Sitting in the fading sunshine of the dead end of a summers’ day with a beer and a smoke, outside a bar or on a hill or at a river or at the beach or in my living room, not moving at all, blinking into the sun, with the knowledge that at the same time I’m propelled with 1,674.4 km per hour away from the sun and into the dark side of the Milky Way just by sitting here on this uneven rotating ball of cooled-down magma and salt water together with the other 6.9 billion lemmings.

I’m currently re-reading George Orwell’s 1984, for a variety of reasons. In light of recent events I wanted to be reminded that the we should not take reality as it is for granted, and he is also one of my favourite all-time writers: because of his fierce advocacy for the downtrodden and sharp and balanced view of the world (which pretty much reflects my own, without me being a political writer), but also because his writing style alone is that good. Here’s a poignant quote from the first chapter:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

“There are a hundred things she has tried to chase away the things she won’t remember and that she can’t even let herself think about because that’s when the birds scream and the worms crawl and somewhere in her mind it’s always raining a slow and endless drizzle.

You will hear that she has left the country, that there was a gift she wanted you to have, but it is lost before it reaches you. Late one night the telephone will sign, and a voice that might be hers will say something that you cannot interpret before the connection crackles and is broken.

Several years later, from a taxi, you will see someone in a doorway who looks like her, but she will be gone by the time you persuade the driver to stop. You will never see her again.

Whenever it snows you will think of her. ”

― Neil Gaiman

For the 10 Days in Dublin festival, the best Dublin indie arts festival with an incredibly packed programme (see here), I’m organising a series of readings together with the HQ of Emerald Island-scribblers, the Irish Writers’ Centre. The idea was to have both expat writers and poets who live abroad and in Dublin reflect on the importance of place (and home) in these globalised times.

I’ve asked a few talented writer friends of mine, and they all agreed to participate. So we’ll have a great bunch of inkslingers either at the centre or skypeing on from wherever they live in Europe, among them Kit Fryatt (Aberdeen), Christodoulos Makris (Dublin/Nicosia), Anna Byrne (Cork/Berlin), Nuala Ní Chonchúir (Galway/Dublin), Stu Anderson (Edinburgh), Au Ngog Dung (Dublin) and many more. Also have the good guys at Storymap Dublin agreed to participate, so each reading will feature a curated story from storymap.ie with added commentary by story/filmmakers Tom and Andy. If you’re in Dublin at the time, why not pay us a visit? There’s more info to come about the individual readings over on our Facebook-page.

There’s a storm on Jupiter, raging for 348 years. When it started, the English were fighting the Dutch with muskets and cannonballs made of stone, Moliere published L’Amour médecin and King Philip IV of Spain died. It is still raging this minute, today.

I never liked spring. All that flimsy sunshine, blooming trees and girls in short dresses licking ice cream just lull you in a false sense of security, as if there will be no rain and storm and hail and bitter tears for the next six months.

I’m not really sure why I’m so grumpy, really. I’m currently working on a book about my grandmother with 20,000 words already down and high hopes to have it finished by July, when I’m organsing a series of readings at the Irish Writer’s Centre for the 10 Days in Dublin festival in (ta-daa!) Dublin. And I’m also still working on the concept album of German metal band In Arcane together with the very talented graphic artist Jörn Zimmermann; plus I’m flying to London in June for a talk of my favourite author, Neil Gaiman. So no shortage of good stuff in my life currently. But still.

I never thought I’d say this, but it seems like I miss winter.

The Trouble with Geraniums

The trouble with geraniums
is that they’re much too red!
The trouble with my toast is that
it’s far too full of bread.

The trouble with a diamond
is that it’s much too bright.
The same applies to fish and stars
and the electric light.

The troubles with the stars I see
lies in the way they fly.
The trouble with myself is all
self-centred in the eye.

The trouble with my looking-glass
is that it shows me, me;
there’s trouble in all sorts of things
where it should never be.

- Mervyn Peake

‘It is a dull day, as it always is in this district, and for a moment, the entire vista seems nothing more than a photograph from an illustrated newspaper, so flat and grey are the houses, the people and the carriages. That reality is paper-thin, and it betrays its imitativeness in every chink. At times, one has the impression that is only upon the tiny patch before one’s eyes that everything arranges itself properly into that pointillist image of big city boulevards, whereas to the sides, that improvised masquerade has come undone and is unraveling. Unable to preserve in its role, it is falling to pieces above us into plaster and oakum, the lumber room of some enormous, empty theatre. Tense poses shudder on that outer skin, the artificial seriousness of masks and ironic pathos. But far be it from us to want to unmask the spectacle. Despite our better judgement, we, too, are drawn to the tawdry charm of this district.’

- Bruno Schulz, The Cinnamon Shops.

More info on Bruno here.

So I’ve recently returned from celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, and I brought something nice back. A shiny little buke that contains many a picture of unspecified things that look like the Emerald Isle, compiled and edited by the good people at our favourite Irish news aggregator, broadsheet.ie; and all proceeds are given to Aware, who fight depression and suicide. So all in all a nice thing to have. Yours truly even contributed a thing that looks like Ireland (a Cologne hairdresser sign on page 133, to be more precise).

And now I’m giving three copies away. What you have to do? That’s easy – just like my very own Facebook-page (I know, I’m a sucker for publicity) or leave a nice comment here if you have done so already. I’ll draw the winners from new Facebook fans and commentators on Thursday, 28.03.2013 and ship it to where you live, anywhere in the world. So what are you waiting for?

Thank you, Maggie Appleton.