The frame I'm looking through

They have such a hard skin, the germans...and my hands are so cold. Cold hurts...and I'm not only talking about my hands. I can't feel. I'm hardly holding the pen as I write, the cold wind made them senseless....useless. Now I can hardly write, or touch, shake hands, look for coins in my pocket for the ones whom the wind has frozen their minds, as told by the ones who have a frozen heart. I wonder until which point it was the wind...it's not windy forever. I hope the wind wont get to me. It's only my hands that are frozen now, and I keep on writing. The holocaust victims wrote with broken hands and broken hearts their last goodbyes, their last words, knowing they were. I don't know when mine would be.. I'll never know...and so I write. Today.

I've been noticing turists fall in love with Berlin, perhaps wishing they could once live here, tho the ones who do, wish for something better.. I'd say, since life here is no fairytale. People fight through the cold to get fed. People with talent and dreams. People who are truly good at what they love to do..but I guess what we love sometimes isn't enough. Brushes moving colors on the sidewalk, beats through moving bodies on the streets, strings and voices on the subway. They are the life of this city. Yes, the "brainless" are the life, the colors, the music, the ones who bring out smiles and laughter, the ones who remind you that life is to do the things you love, always, no matter what....to relax... To waste time once in a while...just to slow down and turn up the music.

Tall boots, high heels, tennis shoes...walk them by as fast as their feet can take them...they don't even have time to glance as they walk with their food in their mouths. They say time is precious...and they never do anything precious with their time. Is it culture? .....fascinating.

How much german culture do I need then, to swallow my laughter? or to give away hopes and dreams? I once looked at my relexion in the subway's dark window... I stared at my brown eyes..and saw nothing. Frustrating. Have my eyes lost their smile? I can't even see tears..so it was not sadness I was looking at. The next day the wind came...again, and washed away the tears they hold. Everything was blurry now, there was only something clear. A sound, the voice of a friend next to me.. love on her voice, with hands that helped me to see. Everything was clear as we started laughing.

Photography

Sometimes I wish I could capture moments, scenes, with my bare brown eyes. Store them in my mind where I'll never forget, where no one else would know, where the feelings and thoughts of that precise moment wouldn't be lost. His eyes were on me, staring, incertain, but friendly, so small but yet so smart. He has much more room for imagination, he can get lost within time and forget all his worries, focussing in what he really wants.A kid. I wish I could see through his mind and know what he's thinking... understand why each year his mind would darken and his heart would shrink. Why his face smiles in the reflection of my eyes and why in a few years.. he will never smile at any stranger again. I wanted to capture the scene including the lady.. getting off the bus with her hair being pulled back by the wind, discovering the colors, the texture..her purple scarf recover life around her blue jacket. It just captured my attention. I think life is full of distractions.. depending deeply in our point of view. I like to remember people on their good days, or when they're smiling. No matter how criked or how much of their breakfast is showing... a smile always does it. It moves every single muscle of the face, it light's it up. It's fascinating. 

I wish I could capture things all the time... This is why I fell in love with photography, the way it expresses the silence, unsaid words, the moment, the feeling, the sounds... the essence

The unspoken

The warmth of the day lightens up hearts, curling up mouths that become smiles. I used to walk in the shadows, now I walk in the sun. I search for it, love it… I need it.  It’s as if I was blind and now I could finally see. Like I had never been touched, and now I could feel every inch of my skin. I used to complain about the birds, leaving feathers and seeds all over...now I can only see them behind bars... I wish I was still complaining... I liked to go inside shops to get rid of the heat, now I walk in to feel a little warmth. The weather changes life. The gray sky is vanishing.. the young ones are spraying it blue as they draw graffitis on the street. The U-bahns are starting to feel alive... people smile more often...or more turists are comming...

Beginning

You never really know when your day is going to begin ..or when it's going to end, because it doesn't necesarily begin when you wake up and it doesn't always end when you go to sleep. Your day usually starts when something happens that will always remind you of that day, something big...something small, meeting someone or saying goodbye, a walk with a friend, or a walk on your own... If you pay enough attencion you'll see that everyday has it's 'something' attached... no life is monotomus, there is always something, no matter how small, that distinguishes a day from another. A new day is a new start, a blank page. You'll never know which day will suddenly change you.. or when you'll make someone's day suddenly change them, you can make any day as important as you want to... voluntarily or not. We decide what to do with our time. We decide who we want to meet. We decide where we are headed towards. Tho sometimes.. we waste time, we leave things for tomorrow, we leave promises behind, we lose friends, we lose hope, and sometimes even lose our dreams. Why do we sometimes turn right, when we want to go left? Why are we suddenly afraid.....of nothing at all? Why can't we go talk to someone we want to? Why can't we smile back?
How can we be so incomprehensible....? Why are we holding back our dreams...our desires? Why can't we just let things be?

berlin

Each step was a new word, each street, a new sentence, each station, a new paragraph. As I walked I wrote, I acted out this internal monologue that kept running nonstop in my mind. I was trying to understand, to see what there was to figure out, to discover them, the old men,the emo kids, the woman, the people that stared, the ones that listened, the ones that didn't care, the ones that never laughed, that never talked, that never smiled... They were diferent, it was like I was too human, too defectuous, too breakable, and my only defense was the expression on my face, but it wasn't enough, I felt weak.
As I kept on walking I saw at their faces, I looked into their eyes.. expressionless, hopeless, trying to escape from sight, not looking at anything they didn't have to, focusing in where they had to be ..forgeting where they have been. I was afraid of ending my monologue, of wasting out my mind, everything I cared for beeing vanished... of disappearing, of becoming empty, hollow, german.
The subway is fun. At least for me, since the rest don't seem to have any reason to enjoy it... or life at all. People's mad faces amuse me, their silence, and their stare when I talk, happily, or laugh out loud as if they were condemned not to. The most amazing things have happened to me in the subway. (Maybe amazing is not the word anyone would use.. but it really was). As I stared into my cold hands and heard the german voice announcing the station, I looked up and saw a smile... with no aparent reason attached to it. It was an old man, alone, he sat infront of me.. just there, smiling, then he moved a little and I noticed it, the had lost both of his hands, but there he was, the only handless man in the subway.. carring the only smile.
Music came along one day, an Italian, singing so joyfully while not a single person rised their head to look at him.. at least, not a single mouth tried to become a smile, it was like I was the only one how could hear him.. as if they were all deaf. The melody came out from the strings of his guitar,into my stomach, my heart. It felt good, knowing I wasn't the only human around. Then I learned how to distinguish germans from foreigners, germans always sat on the hall side, so no one would sit next to them, since its uncomfortable to sit by the window with them in the middle. The foreigners sat on the window side, so anyone could come in and sit beside them..if they'd wish... but germans don't really "wish" they still keep on walking, useless. One day I saw someone who made them really move, stare, look up, alive, aware of their surroundings. A drunk. A man who kept on talking and talking... he never really did shut up.. and people just moved away from him, ignored him and turned their emptyness into hate. I guess they can only be hollow and upset. I don't want to be hollow and upset. I just want to be me... in a sea of madness, of emptyness, of sorrow, or confusion.. but sometimes afraid that "me" is not strong enough.