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viellaermundnichts · 7 years

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A little something - Told by the heart & written in English

In the first place, my poetry wasn't designed for a greater audience. It really wasn't. Although as a child in 4th grade I had written my first “book” - a small notebook full of stories about pets – which then was copied for my whole class & at some point read out lout on a stage of a school gathering by 10 year old Astrid – although this had happened in my childhood, I considered my writing for a long time to be this exact thing. Mine.

I remember traveling to Brazil many years later. It was in 2008 & I had just graduated from high school back home in Germany. A friend of mine who I had met during an exchange program in the beautiful, icy winter of Winnipeg, Canada, a couple of years before, had invited me to stay with him for a while on my way to Santiago de Chile.

Sitting in the guest room of his student flat in Belo Horizonte – a mattress on the floor & only little space to store my two giant suitcases – I started to write a journal. A kind of diary; a travel journal composed of stories by myself & for myself. Consisting of ideas & my impressions of this trip. I had my first true boyfriend at that time who I supposed to stay the love of my life, my +1 ever after. I decided to write this journal also for him. So that he might get a hint of this new, overwhelmingly colorful & a little exotic world that revealed itself for me in South America. I wanted to give him the possibility to get to know this distant country, even continent, through my eyes while he was preparing for university exams back home in Germany. I wanted to allow him a small grasp of this trip, an idea of my journey. I wanted him to feel close to me, & the other way around. & I wanted to show him my love even from the other side of the world, stuck with too little space for my extremely long legs. Also at that moment, I decided to never travel again with a suitcase – or even two - & to use a backpack instead. This idea turned out to be a great one & I've felt much more flexible & somewhat more free wherever I traveled ever since.

As I said before, my poetry was never designed to be for a greater audience. At least in the first place. In the second, a couple of friends plus my family members encouraged me to publish a few of my texts online. First on facebook, then on my own blog.

It felt a bit weird at first. Embarrassing, since now the whole big world could easily get access to my inner feelings & private thoughts. Embarrassing, true. But I considered it also somewhat like a challenge. A little adventure, undertaken from my desk at home, or later on through my cellphone on a longer journey. I really liked the design of my blog which, to be honest, is rather simple. & I liked it when people liked my poetry. First of all my friends, & later on even strangers who would clap after my performance on stage during a poetry slam or a similar event.

Astrid, the kid from 4th grade was back. Back on stage, reading out her own writing. & feeling so happy about it. Pets had turned into freedom by then; into friendship, love & loss. Truly, the topics had become a little more diverse. The mind behind it, however, a young girl torn between her wish to keep her private thoughts to herself on the one side, & the craving to share this form of creativity with others on the other – the mind had stayed just the same. Now, I'm convinced that this was about the time when I decided that I did not write my texts exclusively for the drawer. Where they would be kept until forever, hidden away form the world outside. Dusty & at some point simply forgotten.

When I look back to this situation today, I’m deeply convinced that the decision to enter that stage was an extremely important one for me. It provided me with the feedback that actually people did care about what I had to say, that they did want to hear it, & that I, on the other side, wanted them to know.

Where do I look back from at the moment? Currently, I'm in Finland; Vieremä is the name of the town that is closest by. But I'm much closer to the huge Finnish forests, lakes & small stretches of open land before the next pond, bog, or again forest starts to emerge from this Northern European soil. I woke up this very morning, a friday in July of 2017, with the distant idea that maybe I should write another text. A different one, a new one.

While I used to consider my writing as poetry - & only poetry – at first, I now also enjoy to simply add one word after another to make up a little story in the end. Most of the time, those words don't have a real order in my head & the outcome on paper is often a huge surprise. Rhymes & metrics, rhetorical devices & especially puns are still my favorites. Sometimes, however, I simply need to free my mind immediately by jotting down notes as fast as I can. By writing sentences on paper or typing them into the keyboard of my computer to get rid of them. I feel the need to organize myself & my associations into a text – poetry or prose, who actually cares? - that I can store outside my brain, but can come back to at any time.

So this morning I wanted to try something new. During the last years, I had sometimes received a message from somewhere around the globe. Composed by an international friend who doesn't speak my mother tongue, German. This friend would ask what was going on with me “being an author”, since he or she had seen a picture of me speaking into a microphone on stage. Often, these friends had even liked my fan page on facebook although, naturally, it couldn't mean anything to them. Everything was written in German.

So this is the reason why this text here is finally written in English. As soon as this idea surfaced in my thoughts, I felt that it's a great one. Great, but slightly difficult since it offers me yet another possibility to “overdo” it. To go on writing since I literally can't stop. I can't help it, but I sometimes suppose that I'm somewhat addicted to writing.

I used to be a heavy thinker.

Before an incident that took place during the spring of 2011 & that unquestionably changed my life & gave my existence a new direction; before that I could sometimes not do much of all this thinking. Alone in my room in a shared flat of my first university city, I would spend hours thinking about the past and the future. Sometimes the present, but only sometimes. Outside in the park, in the woods, or during a trip by train back to my parents' place or up north to the Baltic Sea to my boyfriend at that time, I would spend so much time thinking that, at some point, going a little crazy seemed like the only logical consequence.

Chaos dominated my thoughts. A mess of feelings, of wishes & regrets. I tortured myself for things that had happened, for things I had done to other persons & to myself. My ex-boyfriend, that first love I'd written my Brazilian travel journal for – which, eventually, I never ended up showing to him – he played a significant role in those thoughts. But I'm taking it too far. All I want to say about it now is that the spring of 2011 evidently changed my life.

It made me feel as uneasy as could possibly be; confronted me with an enormous variety of limits, of challenges & of thoughts I never want to repeat. It finally left my in a cold depression, almost suffocating under a blanket of fears, of sorrows &, again, regrets. I had no idea where I was going & it wasn't yet the time for me to lift this blanket, to free myself from it. The blanket, I recall now, was a huge one at that time. An enormous burden for a tiny person.

However, when I left for my new, my second university city in 2013, when I quit my studies of psychology for that moment & took off to rather become a foreign language high school teacher for English & French; when I left my old study home for a new one, I finally stopped keeping all these suffocating thoughts, these emotions, associations & ideas to myself. I started to write them down. On real paper, using a real pen. Sometimes, I would also use my computer keyboard, but I preferred writing directly into one of my journals.

Now that I started to write this present text in Finland, I understand for how long my mind has actually waited for this. For how long my fingers have wanted to put these words down.

I'm currently staying with a high school friend here in this beautiful, open house in central Finland. He's doing research for his studies in engineering up here & right now, I'm alone at this house where he lives during his stay. When I look out of the window, I see birch trees in the wind, with tiny, thin trunks that don't do justice to this massive term. At least in my opinion. The grass is extremely green, full of yellow flowers - of which I assume to know the name in German - with hints of purple, pink and white. A lake is close by, as well as the huge, impressive forest. Are these alder trees? Conifers, I'm sure of that, but also alder? I really don't know.

I left my botanical experts back home in Germany. Forestry students with head, heart & soul who never grew tired of explaining our nature to me, especially plants. Although extremely fascinated by & truly interested in the botanical knowledge of my friends, I myself wouldn't pass a single test on plants. The other tree expert I left behind, is a friend from Estonia. I had visited him in his home country before coming to Finland, stayed in his family home in Tallinn for a couple of days, where I felt very welcome. Treated with friendliness & a somewhat shy way of showing me that I can feel comfortable there. “Eine kleine Torte” (a piece of cake) was offered to me by my friend's mom in irregular intervals. With a little smile on the lips, a hint of generosity in her eyes, & phrased in my mother tongue.

Communication has never been a huge problem for me. Having grown up with older siblings, several kids around the same age in our village, plenty of imaginary friends & later on even more real ones, I've always liked to talk, to tell stories & chat the time away. Conversations with others where often my fresh air. My oxygen & joy. Back in Tallinn, talking to the Estonian family wasn't really easy, since we lacked any deeper knowledge of the other's language. My friend, however, frequently impresses me with his high skills of the German language which he acquired in less than a year.

The communication limits that I experienced with his parents reminded me of those from 2008 with the Portuguese-speaking family of my friend in Brazil. Well, somehow we managed. You always manage, I believe. At least somehow. Once again, I was glad for sign language. A thumbs up, a movement with the head or simply a smile.

By now, I don't really recall what I actually wanted to write about in this text. Before I got carried away, I mean. Again, I would say.

I had planned to write about my journey to Estonia & Finland, of course. The fascinating & fulfilling beginning of the summer of 2017. About how much I love to reflect for a moment, think a thought & eventually put it down on paper. About the decision to try & write a little something in English.

Over an hour has passed since I started scribbling into my notebook; and almost another one to type the whole something on the computer.

The notebook is a journal with a beautiful brown leather cover that my forestry friends gave to me for Christmas in 2015. For my stories, my thoughts & my rhymes, they had explained. A notebook I wanted to take on last year’s big trip to Canada & Alaska, but that I finally decided to leave at home, because I didn't have the words at that time to fill it.

I'm in the kitchen now. Still writing while trying to have breakfast at the same time. My friend bakes his own bread here in Finland from time to time. His craving for German bread is so strong that he can't always have the local version of it.

The taste of this type of bread brings back memories. From my childhood, from home. I now think about next week. I'll be back in Germany, back in my new apartment where I don't feel 100% at home yet. Right in the center of a beautiful, lively Eastern German town. Tourists will be walking on the streets outside my door & they will praise the cozy atmosphere & the unique architecture. Oh, look at all these colorful houses!

Street music, ranging from flute or guitar to violin & sometimes even piano will fill the air of my apartment again through the open windows. The sound will probably make me feel closer to the strangers in the streets. More involved & less alone. I will go back to work the week after & I'm extremely glad that I can say how good this feels to me. Maybe my wish to go back to Tallinn will fade a little by then. Maybe. Now, I don't know.

The water has been boiling for several minutes. Hot drops are spilled all over the kitchen counter & a little stream finds its way to the wooden floor. I'm back in Finland, close to Vieremä, in July of 2017.

Today we will set off on a new adventure, a weekend trip to a national park not too far away from here. Camping & cooking on a tiny gas stove. Hiking & swimming. We might take the kayaks along or simply conquer this world on foot. I'm overwhelmed by this outlook on the weekend & keen to get going.

With the wet dish towel in my hand, dripping from what was supposed to be my tea water, I look through the kitchen window on the professionally cut lawn and the line of birch trees – not alder – that starts right behind it.

Life, so it seems to me right now, life is so simple.

Simple & good.

A small reflection is visible in the kitchen window. As I get closer, a pretty happy face smiles back at me.

Pretty. Happy.

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