The Art of Solitude

Stars
atoms
galaxies
in and outside of you

Light
and shadow
two sides
of the same coin

No man's land
where nobody lives
I try
to find s o m e t h i n g

There
far away
in the middle of nowhere
I came closest to the truth

After this
long journey
what do you see
when you look back?

When
will I finally
make it
through this never-ending fog?

Even if my paths
take me to
the most remote places
I know I'm on track

And I realized
life is just
a blink of light
between two eternal voids

No amount of words
can communicate
the full picture
of your thougths and feelings

Youth will always
be in your mind
but you will never
enter this place again

Wading through the fog
of my memories
layer by layer
to the very core

Between
the memories
and tomorrow
lies the answer

Restlessly
wandering
through
the night

To live this life
in this exact moment
with all of you
the biggest gift

Suddenly this question
flashed in my mind
is this
the dream I had of you?

Deeply
I listened into the silence
in anticipation
of a distant echo

Do you
feel the same?
I asked myself
while the world keeps spinning

In the threshold
between today and tomorrow
I found
complete contentment

Trust the path
that opens up before you
and follow it
to the end

The city
of my childhood and youth
which I knew like nothing else
suddenly seemed so different

Crawling through
the darkness
towards nothingness
the light within me

When the fog
lifted
I recognized
the path

Is it wrong?
When no one's there
I feel the most
at home

After months
of heat, pain and sweat
I finally
arrive

I am alone
but at least
I am
with myself

Tell me
do you really
know
who you are?

Behind the
dense storm of noise
the silence
is waiting for you

So I walked forward
towards the horizon
towards the light
of the new morning

Out
in the deep night
I faced
my alter ego

All of my thoughts
and memories
only the tree
will preserve those secrets

Breaking through
the thick curtain of darkness
I finally found
the broken memory

Those waves
look the same
as the day
we met

I tried
running away
as far as I could
but it follows

After all these years
your traces
are still
in me

Once in a while
I dream of
the place
where we lost each other

The more
you wander
you will recognize
what's most important

Will destiny
lead
the way
to you?

Inside and outside
merge
I am one
with everything

Tell me
what
have you
done to me?

I have
lost a part
of myself
with you

You are
only as strong
as the challenges
you face

Even if
we are together
in reality
we are all alone

This moment
from back then
follows me
until the end

Only when
the noise dies down
you can
hear the silence

Over there
on the hill
I want to be

In my dreams
I wander endlessly
in search of
[ something ]

You have never
been closer
to your goal
than now

The glow
inside you
shows
the way

The path
to the light
leads through
the darkness

The wind storms across the field, so that the loud rustling of the grasses breaks the silence of the night. The only sound. I march purposefully through the tall grass, always heading towards the pulsating light. The world blurs around me, my feelings and thoughts switch off, as if in a trance. I walk on and on, at a monotonous, constant speed, on and on. Until the light finally covers me completely...

Where am I?... I don't know. Neither where I came from, nor where I was going. As if I have fallen out of time and space, I am now standing here, in this unknown place. And I sense that it is something like a new beginning. I have been given the gift of taking a new path under my own steam. And so I take the first step into the untouched sand.

You feel lost. Lost in the thick fog. No matter where you look - only emptiness. The oppressive feeling of disorientation spreads through you more and more, weighing heavily on your chest. But just before you lose your last hope, it appears. The light.

The gentle light of the morning flows across the clear night sky, slowly but steadily washing away the darkness. And the fog in my thoughts is also slowly dissipating. As if the dawn had driven away the thoughts of the last day to make room for new ones. Yesterday is forgotten, it's time to look ahead.

A never-ending march through endless landscapes, rugged mountain regions, icy tundras and extremely hot deserts lay behind you. Time and space blurred into a viscous, indefinable mass without beginning or end. Until you finally found what you weren't really looking for - your self.

I feel at home up here. One of the few places of peace and solitude. While the noise rages downstairs and you have to push your way through dense crowds, this is a small Zen garden, an oasis in the vast urban landscape. Life downstairs dries me out, while I can quench my thirst at this source of calmness and clarity. Just a little longer...

All around you is darkness, emptiness, dreariness. A barren landscape devoid of life. And the pouring rain that soaks you. But all you can hear is the soothing, magical melody of the raindrops dancing on the puddles. Taking in the beauty of the breathtakingly empty plain that stretches far beyond the horizon. A moment of your most important realization: your thoughts are your true reality.

As if the cosmic sky had swung its brush and painted a work of art with light. Just a fleeting moment, and the painting is no more. A moment lasting a second, branded on the soul for a lifetime.

What are you looking for? You don't know, do you? The only thing you know is that you are missing something. You can't tell if it's an object, a place, a person or just a feeling. But there is a piece that you seem to be missing. No one will be able to tell if you will ever find it. But you know: you HAVE to look for it.

Always on the lookout. Restless. For the place I don't know yet. The place where I feel I have arrived. My true home. Whether the search will ever lead to a destination, whether this place even exists... I have no idea. But I'm not going to stop.

Concrete roads, concrete pillars, concrete bridges. Bathed in the surreal light of street lamps. An artificially created landscape. The only organic thing here was... Me. A foreign body in this seemingly inhuman world. And yet I felt at home here. I wondered why this place gave me this contented feeling. Shouldn't it be repulsive? Shouldn't I like forests, meadows and the sea much better? How could this empty cityscape fulfill me so much?

The city itself was gloomy, concrete gray, dirty. Colorless blocks, the epitome of dreariness. But as soon as the time came, the countless, colorful lights bathed the colorless structures in an unimaginable, dreamy sea of color. The ugly grimace painted over, the make-up of the big city. Although I knew the true face, I had to admit - the beauty took possession of me.

Why do you feel so alone? As if you can't really connect with anyone? Are you missing the connection to yourself? Feel inside yourself. You alone decide about your thoughts, your actions and ultimately your own well-being. Be content with yourself and you will never be alone.

The outside world is so quiet that you can hear the white flakes gently falling on the soft snow. But inside, thoughts are whirling through my head. When I try to grasp one, it immediately slips away and two more come to the fore, which also immediately vanish. Outside and inside merge into a feverish dream from which I can't wake up.

Just the moon and me. 384,000 kilometers away, connected in solitude.

I stare at the vast, lonely landscape, bright lights flashing in front of my eyes at irregular intervals, burning abstract fragments onto my retina, having a slight after-effect, ghostly shadows. Time and space become blurred, cannot be grasped, are swallowed up by a vortex that pulls reality along with it, distorting it into something indefinable. The further away reality became in this state, the closer I came to my self.

A pair of shining eyes in the darkness of the night, shrouded in a thick layer of fog. The light shimmies along the blanket of fog, cone-shaped, until it fades into nothingness. With its hard, angular surface, the watchtower is a foreign body in the diffuse cloak of the fog. It rises up in the empty landscape, pushing its way into the untouched nature, radiating the deliberate feeling that it doesn't go any further from here.

A long way lies behind me, through dreary, gray landscapes. Not a soul to be seen. Just nature and its silence, gently broken now and again by a rustle, a whisper, a chirp, or rather just a gentle nudge, only to become heavier and more intense afterwards. A cloak of silence that brings contentment and harmony.

The squalls whistle and whip, tear at me and push me away as if I were squeezing my way through a crowd of people gone wild. My face hurts from the wet cold, the raindrops like pins and needles, maltreating my unprotected skin even more. The parka that promised protection has long since given up, my clothes soaked, a mixture of warm sweat and cold wet. I fight my way through the night and finally find – the truth.

Where am I here? In the nowhere... Countless steps that I took, thoughtlessly, without destination. It didn't matter where to go. The main thing was to get away, as far as possible. Leaving the familiar behind. To a place I'd never been before. Where I don't know anyone and no one knows me. When the past hurts too much, the only thing that helps is to move forward.

The world was no longer aligned in its picture frame, no, it was twisted, distorted. The bright neon lights hit my retina, burning confused shapes and bizarre colors onto it like the dreams of a kaleidoscope. The reality was sometimes more, sometimes less recognizable, the veil of shapes and colors lay randomly over it, like the waves of the sea, which sometimes receded, only to wash over the sand again with unexpected intensity.

It appeared from one day to the next, was suddenly there. No one knew where it came from or had seen anything conspicuous before it appeared. A perfectly smooth, flawless surface, made from a piece of a material that no one had ever seen before. Judging by its shape, it must have been worked, it was not organic, not natural. But there were no traces of processing. There it was now, rising up in the middle of the shining city - the monolith that could not give any answers but raise a thousand questions. But that soon changed...

There was no plausible explanation, but the beauty of the concrete desert at night in the artificial light could hardly be surpassed at that moment. You had to consciously expose yourself to this cold, repulsive landscape, absorb its extraordinary, silent aura, in order to understand the monumental effect this atmosphere had on people. It was inexplicable, but it did something to you. It was as if you were on a distant planet for that moment, in another world.

I stood in front of it and a hurricane of images rushed through my head. Many years of memories that had accumulated about my childhood. It had been a long time since I had stood in front of the house where I had grown up. That feeling of familiarity and home that only comes from memories of childhood. A time when you experienced so many things for the first time. A place you will never return back to. Nostalgia in its purest form.

Fragments of memories that pass before my inner eye, as if I were standing in front of a brightly lit window at night and trying to figure out what is going on inside. Shadows are recognizable, but they are torn out of context and cannot really be grasped. They appear and disappear immediately. Like a feverish dream, consisting of seemingly incoherent scraps.

Like a sharp knife, the glistening beam cuts through the night-time fog that previously enveloped me as if I were wrapped in cotton candy. It now lies before me in this soulless wasteland - the "Ark". The sea had last seen it around 90 years ago. Now the water was long gone and the vast plain had become her new forced home.

Like moths are drawn to the light in the darkness, I am drawn to this place that I do not know yet. The place where I can be me, without these recurring thoughts - is this all there is? What else is there in this world? I have only seen a fraction of the places I could go. I am drawn ELSEWHERE, and yet life keeps me trapped here. Now the time has come... I take the first step.

Do you remember? What it was like before? When smiling children played in the streets and green parks. How people met in the lively squares and enjoyed their time together. No thought of problems - because they didn’t exist back then. Just as the last rays of sunlight break through the haze and usher in the night... That’s how all our lives changed from one day to the next.

Would you look for me if I left? If I packed my things from one day to the next and just disappeared? Take the last train and get out of this village. Leave it behind, along with all the memories that cling to its places. Would you?

Only distorted shapes and colors. Clouds of light. Here and there, outlines appear that make sense. That I had seen before. Memories, some young, some old. From a time when I was different from today. A mixture of then and now.

A huge, gloomy skyscraper, reaching deep into the sky. Blurred shapes, dense fog, obstructing the view. This indefinable darkness piles up inside me, waiting to be confronted. Unconquerable, it seems. But even the sturdiest walls are doomed to fall.

Do you know that feeling of not belonging? That feeling of being part of groups, but always feeling that faint candle flame flickering inside you, telling you that you are different? I don’t remember when I got rid of this urge to belong, but it was the greatest liberation. I realized that there is nothing more beautiful than accepting yourself, with all your facets and peculiarities.

Wandering around. Without a destination. Just wandering, always moving forward. Not standing still. Always giving the senses new stimuli to displace thoughts. Offer them no nourishment, no space. This night should not end, never. Of course, it wasn’t possible, but as long as he could, he wanted to indulge in the illusion, this fata morgana. On and on...

That moment when everything feels right. When there are no more doubts, no more „what ifs“, no more thoughts of options. When everything seems to fall into place and there is only the path you have chosen and you are eager to finish it. One of these rare moments had now come for him.

It was pitch black around him. Only the lights of the distant city cast their artificial, sterile glow on the tall grass. Ordinary people would avoid being here at this time of day, wouldn’t even think of stepping foot here. For him, it was... indescribably magical and incredibly beautiful at the same time.

Setting off. Into the unknown. Into the nightly forest, whose fog veils everything you could have recognized. Leaving behind the glare of the never-sleeping city. No more thoughts of what was.

It was one of those nights. In which the almost ghostly silence was only broken by the gentle crunch of boots in the snow. When you would rather stay at home, but witness the breathtaking winter beauty when you do venture out. However, there was no time left for this pleasure...

Take another deep breath. Gather the last of my strength. No more thoughts about the exertions that lie behind me. The memories of the journey so far - no longer important. This last outpost will have been the penultimate stage.

The darkness that had protected him for so long now slipped off like a cloak and let the glistening light wash over him. It felt as if someone was pouring glowing lava over him, slowly but surely melting away his dark, rusty armor.

I feel at home in solitude. This thought flowed through my body with an unprecedented intensity. Of course, as humans we need stimulation from the outside, but the beauty lies in processing these influences introspectively, connecting different thoughts and allowing new ones to emerge. With this relieving feeling, I wandered through the empty streets, my skin warmed by the days last rays of sunshine.

A brief stop in this never-ending night. How much time lies behind me? How much ahead of me? No idea. I just keep going, stubbornly and steadily, my destination always in sight. Nothing and no one to stop me. But first a sip of coffee...

Just as the fog envelops this village, the silence envelops my soul. This feeling as if time stood still. As if this moment is frozen, completely torn out of context, robbed of meaning. This feeling that only arises in the stillness of the night and nowhere else.

Nothing but silence. Perhaps the gentle whisper of the wind, or the distant chirping of a bird. Otherwise... nothing. This absence of sound intensifies the focus on the self. Suddenly I feel the cool temperature of my faces skin, the gasping of my lungs for fresh air. I knew this moment would live on in me forever as a memory.

Past, present, future... The only thing we can seem to grasp is the moment, the now. This one moment. But it only lasts for the blink of an eye until it becomes the past. What was this morning is already history by the evening. The future remains completely hidden. But isn’t this also true for the majority of our past? We forget so much and only remember fragments of yesterday...

Only the gas mask gave him the opportunity to approach this incomprehensible, vast urban landscape, which consisted of nothing but ruins. It was engulfed in a deadly smog that was ready to creep into any lung at any time, fill it in seconds and completely eat away at its tissue. Like a savior, the glowing orange morning sun broke through the thick fog. As long as it still went about its daily routine and shone in the sky, there was still hope.

You can rely on the haze in this city. Without it, my eyes would only have endured the morning sunlight with stabbing pain. They were still used to the darkness of the previous night and my apartment. But now my body was given the signal to put the past to rest and start the future with fresh energy. No one asked if I wanted that.

It’s pounding in my head. That’s the first feeling. The first feeling that flows through my body after this miserable night. I don’t know how many times it woke me up from my confused dreams, but I didn’t get much sleep. No wonder after the lack of food and overflow of thoughts of the last few days. Or has it been weeks? I drag myself to the window with the last of my strength and open the curtains.

Every day I ask myself when I can finally leave this godforsaken city behind me. It seems to me that it can give birth to nothing but death and destruction. A limbo on earth. And then I walk through the empty streets at night and the beauty of the night-time haze takes my breath away every time. How can something be so ugly and so beautiful at the same time?