Still writing

Beginning: The sentence that returns

Here I am. Still writing.

It was just a morning like many others. Coffee steaming. A blank document. A dull sky above the Aasee. And yet: suddenly it was all there again.

Not as a thought. Not as a recollection. But as an inner certainty.

Like a scent that throws you back into another time. Like a song that opens an entire chapter inside you. Or like a sentence that appears in you and reminds you who you are.

Still writing.

That is me. That was me. That will be me. Whether in Chiang Mai or in Münster. Whether in a bamboo hut or in the truck. It is the same voice. The same pulse. The same pen in my hand.

Eden Farm: When everything became still

I don’t just remember Thailand as a country. I remember Eden as a state.

No train. No noise. No conversation that wanted something from me. No system that classified me.

Only silence. Only space. Only me.

I sat under a covered terrace. For hours. I wrote. I drank coffee. I watched the chickens, the ducks, and what they were up to on the table and on the chairs of the terrace. I had no agenda. No goal. No plan for what it should become. I was simply there.

And at some point I felt: this is not just a break. Not just waiting for my truck to be finished. Not sightseeing in Thailand. This is not dropping out. This is an arrival in myself.

Eden was special and there was nothing there that distracted me. Nothing that pulled me away from myself. Eden was empty. And in that emptiness, I began to remember.

The repetition: Aasee, coffee, writing

Today I sit here again. The same time of day. The same gesture. The same longing for the first sentence.

Only: the place has changed. I am in Münster. In the Haubi. In my old Mercedes truck home that was my house for nine years. Outside the window, rain drifts across the meadow. Instead of chickens I hear cars. Instead of frogs in the pond someone is knocking in the distance. But the pattern is the same.

I write. I drink coffee. I am silent. I listen.

When I close my eyes, put on my headphones and listen to Grandbrothers in the Cologne Cathedral @ARTE Concert , I am there. In me.

And even if the world outside feels narrower – inside it is just as wide.

That was the great discovery of recent months: The source is not in the place. It is in me.

I can lose myself in Tokyo. And find myself in Telgte. I can be loud in Pai. And silent in a parking garage in Bochum. It does not depend on the backdrop. It depends on the listening. On the willingness to remember again.

And when the time is ripe, I will be there again. Fully.

The essence: What Asia really was

Some speak of wanderlust. Some of homesickness. I believe: both mean the same.

We do not long for places. We long for states of being.

What Asia was for me was not the jungle, not the sea, not the palm trees. It was the state in which I allowed myself to be me.

I was clear. I was wide. I was pure.

There was no “What will they think?” – there was only: I write. I live. I love.

And sometimes it takes exactly that kind of distance: 9,000 kilometers to realize that I was always there. That I never lost myself. That my heart kept beating. Even in the fog. Even in the noise. Even in the longing.

Asia was not an event. It was a mirror. An open gate. A gentle rhythm inside me that I heard there for the first time.

And now, months later, I still hear it.

Still writing.

The call: For all who want to remember

I do not write this for likes. Not for attention. I write because I feel that I have to share.

For all who have lived their own Eden. For all who miss it. For all who think they have lost it.

You have lost nothing.

You can remember.
You can be still.
You can breathe.

Maybe you don’t need a flight.
Maybe you just need one sentence.

Or a picture.
Or a voice.
Or a gentle reminder:

The source is not in the jungle.
It is in you.

And sometimes: close your eyes, put on your headphones, breathe, connect, and remember.