~ stories ~

It was around 1979, I was 17 years young.

I was on a school trip to the former DDR (Eastern Germany before the fall of the wall), the school bus I was traveling in turned into the parking lot of a tavern and resort for the night. I was sitting by the window and was looking outside, when my eye directly fell on a beautiful girl with long curly beautiful blonde hair, and thought, yes, I want her to become my girlfriend, the bus had not even parked yet.

That night when there was a mixed disco, I approached her and started talking and dancing and flirting with her. After the dance evening stopped, we went outside and started kissing.

The thing was, that she had to be in her room, in her bed, at a certain time with the lights out. (eastern Germany school rules at that time). As her room was on the first floor, we agreed I would visit her in her room later by climbing through the window from the back of the building. So I did, and landed in her bed at a certain point. We just enjoyed each others presence, and intimacy, and kissed a lot, nothing else 'funny business' or so, as we both still had our normal clothes on. I just enjoyed fully the kissing and stroking of her hair, and face.

Then suddenly she said, “quiet I hear the teacher coming to check on our room”, there were several girls sleeping in this room.

So I slid down the sheets and hid beneath her bed on the floor next to her window where I had come in. Then the teacher opened the door, and came into the room asking if everyone was comfortable and goin to sleep ? They all said, “yes”, and the teacher wished them goodnight and closed the door again. We all laughed and I crawled back in her bed. We kissed some more for a while and after some time I crawled out of the window again and went to sleep in my own room.

Her name was Kathleen. The next day we said goodbye, and exchanged addresses. We wrote quite a lot of wonderful love letters for a few years after.

At a certain moment, some years later, I had the strong feeling, wish and desire to go and see and visit her again, we hadnt written in quite a while.

So I took a train to Eastern-Germany to Rostock where she lived.

A (for me then) relative long train trip, and I remember when we past the Iron curtain, the border train crossing between West and East, we got checked on by some really huge big muscular, stern looking military police women and men with big german shepherds, checking everyone very closely on their passports.

I arrived in Rostock, and went to her house of which I found the address by having written it down from her letters.

No mobile phones, no maps, just asking your way around and taking a bus, etcetera and just going with the flow, and feeling of direction. The city looked as if I had traveled back in time in a time machine, and there were not many cars, just really tiny slow driving small Trabants. The streets were huge and empty, and communist red flags were waving everywhere.

I arrived at her house, and someone there told me she was working at a cafe close by. So I walked there, and when she saw me she was very surprised (as I hadn't told her I was coming) and happy.

She was working but had time to have a drink with me in the sun, after she asked her boss and explained that I had come from soo far.

She told me she was already married. I was quite disappointed by that news, but I accepted it directly, and wished her all the happiness and love that she deserved. I went back on my way again after spending the night somewhere, back to Holland (The Netherlands).

I've sometimes past years looked on the internet if I could somehow find her again, but she probably took on the surname of her then husband. I will for sure never forget her. I still have somewhere a little photo of her which she sent me in one of her first letters :) For me she is forever still my girlfriend, and bright light shines in me with these memories <3

~ ~ ~

I was 24 and was madly in love with my still relative new small young beautiful marvelous Bonsai tree, which was a present from a group of friends for my birthday. Bonsai being the Japanese art of keeping a miniature tree in a little pot, and making it look like an adult old aged tree.
It was sitting in a very small teacup size green porcelain cup, and was around 15 cm tall.
It had the illusion of a very old tree, with really tiny little leaves and tiny branches. Every morning when I woke up, the first thing I did was sitting real close next tot it, and studying the little tiny slowly growing branches and leaves to see if perhaps little new ones had appeared. I knew practically every branch and leaf by heart and exactly when a little new bud had opened and sprouted.
For me it was the most beautiful thing in the world I had ever seen or experienced. It was absolute perfection, how the sun shone through the tiny canopy, and every day I was in wonder about it, watering it diligently, and spraying it with a mist of water on top to give it extra freshness.

There are no words to describe to make you understand how much I loved that little tree.

One day I woke up and something really devastating unfolded.

The Bonsai was standing on the ledge of my window, which was open. I was living on the third floor.

I approached the little marvel as usual but made a tiny error in judgement and with some strange uncontrolled movement of my hand I accidentally nudged it over the ledge of the window and realized in a split second it was gonna fall three floors down to the stone pavement below.

The same moment I realized my mistake I bent over and looked over the edge, and I had what I call an experience of enlightenment.

As it was soo dear to me and I loved it soo much, it was as if my child was gonna crash onto the pavement, so my mind did something strange. In shock of what was happening I looked at the little tree falling down three stories of my apartment block.

Everything seemed to happen in a split moment, and it was as if time stopped, as I focused on the tree, I became the tree... the tree wasn't falling, I was falling. It seemed to go in slow-motion, and I experienced every tumble of it in mid air, and then it was suddenly over, cause the little porcelain cup in which the tree was standing crashed on the pavement. It was then that I returned to my usual awareness and was my normal self again.

It was the most unexplainable experience of my life.

In the end nothing really bad happened to it, as I immediately rushed down the stairs outside, to pick up the broken cup, and slightly damaged tree. It was only a little tree with some earth so it could easily survive a fall like that. So that same day, I replanted it to a new cup, and gave it extra care, and it lived for many years after.

I photographed it each year to make a sort of history of its growth, and still have the photos of it. In the end after several years it died in some harsh winter, outside of reasons I have now forgotten.

But that experience of me falling as the tree was one I will and can never forget.

~ ~ ~