Letters From A Rambling (Wo)Man

I’m coming back.  Get ready.

It’s been ages, sorry team.

BTW, I’ve been asked to clarify the last post - that was from one of Craig’s Lists’ “Missed Connections,” not of my own experience.

Anyway, I have heaps of stuff to do at the moment, so here is a video I made the other day - I felt I needed video format to better communicate the situation.

I’ve got more posts coming - patience, please.

http://emmakoster.com/oh_germany/01.mov

Loves,

efk x

we have to meet … we were both stepping in at alexanderplatz (U8). you , black coloured fingernails , a backpack , and the most beautiful eyes i ever saw.
i stood across at the door listening music and holding a red bag, awkward looking at you. you stepped out at schönleinstrasse . it seemed as if you missed the station. i also drove to far , but was so distracted that i missed to step out too. so i turned around next station.
then i saw you again 10 min. later at kottbusser damm… you took the train direction warschauer strasse. i was going opposite one.
please send me a mail when you read this, and let me take you out for a coffe or dinner…

– MISSED CONNECTIONS–

(I wrote this on Monday. Forgot to post).

It bloody snowed today – can you believe it? At this late stage… Ridiculous.

I was watching the mad weather from the window of our kitchen, cigarette in hand, “tsk-ing” the cursed snow as it whipped and whirled about. After I’d smoked about half my cigarette, my peevishness began to subside and I just observed the wintery waltz of chubby flakes. Eventually, the feeling had vanished completely. It was beautiful and hypnotic out there, like watching glittering wind, chaotic and excited, with no real path in mind.

My favourite part is when the snow snaps and flies upwards instead of falling, before dropping and darting in yet another completely different direction. The grey stoniness of gravity (that’s what I imagine gravity to look like) doesn’t mean a great deal for snow and it’s playful airborne course, and that liberation of movement and direction was beckoning me.

I felt envious of the snow and it’s freedom to move about at whim, with no course decided, no planned end point, and completely open to the fancy of the elements and obstacles surrounding it. On a still day, it would have fallen in silence and grace, before delicately icing the landscape below. “It is probably the last day we’ll have like this for a while,” I thought. “I think I’ll walk today.”

“What the fuck – Dieee, Emma! It is Springtime now! I don’t want this fucking gay-ass snow! Fuck off, the snow!”

F moved to Berlin two years ago without a word of English, and we have lived together since I moved here. Unlucky for him, he is learning the majority of his English from me.

“Oh my God, F! Why are you talking like this?!“

“Diieee, Emma, you say these things all of the times. I hear from you!”

“That’s bullshit – you do not hear me saying these things.”

“Emmmma, all of the times you say ‘this fucked, he is big gay, this oh my god’ – it’s true.”

“With a sense of irony, F.”

“No, I do not understand this ‘ironing,’ I just understand that you teach me Australian and not good English. This is very bad for my life.”

In recent weeks, F and I have really bonded and he has really shown himself to be rather hilarious  - as opposed to just sweet and quiet. He’s not quiet at all, truth be told, and now, armed with a swag of his favourite English expletives, we chat and joke all day. Of course, swearing with a thick, Italian accent and repetitive hand gestures makes it seem like not swearing at all - a charm he is well aware of and abuses frequently.

“Dude. You totally understand ‘irony,’ not ‘ironing.’ I can see what you’re doing here…”
“No. This also I do not understand. Diieeee, crazy Emma, you make no fucking sense! You are very chaotic today. You are like the crazy, fucking gay-ass snow today.”

I hope you like it.

Took me ages.

www.emmakoster.com

xe

I woke up suddenly with my stomaching heaving, about to vomit.

In a frantic and groggy distress, I lunged for the bottle of water on my bedside table (chair), knocking off my reading glasses, a pile of old receipts and train tickets, and tipping over the ashtray I pretend I don’t have in there.

I took a swig of water and sat motionless for a few seconds, evaluating whether the need to vomit had passed. My body wretched again, this time the violence of it thrusting me into motion and I stumbled through the bedside table crap, strewing it across the floor. I patted down the trinkets and books and random, broken earrings on my dresser until I found the last bit of chocolate that I didn’t even know I was searching for. I ate it quickly, hoping the sugar may ease my convulsions.

I stood for a minute, feeling a little hopeless and confused, and breathed deeply until I was sure the feeling had passed. “This is new,” I thought to myself as I gingerly stepped back to my painfully low futon bed.  I checked the time on my phone, just in case when I read the news in the morning no catastrophic event had occurred.  Sometimes my Mother is convinced her body is so in tune to the universe, she can predict the news.

“Oophh! I had a very strange sensation in my arms early this morning. I’m just going to get online and make sure nothing has happened that could be related.”

Watching her speed-read The Age online, I would sometimes see a slight look of self-satisfaction in her face as she absent-mindedly touched parts of her body, convinced that she had indeed picked up on the events through her personal ‘biorhythms.’ She was particularly a little smug the ‘strange arm sensation’ day when she read about a man being bitten on the arm by a Bronze Whaler shark, whilst surfing in Coffs Harbour. We never just  “slept funny” in our family; we were tapping into the energy of the Universe.

It was 5.10am.
When I woke up to start my day properly, I still felt a little distressed by the violence of the pre-dawn nausea. Walking to the bathroom, I noticed a receipt stuck to the bottom of my foot. I glanced back, remembering the cascade of shit on account of my scramble, and saw that I’d walked a couple of cigarette butts into my bed, and my outrageoulsy expensive reading glasses were dusty with ash. Stepping into the shower, I wondered if when I read the news that morning, the world would be in a similar sort of mess my life appeared to be in.

Bah! Sometimes this place is just so freaking odd.

See below. (Yes, I have been trawling the ‘Missed Connections’ again.  I’m so addicted.)

Craig's List Weirdo

We left each other last year after a brutally short-lived window of time together.

When it was over, I had faith that it was not the end for us; I hoped. I remembered. I would go to sleep thinking of the time we spent together, dreaming of the times to come. The very fact that you existed at all was enough to sustain me. For a while, anyway.

And then more time passed. I had moved away, and the days grew cold and short, and I felt further away from you then I ever have. The most upsetting part was that as time ticked by, I began to forget you. Days would pass and you never came to mind. And then weeks. Suddenly, a memory of you or our time together would bubble to the surface and I felt shamed that I had let you slip away. Please understand - we had spent so much time apart, my new life took over and you weren’t around anymore; it was never meant to end that way.

And then today, after all of these months, we met again.

Walking around with the glory of your presence is something that, to be honest, I had forgotten. This morning- you reminded me. So forgiving, so understanding, so willing to rebuild and move on - to pick up where we left off. I don’t for a second pretend that I have the same strength or determination that you do, but I want you to be confident that my love for you is perhaps the only constant in my life.

I know you won’t be here forever, and the time we spend together always feels like it ends in the same instant in which it began, but I want you to know that I promise to savour every moment we are in each others’ company, for when I am with you - I feel a happiness that I have never felt when I am with another. Season.

Spring - I love you. Welcome back. I know you will have to go come June, making way for your hotter, but less interesting sibling, Summer, but I want you to know that it is you. It has always been you, and I promise that for me - it always will be.

All of my love,

x e

“Question mark,” once she finishes reading a written question out loud. Love.