Restless Rest

What is there to do for me? When I was still at work (in Paris... *starts to sob uncontrollably*) there were a million things in my mind I'd rather do at this very moment.
But where have they gone? I can't find one of them.
What do I do? I look for a place to live in my new hometown, Freiburg (hopefully), desperately and every flat share rejects me.
I have breakfast and movie nights with my friends and I'm out clubbing sometimes, I try to catch up to my guitar skills - didn't play in a long time and when the weather is nice, I go for a walk, I sit down on the grass to write poems, I lie down and start to cry over sad german love songs on my iPod.

What I was listening to the last couple days
hwww.hoerbuch-blog.com/

The rest of my holiday free time I sit inside and play useless games on my phone and listen to audio books (No, not on audible.com, I'm not sponsored -I just go to the library, I'm sorry). 2048 has become my favourite number and I protect myself from zombies trying to cross my lawn and eat my brain. Yep, that's it, mostly. My life. 

Don't start this. Just don't.
ironyca.files.wordpress.com

I know, in less than a month I will be fully occupied again with stuff from Uni, getting to know new people, keeping up my two other languages and books and all that, but for now I'm in that ultimate vacuousness, that blank space between one paragraph and another.

I'm just before the new chapter where a new storyline will begin. It feels awkward. It feels like I should make something out of this time, but I'm wasting it. 
I feel kind of restless, like: I want to move, let's do something!
But then again, what's there to do? And so I end up on my bed again, with the video games and the audio books. I enjoy that, to be honest, but shouldn't there be more? 

I 've come to believe it's the fact that I don't have an appartment in my new environment yet and my inner, repressed anxiety about the future is making me uncomfortable. I know it is going to work out in some way, it always works out eventually. But still... I just want to have it safe. I always have a plan B, but I really really don't want to use it. And what if plan B or C or even D don't work out? 
In front of everyone, my parents, strangers, my friends I'm like: "Hey, no stress - I will find a thing, former or later". Gosh, I'd love to be as chilled out and relaxed about it as I pretend to be. I'm not. I'm a bag of nerves. I live in restless rest. I'm desperate. HELP! 


Ok, calm down, Lotta. It's not that bad. This problem will be solved in less than a month, lay back, take a rest. You'll be fine.

EMF (Electronic Music Festival) 2014

What I really, absolutely want to do, is going on a trip. On a holiday. Because the only holiday I had was the festival at the beach in July I attended for 2 days (Electro Beach). Hell yes, it was awesome and "en plus" we had sun, fun and music - but only two days... It passed too quickly. 
I'm not all about sunshine (instead I'm all about that bass), going to the pool and party all night - no in fact I want to go wherever I can go, just a holiday. I don't even care if it's Belgium, Poland, the Nederlands, France (again?!) or something further away. I wouldn't even mind the "Nordsee", one of the two seas at the coast of Germany.

The problem is only the appartment for October. I can't just leave now and hope for the best. That's why I'm still here writing and not freezing without any battery left in the woods with a friend and loads of good music and conversations (and maybe some tea). I imagine me driving hundreds of cilometres, I imagine cold wind and a cloudy sky and a grey unfriendly ocean and sand under my bare feet and a cozy blanket. I want it so badly, please, let me find a place at Freiburg - and then let me find one friend who is prepared to come with me. 

The destination and the activities don't matter much to me, let's do whatever wherever. Just together. And just right now. So...


Who wants to go to the "plage" with me?

The Sun's Lie

Sun gazing through the clouds like  

what up, I'm still here keeping you warm 

but it's autumn and she is not as strong as she shone 

just a few weeks ago 

when we were still together 

when she kissed the river 

like we kissed 

in a lovely, red and endless seeming romance 

that ended, of course 

Tell me sun, was I betrayed?

I'm back

Don't know what I was looking for when I went home. I found me alone. And sometimes I need someone to say: "You'll be alright. What's on your mind?"

Yellowcard

I stopped listening to Joshua Radin, I've maybe shed a tear on the train home. But it was hard to be sad and depressed. Firstly, there was an annoyed couple who sat across from us. And secondly, us -  I was with a good friend. When you leave with someone it isn't as terrible as when you leave alone. And I knew none of my German friends would stay there, we were the last to leave. I knew noone would come to the "Gare de l'est" the next time I will arrive there. That it would be completely different, even if it wasn't exactly a goodbye forever. 

But in some ways it was. It was a goodbye to Paris, as my city. As in "Bitch, please. I'm not a tourist - I live here", the pride in my voice when I vocalized this sentence. 

My workplace is no longer my workplace. It is "the place where I used to work" and, "au pire" (=for the worst) my room is no longer my room. It is the room of someone else, some new girl who'd come to live there the next year. It is not more than "the room I used to live in" now. 

Maybe now, as I'm reflecting about all, the goodbye, maybe now is my time to cry over it. To realize that it's really over. That I can never go back. 

Yes, I know that this is not the apocalypse it's just the end of a limited time period. I was conscious about that fact before the very beginning. 

Yes, maybe I'm dramatizing and yes, I look forward to my studies and to my time as a student of "Medienkulturwissenschaften" (yeah, that word is a thing) and politics. 

Yes, I know the best is yet to come. Or at least I hope for it. 

But what if this was the best time? Like in some Green Day lyrics: "I hope you had the time of your life". For me, "The Time of Your Life" is an abstract thing. Maybe the time of your life is everytime. Every moment. The Now. You can make any time the time of your life. I'm looking into the future and I'm thankful that I can do this. That I am who I am. Born where I was born. Raised like I was raised. Hurt like I was hurt. Struck by love like I was struck so many times. Because all that made me me.

Now I'm back. But so what? It was an awesome time, I made awesome friends, I learned a lot about life, I got to know a city "vraiment", I fell in love, I found my own lines and borders, I learned a lot about myself, too. But I don't know all. Perhaps it's good to be obliged move on, so I can change, learn more and experience more. 

Nostalgy is all well and good. I can't help to fall into it from time to time. But I don't dive into it, don't bathe my soul in it, don't let the shiny memories be the ideal of today's reality. I'm not that kind of person anymore. I have changed.

I'm back. I realize how few my real friends are. While my brothers are celebrating a on-going-two-weeks-party because my parents are out on holiday, I sit there, often alone, mostly with my best friend as my only companion, seldom with 4 other friends from whom two of them are my female cousins (#foreveralone). But I don't really care. I don't need that superficial kind of friendship. I take it if it's there but there are more important thing to focus on. More important people. 

I'm back. And I'm cool with it.

I think you've changed

Thoughts on: A hopeless romance, a missing cupboard & the nostalgic nature of humanity

I know that my time here is coming to an end. I'm ready to go. Yet I'm not that ready. I guess you could see it coming: My next sentence and how it will begin: There's this guy... And this is how all the good and the bad stories start. The live changing stories, or the bed time stories, the stories that last a life time or just a week. The love stories. 

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go. I'm standing here outside your door. I hate to wake you up to say Goodbye - John Denver

So there's this guy. I'm not going to talk about how we met, how he looks like or whatever. I'm just going to talk about how he is. And how he makes me feel.

Whenever I feel lonely, he reminds me that I'm not. He cares. I lie next to him - without having sex and without kissing, just staring at him, for hours, staring back at me and it feels good. I don't wonder much about what this is or how we got this. I just want to go on like this forever. I don't want to change it, to develop (even though I know it's neccessary), to break up or to really commit to it. Because I don't want to destroy it. For him, I'm the first one. 

On the one hand. this feels awkward, because I am afraid he will regret it and because he's not the first one for me. 

On the other hand, it's so unbelievably beautiful, it's special. He does not try to manipulate me, he has no high expectations, no broken hearts and no crying nights due to failed relationships on his back. He still believes in love. He's innocent. I like that so much. Maybe because I'd love to be like this again. I would like to go back to my 16th year, before I had my first boyfriend, when love was that ONE BIG THING: that dream, that miracle to find. 

I don't know why this makes me cry now.

When I was younger, I was very afraid of change. For example, I cried so badly when we got a new cupboard in our living room. (#firstworldproblems, I know, but) How was I supposed to live with a new one yet the old one had been so good and reliable and felt like home to me? 

How was I supposed to stand a life where everything I loved was changed constantly, taken away from me or replaced by something worse? How was I supposed to be happy when I knew everyone was going to die eventually at a time in the future, because everyone grows older? And how was I supposed to sustain growing older, being an adult, leaving childhood behind and my parents dying before me?

I hated these nights when I lay awake for hours with the carousel of painful thoughts and questions going on and on in my tiny head. In the end, I cried myself to sleep, over and over. Not every night of course, but some nights - especially when I hadn't kept my mind occupied by other not-so-important things that regarded my daily life. 

Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle Some nights I wish they'd just fall off - FUN.

My biggest fear was change. Change that would make my body look different and make me feel ugly (commonly known as puberty, kids). Change that would come with the time, inevitably and fast, and give my parents grey hair and wrinkles and would make them die -sooner or later. Change that would end every good time I ever had. And what follows after a good time? For sure, a bad time. There weren't going to be good times following good times forever. I was convinced that change would destroy everything. Change would make everything worse.

Now my home, soon a memory, because everything changes.

Is there still a bit of this fear inside of me? With the years going by, with accepting myself how I've become when I developed, matured and changed, I changed my regard on change. I learned to be more accepting. I accepted change as a part of life. Change is the only abstract thing that is unchangeable. It comes with the time, that goes by and that is unstoppable, no matter what you try. The time as a physical factor noone really understands. Isn't change as a result of passing time the essence of life? Everything is in motion, everything dies and something new is born and even if the material doesn't vanish (like e.g. water) it changes constantly, to ice, raindrops, water from a source, in a stream, in a toilet, frozen in a glacier or on my cheek when I cried my eyes out because of a cupboard that was tossed in the trash 12 years ago. 

Get back, get back
Get back to where you once belonged - The Beatles

You see, I've accepted change, It doesn't frighten me anymore. Or does it? Or does it just make me look back on my "unchanged" or "innocent" self, the past-Lotta, with all her morals and beliefs and opinions? I don't know if she would have liked me now, the Now-Lotta (that will be the new past-Lotta in a few seconds), I often like to imagine she would tell me I've become a bitch. I've changed too much. I've gone to far. But where do we go from here? 

I can't get back.

If I think closely about it, I don't want to get back. It's just this kind of nostalgia you like to plunge yourself in when you meet someone like him. But you recognize, maybe everything is lovely now but it isn't going to work out, because he's going to England for a year starting in September, and you are beginning your studies in Germany, "environ" (=roughly speaking) 861 kilometres away from him. 

Adding to this, you have the solid base of barely one month together in which you weren't really in a relationship at any point. How lovely is that?

On top of all, you see, you're just not on the same level. Yes, you like his sweetness, his innocence, the romantic stuff- but is that really you, how you are now? Not really. 

This is what little 14-year-old-Lotta longed for on the sofa, with her braces watching High School Musical for a billionst time. But is that really you, "grown-up", responsable, 19-year-old-Lotta, an adult, an to-be university student, who does her own laundry, independant, studies for a politics exam, likes contemporary art, has had ONS and still feminist ideas? Maybe you could be together. 

You could be truly in love, you and him, if you would both stay here and had the time. But you know what? You don't have the time. That's life.

You, dear reader, get me. You see that I like the idea of "past-me" and "now-me" and "future-me" as if they were seperated from each another. In fact they are all me, inevitably connected, myself in all varies and shapes and sizes. It's fascinating, isn't it? 

How change, how all the factors of change (time, journeys, people, environment, ideas, experiences, a book, an article, music, a single sentence, a look...) can make you a different person, with every thought, every love story, every year on your back you get richer and better and in the same time more complicated and hurt.

I unsuccessfully tried to find I good metaphor for this. The best I can offer is, to see your personality as a book, or better, a story. A story that is rewritten, changed, edited, expanded, completed, cut off, ripped out and glued together again in a randomly beautiful mess. 

There's no such thing as a "simple character". Constantly changing who I am, I like to document moments, I like to keep records of my change, take snapshots of the versions my story can show. In my poorly written songs and poetry, my blog (YES, THIS IS A SNAPSHOT RIGHT NOW) and right on top my diaries. Because humans love to be nostalgic. 

You can have a good time judging yourself at the age of 3 in pampers giggling and playing in the sand in a bleached out photograph, remembering "The Good Old Times" with your buds enjoying a beer in a bar, laughing at your heartbreak in 7th grade when you were convinced you'd never go out ever again when you read your old journals... 

Every human loves to look back on his life, pictures and pieces of texts and memories and says things like: "Isn't it funny how hideous I looked in my braces?" and "Oh it was sooo ugly that old cupboard in our living room!" and to smile about that lovely little love story that was never meant to be written.

Goodbye ?

It's been a while I know. I had some stuff going on with that one guy I've never told you about but I'm tired of talking (and thinking) about him because it's over before it has even started,  I really don't want to talk about it, so...

I'm saying goodbye again, soon. Or I'm actually saying Goodbye already. Today I had to give my 9-year-old host child girl her goodbye present - an album full of photos of our year together. With a smiling eye I see in the future, because I don't have to care about all those children problems anymore (like where's my stuffed animal? Or can I have ice cream? Why does my brother get all the attention? etc. etc. etc.) and I can make a new start. 

I'm really in for new starts. I'm excited to LEARN again. To actually put stuff into my head, to read, to improve my writing, my knowledge and my skills. I'm craving to learn after that year. The only "intelligent input" I got, I got through books (as normal) and cultural stuff I had to do in my free time. That was no bad, because I got to see many, many inspiring exhibitions, got to know more and different artists and ways you can perceive and do art and got to think about art and culture and how they can be impulses for my brain and my mind. 

I'm going to miss the endless, illimited access to art, music and culture I have here in Paris. I still haven't watched a theater play but it's overdue! I do visit a lot of museums, some seldom, some even regularly, like the Centre Pompidou, I watch a lot of movies (the cinema card, remember?) and I attended some concerts. I like to think I've done a lot during my 10 months here. 

Now, with July, the last month of this year abroad, this amazing time in Paris, starts. And there, the crying eye comes in... I'm using the last, the fourth toothbrush and my parents took my IKEA carpet and a not so small suitcase to Germany with them, when they visited, end of May. Ever since, my "chambre de bonne" looks empty, not as comfortable as in winter. It also reminds me adamantly of my departure and the Goodbyes that I have to face in a short while. On top of that, it brings back the memories of how it all began, the starting days in late August, when I arrived here for the first time.

When this was only a room, not home. When I didn't know the names of the streets or where to board exactly on the metro platform to change trains in the best way at République later. When I had no friends here and no idea how the other interns looked like or were like. When I imagined my year so brightly but also so differently as it turned out to be.

Open the boxes, unpack what you own.
Hang up some posters and make this a home.
Walk down the stairs and open the door.
Look at the things you've never seen before.

This is the beginning, of anything you want.
This is the beginning…
This is the beginning, of anything you want.
This is the beginning…

Get on the buses, learn numbers and names
Your eyes are the camera, your heart is the frame
Hum a new song as you walk down the streets,
Soon they'll be full with friends and memories. - BOY (This is EXACTLY how it felt)

Why did I put a question mark there, in the title, you may ask. I'm not going to stay here, that's for sure. But who knows if I will come back or not. Maybe I'll live here with my family, 20 years from now, maybe not, but I could. When I was babysitting two cute boys from my "Kindergarten" last week-end, I realized that I could do it. I could do anything. There are people doing it everyday. Moving away from "home" and making a new place what home is ought to be. Marry a French man, have kids with him, send them to a French-German kindergarten and school. Go to apérétifs and theater plays, go out in the parks, spend my days doing a job I love, have a nice appartment in the 10eme arrondissment in Paris. I could do anything. I could be anything.

I could just stay here forever. And lie in parks and drink beer in bars.

For now, I'm returning. But goodbye ain't goodbye. Because I'm sure I will come back. And I know, it sounds kitschy and cliché and everything. But I don't care. So here it is: Paris will always be in my heart. I found a new home there. I fell in love there. I won't forget it. So this Goodbye will just be temporary, while most of the other goodbyes (real goodbyes - with people), will be for long, maybe forever. This is hard. I feel the tears coming but I won't let them run down my cheeks. All these kids and their futures lying in front of them like an endless pool of possibilites and chances and failure and changes and love and death.
I love them, each and everyone of them - and some won't even remember me. 

I wish them luck on their way but I know I can't be there for them to help. I can't educate them or raise them any longer, I can't be their mentor, nor their friend. They have to make it on their own. It hurts. But they will.

Paris, tu vas me manquer. Je te dis Au Revoir mais c'est promis: Je vais revenir, mon amour!

I'm a writer

I don't want to say that I'm an author. Or that I actually write stuff anyone wants to read. Or that I actually write real stuff at all and not only unfinished blog posts in bad English and sad kitschy entries in my actually very pretty diary. 

But still I claim that I'm a writer. Simply because I like to write. And I do it a lot. Some people do sports, to get out their energy, to vanish their thoughts away (or sometimes reflect them once again). Others do gardening. Or cooking. Or collecting things. Or just watching TV. And I? I write. That's what I've always done. For me, there's nothing better than pouring all my "forever-alone-crushing-on-that-guy-break-up-lonliness-happiness-what-did-I-eat-today" words into a tiny little notebook. 

"What's the point in writing it all down?" is a question non-writing friends just LOVE to ask me. On the one hand you can easily answer it with that old quote that's about using the experience of your past to conqueor the future. On the other hand I like to see my writing as a part of memorizing my life. 

I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you. - The Fault in Our Stars

It's not exactly what the quote is about, but I love it. And it's similar. Writing is (even if it might be a shout into the void) for me a means to hold on to my memories, my biography, my experiences. I can reread all of my heart breaks, my friendships, my failures and my good moments (They're rare in my texts, I have to admit that, mainly because my urge to write is bigger when I'm sad, obviously). And more important, learn from them. I can recognize patterns and I can follow my handwriting, how it changes over the years and why.

Before I became a writer, I was a reader. I'm still a reader, as you may figured out by the exorbitant number of cute quotes from teen books I use in my posts, or the various hints I hide in my texts regarding my love of books (which are not very hidden, come on). 
Reading was always a possibilty for me to exchange my reality for another. To dive into another world, a different dimension, a different person. 

Reading is letting yourself go far away while you sit steadfastly in a chair. Throughout reading, I gained my words. And I realized the power of putting words together in a row, to make them gain sense and meaning. Through reading I learned how to communicate better, to speak differently and to express myself. Through reading I learned to write. I mean not in the original sense of "learning to write" in primary school. But rather in the sense of writing essays, stories, fiction, diary entries. To put real feelings on the paper. Yes, in fact, it started in primary school, when I had read all the books from the children's section in our local library. Literally every single book. So I started to read stuff for older children and teens. I read books within the characters where 17 when I was 9 or 10. 

When it comes to books, I matured really fast. Since I'm 15 I started adult's books because back in the days I believed I had read all good teen stuff on the recent market and I was not willing to try out classics yet. Now I'm 19 and I read teen books for 16 year olds. What the hell is wrong with me? I loved my German class in primary school Except from grammar and orthography, the exams were all about writing fiction. My favourite exercise were the assignments where you had given several words and you had to imagine a story in which all the words play a main role. I digged it! And obviously had the best grades. I was a literal bubbling pool of  creativity ! And I didn't stop reading. It got worse. Now I reconsider my former reading behaviour and I view it differently. Sometimes I didn't read books, I consumed them. And it's a shame.

My record were 17 books in one summer, which means in Germany, 6 weeks of summer vacation. I was totally addicted. Addicted to books. I've never stopped reading. But I consume less and with moderation now. Because in the beginning I could memorize every plot, every storyline and every character from any book I've ever read. I literally told my best friend a whole book (Molly Moon) everyday on our way to school and home. But I realized that I can't do this anymore. I've read to much. And maybe my memory and my brain kinda suck. I made too few pauses. Consumed and consumed without a stop. Maybe sometimes books are like chocolate. You have to enjoy them, slowly. Or you will have a bad feeling after.

I'm in a constant clinch with friend about how  we should read books and which books. In his opinion books need to give you something precious, a life lesson, a moral, an important thought or something like that, to be good books. I agree. But I disagree at the point when he says: Only these books are worth being read. That's not true. What about all the books that take you to a different place? A journey to a tropical island, or in the head of a sick perfume maker a 100 years ago, on the back of a dragon fighting for peace in a fictional fantasy land? 

I wanted to talk about writing, instead I talk about reading. There's a thunderstorm outside at the moment. It's fucking hailing here. The hailstones sound like an enormous drum on the roof, but unmelodical without a real rhythm. 

One day baby we'll be old. Oh Baby we'll be old - Think of all the stories that we could have told - Asaf Avidan

But reading and writing go together because all we read was written once. A perfect imperfect combination of words and letters to get straight into your mind and make you think. Is this what I do now? Is this why I write? Not to hold on to moments from my past, not to find matter in my life. Just to tickle some neuron in your head... Just to make you think. Of what? I don't know - I'm not you. I'm just the writer, you're the reader. I think it's legit to say: I write, I'm a writer. Don't you?

Lastly, I need to say that I have this "urge to write" that I already mentioned. It's not only like a hobby, not only a form of relief from my thoughts, it's like a strange need for me. I feel it like a soft pain in my stomach. Not all the time, sometimes I miss it for weeks or months. But then it's back, strikes me and forces me to take up my pen again. "Write! Write!" shouts this voice inside me. Randomly, I start to write. I put words together. There's no sense, no meaning, no plan, no book. Just me and a story. Writing is telling stories. Maybe that's why I write. I like to tell stories. Some people would even say I'm good at it. 

Writing is a part of me, like reading is a part of me. It wouldn't be me if there wouldn't be a book on the bedstand. It wouldn't be me if there were no secret documents of absolutely random unpublished unread stories on my laptop. I never told my ex about my writing. I was afraid he'd laugh. I was ashamed. Maybe this is one reason why we broke up. If I'm ashamed for my writing I'm ashamed for myself, am I not? I don't want to be anymore. I'm a writer. I have no shame.