you say it’s not nice, while they’re busy ruining our lives, destroying everything that we’ve worked so hard for and that we’re also ashamed of. they’re dying because we’re not doing enough here, because we’re worried about just existing: next month’s rent, the next contract, a job, a gig, whatever it is that’s supposed to keep us alive, keep our heads above water. ok but what does alive mean in these circumstances.
you have to decide. keep existing a while longer or live, briefly. the young person who draws wishes me a long life and i know intuitively that they know exactly why. they know that we are being threatened, and that our actions mean danger for us, because too many are dropping out. such and such percentage of people don’t agree with it, one hears. but do something about it? people aren’t ready for that. not ready to risk anything. i’ve done some risking already and it ruined my sleep. the approaching winter is near.
how long will i survive in the cracks of the street that they say is swarming with barbarians. where it’s just a matter of time before they’re on the scent of terrorists. tv flooded with shameless propaganda nobody interrupts. sic the dogs on them without muzzles.
using inflammatory rhetoric just to hold their ground and nobody wonders at it anymore, nobody even shakes their head. sure they’d like to hang on to what they have a little longer but they sold their souls long ago. now that the neighbors have official orders to rat on you, you can be happy about where you live. a year ago i dreamed that they had barricaded the streets, that they came and banged on the doors and lined us up on the street to grab us one by one and lock us up or just shoot us.
we are hurrying towards fascism in seven-league boots.
do they not see it, or is it what they want. finally the chance to let their racism out. no pig is like the others. their origin stories are of no interest. your demand is human. the bar is high. i climbed, you watched me do it. you have my eternal thanks. even in my grave i will be thinking, shoulda woulda coulda… what could have happened if i’d been sooner, if you had existed for me sooner, believed in me, a longer shared path, this too would come to an end. like every little life.
what was fantasy, only existing in the realm of the imaginable, it was already there in language, no accident, we know what it means even if in spite of everything we still find ourselves standing in front of it in shock, unable to understand the concretization of it.
the end of the world will stay until we die.
nothing will ever again be like it once seemed. i despair of my survival tactics. wars are fed by the poor, they take their first bites from the sick and the weak. you once said i should be happy that we don’t have to run here yet. do you still think that. not everybody is fast as me you said. but now there are many who’ve overtaken me. it’s important not to think of it as a contest. but thoughts are stubborn. along the banks of the canal we meander through the warm night and slurp out of bottles bought from the späti and drag our heavy shadows behind us. in the darkness of the bushes we see a glowing red circle, we think we recognize a dog, but where’s the owner. you keep talking, about organizing, and update me on the struggle in schools and what kids are dealing with. they’re being forced to hide their identities, at this point i turn around, wordlessly, to see if anyone’s following us. i shiver. and we keep walking along the canal. what can we control and what can’t we. when you’re terrorized by the fact of living, when guilt and responsibility accumulate and encrust you, when the words don’t want to come anymore because fear is stuck in the back of your throat like a hunk of chewing gum that clogs your airways, robs you of breath. when nights become day because you’re brooding over your fate and the fate of others. when you wonder what you can do, what’s in your reach, if you can’t close your eyes without thinking about the skinhead on the subway croaking and cawing away while nobody says anything. when you dream about activists planning an action and the cops are already breathing down your neck.
when day and night become your enemies.
when you destroy yourself because the program was successfully activated. when their strategy is working because you can’t think clearly anymore, because the fog of fear engulfs you and you can no longer form thoughts except for that one, that one that plays on loop, that one you can always repeat. i don’t want to die yet, how will i die. how can i die according to my own rules before they come for me. before i have to endure endless suffering. write without certainty, that’s what you once suggested. don’t claim more than what’s true. adjust the temperature appropriately. appropriate words were and are the key, the one that fits. i still remember the time you stood in front of my door, drunk, making circles around the keyhole with the key in your hand. i will never forget this epiphany. in the illuminated street, thoughts that fly about, that flutter, that don’t want to be thought. self-censorship does not want to express itself. but we have long since recognized it, even if its plumage isn’t always the same. signs, signals, flags, all red red red. no messengers needed anymore to name the danger. networking is the most important thing. the flow of information. the precise studies. details that you miss, aren’t aware of, can easily be your undoing. trust no one. except your true friends and comrades. i talk about limited capacity, about how i can hardly share my thoughts, although they’re anything but absurd, because they lead directly to worry and they mean too much. they overwhelm with too much reality all at once. or too little. and i ask myself if i’m still grieving or if i’m already grieving. what it is that i need to be able to say goodbye, and to be decisive, when it’s no longer possible to fool yourself. when you are in the grip of normalization, when you aren’t thinking clearly enough and untangling the knots, always starting over from the beginning. it’s fussy work, things keep wanting to cling together that belong separate. that don’t belong.
we don’t belong to ourselves.
we don’t want to be selfish, we share. we share what we can, we share what we have to give. we think beyond our we. we rise up for something we might not achieve in our lifetimes. but we remember the tactics and the beginnings and all the resistance that is always there wherever oppression reigns. see you later dream. see you later calling. see you later family. see you later past. see you later future. see you later beloved, see you later intoxication, see you later travel, see you later innocence, see you later naivete, see you later kicks, nights by the bonfire, wine, singing. see you later lana del ray. see you later moonbeam. see you later awakening winter woods. see you later owl. see you later snow and tramping about and footprints and ghostly faces and sticks and vacation and beach and all of the still unread books that are piling up
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translated by Cory Tamler
credits for the picture by private
