MY HEIMAT 2
Homeland, Domovina, מולדת, Heem, Patria, Namai, البلد, Patrie
The picture is a reelaboration of NOT HERE, by
Sayed Alavi, public art, 1991.
EVERYBODY HAS ONE;
BUT NOT EVERYBODY FINDS IT.
A topography of images, memories and yearning.
Of yearning, most of all.
It was the early autumn of 1994, and I was happy.
I felt I had arrived at my destination. I was inhabiting the life that I had been awaiting.
It had finally come to me.
Little did I know that it had come to me and shown its face only to kiss me goodbye; that the faces of friendship and the horizons of Future were already morphing into memories. My friends and I - our common Future and I - were already waving farewell to each other, from trains departing in different directions.
It was a kind and cruel gift .
Or it would have been a gift - kind or cruel or both - if it were an offering by somebody or something else, elsewhere, outside of me.
But it was something in me, perhaps older than myself, that was driving me away from the Homeland I had barely seen - just long enough to realise that, yes, this was the beloved, limitless face of my Homeland, the one for which I had yearned, and for which I would keep yearning in the years to come.
I was giddy with the happiness of inhabiting a Future that was already behind me.
Sayed Alavi, NOT HERE, public art, 1991.
This tiny space in the greater Cyberspace is home to unspoken memories: of friendship, of youth, of yearning for all that was, and for all that could have been but never came to be. Perhaps some other Time.
It is dedicated to my family and friends - those who were, and those who are no more, and those whom I never met; to those who are still searching for me, as I am searching for them, even knowing that it is too late.
Perhaps some other Time.
To my friends and to my own unlived, misslived, outlived - and yet unyielding - youth, so fierce in its softness and fragility. To the autumn and winter of 1994, when I first saw life through the eyes of Janus; when nevermore and forever became a single, two-faced, heart-splitting yearning.
To Hermann, Clarissa, Juan, Helga, Ansgar, Evelyne, Rob, Renate, Jean-Marie, Olga, Stefan, Volker, Reinhard, Alex, Waltraud-"Schnuesschen", Elisabeth Cerphal; to their friends and their loves and their sorrows, and to the place that brought them together.
Most of all, it is also a plain and simple - a very plain and very simple - thank you to the man who brought them, and the pain of forgotten Sehnsucht, into my life:
EDGAR REITZ.
Eduardo Arroyo: Seven landscapes after the battle, oil on canvas, 1964/65, private collection, Bordeaux.
If you know what I am talking about, then you probably know the wonderful page set up, and inhabited, by a group of wonderful people whose Homeland - or the quest for it - is the same as mine and yours and Reitz's:
And, of course, the mother of all Heimat websites, with wonderful material in German:
Even if you don't know what I am talking about, visit these pages all the same.
(They'll steer you over onto IMDB, among other things.)
And here is a taste of Nikos Mamangakis' unforgettable film score, the anthem of tomorrows past.
(Another piece of music used in Heimat 2 is briefly discussed here.)