#whatever it's been a hour im doing nothing but talking about it on my priv twitter lmao i need to explode

[homosexualcitron]

i just finished reading Mairimashita! Iruma-kun and ^w^ maybe it's now one of my fav manga ever idk maybe i'll never be normal anymore... maybe i want to explode because i want more

[marijnwordtmaozhen-blog]

Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben

Seoul, some hour way after midnight. Some party place in some party street in some party district. As I lean against the bar, I glance at my newfound friends across the frolics and, yet again, I find myself beholden. There’s Adriën, the fancy dressing French-German white-hat. He has that rare skill of diplomatic cordiality that could truly hearten anyone.  At first appearance, I found him to resemble a seasoned casanova, and maybe he would have proven to be one if it weren’t for his fresh relationship with the girl dancing swirly less than a meter opposite of him. She smiled constantly in his direction, in a frequency that would have been disturbing in any situation other than theirs. Her name was Manja, and she was there from day one of my Korean adventure. Over the course of our trip she had impressed me with the passion she would blazon whenever she talked about her travels and her intercultural experiences, her firmfeeted principalities, her determinant empathies and her strong trust and reliance in herself. 

Next to her danced Pinkas, the man, the bass, the legend. It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn I was able to catch the sound of his laugh even over the boisterous blasting of the K-pop throbs. I admired Pinkas’ ability to be unconditionally content with whatever situation he’d find himself submerged in, always bringing back those rousing bursts of laughter and infecting his company with sheer elation. He was passionate about his musicals, he was passionate about his singing, he was passionate about our travels and, most importantly, he held back not in the slightest to show and share all of this. Then, towering above all the others, Nico’s frontage could be spotted, joyous and unmistakably tipsy. Nico to me was the boilerplate of amenity. He was the guy you want to have a few cold ones with even when everything and everyone else is nothing but nuisance and obligation. With Nico, things were blandly simple: he was just always kind. His humor spot-on, his dialogue keen and permissive, his laughs plentiful. We had frequent talks about music, and he ended up inviting me to come join a jam session back in Germany once: coincidentally, this is about the best invitations one could give me. Yet another reason on the long list of excuses for me to make my way over to the Rhineland sometime.

And then there were Mitko and Sandi. Mitko dancing like a diagnosed kook but nailing it. Sandi moving like I seldom saw someone move. These two, I could honestly write a book about. They were two of those rare people that truly, genuinely, legitimately inspired me, in the most cliche and banal fourteen year old’s motivational tweet sense of the word. With Mitko I could go from birdbrained hilarities to dead serious conversation in a matter of seconds, him excelling in both. I think he ended up understanding me more than he realised, and definitely more than anyone else has managed in a clocking of less than two weeks. First and foremost, this was due to his capacity to displace himself in others. He was that particular type of person that voluntarily delves into a disagreement with his own arguments or convictions, just to be able to construct an understanding of the other. He was remarkably easy to talk to, and gave the comforting sense that you could say or do no wrong. He was bright, and his way of thinking surprised and impressed me even if he was just drunkly divulging his stream of consciousness. When I arrived in Seoul the first day, I had a sudden moment of sleep-deprived panic as I realised the gigantic risk I was taking going on this trip with no more than one person I semi knew. This person would not arrive for another six hours, and I started picturing nightmare scenarios of the worst possible people I could be forced to trek the country with. But then there was Mitko, whom I went out to have a quick beer with and ended up talking uninterrupted with for over three hours straight. My gratefulness for meeting this astute lunatic is enormous.

And then, finally, Sandi. Her kind of spark: I don't think I've seen alike. A certain reconnoitre chronically radiated from her rustled smile — it's that particular type of smile that resonates softly on your retina long after you awkwardly turned it the other way. It may very well be a repercussion of my gradual acclimatising to Asian backdrops, but it seemed to me as if her eyes were always opened a tiny chip wider than those of others. The bobbing of her thick curls assimilated homely comfort, even from across the tumultuous ocean of shit-faced Koreans. She bloomed, dimly yet distinctly, under the fluorescent night lights.

As I remained in expectance of my drink I kept my eyes locked on her movements in a slight creepy fashion, and it appeared to me that they exerted a harmony and alienation simultaneously. As if she was planted perforce here amidst the hordes of horny twenty-somethings, yet somehow found her line of best fit within the sex-depraved freakshow whilst not giving in the slightest of her authenticity. At any given moment she was her own, yet conjointly she was theirs. Adoption without adaptation. She seemed placid either way.

Sandi was an explorer. Not in the name of her scratch-map or tick-off list, not for the stories to tell back home, not for some blog or for her Instagram fame: just for herself. For being part of everything our stunning little planet has to offer. She was breezy and easygoing, and her abundant travel experiences had taught her not too worry and cramp her toes, but rather absorb every moment as wholly and genuinely as she could. 

She loved herself, though it seems this characteristic nowadays carries strictly the negative implication of privative egotism. To my vexation, time and again the admiration of the self appears to stand synonym for hauteur, for vanity, for arrogance. I feel this is a peculiar misconception. Conjure in your head an absolute prototype of arrogance: what do you see? The buffed up king of suave at work that was about three bra sizes out of your reach? The clique of bloated miniskirt empresses that implicated their own adaptation of a Stalinist regime on the high school cafetaria? 

I fashion the chances slim that these people brought forth by your mock-up snapshots of arrogance truly loved themselves. As if the stuck-up bitches of the world, with all their pompous pride, steroid-infested bodies or liters of weekly make-up consumption, are not equally the utter subjects of their own uncertainties and self-doubts as any other would be. More often than not, insecurity makes for arrogance, and both are by no means analogous to amour-propre, to a genuine and optimistic autoperception.  

Maybe it lies in this misconception that the apt appreciation of the self is one of the rarer qualities in today’s people. Or maybe it lies simply in the curse (and blessing) of man to be unsatisfied in perpetuum. Either way, somehow this girl managed. She bared not the slightest sway of arrogance. She was positive about who she already was, and hopeful about who she could be. She did not try to appear as anything. Not even as herself; of late, I have found myself fascinated by how people go through the greatest of lengths to showcase to the world how much they are themselves, and therein somehow create a detrimental paradox, or at the very least a noteworthy hypocrisy. Only through her total abstention of staging, Sandi could be herself and appear as such. 

At the risk of sounding overly melodramatic or, god forbids, poetic, I will bring an end to my descriptions at this time. As I write here a week or so after ‘returning home’ from the trip, I suddenly realise I have been writing in the past tense. As if these people are now reduced to bare figments of my memories. As if they no longer exist in my living world. On one balmy night at Cheju, sitting by the beach and calmly staring into the campfire glows, Pinkas told me about the German saying: Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben. Although the saying was supposed to have a more cynical, cautioning implication, I looked around the campfire at each and every amazing person sitting, drinking, chatting and laughing and couldn’t help but pick it up up as a message of comfort. I hope dearly to see all of them again once. 

And then to think it’s a bunch of Germans I am talking about.