VDAY 2011

There is more than what the eye can see.

You don't need to be blind to see ... With your hands.

A gun - the hand pulls the trigger. The fist strikes. Hard. The fingers strangle. The fingers with the nails sinking into  the skin. They strangle. A stick hurts the body, makes bruises, may crack a rib. That can heal. But the hand ruptures the soul. 

It's also what the mime uses to paint the wall to hide, to protect. Come inside. Wave your hand. No, not like that - not like the Pope. Like an Italian.  Don't you feel it? Don't you feel Italian! 

Enjoy your hand: let it melt the chocolate, let it collect the raindrops, and let them dry with the sun, let it make love.

And now the other hand [if you are lucky].

It's more brain than the rest of the body.

It's how the child picks flowers.  

It's a hello. And a goodbye.

It's how we hide laughter and how we wipe tears.

It's antenna for prayer.

It's the cup we make around the face in surprise.

It's how it's sweetest to eat. And most erotic to feed. Almost.

It's the tool for exploration: start at the hair, trace the eyebrows, close the eyelids, gently tap the tip of the nose, bewitch the lips. And then go down. And downer. And downer... To the hands... Fuck - there is a wedding ring. So what?!

I put down the wall. I put the white gloves on the night stand. 

I embrace you with my hands, the part that stays at least half-conscious. I hold the air in your lungs and yet it still escapes, so I kiss you to keep it in. I tease. I take the strawberries. And the ice. I go over the skin. A millimeter away. I feel the warmth, though not touching. My hand slips down - to your navel, the outer side of the G-spot. Your skin is a magnet attracting my hand, guiding it further south where its warm, and warmer, and warmer... My hands are everywhere. In and around. Where was the brain again?

We wake up. Luckily we still know the grammar. 

We protect.

We are building walls. Now-together. We share the white gloves.

We put the hands together. 

And you stand up and look in between, through your fingers if anyone is watching. You want to open your hands, open your arms and embrace this life, embrace this wonderful planet called Earth.

"I am a little spot in the universe, but at the same time I have a whole universe inside of me. I want to feel it, take it, touch it, and let it go. I want to feel - my hand in your hand. I want to feel the comfort that you give to me. FEEL IT. Take the hand. Take it - come on, don't be shy. Feel its years, feel its wisdom, feel its beauty, feel its sexual orientation; now feel its stress level, its leadership skills, its GLOBAL leadership skills, its GPA. Feel its vulnerability, its curiosity, its shyness, its comfort, are you feeling it? It helps if you close your eyes.

"Remain expectant." 

Moving on ("Last Career Lesson")

[The following text was a speech I gave upon my last work day at Jacobs University as Head of Career Services before moving to my new job.]

You know how in the movies, the character always storms into the office of some HR person and before having even opened the door, they start shouting “I am QUITTING”??? And how often time, there will be roller blades involved? the person skating across a restaurant floor? Well, this isn’t quite like what happened. Not at all. For me, it was a long process and I want to share with you today, the process - because it is an embodiment of what we’ve been repeating over and over and over again - networking!!!

So, many of you have been asking me “what from now” and I’ve been annoying replying “come to my career lesson” and you’ll find out. Today I’m going to shed some light on the rumors about why quitting. 

It all started in April. You remember, Mercatorstrasse event? It was huge - wild wild west. Wonderful weather, magical food, drinks, fun (some pictures btw are included in the slideshows here - they have that wild west dusty color). An alumnus of Jacobs was visiting and I as a typical Career services guy was gathering information, trying to pamper her to share with us more of her experience and to help establish the first link.

I was listening to Ioana (you can find actually some interview with her in our alumni profiles on the career services website - end of commercial break), and I could see this passion in her eyes. And of course the first thing that comes to mind is “boy, I need to introduce her to Diana who is looking for the same kind of an internship”. Little did I know that this decision was what will lead me forward as well.

So, we set it all up, Diana applies, and takes over the internship after Ioana. And sure thing, as someone with genuine professional passion for Human Resource Management, both of them talk their supervisor into meeting me, the guy from Career Services. So I prepare, I have an offer in hand, a suggested timeline for recruitment, a couple of questions based on some curious findings they have done some research on with university students and off I take the train. We are still in July, is everyone still following? We’ve got way to go :-)

The meeting goes fine, I meet some other colleagues who are responsible for university relationships as well, I have lunch in their cafeteria (not too bad but honestly, Aramark is still pretty good - so stop whining about that). And good, we shake hands, we smile, we exchange pleasantries, I do my “magic” and ... I fail utterly. I come back to the office, I do a follow-up offer, I send my thank you-s, and NOTHING. For weeks. Nothing.

Three weeks later, I get an email from Diana that her boss (who I met) has been “asking about me” [airquotes]. I wonder really? We just had a coffee but he wants to see my CV. wait wait wait - that’s merely the beginning of the story. So, I say, sure, it can never hurt to learn about recruitment processes about a specific company first hand and pass on that knowledge further (same as all of you do with your internship reports). And then for weeks, again nothing. Diana tells me “position he had in mind got filled internally” so that’s that. OK, I didn’t think further about it. And then, September came. And I get an email from someone who has the same family name as Diana’s supervisor asking if I would be available for a phone interview. It turns out in the meantime that, yes, that was Diana’s boss’s wife who also works there. And it turns out, Diana’s boss had no idea my CV had landed in his wife’s hands. Lovely isn’t it? I assume they have a very good communication lifestyle. But perhaps you could make the argument that they know how to keep personal life separate from professional - which I have been notoriously bad at.

So, anyway, I have the first interview over the phone with her. I prepare, I close the door, turn off all gadgets (of which I have many), I stand up and do the whole interview standing, I still wear my best suit although its over the phone, I have my CV printed in front of me, I have prepared my elevator speech, my “3 weaknesses”, my “3 strengths”, and ... ZILCH. She asks me one thing: “We don’t have anything in HR but would you be interested in Sales and Marketing?” I explain that most of my job is in fact marketing. So, great, when can you come for a personal interview.

I think to myself, all of this is a good exercise and I go there to meet the head of sales and marketing for central and eastern Europe. And you know, I haven't had many bosses. In reality i have had only two real bosses. But I have often heard that you should first choose your boss and then your job. So far I've never done that - things happened. So I had the chance to test this theory. And in the entire interview, not for a single moment, did we talk about the job or the tasks. We talked about values, believes, fears, aspirations - and this is the kind of conversation that when you have with someone you realize "he can be a great mentor to me" - someone I can trust fully, someone who will understand how I think, someone who will support me with advice and plain with being present, someone who will never start rumors against your back, someone who will defend you because he is not afraid of responsibilities. I've seen such a boss before and at this moment, I want to turn to you, Dr. AZJ:

We had a bumpy start, I am not easy to work with, I am opinionated and arrogant sometimes but it took me a couple of jour-fixes to come to terms with that and to learn that you are someone I can learn from a lot: about patience, about persistence, about zen passion. You remain the one of the few people from whom I can tolerate to hear sentences starting with "in my experience...". In fact, I love those sentences - and whenever I was frustrated with something in the past months when we weren't working together anymore, I wanted to come over to hear that phrase. If it weren't for this relationship, I think it is safe to say that I would have personally not been able to find the passion in my heart to work the late hours, to fight for the students, to grow career services. Whatever has happened with career services to this day is thanks to you! Thank you!!!

Back on track now. First interview goes great. I get a call from HR wondering about my feedback. I tell them I felt great and they tell me that the "click" was mutual. I am thrilled of course. They want another interview. I say great - I'll be there. As some of you know, at that time, I started considering leaving Jacobs more seriously. So i welcomed the next interview - that was November. And once again, the interview was a marathon of "how do you think", " why" and "what do you believe in" questions. The interview was with the same guy from sales and marketing plus the general manager for Poland. 

At the end of the interview, they tell me that indeed they want to fire me and that HR will be in touch with me. And to cut the long story short, in December they had started the process and so had I. I had mentally started preparing, I had started cleaning up the administrative issues in the office, etc. And here we are today: all the plans for the transition have been completed, a detailed step by step time schedule (down to drafted emails) has been submitted to the leadership, with an offer for continued support in the coming months if necessary. And I am having my last working day.

And I have some more thank yous to say:

Diana - because whenever I needed a pep-talk, she gave me a motivational speech

Anika, Carin, Laetitia, Imke and Sarina - because they made Career Services my home

Ulf Hansen - because when I was speechless, he had a monologue prepared

Keratin Wilde - because in times of desperation, her poignant and sometimes sarcastic comments warmed the heart

Margrit Schreier and Arvid Kappas because they always wished me the best with all their heart

Marja - because in times when I was down, she always had tea ready.

Conquering Musala

Musala – the highest peak on the Balkan Peninsula. A cruel spot to visit in Summer, an even crueler to do so in Winter. At a height of close to 3000 meters above sea level and an unprecedented constant wind, it is surprising when the sun shines. It is one of those places I hadn’t yet visited in Rila Mountain. We left Sofia around 9:30 (just in the beginning of the Solar Eclipse which was quite visible thanks to the cover of clouds). We started our walk in Borovets around 11:30 (no lift) and by 1 we had managed the easiest part of the walk through a coniferous forest meandering between the small hills. We reached Mountain Hut “Musala” at 2389 meters (there is a dispute if this is the highest mountain hut in Bulgaria or if there is another one in the Balkans). That was our only stop where we had some tea, walnuts and honey (we were bringing the walnuts and the honey). The tough part started then – there was a slight wind and we were worried this may catch us off-guard. And indeed there was a spot where we had to walk on four legs but that was fine in the end. The final portion was the actual rock climbing – holding with both hands to the steel rope and praying that if you slip, your gloves will hold you well. We were not attached to the rope – we were just holding to it. On one side of the rocks was a fall into a pool of stones, on the other side of the rocks was a fall into an ice-frozen lake. Either one of them would have been deadly. Magically, around 4:30 we reached the final point and when we showed our faces across the ridge of the final step, the setting sun was like a nuclear blast in our face. It was a blessing! It was difficult to sleep there because of the thin air and the change of pressure. It may also have had something to do with the solar eclipse too. After a series of massages (proper ones – that make each spinal cord and every other bone crack), we had dinner in the form of tea, honey, walnuts and apples – all bio, all home-grown, all travelled 2000 m in altitude and about 20 km in latitude. I went out to shoot the stars for a while but at -16, neither I, nor my camera could last for too long hence the lack of patience with proper exposures and pure enjoyment of the view. The next morning, because of the difficulty with sleeping, it was a song to wake up for the sunrise – which is, as I was criticised to have said (“thin air” someone suggested), like a slowed down ocean of white cotton, illuminated in pink and pale blue light like a magical symbiosis of the male and female – because the cosmic energy is ubiquitous and omnipotent. Three very dangerous slips (I ended up hanging just on my hands), some further marveling at the lack of ANY wind, a couple of layers of clothes taken off, and 2:30 hours later, I was falling asleep in the car back. All pictures, made with Leica M9, and Summicron C 40/f2 (mostly at f5.6 or f8) – what a tough journey for that little piece of digital equipment – how it survived the -16 degrees temperatures, and kept functioning without hiccoughs, without change of battery or other problems, I’ll never know. The last 5 pictures have received almost no manipulation whatsoever (I should do a series one day of the different steps taken for clearing up one of these pictures from the beginning to the end).

Everyday Magic

I always try to look for the positive things on the street with my street photography and some time ago I asked my twitter and facebook followers for topics for a shooting challenge – Elena had one of the most inspirational topics: “Everyday Magic”. It took me more than a month to collect something for her. These six pictures to me capture those slivers of the daily routine of the people involved. The camera man becomes somewhat of a voyeur – staying away, and yet penetrating a most intimate moment. Photography for me is not merely a chance to immortalize a moment – it is the experience of that moment – none of these events would have been memorable to me if I had not taken a picture of them, if I had not seen them in a still frame through a small window, if I had not studied them afterwards, if I had simply continued my walk through the city, if all elements did not fall into place on their own: the woman with her hand on her forehead when she sees the gay couple, the two men staring at the kissing couple on the stairs, the ignorant isolated bliss of the kissing couple, the two dogs politely sniffing each other in the middle of the big square, the boy that wanted to take a picture of the couple but got distracted by the street photographer taking picture of him…

The Greatest Thing You Will Ever Learn Is Just to Love and be Loved

In the beginning there was Chaos. Chaos and I. It was dark, ominous and depressing. I was there alone, in Nothing, despondent. There was no time to waste, no beauty to appreciate, no love to share. I was Somewhere, at some time, doing nothing but thinking – thinking what it would be like if I created something. I often imagined things – things I had never seen, touched or sensed.

One day … some night … any moment…no, always.

“Why can’t I create by force of words?” I sighed in a low cynically dejected voice. I could immediately feel someone’s presence; someone invisible, whose molecules had mingled with the atoms of the matter around. A presence that I had never felt before and that I never separated from ever since.

“Hello? Anyone there?” Of course, I realized as soon as I said it, that there could not possibly be anyone because I was the only creature at that time. But then I heard a voice coming from inside my head:

“Yes, it is I – Will. If you make me strong, you will be able to create whatever you wish. But beware, I require the greatest sacrifice ever.”

I was so happy that after so long a loneliness and down-heartedness I was going to be able to create, that I totally disregarded the warning.

The first thing I felt need of was TIME. “I want to measure the amount of Thought required to Inspire My Emotion!” And then, at that very moment, in my head, bangs echoed, striking the seconds precisely. I felt as though another pair of veins was placed along my old one – the pulses were following and overlapping each other. I was fascinated. And yet, I finally appreciated timelessness as my best friend. But I was happy – I had sacrificed my immortal nature for immortal emotion.

I knew that I was merely in the beginning. I needed two more things, the most abstract ones, before I started creating the material world as I had seen it in my dreams – BEAUTY and LOVE. I started with BEAUTY. “I want to be able to feel emotions for the Beastfully Euphoric and Assertive Understanding of the Tempting Yield!” As soon as I said it, I felt hot thoughts running down my spine, back to the brain, then along my nerves and on the road again. My legs became weak, my mind got vague, my brain worked frantically. And yet, I finally appreciated that my absolute power as a judge of beauty had been my best friend. But I was happy – I had sacrificed my innate power to judge for the innate power to admire.

Finally, came LOVE. “I want to have my heart stolen by Livid, Overwhelming, Viral Emotion!” And then, I felt pain, quick thumps of the heart, enlightenment. My heart was in agony and at the same time it was flying, my eyes were closed and my hands were moving graciously as if in a dance. And yet, I finally appreciated that my nonchalance had been by best friend. But I was happy – I had sacrificed my survival instinct for adoration.

Armed with TIME (so that I could measure infinity), with BEAUTY (so that I could be appreciative), with LOVE (so that I could like everything I create), I was ready to materialize a world of my fancy.

I realized I needed light so that I could see what I create. But out of sentimentality I wanted both light and darkness in balance. “Let there be light half the time and darkness the other half!” And so it was. And I liked it for its heavenly simplicity.

I needed some matter to start constructing on. But out of sentimentality I wanted the earth to have the shape of a sphere – so that I never stop walking, just like in Chaos. “Let there be a large ball of firmness and warmth!” And so it was. And I liked it for its geometric perfection.

I needed oceans too. But out of sentimentality I left some pieces of land so that I could walk and just think there. “Let there be oceans around the earth!” And so it was. And I liked it for its invigorating powers.

I needed mountains. But out of sentimentality I left some pieces of flat land, so that I could enjoy climbing up, going down. “Let there be mountains reaching up to the skies!” And so it was. And I liked it for their desperate desire to reach the skies.

I was happy with my creations. At that moment I did not see the need for more – it was beautiful and it was loved. But little by little I got accustomed to the view because it neither changed nor evolved. I went through my archives of dreams of a living world. It was easy to pick up the colors – green for TIME, red for LOVE, yellow for BEAUTY. But I found it difficult to choose a single shape and size – they were all wonderful. I thought that variety would be great so I made them all different.

“Let there be trees of all sizes: large trees, small trees, bushes, and shrubs of different shape – some elongated, others circular, some curved, some dense, some transparent; of different spread: some growing at one place only, others – spreading their seed all over with ease.” And so it was. And I liked it for its astounding variety.

I loved brooding in the green grass, hiking up the mountains, hiding in the forests and enjoying the sun. But I then needed to share Beauty. That was how the idea of creating creatures to understand me came to me – creatures with emotions and feelings, creatures completely independent and conscious, creatures able to create and appreciate.

“Let there be creatures flying in the air; creatures swimming in the sea, creatures prodding on the earth, and creatures living in the trees.” And so it was. And I liked it because, finally, I could share Beauty with creatures who could feel love.

I was filled with sensuous ravishment. But time went by and I could feel a pattern developing – the creatures bred, grew up, died and then it started all over again. However, I wanted to create creatures susceptible to spiritual perfection. And I decided that the only creature that could evolve was my own alike, and yet different – because alikes push each other apart. And I was looking for something to complete my spirit as if we were two parts of a puzzle.

I sat on the lavender grass near the ocean. Birds were singing, a small rabbit was tickling my feet, and a colony of ants – so absorbed in their work that I was the last thing that could ever stop them. And I saw in my mind the Human – an embodiment of TIME, BEAUTY and LOVE.

“Let there be a human.” And so it was. And I liked it for its lavender eyes, its rosewood hair, its violet lips, its jasmine skin… It was my masterpiece.

The human moved. I could feel the warmth in its face but also the questions in its eyes – questions about existence, about living, about breathing. But I sent my message with an appreciative smile: “You will have your answers – you will learn them through experience. You will recognize Beauty; you will learn to appreciate it, to love it because Love is the greatest thing you will ever learn. You will soon be ready to take my place and start creating because this is the greatest power you will master.”

“But Muse, are you leaving me?” asked the Human.

“Yes, my dear. I need to. I have done everything I ever dreamt of. I have fulfilled my obligations, I have accomplished my tasks and I have seen my dreams come true. I leave you in charge. I want you to continue creating Beauty and sharing it. I need you to go on in my path. Promise me that you will be my best creation and that you will not betray my principles.”

The Human nodded in appreciation. I could feel its love – it loved me with all its heart. I stretched my hands for it. I touched its heart. At that very moment something exploded in me. I was no longer a material body but a soul. I felt my hands reaching for the mountains, my legs reaching for the oceans, my hair reaching for the grass, my lungs reaching for the clouds, my liver reaching for the core of the earth. At that moment the whole world began breathing.

The Human stretched out its hands and reached for the rest of my spirit. The moment it touched my eyes, they rushed into its so that the Human could recognize and appreciate Beauty. The moment it touched my veins, they rushed into its so that the Human could measure Time by their racing pulse. The moment it touched my heart, it rushed into its so that the Human could feel Love.

When the two hearts touched I was gone. I was Nowhere. No! The very moment the two hearts started beating in the same beat I was Everywhere.

Jan. 2004