Wings of Desire

Tuesday, March 6, 2007. 13:24. Berlin. Technical University Library.

Sitting behind a rather ordinary, standard pale-green German desk for some time now, after numerous unsuccesful attempts to focus and be productive, I must admit that I have failed. Opposite of me, Sebastian is busy with electrical engineering problem solving and what they call – the rational world of mathematics (or so they* say). I am staring out the window which has now began to set off my mind on a tangent. Looking at the birds soaring above the smokestacks across the street, I can’t help it but think about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a book that I have read many years ago ... Ironically, the more I think about it presently, the more its paradigm of perceiverance intrigues me. The question that I ask myself is – are we really in fact looking for pefection? Just the other day, I was sitting at the 103 café having this discussion with Sebastian. I asked myslef: what is it that really counts in life?

I suppose that throughout centuries humans have been customarily attached to material things, perhaps because they are simply more tangible and cohesive to the average mind. We take comfort in the five senses that we have, and we tend to cling on to things we can touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. However, what happens to those things that we cannot experience with our five senses; those things that are not made of brick and stone, those things that we cannot buy and those things that we simply cannot have any control over? Perhaps being limited and constrained within the realms of the five senses can make ordinary and everyday life much easier, but at the end of the day once we know that everything we see is tangible, there is no space left for belief, hope, or for their further quest. Perhaps I have been poking fun of Sebastian’s mathematics a bit too early, as I begin to question what happens to the whole world of the irrational out there? The world which is at many points incomprehendible, the world where belief is that first and only step in shining a light to the rest of it.

Essentially, it is nothing but fear that keeps us restrained to enter and explore the irrational, to do the unexplainable and incomrehendible. The five senses are nothing but an emergency break, a common constraint to which we so blindly abide by. It is them that blind us and limit us? When will we, like Jonathan, spread our wings and without fear of failure – reach perfection? How many falls does it take for us to realize who and what we are? How many falls does it take for us to be honest enough to ourselves to get up after a heavy fall, dust ourselves off and look at ourselves in the mirror? Only we know... because no one but ourselves is our worst and most sincere critic.

*For special reasons who they are will not be revealed nor discussed for the sake of general security

On Hopeless Romantics

There exist times when one finds them very selves in the words of a song. Due to its exceptional uniqueness, it is able to perfectly capture the mood, the mindset, the emotion, and the sensibility of the moment. It is one of those rare instances which seem as if that particular song has been tailored specifically just for them, in many ways similar to those unexpected predicaments of the future seen through a crystal ball.

What happens however when one starts discovering themselves in too many songs? What happens on those sleepless nights when you lye in bed, staring at the ceiling while you play out a million different scenarios of life as the shadows merrily play with the light? What happens when you associate yourself with so many different situations that are sung about, triggering hundreds of different moods, ideas, and emotions? You find yourself in a strange limbo and you can no longer make any sense out of it all. It’s as if you got stranded on an island surrounded by a sea of confusion left with nothing but these songs meandering through your head. Is that just a temporary state of insanity or an inkling of hopeless romanticism that has been hibernating deep within?

Hopeless romanticism, on the other hand, is seen as nothing but one’s unwillingness and stubbornness to accept reality. Hopeless romantics create and live a separate reality, parallel to ours. They are looked upon as fools and jesters, scornfully condescended on the side for their very hopelessness. However, hopeless romantics are everything but hopeless. Hopeless romantics are the only ones who truly find themselves and live their lives according to the lyrics of a song. Hopeless romantics are those who have faith. Every single breath a hopeless romantic takes constitutes them as a believer. Hopeless romantics are dreamers. They will forever continue to fight their windmills. The last thing that dies is hope.

Echoes of a Carrousel

Ils disent que la vie est un carrousel
Elle tourne vite, et tu dois rester dessus
Le monde est plein de rois et de reines
Qui t'aveuglent et volent tes rêves
c'est le paradis et c'est l'enfer

Et ils vont te dire que le noir est vraiment blanc
Que la lune est juste le soleil la nuit
Que quand tu marches dans des couloirs dorés
Tu dois garder l'or qui tombe
C'est le paradis et l'enfer

It was windy that night, yet for some reason it was not cold. The air was filled with something beyond words. It was as if there was some sort of indescribable energy came from that old carrousel: the resonant echo of the children’s laughter, the smell of roasted chestnuts, and the careless, yet serene smile on the faces of the passers-by. It was in many ways a return to childhood – a return to innocence, something that is almost nonexistent today, something that only lives in our memories.

Life essentially is that same carrousel which we once rode as children, except that as time moved on we got a little older, and in return, the carrousel got a little faster. We have become so preoccupied with clinging on, that we seem to have forgotten why we essentially chose to hop on the ride in the first place. Irrational fear seems to have penetrated past our flesh and straight into the bones; our raison d’être having become nothing but a means of maintaining the status quo selfishly driven by this foolishly egotistical phobia. In essence, we have deprived no one but ourselves of the real joys of this carrousel by consciously choosing to constrict ourselves to only the flat, two-dimensional aspects within the realms of time and space.

In today’s world, time has become nothing but a shallow synonym for a conniving foe whose only reason for existence is to loot us of our own. However, time should never be condescended and deprived of its profound qualities of relativity and arbitrariness: while some things seem to happen in a second, others appear to last a lifetime. Essentially that perception of time and space, then and there, is what differentiates those who take pleasure in riding the carrousel and those who merely hold on to it with every last tense muscle in their bodies.