I see a father outside in the garden, the weather is clear and he plays with his little child, 3 or 4 years old. It is running from a certain distance directly in his opened arms, he swings it around and around and there´s this cry, high and pointed "Iiiiiiii" expressing its joy and happiness about the game, the time with its father, the wonderful day, its being young and living.

Walking through the streets of the city along the little river I see a crowd of birds, sea-gulls suddenly flying high above into the sky directly into the sun as it seams, over the heads of all the poor human beings without wings and I hear them cry, high and pointed "Iiiiiiii" and I´m thinking of their freedom and triumph to fly away whenever they like to.

It´s sunday morning and I hear our cat in her basket, wanting to get out, we always close her basket at night because of the baby and normally I get up early enough for her. Today her screaming "Iiiiiii" reminds me of something, half asleep I see a child and sea-gulls high above. The cat´s cry comes directly from her pain and involuntary imprisonment, I get up and let her free, the "Iiiii" still in my ears.

Is there a cry so pure and from the bottom of all creature´s soul to unify ourselves with the rest of the nature? The cry hasn´t a meaning by itself it´s just the surrounding that gives it the connotation: sometimes joy, sometimes pain, sometimes just a signal, a warning. Let me fall in the chorus of these united voices, joy, freedom or the opposite, I´ll cry with you.

"Oh hello, what a surprise, you here? I thought..." she hesitated, suddenly realizing about the last happening between them, the unpleasant event of a failed exam. She wavered a bit here and there with her hands, smiled apologizingly pointing to the room full of students waiting for her and escaped.

It seemed long ago, years and years, since the time I had trusted her, since the time where I thought of her as one of the very few teachers who is able to understand her students and who practice a relationship of strength and friendship. It was the last year in college, I studied mathematics and physics and she was one of my teachers I had nearly every semester straight from the beginning. She had courses in every phase and so every student knew her. She was famous and popular working with her was refreshing because she was full of energy, loved the themes she presented with all her heart and her way of teaching was quite "special". Most would have called it "chaotic" and "unsystematically" but I always thought it a very creative way, she produced new ideas and thoughts nearly every lesson and accepted this way of "randomized thinking" from her students, too. Project-work was full of surprises and unexspected results, we all forgot completely the time when we had our "creative hours".

My collegue told me about a talk he had with a student we both knew from courses. He was completely out of range. He wasn´t able to value his qualities and faculties any more. It wasn´t his habit to speak openly about "problems" so it must be a real pain when he went to my collegue. I immediatly thought of the exam. He wasn´t able to answer really easy questions of the basics. I myself was shocked, I thought high of his knowledge and now? I asked and he answered completely wrong. Talking with my collegue about we noticed that it was a complete misunderstanding at the beginning and because of my rough reaction, I know I´m impulsive but in this situation it really was quite wrong, he felt totally confused so that the rest of the exam was done. He had talked about the wish of killing himself and his hopelessness, his desillusion about his future and so on, my collegue just told me in short. But there was no way to change the result, and there was no meeting after this to talk about it, only another exam, in written form, where he recovered his brilliancy and had the best grade of the whole course. But I noticed that he avoided me the last days and never would have accepted a free talk with me.

I was taken aback, I hadn´t thought to meet her again, my brain was cleaned of her existance, I stood like stone, a frozen grin on my face, hearing her words but not able to understand them, it sounded like a foreign language. Her quick change from real surprise and honest delight to uncertainty and troubled hesitation and in the end a form of feeling ashamed and uncomfortable in my presence. Her words glided down and I stood, my feelings iced to ban the gigantic explosion I feared. Like stone - for the rest of my life.

She was old, no, not as you think long out of age where you´re interested in love and sex affairs, not such old. I think she was at her beginning forties, but I myself was just 22 and looking still with the eyes of children she was old. I admired her, she was my new boss at the clinic where I just started my internship and she was perfect in everything she did. Was it a crime to adore her, to think of doing her a favour, cooking tea for her, bringing sweets for her or cookies? Well, it wasn´t only for her, it was for the whole team, 5 to 7 people I liked, too, but in my imagination it was specially for her.

A new member in our team, nearly fresh from school, completely unexperienced and with these wide and interested eyes babies and children have. I was impressed because it´s not often that you see grown-ups with such eyes. Se wasn´t pretty and at the beginning really no great help, you had to explain her everything, that took time we never had in our working day. But surprisingly she was quite fast in learning and after 2 or 3 weeks we noticed her help intensely. Our boss an older nurse and experienced in nearly every ward of the clinic at first hadn´t noticed her, she worked in a different shift and never had to do all the inferior work like beding, serving breakfast, preparing dinner, cutting cellulose and carrying bedpans.

- I´m becoming old
- what are you talking of?
- I said I´m becoming old, it´s terrible
- why do you talk like this? You´re only 4 years older than I
- perhaps they are the important ones
- oh come on, don´t be silly
- and I´m still stupid like a teenager, falling in love like a silly cow
- you??? tell me more!
- no, it´s too sad I never dreamt and hoped like this before and I never was so sure that I´ve not the slightest chance
- come on don´t talk in mysteries, I don´t understand a word

It was the new internship my boss had fallen in love and because of the over 20 years difference she tried to forget about the whole affair and hide her feelings completely. It must have been painful to tell me about, but we had started our nurse education together and over the years of work had become friends. But was there any hopes I was able to give? To be honest no. I tried to find out about her sexual preferences and being young and without any prejudices and fears she smiled and outed herself easily as lesbian. I thought "bingo"!

I had thought that it was my age which stood between us, I wasn´t sure if she could have been lesbian as I, I just felt that I went mad because of overwhelming love to a person completely untouched and unexperienced. She had not a glimmer of sexual habit, she was neutral like an iceberg and I asked myself why I was burning like hell. She shone in the beauty of pure - being, unreal because of the complete lack of gender, so I imagine angels.

She had invited me twice, does this mean she feels perhaps more than accepting my qualities at work? I wanted to invite her, too, but impossible, she strictly denied it and I saved my money. I felt nothing fer her, it was only curiousity that let me think about her feelings. I noticed that she clothed herself correct and perfect but there were these real short skirts, the open blouse, more rouge on her cheeks and a new very sweet perfum odeur. She played a role I guessed, she presented me the woman she never wanted to be, the little "femme" as the french say.

She had an affair with nearly every new member of the team, it seems as if her sexual appetite always needed new fruits to taste, and the more exotic the better. We male collegues were surprised how easily she snatched new victims, it seems as if she had some mixture or magician trick she used because there were not one man in the whole firm who hadn´t break in after some time. I myself included. It didn´t last long but when I think back my heart again starts beating with double power.

The new collegue, how long will it take this time? She had started immediatly with her game. Yes I couldn´t call it something else because there wasn´t any seriousness in the whole affair it would last 3 or 4 weeks, maximum perhaps 2 or 3 months, but the end was calculated as before, it wouldn´t be the "man for life" as one used to say. Often I think it´s only her way of demonstrating her sexual power and top-position. As men always used to do when they are successful and rich. A man who behaved like this was quite normal nobody would start mocking about, it was accepted in community. But a woman? It wasn´t correct to judge her with different measure but we all felt shocked about, it was scandalous. How long will it last, that was the one and only thought that whispered through the rooms and floors of the whole firm. We pitied the new victim in future.

I had brought her home after a client-meeting we had finished successfully. It was late the fight was not easy and we had reason to clap our shoulders. I laughed relieved and gave her five. It was some sort of boisterousness between us, so my concentration wavered away and relaxed after this heavy day I accepted her offer to come in for a tea and some snacks she still had from her birthday two days before. I awaked when she tried to kiss me, oh no, no, no, that wasn´t what I´d exspected. She looked askingly and I thought it a good chance to tell her that I´m homosexual.

He broke the wall of sexual affairs I had built around me to protect myself. You laugh? You´re right, it´s a stupid way to protect oneself but I feared real feelings and intimacy, I feared the people around me. But now he had opened a way I never had seen before: he offered friendship and gave me the freedom I needed. "It´s like offering fruits and vegetables to a carnivore, or food to an alien from mars who needn´t eat", he said in his excusing tone for not hurting me and the ban fell down.