solidarity - chinagirl

Saltzburg was busted! I don't remember what festival or happening it was in April -74 but every hostel and hotel was booked full and so I seemed to be facing a night on the street. Not that it was so very cold any more, but not necessarily very tempting either. And I was hungry after walking through the city in my vain search, that had brought me to the square of the old town.
Many restaurants, taverns and bierstube on the square. I chose neither the most expensive nor the cheapest but a cosy tavern with a lot of young people inside. Food and good company were the rescue of my falling spirits!

The table had five ruff canadians eating their meal with a beer, and soon we had a conversation going. They were travelling with backpack as I was too and we talked of the places we had been to and places still to go. And ate and drank beer. In the next table was an asian girl at first with some other people but then alone. She had not been a part of that group and joined now our conversation. She was on her way to London, but had wanted to take a look to the central european life, too. So after landing to Frankfurt some days earlier she had continued to Heidelberg, Munchen and now Saltzburg, then to Wien and flight to Rome, Paris and finally London. She was lively and funny and good company. And she was chinese - Taiwan, I supposed, or Hong Kong.

The canadians were booked in a hostel outside the town and left well before midnight to be there in time. I stayed with the chinese girl until she said she too was ready to go to sleep. So I smiled to her and said ok, u go. She seemed puzzled and I explained that I had no accommodation for the night and intended to stay in the tavern as long as possible. In the morning i'd take a train or a bus to Paris and sleep through the journey. She looked at me with wide eyes and smiled and said, that she had a room in the hotel Xxx  and it was big enough to sleep two. I did smile and wonder how was I to sneak in, and she said that we'd figure out something. And off we go. Her room is in an old and grand hotel by the square, and I'm quite intimitated... but she goes in and talks in the reception so I can slip to the stairs, and then we continue to her room. A large room with a wonderful window and a  bathroom with a window, too. And so I had a warm bath and a drink and a nice chat with a friendly person curious about my wiews. Her room was  cozy and had a splendid wiew over the old town. By the window was a divan and a desk, and there was a comfortable bed on the other side of the room. I slept on the divan and I slept really soundly. She slept in the bed.

I woke rather early in the morning and she woke when I packed my backpack. We laughed together and she gave me a wide smile with her best wishes. And I sneaked out of the room, tiptoed down the stairs and said a friendly hello to the cleaninglady!!!  And I was on the street fresh and ready for the day...

We never knew each others names but that is something I might call... solidarity?

What has it got to do with religion???

I have been writing this story set in northern Pakistan. Or associating this story... It has been an interesting process for a few months and surprisingly easy in some ways, difficult in others though. The skeleton is ready now. It has not so many pages of text, just some 22  or so plus some pages of characterprofiles, because I think that if you know the background of a person you can predict or imagine or deduct how this person will act. I don't say 'behave', because I don't like the word behave. I do not understand it's meaning. 'Behave' has been so badly missused in my lifetime that it means just a kind of forced random pattern. Action, function, yes, but what about acting?A doctor is acting according the situation when coming to the scene of an accident. And an actor may be acting a doctor... or whatever. The words are so susceptible, or can one say so? Maybe not... But about the manuscript: After I wrote the skeleton of 'Requiem' I thought that there would be no such misstreatment - on state level anyway - as apartheid was in South-Africa. Not so legal and organized, and accepted as apartheid. Of course people have not full human rights neither here nor anywhere else, and all kind of shit happens inside the system, but not officially on statelevel. Yes, there are China and Libya and some others and their practices, but officially they are aknowledging the basic human rights.
The time of Taleban rule in Afghanistan was something else: women in this country had no human rights. Women. Babygirls are killed in China, and maybe in India a practice concerning young widows is still alive, but the sharia-rule - It has been hard, very hard, sad and depressing to dive in this sea of suffering. Depressing because nothing seems to change. Same violence, random and stupid, fascistic ... It seems almost unbelievable how dazzling the power over others can be! How can it be? How rigid and blind can human mind be not to see...
And it has nothing to do with the religion, or as much as national socialism had with christianity, or communism.
Pakistan is a country with a violent political history - as by the way most countries have. Zulfigar Ali Bhutto was hanged and a military rule followed, and finally a new attempt to democracy: Benazir Bhutto was elected and soon after assassinated, so... Now in the mountain region in north near Afghan border the Taleban movement is rising its head also in Pakistan. The region is poor, isolated and it's inhabitants not educated. And instead of schools they choose oppression and violence. Why? Well, USA chose Guantanamo...

This 'Fifth Night Moon' is a row of free associations. The characters have their origins in my knowledge of human beings and  their behaviour (I'm using the word!). It is skeletal and formal because that is how it happens - cause and consequence. Those that lived throught the war and sharia are listening rather than acting, but the independent and 'no-one will tell me what to do' - european woman Lore takes the gun. And she is an atheist.
I think that rigid hierarchy and violence are typical to individuals, who have had no need to adapt and develope different strategies for survival. Or maybe they have had no chance because of violence aimed at them. During my 56 years I have met and known people from various different countries, black and white, yellow and grey, men and women, young and old, and I think that most of them would accept violence as the last chance to survive... you know: even a rat attacks if cornered. But Lore is not threatened that way, so why? And Wasim is not a rat either, so why? Both Lore and Wasim are primarily enraged because of what happens to other people. Lore sees the suffering of Saima and Wasim saw the way Pakistanis were treated in Britain. Both react to individual cases, and while Wasim's way is to organize and arrange, Lore takes the ancient path of revenge.
Thrue hope, future and possibilities are with Saima and Kalim, who in spite of dissappointing reality can still play and laugh. And even Shahzana and Wawa, a lot endured and tired, still have strength to listen and exchange conversation. Lore returns to her old world unable to give up he ways and unable to change.

I do not  know if there is anything substantial in this skeleton, but I'm ready to go on with it and help it to develope to a full scale movie. Yes.

memory and light

Light, light and colour. Night, stars in the darkness.
Long, long years ago - a lifetime actually - I had
the experience of understanding another intelligence,
sharing a moment of absolute and clear thinking,
an idea.
Long, long time ago, walking beneath the pines:
'As long as you remember I am alive.'
'As long as I remember you are alive.'
Light and colour, and darkness. And the brighter
the light, the darker the shadows get. The shadows.
In the mind. But the colours were for life.
Sensual intelligence. Light and shadow for intelligence.
Colours for sensual being. The crumbling fringes of
shadows, when light is eating them away...
or vice versa.'
Sensual - all that need to believe in feelings and
impulses ones senses produce, and no way of even
knowing weather it is just an illusion or something
called 'real'. No way of ever knowing. But still necessary,
inevitable.
The remembrance can't be denied, or forgotten.
It exists, the moment and it's vision, endlessly
stretching from the actual moment in time to eternity:
As long as you remember, I am.
And what is there to remember? Sincerity, the aim
for momentary clarity, infinite tolerance, especially
in thinking, ability to give up everything and share.


Colours.Those of land in spring and autumn,
ochres, greens and umbras of the nature, and
those surrounding the mind: bright and clean reds,
blues and yellows. White and black are not colours
but rather amounts of light, and what is light?
Nobody knows, again. Anyway light is something
we can sense, partly at least, an essential part of
sensual intelligence, of human life.
Light is one of the basic ingredients of physical
reality. When we talk of existence, of relativity, of
universe and it's formation, the theory of universal
structure, we talk about light - whatever it is.
Light in it's many forms: The warm sunlight - basic
creator of life on earth, or the artificial light and it's
various ways to enhance human life from laserbeams
to infrared and all their everyday adaptations.
Fascinating both scientifically and imaginatively
is the light of the stars, the same sight seen by
ancient egyptians and those long before them.
They did not know, what they saw. I do know of ligt
and the speed it travels, of dark material and the
expanding universe. Still we share the vision:
nightsky is the same to the human eye...