Catrin Weiz-Stein
The Jealous
Ocean
I am not friends with the ocean. I think the ocean might be jealous of me. This is an odd expression. I understand. The ocean is mighty and vast and as old as anything on earth. So what would make me think that the ocean could possibly be jealous of me? Maybe it craves a grave. Maybe it longs to be mortal. It is a tiring thing to stretch from beach to beach to beach. To have a belly full of fish. And to see the sun flapping through the sky up and down and up and down. I am like the birds. I can trace the birds with my eyes, and I can fly. I can feel the sun on my face, and when I have been in the ocean I can eventually dry. I can feel the sand under my feet. I can walk on the boards and the stones and the cement. I can feel the wind. The wings flap and fall from me. I am not a bird, nor am I the ocean but I can feel them just the same. The ocean is the product of a god, but the things I see are the products of me. In that sense I am like a god. I am equal to him as a creator of life and motion and the furious flapping of wings. Even as the ocean makes its sounds deep into the day, it cannot feel the wind in its hair. It cannot know the burning hands of the beach, and it cannot make things fly where those things have never flown before.
My Sister,
the Stars!
I had a friend once. My friend was weaker than the zephyrs but still she could move clouds. Our friendship reached back into the many years of the many different friendships that have existed before us. Friendships that rested one on top of each other. Layers and layers of friendship. We felt our love stretch down into the soil of the many friendships, and we knew that our love was as infinite as theirs. We joined them. Our friendship became a layer. It felt the heat of the sun and the icy pelting of the frozen snow. Our friendship was out and open and undressed. It was a green stalk stretching upwards to the sky. It was alive. She held me. She held me when I needed to be held. She spoke my name quietly and reminded me that there were millions of stars in the sky. None of them wanted to hurt me. None of them wanted to see me hurt. Even if there were some here on earth who wanted to steal from me or cut me or watch me wither, the stars are empaths, she said, and are built to last for millions of years. Whenever anyone attacked me, she promised that the stars would see them die. She held me when she said these things because I could not hold myself. She turned me so that I could look up and watch the sun leave the sky and see the choir of stars stare down on us and sing our names so loud and so bright.
The Garden
When can we return to the garden, my love? When can we fill the empty benches? When can we watch the things grow that you can't easily see grow (unless you invest the time to really watch them)? I don't know how my hand found your hand, but our hands came together the way the bushes closed tightly when the foxes wanted to intrude. We were as still as the trees. I felt myself grow roots into you. And inside of me I could feel you fill me with the songs of the earth. From inside of me I could hear you sing and your voice was a vibration that made my skin tremble. You talked to me about counting the petals on the roses. On all of the roses. Every petal would mean that our lips would meet. Every petal would mean that your lips would melt in my mouth, mumbling the words to every song we'd ever sung together. And they were the songs about love and pastures of flowers. Wildflowers. You kissed wildflowers into my mouth, and I could feel the fields stretching their arms and wrapping us in affection. Then you turned into the garden, and I turned into the garden and together we bloomed madly together. We were the choir of faithful rebirth and blooming, singing the song of the garden to ourselves and to each other.
His Favorite
Planet
The sun is an old man, creeping up over the edge of the earth. He is much too noisy to surprise me. I have done my best to get his attention because I'm not afraid of him. I am brash. I am a scream that echoes in the heavens. Even with the great distance between us, I know the sun can hear me. I wear his favorite colors. I am made of the things that he helped make here on earth. I am not afraid to tell him who I am and how I feel. I shout for him to look at me. “Look at me!” I am down here on his favorite planet. There are many who need and love him, but I love him most. I am a warning, a red catastrophe, standing on the edge of the horizon because I know he will be here soon. He will rise up and see me. Even though his time with me is limited, he has been looking for me. He has a million eyes and a billion thoughts, and I know that I am more than just random. When he thinks of me, I am his best thought. His favorite thought. I want to orbit inside the vicious gasses that make him burn and glow. Quiero ser la novia del Sol, y quiero que el sol sea mi novio.
Moon
Talk
Not long after twilight has stumbled from the sky, I find myself alone. My only companions are the thoughts in my head that jibber-jabber, filling the rooms of my mind like revelers at a party. They stand awkwardly and drink champagne and lean into their seductive poses. They touch faces and fingers and find ways to catch the eyes of the beauty that surround them. They tilt and twist, intoxicated by my persistent need for distraction. But there are others who would join the party. Those who would like to climb inside my ear, knocking at the door of my thoughts. The moon is a crasher. The moon would love to find a friend or two who might still be lingering after all the others have left for good. The moon is lonely, and yet no one seems to notice. But the thoughts that I can't seem to get rid of know that the moon is sober with his guilt. It’s because his beauty is stolen. He knows that he is nothing. He is a fluke. He is a scrap. He is trapped in the orbit of our human behaviors. He comes to me and asks if he can enter. I hem and haw as I try to mask my distaste for him, but ultimately it is impossible to say no. He has the authority of the sun and the charm of weightlessness, and I have to confess that I'm actually glad to see him every night. Because even as the very last party goer slinks about inside of me to find a place to sleep, the moon and I sit on the porch and talk about the history of everything. Despite his tortured expressions, the moon is a wonderful conversationalist. A friend? Maybe. But it always seems that he finds the last person at the party to untie his tongue and let the packages of his mind tumble. And that poor soul who didn't leave before the others falls into a wall or drapes herself across the ottoman, covered in the moon's regrets. Sadly but most poignantly, that last partygoer is always me.
A New
Species
Hurry, dear human! The earth is tossing off its dead! You have slept entirely too long, and I will not wait for you to resurrect. No one has nailed you to the dusty floor. You were born already and given life, and you found your way through the splendid freshness of the first days. I was there for you in the sky, holding your hand as you tried to stand up straight. I lifted you then when every tree was perfect. You were perfect. Life was perfect. But life was a danger. It had no meaning because there was no end. We would all live forever together in that perfect kind of coffin. What is the reason to begin or end your days when your days don’t begin and end again and again and again? What is the reason to reach out and touch the skin of a tree or the beak of an eagle when all of these things will still be there the next day. The next year. Why would there be memories? It's all the same. There is no coming or going. There was no single day. There was nothing and then there was another day when everything came to be. It was a copy. A copy of a copy. Soon you found there was nothing left to see. Nothing left to discuss. Because once you had seen everything and talked about everything, all that was left was silence. And the silence went on forever as well. Infinite. Immortal. The misery of being undead. What is the difference between life in Eden or life in hell? How is the torment different? You can get used to the pain. The physical torture of hell is not worth the words and the time some poet might use to describe it. It's the endlessness of it all. It's the fact that the days turn like a wheel that never loses its momentum. It just spins and spins! You are strapped to it like a crucifix. Nailed to the wheel that never stops turning. Even the sun will die one day. But not hell. And neither does Eden. Paradise is forever as well. And so you slept in the field with the flowers, and I sheltered you, flapping my wings until my heart felt like a ball of rubber bands. You let yourself dream of a serpent that never was and the tree that claimed to be forbidden but wasn’t. You made up a story and ate the fruit of tomorrow. Because now the sun will set. Now there's a reason for one of you to dig a grave. Now there is meaning to the days. Because each day will be the last day like it. The next day will be brand new. During the days in front of you, you will change because you will die. Slowly but yes you will die. And he can punish you with childbirth and punish him with hard work and throw you from the garden. Outside, you breathe for the first time. Because now you need the air. I sliced through the air, soaring high and low, wondering when my last day would be. Like a new species, all of us think about the imperfections of our brand new bodies and souls.
The Gift
The tree flings some of her children into the air and holds others tightly by their little pink palms. Either way, we are swimming in petals. She is a gift. She was given to us from a faraway place, and the people who gave her to us wanted us to bless them and to accept them. She accepts us with the stillness of her smooth trunk. She is planted, She is deep in thought. The millions of memories that stretch back into the green silence of time belong to her. They cling to her before they shake free. We pray that our memory will be there when we go to her and ask her silent face, "why are we still here? Why have we not become seeds in the wind? Why are we not the babies of trees, planted in the neglected afterlife that comes between the time we are born and when we die. Why are you silent?" But she will not respond. She will not answer us except to think that we do not deserve her. She is stubborn when she scorns us because she is going to outlive us by a thousand years. We are nothing. Even dust lives longer. Even mistakes last longer. She looks at us as if we are the biggest mistakes to ever tremble and cry and stumble. She is forgetting all about the pink blossoms, but still she holds their messy faces as tightly as she can. She never remembers the fact that by next year she will give birth to a million more. Still she holds her children and wishes that we babbling humans were never born.
I Think
Colors
I am miserable with the hot hands that surround us on this hill where we pretend to sleep. I am far away from sleep. I feel like a knife has been plunged into a canvas sack, and I am unseamed. I spill the things that I have tried to keep hidden. I want to be a sack like all the rest, and yet you have made that impossible. You have torn me apart and exposed the many diseases I carry. I carry distress. I carry the years that were promised to me like I am indigenous and were replaced with nothing but a checklist of red flags and symptoms. I do not think thoughts. I think the opposite of thoughts. I think colors. I think textures. I think screaming surprises and sweaty nights that weave together into the tapestry of something like a memory. But they are not memories. I have no memories. My memories have turned into red and white blood cells. My memories have turned into flesh and skin and sinews. My memories are broken bones, and when I try to stand I only crumble. It's hot here. The sun is ashamed of me. It happened in front of him. The long sentences that I did not know how to say wrapped themselves around my broken body and they were pulled until their meanings tightened and left marks all over me. The words crossed over themselves until the sentence lost their meaning. The sentences became the howl of the wind that was caught in a trap. A wind that became ensnared by the words they used. The soothing simple words that he used to force the wind to obey. But today there is no wind. You have knocked the wind out of it. You sit up there, glaring down at me, refusing to acknowledge that I'm staring directly at you. I stare stubbornly at you as my black cold eyes turn blacker and much more aware.
Author: Derek Letsch
Artist: Vince Voltage
Catrin Welz-Stein
"In my art, I blur the lines between imagination and reality, while exploring womanhood in many different ways. I like to give my images a vintage, ethereal feel. During the creative process, I scan old paintings, photographs and illustrations, making sure they are in the public domain. I work digitally and transform the scans by first tearing them apart. They are like puzzle pieces that I work together, until they reveal a whole new meaning and tell an unknown story."