Where is death? Who of the "normal people" has directly experienced how a human being or an animal dies? Who has consciously experienced, what it means to dy, how something lively changed into something dead? Who still knows, how to slaughter a chicken or a pig, how to shoot a deer or a hare, how an old drivelling grandmother pass slowly lingering illness and dies in the end?

We grow up into a clinical clean surrounding, where no blood, no dying, no death seams to exist. The meat we eat lies hygienically packed in refrigerated shelves of the supermarket and in its small and compact form doesn´t remind of the animal that it was before and had to be killed. Even near relatives dy quiet and secretly somewhere in an old people´s home or unobtrusive and hidden in a hospital, for not inquiering or dismaying others.

At the same time we are flooded with blood, dying and death. TV, radio, internet permanently report on war and destruction, pictures of bleeding corpses, children in shreds, burried people are part of our daily life, they build the horrible background when we work, eat, tidy up. The deaths are there and not there, frightening real and unreal, the connection between perception and feeling is cut because of the indirect conveyance of neutral media.

This seems exactly to be the key, that the difference between game and reality cover up, that crime and consequences, killing and dying are separated. A human being who hasn´t seen, what it means to cut off the chicken´s head or to shoot a deer and then to see how the animal really dies, eats its chicken McNuggets without thinking and plays moorchickenhunting. A human being who never has seen how life dissappears out of a person is still sure that warcraft is necessary to secure peace and cannot feel that every single warvictim is already one too much.

Shock and dismay on terror attacks or amok runs is hypocritical if it is only concentrated on the offender, he just re-establishs with his action for himself and all the others a connection between perception and feeling, it is in small what happens daily in big, directly in front of our eyes but normally separated from our sympathy. Show children death again, take them to hunting, let them experience what death and dying really means. But also show the grown-ups death again, send politicians directly on the battlefield, let them see people teared to pieces and dying.

Death will never be routed out, it is part of our life. Because we try to ignore this basic fact and hide and gloss it over and emotionally exclude it from daily life, the inexplicable can go on directly in front of our eyes. Children and youth just let us see into a mirror. We can turn away with shiver and damn and punish this lost youth or at last accept the challenge, look in and confrontate us with our own horrible grimace of the offender.

"Helen? Is it really you? Here in this country? In this town, at this special place?" It was too late to escape, she had seen me first and as a natural habit of her character immediatly came straight to me, sitting in the shadow of a tree in the gras, reading and sometimes just looking around. I was on holidays in Italy, to be honest I was escaped from the bad english weather into the south, without an exact aim but after some times of lingering around here and there I went to Florenz and now I was nearly 2 weeks in this town I knew from a study travel in college times.

"Susan, that´s Helen, one of my special friends at the college. She was the one who opened my eyes about myself." Oh yes, I did and I gained nothing but hate and rejection and had to accept that the close circle of friends were now and forever shut for me, I was thrown out immediatly and never got the chance to enter again. Well, perhaps that´s not at all correct, I myself never tried to get in closer contact after the desaster, I was too humiliated and ashamed by her demonstration of her powers.

"And that´s Susan, my new love, we met 3 months ago in a museum in Paris and madly fell in love and now we decided to go on some sort of a "marriage travel" and which town could be better for it than Florenz?" She was madly in love, congratulation. In her very typical way of honesty she had shown her happiness and luck directly, with the brutality of a child or a genious not thinking about the feelings of others. She was always so and perhaps this was the speciality that gave her the charm and freshness that attracts everyone she meets.

"Come on Susan, sit down for a while, it´s so fantastic that we met Helen, how long havn´t we seen us?" Over ten years. I looked at her with critical eyes sitting now next to me, talking about her life and former times, Susan next to her, shy and somewhat uncomfortable what I could easily understand, not knowing how to cope with this funny situation. But there was nothing to criticize, she was taller than before, her style of clothing was more elegant but still nonconformal as in our times, her hair always short were now much longer and draped in a node which gave her the impression of strength and power. I myself felt like a child compared with her having not built an exact characterline and being as unsure of myself and the world as before.

"What have you done all the years? And why havn´t you written or telephoned?" Written or telephoned? I was shocked, she had capped all our strings of friendship, had stopped answering my letters in which I had tried to explain or excuse myself. Yes I wasn´t able to write or talk to her after college time, I left town and country and fled, the only way for me to handle pain and conflicts, not very brave, I know. I had studied a bit, had worked, had started different jobs and professions but never had the perseverance to do it longer than 1 or 2 years, then I had to leave again. She talked about her life in these 10 years, about her career, her love affairs, the others from our course and their ways, she was full of life and energy and charming as usual, I never would have exspected her to be like this when we would meet again. A year after college I had seen her downtown shopping with a man on her side, I guessed her friend.

"Oh no, that was only Alex, a neighbour, I always pretended at college that I would marry him, you remember? But well, you were quite right with your guess that I´m a lesbian. And how thankful I must be that you let me see myself as I am." All the years her hateful words had followed me, that I must be crazy even to think such thing about her and how brutal I am and that´s a fault she never would be able to forget and that I had to understand that even normal friendship with me is now completely impossible forever.

"Yes Susan, Helen was my destiny-angel, she awaked me and gave me enough braveness to think about loving a woman. Without her I would be now a very unlucky married woman with perhaps 2 or 3 children and no taste of real love." Susan looked half thankful half suspicious at me and I unwillingly laughed about the absurdity. I was frozen in this moment of her "awakening" as she called it, unable to offer my feelings of love again, frozen in the allmelting sun of Florenz.

Life is only in writing. It wasn´t that what I had hoped or wished but it was that what I had to accept after long years of trying other ways and making experiences in real life. There was nothing outside my papers and pencil. And I had so strong hoped it.

Sitting in a café. There were lots of people, for them life was something real something what happened every day without thinking or planning, it was there glued on their bodies or maybe souls or thoughts I don´t know. I see them talking, I see them acting, planning the next days, finding together, separating, loving, hating. It was a lot I saw, the world offered them the complete palette of life and they took it, didn´t see a problem or thinking that it´s a happening, a wonder, something extraordinary.

There is life inside my head, there is reality and lots of stories but now I fear phantasie and imagination killed reality. There must have been a circle around me nobody wanted to enter, it keeps the distance and separates me from the world all the others live in.

Hey world where are you, is there a chance for me, too, to enter? I´m waiting for a wonder, but never will it happen. I´m waiting, not exactly knowing what for. Life is boring, life kills you when you cannot enter it, when you havn´t the capability to jump in. I´ve tried to enter, by hard I swear, I´ve tried to get in contact but life threw me back, didn´t want me. Is there something strange on me, why is it impossible for me to live in reality like all the others, like nearly the whole world? I hate it to be fixed to live only on a piece of paper, only when I have a pen in my fingers, writing with blood from my failure in life, the pain grows because writing separates you even more.

She was found in a little room at a hotel one morning. Dead. She had killed herself. The few persons who knew her where looking for some explaining paper, because they remember her writing about nearly everything. But there was nothing, not a single hint why she wasn´t able to live any more. She had entered life through the completely unknown door of death.

I stare at the receiver, nothing I´d like to say I had said - as usual, and never will I able to talk about the real important things on telefon. Nearly two hours, you can talk a lot in this time but you can conceal even more. You made jokes about the desaster on a firm meeting two days before, you cannot say that you nearly wanted to break out completely, that crazyness had possessed you for the rest of the day. The restless walks through the streets, sitting at the shore of the little lake you´d dreamt of death and making an end at last. No, that´s nothing to speak about. And your selfhate? Sitting in the café, drinking tea, seing all the people aorund you and feeling completely isolated, from others, from life in general? No theme for a weekend-talk. Your doubts concerning your work? What you would be able to do? There´s nothing what you really like to do, everything a mess, a burden a string around your neck, holding you short like a barking dog longing for freedom. No, mother, no talk to hassle you, I´ve made enough troubles and sorrows all the years, I hate me for it. Yes, it´s a shame to disturb everyone I love with my difficulties. It would be easier - perhaps - if I´d be able to express all this to someone, but it would kill my little bit of selfrespect completely.

The man in the boutique with the extravagante and expensive clothes, leaning against a wall, the hands behind his back looking at the salesman helping a man choosing a new dress. Tension, his hands squeezed together in pain, his breast like under some tons of weight, his head flopping around in uncontrollable thoughts. Why always only the role of a spectator, a foreign visitor nobody knows, nobody wants to know, no matter where he was or with whom. He was the spectator, the listener, passive, not in touch with reality, separated. How he longed for this person over there, but no word came from his lips, he stood and in the midst of his pains he hurried away, an escape into the even greater pains of selfhate and disgust.

- oh hello Daniel, how are you?
- fine, fine
- you have changed the job I heard?
- yes, since two weeks
- and how is it?
- well I´m still at the beginning but it´s ok

Always these conversations about nothing. I want to die, flying away forever, give me a revolver and I cancel my spectatorjob on earth, I´ve seen enough, I want to come home. Thinking about killing myself in different ways and that I´ll become crazy soon I take the receiver, weekend-call at home.