falakfala

[falakfala]

23/05/2020

Buda

As a way of postponing my day

As a way of dealing with a day that didn’t had any plans

Those days bring you to other places. Since the bars are open again, I felt a bit more stressed again. There were gatherings and people wanted to see each other. The pushing and pulling can start again. While I just like to go and then accidentally bump into someone. That feels the best for me, then time dissolves and meeting with a smile is easier for me.

When a meeting has a certain time to follow, I become a little bit nervous without a particular reason. Only unpleasant things are sheduald: an exam, a dentist-check up, doctor appointment, starts of meetings etc.

Things that don’t follow sheduled time: giving birth, being born, cooking food without a recipe, reading a book, writing a text, kissing, tea-talks, accidents, transformation, nostalgia, memories, to stare into nothingness, falling in love, transformation, buildings falling apart

[falakfala]

The traces in the hallway are there for a while. I always loved them.

Last time in a dream, I was in a big rush of needing to photograph all the broken walls in my street, before I leave.

The dream was telling me: don’t forget why you are here. For the work, okay.

I fell deeply in love with someone, a very funny Hungarian man, way to old probably, he lived already to long, doesn’t has that young naïvity in love and relationships anymore.

So that dream reminded me, to keep on track, not become melancholic because of an un-answered love.

I also rejected people because of the same reason he rejects the relationship with me now.

During the quarantine public space becomes almost everywhere. Even my own appartment becomes a scene to be changed every now and then, new corners to use, new way of making my outside living room. And sometimes pretending there is someone sitting next to me, or someone coming home and being happy to see me here, relaxed reading. It’s to keep that narrative of a romantic life in tact, by being alone. Time will tell.

We’ll see how things go, for now I am happy with this way of living.

When the flight back got cancelled, at first I became anxious, for one moment really missing every one at once. The body felt heavy, tears bursting out of the eyes.

Releasing.

At least.

After one month.

Now it’s again trying to see the local in another way. The world became smaller but bigger from one moment to the other. The neighbours are nice and funny to talk and smile to.

The whole building is an unknown terrain of possibilities.

Every day I see the crane moving, they are building a hotel. For now there is not that much of tourism going on, so the bricks are there waiting for something. The pubs are empty, the gay-bar too.

Everytime I see the man in the crane working, I try to weave. And there is a small idea of asking him to make some photographs of his day in quarantine.

He too is there, high up in the sky, away from everyone and having his point of view on the world.

[falakfala]

15/04/2020

Széchenyi Istvan Tér.

Evening bike ride and walking the Danube. Bumping into a little field full of rosemary and other spices. And some great view on the city. I made the picture of the hallway, cause it fits in a series of other hallways to nowhere. Maybe they all lead to te same.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/magazine/take-a-photo-here.html

We meet four other people who are also fascinated by the herbs in public. We start talking to them and they are not at all holding back, they are super cosy and comfortable. Preaching we need to stay positive and instead of being afraid to become sick, keep on spreading good energy.

One of them is a farmer, so called bio-ingenieur and he explains how to grow this rosemary yourself. So that’s what will happen now. What a great evening walk. The city can have things to offer, and we are always more happy when surrounded with green. It brings opportunities and opens doors to try to be selfprovided in the metropolis.

[falakfala]

9/04/2020

During the filming of a little documentary with Isabel Tkácová about the current situation for individuals during this quarantine, we met my new neighbour. He is living in Little America, a room from airbnb in the building where I live at Desswffy utca 39.

We were at the balcony and started talking to the man downstairs. He had a friend coming over with his dog and they placed a chair outside. Something not so many people are doing here. But I never experienced spring here, so actually I can not know.

And it’s not because I was still writing outside during Autumn that everyone needs to do that. I can, because I don’t have a family and it’s doable to work everywhere.

So C. invited us to come down and we got an Aperol Spritz, Isabel got water, cause she’s epileptic and alcohol is not a good idea. What first became just a talk, became the real shooting of the movie. He just kept on talking and we immediately got to the certain topics that were necessairy for the documentary Isabel wants to make.

Then it became an exchange, because he wants to work with the shortage of food in the world. His philosophy is that when everyone has food and shelter then we can continue society, but as long that’s not happening, injustice will stay...

I give the postcard and we share some food. He’s a very extravert men and drinks a lot of alchohol. It will take a while before he finds out he’s also the one needing to be taken care of. This period started traumatic for him, which is stressful I think. Further he will find his way and find a place where to feel home.

He reminded me of the text Teju Cole wrote: https://level.medium.com/city-of-pain-1f77a5eae1e9

Now C. is making videos of his life here in an unknown city where he end up right before the quarantine started.

He has 4 children in Vienna, waiting for him to come home one day probably.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC325lic1LrGucHl1ttNVxeg

[falakfala]

24/03/2020

A stranger named D. from Italy is looking for a bike and a friend from Prague is leaving because of the current quarantine situation.

I take public transport and try to pay attention to what I see and feel. The people coming on the bus are wearing face masks. When a women is coughing I check how close she is. My mother called me this morning and left a voice message that she has the virus.

I am mingled with mixed feelings. Cause now being at home would distract me too from my schoolwork. I was afraid to be alone and only wanted to go home when someone if my family would become sick. It’s still the balance that needs to be made if it’s worth it or not. The travel and then the time being there. Being alone over here is different than being home on Belgium. If face the same feelings here as there I guess. But here I can at least do something with the energy. I will join a contest to write a play for the Szinhaz Budapest.

My interest and curiousity in the neighbors can be fulfilled in a collaboration and a 20 day left quarantine to focus on writing and interviewing the neighbours. There is a reward for the winners, that would be great to use it to do some clean up here in the apartment building.

I am already that far. But first I need to print the papers and distribute it. And then wait for the responses.

So I decided to stay here. Although I am alone, I try to help others as much as possible. So therefor the trip to get the bike in the 9tj district.

This is the door and the hallway. The feet are from the man who let me in. He speaks Hungarian, but I know what he means and answer in English and then he let me in. There I wait for t S. to bring the bike. Now D. is not replying, I guess he doesn’t believe that it’s for free.

[falakfala]

24/03/20

We went for a walk, thinking it is a last call, as they’ve just banned coming out of the house for reasons other than urgent. We’ve been gone for hours. This bridge marks the edge of the city- the ring way of rather endless lanes. Below is a space full of sand, one that could inhabit twenty volleyball fields, but a hardened sand that reminds more of construction site than a beach. You imagine all compartments of history, glass, shit, waste, feathers, imprinted in this matter and wonder, will we dare sit down here when it gets warmer?

To our laughter, the prime minister changes his mind a few hours later and indicates that fresh air is an urgency too.

Dziękujemy. (Thank you)

Being under a bridge again reminds of mental health. I hear a gypsy family had lived here for many many years, but they got kicked out at once. Why do people chose bridges? is it really the roof, the shelter from the rain, or also the fuzz that escapes the penetrating silence?

Many rooms are silent now, loneliness takes new shapes, but also friendships are renwed, reviewed. I only discovered you’ve been writing here, and I spit on my chin how ongoingly, abstractly things flow in my head, how by not deciding, I separate myself. It makes me so happy to see you’ve been here.

My room is now filled with strange instruments, and two jars of kombucha have entered the kitchen as house-animals. I would like to once give you a part of it to grow in your place. Would they allow me to carry in a body of fungi floating in a liquid jar? 100 ml might not be enough for it to survive. I will take a bus instead, with a jar shaking on my knees, making the bus smell like vinegar. 

Fermentation is happening, 

many transformations are up to us, now as ever.

Symbols, re-bounds, retreats, closures, that we’ve talked about

and payed for

Are for us to imagine and stretch, win and lose

Heads are still round in 4 walls

[falakfala]

23/03/20

It brings a silent laughter, a nod of a head, when someone brings you to an unknown place just around the corner from where you’ve lived for months.

Right, this was room just behind the building I pass by each day. I feel slightly ashamed that while refering to Warsaw as to a tetris, a city where most people swiftly move from point A to B, using the public space mostly as a transit, I’ve been doing quite the same, enchanted by the mass-motion, up and down the metro station. You follow the energy of the collective body in a rush that sometimes feels like excitement, but mostly obligation. Still, it’s a kick.

Now that I have someone to wander around with through the bushes of the city, I still feel intimidated that I haven’t been doing the same on my own. Occasionally I do evening walks at the cementary, stones and trees reveal bizzare shapes, practice my imagination, and my sensation of being alive. But mostly I replace wastelands for coffee shops. Did I need someone to pull me out, behind the car wash, to see the temple of teddy-bears, to see people making rainbows at the margins of train station? 

Bears that calm one down, bring warmth, but also carry the dirt of the land, making it impossible to really touch. This illusion has to be enough, or maybe it is much more than illusion, who am I to judge, bears collected and placed so precisely, even lovingly.

Someone’s sleeping there, let’s no come too close, not take many pictures, it’s no circus, it’s a home. I see two beds, slightly relieved, they’re safer with two under the night, they pick up bears, they hunt for beers and colored blankets. Bless them a safe night.

[falakfala]

21/03/2020

The first and the last evening.

Getting food from Johanna cause she is leaving Budapest, back to Germany.

She talks about her neighbours, that they are not really friendly unfortunately. And then we look at the doors. Its like a protection for what?

When our doors are like prisondoors, then ofcourse humans start to act like the material we are locked in...

What will keep on surprising me here are the doors. Before you get into a private place, the amount of doors and codes we need to go through are enormous. Opening and closing them becomes part of the routine. But in the end, it’s a lot to do before we can be cosy with each other. It affects.

If I could I would remove them. Or try to grow some stuff in it like plants. The material is because of the metal industry. So it’s a good artefact ofcourse. But we can always burry artifacts and choose something else.

In the end everyone has the same pictures on their fridge. So why don’t show it, share some intimacy. Nothing is more fragile and tender than having a glance in someone’s house and see how they have their little habits going on.

[falakfala]

15/03/2020

Andrassy utca.

15/03/2011

Petőfi speelt hierin altijd een belangrijke rol. Dit jaar was ook een gedicht van hem te horen - omgevormd in een modern jasje - voordat minister president Orbán zijn speech hield voor het Nationaal Museum in Boedapest. Orbán ging hierbij nogal tekeer tegen de EU en het buitenland. "Wij accepteren geen dictaten van Brussel of wie dan ook," benadrukte hij onder meer. Bovendien was het, nu het rumoer omtrent de persvrijheid zo groot is, nog opvallender dat het gedicht van Petőfi, dat gaat over vrijheid, paradoxaal genoeg juist op deze dag niet volledig was. Het gedeelte over de persvrijheid, waar toendertijd voor gestreden werd, werd er uitgelaten. Of dit een vorm van provocatie is geweest of censuur is onbekend.

15/03/1848

Verkondigde de nieuwe normen en waarden die Hongarije kon voordragen. Om niet achteruit te kijken, maar vooruit. Voorgelezen op het Vörösmarty plein.

15-DIK MÁRCIUS, 1848

Magyar történet múzsája,

Vésőd soká nyúgodott.

Vedd föl azt s örök tábládra

Vésd föl ezt a nagy napot!

Nagyapáink és apáink,

Míg egy század elhaladt,

Nem tevének annyit, mint mink

Huszonnégy óra alatt.

Csattogjatok, csattogjatok,

Gondolatink szárnyai,

Nem vagytok már többé rabok,

Szét szabad már szállani.

Szálljatok szét a hazában,

Melyet eddig láncotok

Égető karikájában

Kínosan sirattatok.

Szabad sajtó!... már ezentul

Nem féltelek, nemzetem,

Szívedben a vér megindul,

S éled a félholt tetem.

Ott áll majd a krónikákban

Neved, pesti ifjuság,

A hon a halálórában

Benned lelte orvosát.

Míg az országgyülés ott fenn,

Mint szokása régóta,

Csak beszélt nagy sikeretlen:

Itt megkondult az óra!

Tettre, ifjak, tettre végre,

Verjük le a lakatot,

Mit sajtónkra, e szentségre,

Istentelen kéz rakott.

És ha jő a zsoldos ellen,

Majd bevárjuk, mit teszen;

Inkább szurony a szivekben,

Mint bilincs a kezeken!

Föl a szabadság nevében,

Pestnek elszánt ifjai!... -

S lelkesülés szent dühében

Rohantunk hódítani.

És ki állott volna ellen?

Ezren és ezren valánk,

S minden arcon, minden szemben

Rettenetes volt a láng.

Egy kiáltás, egy mennydörgés

Volt az ezerek hangja,

Odatört a sajtóhoz és

Zárját lepattantotta.

Nem elég... most föl Budára,

Ott egy író fogva van,

Mert nemzetének javára

Célozott munkáiban.

S fölmenénk az ős Budába,

Fölrepültünk, mint sasok,

Terhünktől a vén hegy lába

Majdnem összeroskadott.

A rab írót oly örömmel

S diadallal hoztuk el,

Aminőt ez az öreg hely

Mátyás alatt ünnepelt! -

Magyar történet múzsája,

Vésd ezeket kövedre,

Az utóvilág tudtára

Ottan álljon örökre.

S te, szivem, ha hozzád férne,

Hogy kevély légy, lehetnél!

E hős ifjuság vezére

Voltam e nagy tetteknél.

Egy ilyen nap vezérsége,

S díjazva van az élet...

Napoleon dicsősége,

Teveled sem cserélek!

Pest, 1848. március 16.

[falakfala]

Dessewffy utca 39

From one day to another the Hungarian flag appeared on our appartment building.

Arriving home after needing to take our stuff home from school to prevent ourselves from the Corona virus. All events and education is cancelled for the upcoming 3 weeks at least. I carry a stone sculpture in the bike basket. There was a bigger one that was planned to be cleaned next week. But we cannot even enter the garden.

The big head was to heavy to take. So it became this one.

This week my neighbour appeared with an invitation to gather together with the whole building to ask for the owner to paint some stuff, to make renewings. It was a pity to not be there cause I was travelling to Warsawa, Poland. But now this trip is cancelled, so we can focus on the local.

Someone peed next to the entrance of elevator in the corner. Trying to clean it, asking both my neighbours for a cleaning tool. But they both didn’t have this. The closest neighbour didn’t know the housekeeper either and suggested to use a napkin to make it a bit dry. We were standing on the balcony he was trying to point where the housekeeper lives.

The courtyard was dark and derelict. The green stones were darker. Everything was fogged with the darkness of the dusk.

[falakfala]

The morning started slowly and with cold feets.

Outside it was warm. Too warm for this period of the year, according to previous periods. The city gives a feeling of spring. A micro climate is created and makes it 16 degrees.

Walking with my bike and mentioning there is almost no place for people here in the street where I live. The cars are parked on the pavement, the parking line is made on the pavement and the wheels are flying a bit because of the difference in hight. I pass a women, and make space for her by waiting patiently, she thanks me. Another men who is walking with his right foot turned out to the right, taking the time that his body needs to move in this way. We smile to each other, briefly. We are both disabled by the narrowness of our body in this street. The third women makes a little run to give me place to go. All three encounters reacted differently, and we looked into each other’s eyes. A thing I missed so much in this big Budapestic-city. And how the act of making space for someone else, evokes by accident this gentle emphatic gaze and feeling we know each other.

Continuing the walk brings me to the triangles close to the Operaszház. Normally I walk on the triangles, they have a sharp outlook, they are there to prevent cars to ride there, but they bother pedestrians. Also a wastebin placed in between them and another monument, show the planning of this little area as a little puzzle that fits, but you know the pieces are not made for each other. So you wait until you find the right pieces that doesn’t cause friction, in the meantime you let these pieces connected laying somewhere on the table, waiting to be remembered.

Entering the big street, brings a wonderful sunshine warmth. The first moment of full sunshine, cause the other streets are blocked with the 96 metres high buildings. It’s the limit of heights of buildings in Budapest. Accodirng to an important build up year and reconstruction year 1896.

Pedestrians are waiting to cross the street. It would be wonderfull to install a good bench overhere. I am happy it’s a red light, it brings hot shines on my pale skin that missed this sensation for a whole winter. But when the light turns red everyone continues their walk.

The students from the Lizst Ferenc university are having a break in the sun outside. It’s the music academy and I realise how little our academies are connected with each other. We don’t go to concerts there or know people from here. The building is green. Last spring, April 2019, I took a picture here from the window. A young man was practicing his cello, there was a scooter parked in front of the window. In the mirror the sky was reflected. I placed that mirror in the middle of the image, pushed. This image has the layer of the sky, mirror, scooter, wall, window, room, cello (music), belly of the cello, the image carries a lot of spaces in itself.

Continuing the walk to the yellow church and arriving at Király utca. An important street to walk and work. A lot of shops, eating places, the end of the street leads to the party district are located in this street. The trolley bus passes by. And it has a point where I am always confused how we need to ride and who needs to free the road for who. I am on a point where I don’t know what to do. Like I followed my feet all the time until this moment. I see the brown building with white scars. The plaster fell off, some statues are carrying the rooftop. It’s like I see this building for the first time. I decide to park my bike at the same place I did yesterday evening. Then some men wanted to pee in the bushes. I looked at him as a way of saying hello, but also a a silent conversation that I would see him do everything, and that I didn’t. This silent understanding made him think twice before opening his pants. The city has too little public toilets.

Now during daylight, there are children playing in the garden, they have a school break. When the light changes this area changes. And would the people who want to pee here know that the next day children are playing here?

I lock my bike and start walking, then I see the back of Monika. She works in the antique shop and coffee shop. We met the first week that I was here. I am happy to see her. Because not only my feet where cold this morning, also my heart was a bit heavy.

She askes how I am doing. We talk in the street in the sun. I say that I need to take care of my heart a bit these days, cause I am waiting for an answer of someone who I would like to have a relationship with. She looks at me with empathy. First misunderstands me, and thinks it’s about my relationship with my mother, that’s where we talked about last times. I can say: no, it’s my own love life that I am figuring out.

I thank her that I can just say this. That it’s not that bad when I can express what’s inside. Then I ask how she is doing. Her father passed away. So she will close the shop for some days. “How are you doing?” She says that he as sick for a long time, cancer. I ask about her mother, she says that she’s strong, but they lived together for 60 years, so she don’t know how her mothers heart will survive. I emphasize with that complex feeling. She is wearing a necklace with red hearts.

She tells me I need to come and bring some friends. It’s really empty these days because of the Corona-virus. Locals are coming, but she doesn’t see any tourists.

We cross the street together, she needs to buy some anti-bacterial gel at Rossman.

I go back to the brown building. Cross the street again in the other direction. And make this shot. In the meantime I am thinking about the lives and that sometimes the wires are connecting these feelings.

The wires sometimes distort our sight to see the buildings, and that the buildings are damaged, have scars, wounds because of time passing.

[falakfala]

Going to Szél Kálmán tér, the end stop of tram 4/6. Earlier it was called Moszkva/Moscow. People still call it like that.

It’s the same name as the end stop of tram 4 in Gent.

An exhibition opening of Imre Kiss at Pince. The place is from the father of a young women, first it was a bike shop, now it is a self organised exhibition place named Pince.

Together with Johanna from Germany we arrived late, cause there was another opening of a public space work at Akácfa utca 39. A billboard about housing and homelessness. The compairison of space, cause the messurement of a billboard is equal to the minimum to live in. How much space gets publicity in a city? How many homes and addresses are provided for the citizens?

We arrived late at Pince.

I appointed with Pálma from Hungary to get some books back: Field Guide into Getting Lost from Rebecca Solnit and a book from Italy Calvino. Cause I want to use a text about the ‘blue of distance’ where Rebecca is writing about.

Pálma already left when we arrived... It was a big pity cause I let her carrying the books for nothing...

In the corner of the neighbours door, there was a broken plate. I thought it was maybe Pálma who did this. Cause we made a video earlier of her breaking plates under a bridge. She wanted to get rid of a certain anger and breaking something was a way to deal with it, we thought.

When coming back out of the gallery space, the broken pieces were gone, only some small parts remained. Those parts could leave a trace and will become more invisible by time.

They are the fragile leftovers of the broken porcelain.