¿Quelle

¿Tod?
Todsünde. Todsinn. Wahnsinn. Wannsinn.
Wann?
As I approach to the idiom, the language, the tongue. Lèvres.
Idioma.
I do not have the images, the photos, just the memory. Encore une graphie. The way I write.
What do I want to approach? Commence par le ‘¿’, dans ta langue (maternelle).
Almost. Casi.
Çaci.
Totstunde. L’heure. A toute. ¿
Lo que quieres preguntar. Dans la différance des langues.
As I approach the image, the memory, the dead tongues.
Wenn¿

As I remember I narrate the man in the train kneeling laying praying dying probably vomiting what he did not eat what I did not give him what he needed as the people turned again from him me in the train I did too and I wanted to tell this story and I feel I cannot I am reminded of Prudent the man that stabbed Beckett about whom he said he was pretty nice perhaps not pretty but close enough to the man in the train in the S-Bahn as I went back to my Berliner Heimat a big room overlooking Leibnizstrasse whom I should read more not only not only because but since it is my job since I started and from there I can I feel understand better the man in the train as I turned away from him and imagined that perhaps he was going to die there as I wanted to tell the story his story not really just to pass the time to make time pass as when I was reading l’innommable on the airplane as I arrived to Mexikostadt Mexico City el defe from where I had left months ago when I was thinner but also more squalid not as Samuel not as your best friend but certainly a little livid a little sick an image related to what you write and to the man in/on the train you wish you could tell this story but you do not know from where to where to begin to end perhaps it is not the hour and you just want to pass time telling about the possibility of narrating as you discover that you are not a narrator only an idea-man an ideal-man that is non-existent inexistent just a ghost just a word just an image of a man in a train as I remember I narrate.

Getötet, versuche ich erzählen, die Zahlen, nicht wichtig, nur eins. Nun.
Essaie en français la langue paternelle quoique ton père ne le ne peut rien parler. Pas du tout des tous qui veulent en parler, philosoquement en fait. De quoi. ¿

Getötet, mach was ist eigene. Question of the proper, what you own what owns you how you get away if you want to get away from ‘it’. To be free, Eleuthéria, from the self, that is—simple question. Pourquoi changer de langue donc? Peut-être parce qu’ainsi puisqu’ainsi on peut. Ecrire rien.

Between James and Samuel, Lucia. Licht nicht.
Ichen, ich iche du ichst er icht. Ichte ich. Verstören verstorben zerstören. Plain verbs. Just a possibility, within languages. Iche dich. To father to show: Zeugen. Trying to say to pass to transcribe translate. A man on the train, a million men on the train—you have no image, what do you see here?
Zwischen, Jacques.

Just a possibility, a final possibility. Origins. You know the question, you hear the questions: Todtnauberg. Todberge. (You have the image of you, little baby, on your father’s tummy—nicht deine Mutter, warum? Peur du foyer.)

Aux faits, neben dich: deux dictionnaires, zwei Wörterbücher, « Schibboleth », « l’innommable », « Genèses, généalogies, genres et le génie », « états d’âme de la psychanalyse », « chaque foix unique la fin du monde », « der Kontrabass », « el contrabajo », « Eleuthéria », deine Kamera. Juste comme au commencement, la fin, bien sûr—cliché, photographié. Ce qui reste. Restance. L’homme dans la train.

(„SINGBARER REST - der Umriss / dessen, der durch / die Sichelschrift lautlos hindurchbrach, / abseits, am Schneeort.“
P. Celan.)

Aux faits, à ta droite: photographies, ta arrière-grand-mère, ton oncle, ta sœur, sa famille, ta grand-mère et sa mère, la mère de tes sœurs et de ton frère, ton frère, ton oncle, ton père, toi, ton père et ses frères. Plus loin, Samuel. Mais déjà il y a les livres. Catalogue.

Ses yeux, ces yeux. Ce n’est pas poésie. Au moins pas la poésie. Ecrire pour survivre pendant qu’on meurt on écrit on dit d’où vient cette voix une demande une prière un désir. Comment sais-toi le genre des mots ? Hymen. Le sentiment, la sensation qu’un jour tu ne pourras pas, ne pourras plus supporter subir les phrases les sentences seulement des mots déchirés sans lien sans support seulement les vers qui déchirent qui marquent le poème pas. Nicht wahr ? Wahnsinn.

En tu propia lengua, mientras tienes que pensar las letras, la cantidad y la separación, escansión—ya cometiste un error. Nada fatal.

Von wo denkst du? Heimat. Eins. Not the only one, as you discovered already the impossibility of making only one. Jaillis la fumée. Jaillissez! Ce que tu essaies de dire.
Cantable se mantiene. Moderato.

To think that. Too strong now. The dream of a language (tongue) that would be the softest, almost saying nothing, almost touching. Presque sexuelle, presque là, touchant. Comme le sentiment. Ce que tu resens quand tu vois. Trop tard. Tod.

Tu viens de trouver une araignée. Quelle image. You try to make the link, the trace that unites the terms images that resound in your heart : taking pictures of crosses, great lakes, a little object in front of a giant one, several books piled together, a body, eyes, a dog running, your own hands, smoke, statues, sentences, black on white, yourself, elle, trainwindows, long hair hers, unfamiliar words, rain, drainage, water, a man throwing a rock to the water, mirrors, your hand her hair the words everything reflected, light, a pen and a notebook. You’d mention what you don’t like to photograph. Nichts, nicht (es ist) wahr.

Más cierto en tu lengua¿. Algo te impide escribir con ella. No hablar. Podrías hacer la conexión con los últimos eventos. Demasiado simple. Madres. Ja, du bist ein mexikaner.

Wo bist du? Konzentrationslager. Focus.

“somebody needs you... and everything moves slow”

Verantwortung. Antworten. Wem, darauf? To respond. Se rendre responsable. Why do you write? Why do you? "The devil is you". Simple answer: in you, on you. How yet to make me, to transform me, or rather, to assume this, shoulders? Se rendre conscient. No escape. I am a dialectical man-thus I owe and I am own. By what. Geschichte. Historia. Tell me one.

To escape. La fuite. How to understand this? In a room, I escaped in my room. The flight is productive (Deleuze), or can be. How? Fuire, de quoi? For once focus on the picture, watch (keep garde) of the ring, there is a reason why it attracted you, why you had to take it-or why you were taken by it. Inimaginable. Use your imagination-that's where the crime starts, and perhaps where you can start to ask-without answers. Then, try not to understand-observe: pray. Contemplation & responsibility.

How to differenciate the windows? You know there is a delay. Différer. Aber du kannste das schon, vor viel Zeit. Focus. From which window do you see? What do you see?

She.

The sea.

Die Menschen.

die See, ein See.

Sí.

You need your eyes, her eyes.

What do you want to construct? Bilder. As risky as they are, but never in a flight. Tu as toujours rêvé voler. Combien de temps?
Pregúntale a tu consciencia. Was? Das Gewissen. There, you cannot lie. Bilder. Verantworten. Versprechen (sich). Between images and words, there you(r) rest(s).
Con algunos punteros. Anillos. From where you hold, you are being hold. Dein Schicksal.

Something happened to this image. Unconscious, but there. Not a election. That can never be.
Rest, focus. Wachen. Du bist eine Wache. You asked yourself what was your job, your matter. Tomb.
For that, you gotta remain conscious. "Keep talking".

Heimat

Time to look back. Am Zeit sieht man zurück. Je commence à voir en arrière. Reading about translation. And trying to get it right. Tu viens d’être dans les lieux. Les lieux de certain x. Quelconque. Donde te encontrabas: Berlin. Aussi d’où tu croyais que tu ne sortirais jamais. Erreur. Attend, il y a plus. N’.

¿Cuál es el exponente? -1, +1. Prends en considération le Meridian. Ou où tu trouves (maintenant). Back to (the) letters. À qui écris-toi ? ‘Engelhardt’ you try to make up the name of the restaurant of your last meal (not really). Schwarzkaffee. Café negro. Ja, bitte.

Colourful, even the toilette. « Even there there’s gods… » Geist, You tried to translate this joke, even though apparently it makes more sense in German. Censé.

Schnitzel, als deine Mutter es machtet. Simple pollo empanizado. Simple ? Imaginais-toi comme ça ta dernière journée à Berlin ? Pas. Pas la dernière. As the order goes, this would have been the one before the last night in Berlin—the one about which you wrote before (you always write before the end—about the end).

Revenons. La toilette. Les bières. One last image. Not really. (As the true last night, staying/resting in your demeure, you heard the screams of an old man. No, not actually, first you saw him while you came out of the Chinese restaurant with what’d have been really your last meal ; you saw him there, laying on the ground, and you thought of an accident. Umfall, Urfall ? Came upstairs, ate your meal, and your host asked you what was going on on the street… Ein alter Mann… vielleicht ist er verruckt. Ja. More than one cop. You saw as they pushed him against the car while he kept screaming for help. What did you understand ? « Krieg, Krieg ». Ich war in Deutschland.

Second day Tegel. More important than Charles de Gaulle. Always in airports. « das muss ein besonders interessant Leben zu sein », « ja, na klar ». As you said goodbye. Not really. You tried to take several pictures, instances, of your aborted departure. Look at the sky and imagine yourself on it, in it, through it. Absurdo. ¿Qué leías entonces ? Suskind.

Take one last picture of you in. Take another one. How many kilometers ? Now you have miles. Mille. Trying to get the reflection as (if) another eye were watching you. Simply wrong. Nothing (is) simple. (And you would still try to speak German in the plane, up to the point where the fly attendant gave you an immigration form auf Deutsch. Wortschatz, Wörterbuch. Ja, you recognize that (erkenne ich ?) (lost thought), always with a dictionary, even in Spanish ?) Ja.

A theme of the trip, the stay, la demeure: le ciel. This time you only wanted to take that. Especially while on the ground. Les nuages. Your famous European sky. Gray—the importance of that colour non colour—white all the spectrum, black the lack of all. And gray? Neither nor, ni ni. Irgendwie macht es dich bequem. Comfortable—certain kind of home. The ivory towers of neurosis. Einer gute alte Witz. The Chicago sky.

Two months ago. Vor zwei Monate, auf den Flugzeug. Zeuge. Tú eres un manojo de nervios. (The accents work still). Orange orage. Orageux foyer. Your face, one last time. The end of the trip. Voyage. Simple word. What have you done this summer? Deutsch lernen, und… You go back, not in Berlin, not in Zurich, still in. Yes, remain still. Changes?

Green. Take a walk, a stroll. Hiking. You never visited the German woods. Tiergarten, on one of your last days. This is a lake. Stay with the facts. Easier to handle. Manbuiltlake. Bauen. Hier? Green.

You’re not in Berlin anymore. You’re home.

Ich kann Deutsch.

gestrandet Pergamon

I write to survive. Between the Pergamon’s text, the reflections on being stranded in Berlin, and of mistakes, running in Tegel, having a host that is an extra-host (hospitalidad), the people around me, gratefulness, one and the same insane and beautiful World.



“Mind the gap.” That was the name of the exhibition you saw at the Hamburger Bahnhof. Another name for your thesis and/or dissertation. You didn’t grasp the meaning then, you barely grasp it now. The gap in the gesture, in and as the body. Als Sprache. “Sir, your ticket is for one month from now” “___________” Until then she was speaking German to me.


History of faces. You stared at the teeth of the woman at the Swiss airlines counter. “There’s no more tickets until the end of July”. You, gesture, look at the other ones. The war between gods and giants. Remembrance. Even the gods despair. Although what captures your attention now is the separation, the blanks. As it has always done. You wrote yesterday about suspension, pause. How about 24 hours, how about a month?


You felt certain erasing. What is the difference between a trace and an erasure? As you walked for the fifth time around the gates, the counters, circling. As you leave your luggage for one day there. Crossing against the city, re-tracing just to obliterate again. What it looks like. How it might have looked. Perhaps there is no erasing. All the visages remain.


But you have to pick, to select. That is an obliteration too-as you already know from your not so abstract mind. Then again a position, a way of laying, of lying, of resisting. You think of the eyes, the thought of the eyes and the absence thereof. Alas your modern mind. A little of gravity and water, enough for this picture.

What you miss. As the first image you had (of her). Always two. Perhaps you think in sculpture, any dream of yours is one. How to interpret this. Not only the three dimensions, but also the rock, the feel of it, its resistance, its coldness-nicht immer. From where do these dreams, these rocks speak to you? That is how you feel (their) language. (Now you must stick to English-tal vez aun en español, tú sientes la contaminación de ambas influencias).

Still there is always another screen, another pair of eyes before yours. ‘You’ cannot take the image, ‘you’ cannot create it. (How you must have looked today running through the airport, asking questions in your worst German, looking desperate.) And yet, Macht. Zeige ein bisschen Macht in deiner Augen. Show or display yourself.


Your job, as absurd as it is, to think. “You will never get paid for that” you remember your professor saying. It pays, but that is not a simple verb or action. Of course you’re more interested in the unknown philosopher. There’s something vulgar about Socrates and Plato here. The rock or the text. Although it’s always the double face. Nietzschesplato.


As before, I’m getting lost. ‘Strange feeling’, verdad de perogrullo o antonomasia. You try to reconstruct the stories, but you know it is futile. You know you’re not here, not there anymore. Wo ist deine Heimat. Ich habe drei. Tres hogares. Trois foyers. Right now you feel you will never leave. Was ? The Museum. Einer alte Philosoph. Ein Kind, nur. All of this is making you. Kein Spass. Manchmal. Weniger.

Farthest that you can be from the object, from the concept. Confusion is… fill in the blank. Leere Augen. Ojos vacíos. Years go you will not make the connection. You will not make these connections. (Your friend told you: you feel the nostalgia there. Is it that wrong. What is the turn? Bisagra. Genou. Uturn.) Wait, that’s still a tomb. Your last museum in Berlin-2009.


Götter. Someplace at the beginning of this diary there is the first reference. “I write to survive”. Am Anfang. Cancel the uploading. Algo ahí no marcha. Your pipe is at the airport. So as all your clothes. Perhaps you can change them tomorrow before boarding. An extra night. An extra trip. It’s not the end because it’s not well-paraphrasing your friend. Not yet. Not yet.


Götter. Think of Klossowski. You saw his goddess there. No Actaeon, though. In what will you be transformed? Noch einmal. It starts getting hard to write in this keyboard. Last spree. This is the year. You know, you will know several times. Ereignis. Just see the colours. “We will get married on the mountains” You said it in German. Doesn’t matter. Awe.



How you build. Thus you need a plan, another dream. Même avec des cauchemars. Même nos rêves. The pleasure, yours, lays within. Just as a game-in the bus back, as you get on the plane, a small joke in another language and in yours. Time to recapitulate. Let the words for once be faithful to the mistakes of naivety. “Once could say, we lost the space race… another one could say we won.”


Keys. Llaves. You can play with that homophony. You feel you should play. Glücklich sein. You make a joke, but don’t talk about the joke. Don’t lose the spirit. ¿Ya ves? Always as a question. Thus are the keys, always preceded with a question. Question and answer at the same time. You look for the French key, the Mexican key. (For a moment your keyboard makes that noise: key). Mais, si c’est un batôn? Walk with it, as your best friend.


Perhaps you’re at the comedy now. Or it’s only writing. Which is always also a comedy. As, June 28, 22:36, Berlin. Noch, yet. What do you call this kind of time? Lost. Never. And yet. The feeling of the loss. As you struggle to comprehend, and to stop the jouissance of that feeling. Ein regelmässig Leser. Ganz genug. Remember how you started this day? Bedeutungen.


The end is not Deutsch, not exactly the West either. “The end of the trip”. In other words, no end-as you listen to Rennt Lola rennt. Always Berlin with you. So nah! (Tomorrow at this time: still over the ocean. When everything goes all right. Next day at this time: walking towards downtown.) The big things have this purpose, to protect. As writing. As Literature.

Edith Piaf: Une tonnerre qui s’allume, bravo, bravo! Lost connection. How many things your brain can hold at the same time? Problems of OCD. And yet sometimes you manage to make the switch. With the help of images, bien sûr. Und jetzt. Wasser. Agua. How much it sounds. Ce contre qui tu luttes, c’est le jugement. “You never judge”. Is not an image a judgment? Problems of abstraction. (Your host just laughed, and that filled you with a strange happiness, the kind that makes you smile and look out for a moment).

You remember your sensation from today? When everything was unsettled-und immer noch so? (Now, you recognize that guitar: “Her name is Yoshimi…” Play with that, Gedankespiel. “I know she can beat them…”) Tomorrow you will try a new path. Alles klar.

You listen to Bowie’s Warszawa. Getting ready for the night. For tomorrow. You remember the feeling of your last night in Paris. Did you sleep? A little. Glad to have this Latin American eyes. How I saw Berlin when I arrived, how I’ll see Munich, Chicago, Kansas and finally Lawrence. How I’ll see everything just before I close my eyes. How I’ll see you.

Are you still at the museum? (Get ready. Ins Bett geh.) As usual, you run through the halls. Listen now. Soundtrack. “Angel fragments” Der Himmel uber…