In a state of complete loss of consciousness, I could watch, how someone stretched out his arm several times towards a complete stranger; I. A voice called, I heard it: “Give me your hand, please … please … give me your hand …. please …!” It was my voice.
I saw the strange person, she had come into the stairwell in pajamas and a face mask, where I fell down in a crinoline like Holly Hunter, after her husband had cut off her ring finger on a wooden stump with the ax. She fell, sank, her skirt billowed like feathers in flight and clung tightly to meter-thick mud. Her bust remained strangely erect and rigid, while the blood drained from her cheeks, her gaze turned inward. The eyelids twitched twice. Then the upper body fell forward too. I do not know, had she lost consciousness or fell in a moment of complete clarity. How was that pain? As is well known, she then played the piano with a steel prosthesis, that Bates had made for her.
One night in November I had a rash and found myself in a time battle against anaphylactic shock. I ran out of the house and rang the doorbell. It was the only house with a window, in which the light was still burning. A woman, an angel, appeared to me and I pleaded: “Can you hold my hand, can you hold my hand!” The woman, the angel, held my hand, as long as, until the ambulance came. (that was before Corona)
Have you ever experienced that, that you, in dire need, reaching out to someone? That you in the moment, where everything collapses above you, only need one: one hand, that holds yours …?
I may never have loved people. But to hold a hand, I lost all shame, all reluctance. Pain numbed me, I didn't know anymore, who i was, was almost halfway out of my body. And heard me beg: “Give me your hand … please … give me your hand … I need a hand …” That only hypothetical link left.
But the woman with the face mask didn't give me her hand. She didn't take my arm, which I held out to her sobbing, again and again.
I'm sure, she understood, what I meant, yet she completely ignored my pleading. “in this situation we are all sometimes. I am also alone and my husband left.”
I was amazed, how little I understood of that, what she said. As I sank in the mud, around my trembling body the plumage of the black hoop skirt reared up in waves. I haven't taken it off for four weeks, and I will NOW never take it off again, I want to participate in its silting up.
There has to be a death in life, which is more terrible than the real one. A death, in which you want to cling to total strangers, to enemies, to random passers-by … or even the, who throws one into the stairwell by force.
I wanted to throw myself on a body that night. I wanted to grab and hold someone, solange, until it's all over. Until I can sink into Hades Loch and glide forever in the underworld on a reed boat of the night.
Oh, how I look forward to this peace!
Thanatos wasn't an evil god and Hades will be fond of me, for I am not dissimilar to Penelope.
I also picked flowers by day, when i was young, was healthy and beautiful. And next I went down through the opened lid into Hade's realm.
But I am worried: when I can't find a hand, just, because I was stupidly thrown into the stairwell, because I did something stupid: how am I supposed to die then, When I die for the last time? I'll have to organize someone, Holding my hand until I get out of this damn situation?!
But I don't want to organize a hand. I want some hand! Any hand! At the end, in adversity, something comes up to me: a need, that I suppressed for a lifetime, as required by conformity. It breaks through me like an avalanche: “Give me your hand …. i must FEEL your hand …”
Insane. Those who are lucky will never experience this being at the mercy, will always stay within this fragile circle, that we created ourselves.
In kindergarten we formed a circle and held hands.
Holly Hunter fled across the sea with Bates. The piano, attached to a rope, weighed down the boat, so they threw it overboard. Holly Hunters got her foot stuck in the cord of the rope, maybe, because at the last moment she wanted to keep her piano? With one mighty pull, the beloved upright piano pulled Holly Hunter by its rope into the depths of the Pacific … she kicked under water for so long, until the shoe came off her foot … the rest is film …
oh, why can't I just switch films, the role, the body, my heart, my brain.
There was already a winter once, then I dreamed of it, to be allowed to be everyone. I just didn't want to be myself any longer.