Achim could still taste the sweet-sour taste of his mother’s lemon pie. He could still feel the cuts and bruises his body endured from his father’s spiked belt for a decade. He was fifty years old. The urge for revenge still haunted his soul. A life of pain, emotional torture and living in the past. Alone, left by his wife and children, Achim took the only road he thought possible:...
From the moment we take our first breath, we die. Each day we open our eyes, each smile and each tear shed, brings us closer to our end. Most of us deny the undeniable, taking pleasure in earthly belongings, judging, and despising our differences. Some, spend their time building bridges so that peoples can walk smother onto their path. Meanwhile, the glass hour mocks us or smiles at us. Humans...
Nana was ninety years old and lived alone. She and her husband never had children; they always felt that they were enough. Nana had the same meals every day: bitter, Turkish coffee in the morning, which she would enjoy underneath the walnut tree, some vegetables for lunch, olive oil and homemade bread for dinner – her favorite. Nana lived through wars, the beginning of industrialization...
Fifty-six years ago today my father was born. Twenty-two years later I took my first breath as his daughter. Since that day I craved to understand and create a connection, more often than not unsuccessful, but that hasn’t stopped me from creating my image about the man who is my father. My father always appeared to be a wise man. He seems to be a giant that can pierce anyone with his gaze...
Today I found out that my grandmother died in June. In June, and I only found out about it today… I would have probably never known if I didn’t need to make a phone call and ask an entirely different thing. My grandmother and I never had that cozy, warm, grandma-granddaughter relationship. I remember her very little since I was a kid and we got reunited when I was 14 years old. We...
The thing about mess is that it derails the already derailed mind. Mess gets everywhere, copulates with space and expands like a Bavarian’s stomach. Tidiness is concision, the opposite but mess, it has wings made of shit, and it has grand aspirations, to run like riverluts into every nook and cranny, leaving you ravaged. My place was an armpit because a workman was dismantling, excavating my...
Sitting in an old cemetery writing… A few days ago I received a beautiful present: the keys to an old cemetery to come and write in silence. After only two hours here, my fingers are flying madly on the keyboard and already finished a week’s worth of work. But there is more to it. The silence. There is a special silence coming from somewhere within this place, a sort of tranquility...
I woke up this morning with a buzzing in my ears. It was constant, like a baby’s cry that won’t quiet down until you are ready to commit to his needs and understand his plead. So here I am, a few hours later, sitting in a square on a sidewalk, writing. The buzzing stopped. The square is pleased. My fingers start dancing on the keyboard. What to write about I wonder? About the people...
By Mundy Walsh I was in Ireland last month helping my parents fix the flat roof of their shed. It was a cloudy day and I could see a field of corn behind the tall Beech hedge which separates us from our nearest neighbors—and their clothes line of souvenir tea-towels. We had to lift a section of the roof and repair some of the rafters. There was a long ladder on one side of the shed, which...
By Marisa Garreffa Many years ago, a friend sat me down. “Marisa, if you woke up tomorrow and couldn’t make theatre anymore, do you realise that people would still love you?” No. I did not know that, or believe it. How could I? Theatre was the only thing I loved about myself. Every other part I struggled with – the junkie, the trash-bag, the depressive, the girl who was “one of the boys” and...
