"Endstation Eden, Mein suchen endet hier" Samsa's Traum
"Cause I am what I am what I am what I am, I'm your loverman" Nick Cave
When I presented my flowers and the bottle of wine your voice blocked the doorway, like the window of the shop allows and doesn't allow access to what is on display. I stand before your window and keep looking inside. The display is always the same no matter how much you rearrange those precious jewels you keep. Those stones are pretty, but more than that they are hard, icy, and they distract from who you really are. Everyday by watching you I am urging you to throw these trinkets away, to show yourself properly. I walk back to where my car is parked.
I live my life behind the window panes of my car and my comfort is that I live your life too. Though your curtains are always drawn I know that you see me. I know that because they move sometimes. You look at me ever since I parked my car on the spot where you always parked yours. Now I park there though.
I park here because you need to reach me. I know you need to reach me because you put a letter under the wipers asking me what I am doing in your street. After that I started parking here regularly. Here, opposite the house. Well not strictly opposite, a little to the left. I would come back from work and start the engine. I would let it run for a while. Until I would see the curtains move. They would always move, sometimes in a little flutter and sometimes stronger, like a gush. I know that when they flutter you want to see me. When they flutter, you peek. When they gush you merely, angrily close the door of the room.
I am in my car all day now because I don't work anymore. The state hands me some money and that is enough. I don't need much. My world has become quite small you see.
I park and read, write letters and watch your curtains. I see who comes and goes in and out of your apartment block. I see you too, when you go to work, or to your ceramics courses in the evening. You act as though you do not see me. That gives you away.
You are more cautious than you were before. You dress more conservatively. I know what is underneath that dress. You know that I know. You feel that I know, every time you walk by my car and act like you don't notice me. You feel it in your stomach, on your breasts and between your legs. You feel I know you.
Your unconcerned expression, making a mockery of your normally pretty face, your hair dyed recently, the curtains always closed. For me they are no obstacles. In fact they are more like magnifying glasses. I see who you are. The only sight they block is yours. You can't see me. I am nothing but your mirror now. I am out here in the open, but my gaze hides me because it reveals you. I show myself like a child shows himself to his mother, naked but with nothing except for that what the mother projects into it. I am your child and you will not be free as long as you keep me here. I am in your head and you can't dispel me. You don't know how. I am trying to teach you though.
I saw an advertisement of a woman in the paper. She offers herself in the men's-room of the arrivals section of the airport. The woman is her own absolute master. In a place without borders she is completely free and becomes desirable for her utter availability. She unmasks every man in the smallest room within the doorway to the whole world. A collector of the lost souls who wander and scurry about. Those men all getting away from themselves and she a child unattainable, locked in nowhere. No borders left and so she can never trespass any. She is free and knows that and that is why the men come. They want to taste that freedom too. They have no idea they are in fact begging their mother to give them a kiss before going out to school alone.
She should be your example but you don't know that. You try to hide behind your respectability, behind your school teacher's job and behind your solid pullover taking away all imagination men might have and all because I am watching. I circle the ad and put the paper clipping in your mailbox. Let's see if you pick up this piece of advice.
Do you fancy your students I wonder, fancy their young bodies, which have never laid eyes on a woman? You fancy innocence but only secretly, don't you? That is why you don't dare to admit that you are watching me, you are scared of yourself. I received absolution for my sins, yes, grace by the burden bestowed upon me, the burden of saving you. It takes innocence to appreciate innocence for what it is. You cannot appreciate it because you are scared of it. This world only lets the guilty see the light of day.
As I tried to tell you with the paper clipping, the innocent do not work during the day, they are not allowed. You find them at night. They are in the small alleyways I used to explore. They are scantily dressed and behind the glass, in rows of small rooms. They give all and spare nothing, all in the open with the night as their blanket. They are innocent because they don't hold back, they don't hide, but they are absolutely unobtainable nonetheless. The glass of their windows make them untouchable and when they open their door and you stumble in, nervously, after the act they are hallowed by the sacrifice we sinners leave behind. Beautiful exotic flowers picked by rough hands, but they never whither. It is the gardener who leaves with tears on his face.
They too have their moment of guilt, of depravity even. When the curtains are closed and when they look with a face full of hate at the man on top. A hate of that what is now and what will be eternally, that is sin. Self hate, the other side of innocence.
Before I took up my life here and began this immobile journey with you, I walked the streets of the city and watched love and hate and everything in between. The worn faces of the meek, the self fulfilled look of the suits who do not know they are as derelict as the rest of us. I traveled at night and through the rain and the neon of the cafés your face stared at me. Your countenance was visible on the stairs of the underground walk-ways; your perfume reached me when wandering through the fertile parks, the nightgowns the pretty ladies wore, reflected your jewelry. Yet I didn't come to you, I had miles to walk before I was pure enough. My roaming from street through street eventually showed me that my place was here, silent and still and my eyes the only sense I need. Like the skin of an onion my guilty desire was peeled from me and I have found rest. I have become your guardian. With my help you too will redeem your guilt and admit me. I have come to take you away from this, away from the sculptures of the past you molded. I too have tried to walk away from love and you have tried to close your doors to it. In our journey together we will reopen them.
You will understand that love is not an activity you can control, or look for, but a relation and this relation will continue when it wants. Whether we lay in bed together or whether I observe you from my car, the relation is the same and controls us both. It continues for its own sake, not to be influenced by our feelings or actions. Those are merely subjugated emotions, nothing but whim. We have both been taken up into our love long ago.
Everyday the flutter of your curtains attest to that. By it you call me to watch, that is your end of the bargain. It ushers your footsteps walking through the hall past the cabinet and into the bedroom, our bedroom. I know what you feel when taking every step. I felt the same. You are cursing this love that keeps us together. Love is a gift, easily given, but hard to win back. It is a gift that remains wrapped, a present never opened. If we would open it, it would be gone, but we don't do we? We keep it wrapped. That is how it should be with a true gift. You don't unwrap it, because you don't want to know what's inside. A heart is a very bloody thing.
You can't let me go, no matter how you despise me behind your window. You can only gain your freedom back when you acknowledge your guilt and subject yourself to me. Look what I did, I have forfeited my freedom. I am captured in the car, but by being this prisoner I might save you. That knowledge makes me free. I finally know who I am, by embracing my guilt. You don't dare yet, do you? You are guilty and you want to know, but are afraid to look at it yourself. You need me to show you. You left open the balcony door just for that purpose. You had no photograph of us left; at least it was not where it used to be. I replaced it on the mantelpiece. Did you take the bath I prepared for you? Did you? I bet you didn't, afraid to cleanse to your sins yourself.
You would like it if someone would come up and rescue you from your own red light. The lantern which women like you hang next to their doors. With you it hangs within your whole body. You keep your curtains closed though, and your dress conservative so that no one will see this glow. You don't allow anybody to see your lurid passion, because they will see your contorted face too. O, you look respectable to the outside world but we also see ourselves don't we? No-one can see it but you and me. No one can observe you like I do everyday from the windows of my car. You keep me because I protect you from the prying eyes of strangers. I stay here to tell you to make peace with that lady of ill repute within. I will baptize you again.
I will come for you, every week I do. With a bottle of wine and flowers and every time your voice denies me. And every week you dye your hair. Every week a slightly different color. Dye cannot hide you; neither can your makeup or your new dress. Your quick footstep will not detract those eyes you see. They seem to be my eyes, but don't deceive your self. My eyes are your own eyes watching your guilty legs, your guilty hips, your guilty high heeled shoes. You cannot flee from your own mouth, speaking through my letters, which calls you ugly and defiled.
Come with me. I will make you love yourself again by loving me. I have bought things for you, I have wine and flowers. In a few steps I will be at your door. You should open it smiling this time. It is time to open the curtains and allow the light.
