Tokyo Innocence and Decadence

My new blog: http://tokyoinnocence.blogspot.com/
And where does the newborn go from here? The city is vast and infinite.
[free adaptation from Ghost in the Shell]


farewell

Ending a chapter, the last entry

This blog is coming to an end. Another blog will start, a new chapter will begin. Some bridges you just have to burn. It is 0:56, sometimes in November 2007. Helge is at work. Work is no fun, the shifts have 10 hours and more. But he has strength. Because he trusts, he believes, and he loves. Sometimes life teaches you a lesson that you will never forget. Thank you Ryo, for your friendship and your inspiration. Thank you Neo. It was a great time. It is sad to know that I was all alone out there.

To all who have forgotten

someone complained I never make photos of myself.

I dont know who she is ...

but I love her

Nippori

Hanami with friends

Books

Remembering

Ueno, IOIO

Destiny

My life has been in turmoil the last months. I made developments that I could never have expected me to achieve. I changed, I prepared, I realized how much possibilities lied ahead of me all the time. Now that I left everything in Munich to pursue my life in Japan, I dont feel scared anymore. On the contrary, the possibilities are boundless. The job opportunities just dont stop to come in, I get offers for presentations at conferences, opportunities to publish my theories, to write articles and to collaborate with high class people out of the luxury industry in Paris. I never thought that all my plans would turn out to be realized so soon. I had this dream for a long time, to realize those dream for me, and for another person that I thought would share my future. Now that my destiny has changed, it hurts me to see how fast everything is realized, how right I was to pursue my dreams like this, and that there is no one to share them with. I always wanted to share my success.
I sit atop the mountain now and enjoy the view, on my own. I see the horizon, and all the dreams that I had, come true. I climbed up on my own. I had so much support from friends and my family. But I did it. Over years, I invested into things other people thought are meaningless or outrageous, sometimes I was called arrogant or overbearing. I invested and reinvested. I spent way too much money on things others would consider a luxury. But they were carefully planned chances, possibilities that I wanted to have access to. For every yes that I got, I got 10 times no. Now I know why.
When I look back I realize that I enjoyed nothing more than helping people. I wanted to change lives, to open up possibilities. Gastronomy was my passion. I loved to work there. Now that this phase in life is over, another phase starts. Concentrating on my destiny, my dream. For one year, I have the opportunity to do whatever I want. I am more free than ever to pursue my wildest imaginations, to travel, to study, to meet the most interesting people all across the globe. And I have the opportunity to explore the deepest recesses of my mind, my heart and my soul. To go back there where everything started, to reevaluate everything I did, the persons I shared my life with, and the places I have been. This year is for me. For no one else. And I will readily share it with the ones I love. I will become more successful than I ever dreamed to be. And then, I will not only change my destiny. I will correct this world by making those people I meet on the way, those that show pureness of heart, I will make them happy. By giving them everything I have.
Only true sincerity can hope to capture a human heart. I long for that sincerity. And I know I will find it. There must be a way. And if not, then I will build that way.

Hidden feelings

Sometimes your true feelings are so deeply hidden inside that you believe they're not existant. But they are. You can run away from them, you can hide them. But they are there. You wake up in the middle of the night and know. You feel. You can deny it. You can argue. You can mistake fun and pleasure for true feelings. You can mistake an easy time for affection. You can mistake having no difficulties with being happy. You cant escape love. You cant throw it away. You can certainly try. True love remains.

(watch from 5:30 on)




Lovers

Home

Shinjuku, mexican restaurant

Finding that person

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20090320TDY03101.htm

thank you Ryo for that article. It made me cry. I want to find a person who really loves me. Like that. I thought once that I found it. I was wrong. But the road is long.

Ignorance

Ignorance is a gift. It makes you sleep well at night.
People so full of themselves, that reflecting their own actions seems out of possibility.
It was always my path and I never regret it. How ignorant can a person be.
How foolish can a person be. Change is a stranger you still have to know.

Snapshots

Hole in my soul

Fly away from here

Gotta find a way, yeah I cant wait another day
aint nothing gonna change if we stay around here
gotta do what it takes cause its all in our hands
we all make mistakes yeah but its never too late to start again
take another breath and say another prayer
and Fly Away from here anywhere yeah I dont care
we just fly away from here our hopes & dreams are out there somewhere
wont let time pass us by we'll just Fly yeah

If this life, it seems harder now it aint no never mind you got me by your side
and anytime you want yeah we can catch a train & find a better place
cause we wont let nothing or noone keep getting us down
maybe you & I could pack our bags & hit the sky

do you see a bluer sky now
you can have a better life now
open your eyes cause no one here can ever stop us
they can try but we wont let them no way
maybe you & I could pack our bags & say goodbye

and Fly Away From Here

Smile

The reason

Life is strange. When you least expect it, everything can change within a moment. And suddenly, you live again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q30-2QpZVc

Starting to say goodbye ... 11,5 years in Munich

bridges

sometimes the most important thing in life is to know which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn.

Anticipation

getting "back" - pure narcissm

doing sports distracts, and lets you cope with aggressivity. You can contemplate, think about what you did, why you did it. When I was young I always dreamed about having the time to really take care of me, my body, to once in my life get into perfect shape. After that, I thought, I could get fat. Use crisis as an opportunity to redifine your life, to do things you could have never achieved during structured times. Let this phase of my life be a phase of rediscovered opportunities. Fuck you all you bastards!

Farewell

Make a wish ...

Risk

Sometimes the risk to lose yourself is more grave than the risk to lose another person. If I would face the choice of losing myself or the person I love so much, I probably would chose to lose the person that I love. Because if you lose yourself, you got nothing. You cant love anybody, you cant live if you lose yourself. If you dont knwo who you are, you cant love, you cant live, you can never be free. Is there and greater risk than that?
I knew it. I always listened to the song "la bas". He said it, my sentence. "Je te perdrai peut-etre là bas. Mais je me perds si je reste là." (I will probably lose you there, but I will lose myself if I stay here)
I understood these sentences too well. I listened to them in the summer. Yet I could not realize their implications. This is why letting go is so important. To all the lovers out there, who think they truly love a person. Look at that person, at that individual. Think. Can this person really develop with you, can this person become happy with you, by staying with you. If the answer is no, after long consideration, then let go. Find the strength to let go. Like I said before, its the only fight worth fighting. Love. And loving means nothing else but letting go.
love is just love. It needs no justification. It has its own intrinsic value.

Là bas (there)
Tout est neuf et tout est sauvage (everything is new and wild)
Libre continent sans grillage (a free continent without fences)
Ici nos reves sont étroits (here all our dreams are limited)
C'est pour ca que j'irai là bas (that's why I will go there)
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=6baq46jdaNE

Opportunities

Amazing

It should end how it started. With a song. my song. Defining me. Being my soul.
Amazing.



I kept the right ones out
And let the wrong ones in
Had an angel of mercy to see me through all my sins
There were times in my life
When I was goin' insane
Tryin' to walk through
The pain
When I lost my grip
And I hit the floor
Yeah,I thought I could leave but couldn't get out the door
I was so sick and tired
Of livin' a lie
I was wishin that I
Would die

It's Amazing
With the blink of an eye you finally see the light
It's Amazing
When the moment arrives that you know you'll be alright
It's Amazing
And I'm sayin' a prayer for the desperate hearts tonight

That one last shot's a Permanent Vacation
And how high can you fly with broken wings?
Life's a journey not a destination
And I just can't tell just what tomorrow brings

You have to learn to crawl
Before you learn to walk
But I just couldn't listen to all that righteous talk, oh yeah
I was out on the street,
Just tryin' to survive
Scratchin' to stay
Alive

Desperate hearts, desperate hearts

a new chapter

There is no time like the present. It is full of opportunity and hope. Yet, I am scared. Of myself? Definitely.

Preperation

Time. it can give you peace, make you anxious, make you afraid. Being afraid is what limits your life. Face your fears, go to the dark places of your mind, confront your enemy. Many times, your enemy is a construct of your mind, a construct of your past, an image, a projection. It can seem so real, and yet it fades away upon closer inspection. That is why you try not to look to closely, for the fear to lose your enemy is even bigger than the fear to confront your nemesis. We all need foes, enemies, adversaries. Without them it seems, we cannot live. Pure acceptance of the situation stands in the way of perceived passion and determination. But is all this an illusion? Was all this an illusion? I refuse to believe that. It was all real. It still is real. But it is your past. Accept it. And go on. Reality starts by accepting the present situation, by not fighting it. Fighting takes up all your strength. Let go. Set free. Accept.

Eternity

escape

As long as we were together, time could not touch us. We ran away from time, from reality. From our problems. And we did it so well, because we loved each other. But now we have to face reality. We have to solve those problems alone. We always should have realized that. We ran away together. Using us. But tenderly. With romance. With respect. With love. but the other reality ... still remains. There is still love. You can feel it vibrant in the air. You can almost touch it. Love creates understanding. Even when the relationship is gone, love still creates understanding. It transforms anger into acceptance, ignorance into respect, judgments into empathy. Sometimes time creates the space for this understanding to happen. I can feel love, even when it is across an ocean, around the world. When I read old emails, everything suddenly makes sense. The end was already written in the first emails. The problems stayed the same since the beginning. We just thought we could rely on each other and solve them together. Reality taught us otherwise. Reality showed us the bitter side of love. Love wants to exist, to have a reality, not to be a dream. But sometimes love is just that. A wonderful dream. A dream you never want to wake up from.

I want to fall asleep again and dream. But I already know this is not what I should do. I have to be awake. Because you can only live when you are awake, conscious of what you do. I want to love and be awake.
This is what I am working on. I want to wake up. I slept all my life. Now is my time. To wake up to life. To feel the energy of being awake. I start to open my eyes and I see the sun. In the beginning its blinding you. But you get used to it. When you adapt, you can suddenly see the ocean, hear the waves, feel the breeze of the gusts of wind coming from the sea. Then you feel alive. And you still feel love. Waking up does not mean that the dream is gone. It can become reality. You jaust have to believe.

Like Lenny Kravitz said, it is all just a game. We just want to be loved.
I am so grateful that I am loved. That I could experience such kind of love.
Some people look for it all their lives, and never find it. I have it. I love, so much. It makes me happy. I dont need anything else to live my life, just the feeling that I can love like this makes me happy beyond comprehension.
My worth is not dependant on any person. But loves lets my inner worth shine. It makes me smile. I love, so I am. I exist because I can love. I want to love all my life. I got so much to give. I want to love.

Healing

It is a slow process. A painful one too. I had those phases before in my life but this one is different. It seems that my consciousness is changing as the presence of someone I really loved is slowly leaving my mind. If you now ask me how I know if I really loved someone, it is in the recovery phase that you know. While you are still together, you are blind to the realities, once you break up you realize the truth. It is still a subjective truth, guided by your own images, superstitons, and phantasies. But you are alone with thise feelings, have to face them without any comfort from the other person. You don't get anything back and that is why, at some point, you realize whether the love was true or egoistical. If you continue to feel love, even when not getting anything in return, when you feel you have to change your whole personality in order to move on, then you get a grasp of what real love means. It is painful. It is healing your soul from the scars. After the scars have disappeared or healed, what remains is pure acceptance of the situation, pure acceptance of another person. Please give me the power to continue on this journey, without losing this feeling. Because there is no other feeling like this, love, real love. You are alone with the gods, it is the only fight worth fighting.

Stooping to conquer (by Ryo)

The only way to tame a person truly it seems is to accept them in their worst behavior. Doing so may actually even destroy you. Firmness is required in such cases. Still, being firm is not the deciding factor in taming a person. The deciding factor is unconditional acceptance. You see, the human heart is afraid and suspicious of everyone. Only when a person feels that they are being completely accepted do they put their guards down. But to do this really, you have to disarm your own guards.
I no longer say anything when my significant other behaves in destructive or hideous ways. And guess what? She's beginning to calm down. Stooping to conquer.

Dazed and Confused

Times of confusion, of emotional insecurity, of lost balance. During such a state you strife for freedom. Of thoughtm of judgement, of responsibility. Although reality does not change by the fact that you convince yourself that you have no responsibility, there is another reality, a subjective reality, that allows you to escape, both judgement and responsibility. If you are lucky, you manage to get out of your own vortex within time not to destroy anything important, because during such turmoil, friend and foe become alike, the boundaries of good and bad are blurred, and your own judgement and consciousness are too tired to work. This is a time of fun, excitement, pain, anger against you and others, disappointment, both in yourself and the world, naivity, wrong judgement, right instincts, a time of realizing your own deepest recesses, the darkest corners of your heart and capability. It cleanses you, your mind, while your soul seems to disappear behind a facade made to block direct access to an insecure and vulnerable self. You are not who your are, and still, you are so much yourself. But maybe a self that is inacceptable, not tolerable, too intense or too weak, but still, you have to see that side too. Blessed the ones that encounter this phase, once or twice, in an early stage of life. I had mine when I was 27, and I still remember the pain and havoc I have wreaked. Most of the pain was for me. I was confused and lost, sometimes everything was too much, I juggled lifestyles, girls, encounters. Yeah, it was all about encounters, every day. Defining myself by ignorance and follish behaviour. I did not want to think. I wanted to be adrift, flowing, free from my own moral principles that constricted me, kept me from becoming happy. I hurt many people, but only one that has cost me dearly. It took me nearly 2 years to make up for it. I paid, with so many currencies. With my pain, my jealousy, my love.
Yet it seems so hard to understand such a phase of turmoil when you are not the center, but when you are affected by its destructive force. The person who does such a thing is not completely in control. I remember that I wanted to run away from running away from myself. Yet my true feelings where clouded. They emerged half a year later. Alas, I still betrayed them. And had to find them again, slowly, with understanding from the one person that I have hurt so much. It is strange. Acceptance comes in the end. When it is too late.
How I understand those lost souls, those heart longing for an easy way out. How human. How naive and innocent. And still I am afraid, of my own dark side. That I have surpressed it for too long, also. That it wants to escape again, and that it will hurt people. I pray that people will treat me with decency afetr I have done mistakes. I vow to treat others with decency, those that have hurt and betrayed me. For they were only one thing--human ... and confused.