After nearly 8 weeks of volunteer work… volunteer work… what an expression for… during my stay at Siem Reap, teaching at Happy Sunshine Organization (Tachek Village, Chreav Commune) and supporting the NGO Savong Organization Cambodia, bit by bit my minds return to their need to be expressed, being impressed might be at one point like squeezed, still in a hugging way. Never had the energy to write, to reflect, to structure my minds, my intense feelings, didn´t want to rate, with my western patterns, just lived, gulping sides its in and outs. On the other hand missed sometimes to tense a distance like future or past, loosing the present to bear the bearing. To get lost in the difference.
I kicked my travel, competed the exit, assumed escape, years ago… rooted in the eternal desire of menkind, getting lost. Exploring that amorphous state of mind, a spaceless place, like we try to set up with religions, discoveries or even exploitation, roomless corners to hide, wallless windows, mirrors with a view, lost in a surrealistic vision of movement, an childish romantic dream of love and criticism in balance, biting and kissing, a plea of untrue.
Didn´t had an idea of how to describe that nonsense of moonshine. How I might approach that minded feeling, to suck its light, like a shadow spotted farrow, an universe blown orphan.
Today I don´t know more than I lost my lost. So did I arrive? Is that the place I always searched for in my life, in the eyes of companions, friends, beloved and sweetened salt in the wounds of an autoaggressive misunderstanding called childhood. Me and the world, the great relationship like between a dog and his bone.
I always missed.
Missed something.
Missed simplicity in particular and simple particularity.
Tried to reduce myself to a heart beated rationality, compressed in one mind, a final eternity, a footprint of rise. There has to be a beginning, point of no return, a way of no options – keep on, on or rot! That´s a picture I alwas forced the world to draw on me, in a controlled torturing manner, to stay in front of, face-to-face – I WANT AN EXPLANATION!!! – with the executing squad.
Stab!
Cut!
Slice the burning flesh!
Level by level.
Ease the flamming desires.
Until there is no more left than the skeleton of a breath, a red spot of a dark shadow on the wall, which never existed. To live to be lived.
Wow! Fuckin dramatic, right?
Society of menace.
And in the endit will always just be on me, about me, not the world, not the others, not my next step. On me the step before my next one. Always felt ashamed to admit, that it´s a matter of human being – selfishness. Loving yourself more than the outside, more the love you receive.
Lost inside.
I am a good teacher, uncovered my tiny bearded dictator, feeling quite suited with my knuckles on the teacher´s desk, to be respected, loved, to be in power, to have an even more tiny influence on how the (my) kids explore their way, the consequences of their decisions, wrong and right and how to fight or determine. – I hug my memories, the boy, the shadow. I am my best Freudship.
I am not a bad person, by the fact, that I learned much about doing good in so many different ways, gesturing, speaking, (trash) talking, watching how to touch things, and the thing named heart. I am my kid´s best student, they never stopped teaching me in their most honest and straight way.
I am not changing – Lord! If your balls are damn heated coalballs and your dick is a forged sword out of hell, than you know you might take antibiotics! But… back to… Yes… I improve! I won´t find my center, balance or my purpose. Jessas, imagine that! I accept my positive sides, don´t use my negatives anymore to feel the positive effects, feel alive or even happy – scares still the shit out of my blackness. Don´t need to get the payback for the favour. I can smile without a knife stabbed by myself in the back, like a mute false oath.
That all makes it just more easy to enjoy my minus-man.
– “My true love, don´t worry, never forget what you have done to me.”
In the last 8 weeks there were days I nearly felt like I have to leave right now, otherwise I freak out, burn out, explode! And that mess won´t help anyone. Help. Again. Help. I don´t help, you don´t have to appreciate. I DON`T WANNA HELP ANYMORE AND I DON`T WANNA HELP AT ALL! I AM NOT AS GOOD AS YOU THINK. I don´t wann think about why you think I am a good person. Makes me feel ashamed feel all my even joking prejudices and doubts about trust and grae of charity.
I slept in average not more than two hours per night. Processing. I learned three languages at the same time. English. Listen. And touching my heart. I started with a new set of expressing, finding my colors,s till, started with a blunt pencil. – “Teacher, can I have the pencil-sharpener, please?” “Where is it, I need one as well, urgent!”
Drawing…
The minus-man says, some of your traditional or cultural rules are antique! And I don´t wanna praise them, not even find an excuse for them. Forcing people to fulfil without a sense or function, pushing people backward, reigning their social status, charging it with some spiritual hocus-pocus. That has nothing to do with culture, your culture should serve and change and not cage or destroy. So all you rebellious kids, I met, stomp the ground and push back. They are young, smart and so energetic, with no power, snap! The country needs a change, before it will vanish in corruption and you will find yourself captured on your small island called culture. Drives me outrage to see how some of my cambodian sisters and brothers – expression for best friend, sister or brother from another mother and I am fucking proud to be called like that – suffer and always apologize their different feelings instead of following the calls of their brave hearts. But it always ends up in an subservient gratefulness to have the possibility to survive. And more furious must listen to that speeches of visionaries, plugged with metaphorical imaginations, supported by dramatic gestures, finally just giving orders. You are not wise, because you follow your history of acting wise, you are wise, if you would start to listen to your children´s ideas and not talk like a chilren´s book. Lions or dragons never ruled the world, even if I love your pictures, Dudes, but using them to hide behind your own weakness… I get minus.
– I don´t think that we need culture, we need to know each other, that´s why we have to learn about our different cultures… but when I look into your eyes, i don´t feel like german, I am not in Cambodia, I am here and you are my spot of presence, beyond my lids, stilling my desires with passion and the courage to conquer life with all its fights and to breathe the moment of just human, because that´s what we are. Culture is only a way to life, but to be human means find a way and the power to love life.
“I love you as a father.” – I don´t wanna leave the responsibility I created in a selfish act of purification. My topic why I went to Siem Reap, to HSO, was, beside all that usefull arguments to avoid the truth, to release my anger, my anger about born on the hilltop of starving and enslaved corpses and so in my helpless helplessness I started digging, bury myself, painting me with mudd and blood… Ha-ha, what a stupid selfish western hero bullshit.
But still my break-out is another cage I digged me in, a cage, which enlightens me, makes me happy, beside money or courage.
My plan was to give me as a teacher a try. If it won´t work, I could leave. If the children don´t acccept me, I will leave. My idea was to work with children, because I love how they conquer their world. It was a set up of new experiences, to find another way of thinking and working. Selfish.
I like that person I am there, in my cambodian family, surrounded by my students, by my love, by my brothers and sisters, by most humble, honest and gut-wrenching people in their way of thinking and doing I ever met.
I will return, me and the minus man.
I am looking forward to ride my shabby silver bicycle down the crater-perforated road to your hugs and kisses, to your ideas and drinking culture.
Thank you for motivating me to be a better person.
I love you, my family.