The broken kite
It's Autumn. Children start running all over drafty places holding a cord up in the air, dragging a kite behind them to make it fly in the wind. Hopefully. Kite flying time. A little child, hardly any yet, finding its feed and still wobbling, is dragging a broken kite hanging behind on the bottom, where dystopic railings and dark shapes of adults far behind in the background create an ambivalent mood being reminiscent of prison walls or labour camps in the last century. Its face and gesture appeals withdrawn into itself looking down at its broken kite for a long minute. The leaking smoke of my cigarette blurs my prospect. I see me staying there. 40 years ago.
The smoke clears away. Still the child there, with its head bowed playing around with the cord of its broken kite. What will it be in 20 years? ... Wanderings ... Sanitary views ... My thoughts roam ... This child seems kind of lost behind the railing in the middle of a huge place of impressing tristesse. For me this picture is more than a child turning away from railings in its soliloquy, leaving its kite hanging behind in the grass. It is a synonym for railings adults see and children don't see. And the broken kite becomes a synonym for hopes, dreams and the inner child which is hard to keep up sometimes.
The amused noisy Twenties in the background are only shapes in the back light and turn away from the railing toward the horizon, where the west side of the city embodies the landing zone of the setting sun while the child stays away from the railing reversely to the East. Directly in front of my view, where I sit in the sunset smoking my third cigarette and my camera lies sleeping right beside me. Both, the fading people in the background nor the child, don't really pay any regard to the railing in any way and the tristesse seems to be more in the eye of the beholder. Me.
The protagonist of this picture with its broken kite in the grass could be me back in the days. No doubt, the time had its tragedies, like all times had. But I know how colorful my inner mind was while adults had may only seen Grey walls around them. The Berlin Wall was part of my childhood and the railings in this scene perfectly embody this. But the child's playground is its mind. How to explain this to a child? And how potentially strong such an inner child can be to change the world? Looking at this child and letting the thoughts stray brings me to the changing highlights and centres of gravity in different civilizations and what our century may stay for in history? Pop culture comes in mind and I see me acting shocked while watching the child twiddling the kites cord in its hands. What a century. Where do we come from and where do we go? Maybe we formatted our collective memory and lost rise in terms of civilization when we stopped deifying writers, painters and scientists in favour of singers, bands and news presenters. Maybe ...
But maybe all problems end with the decision to start solving them. And maybe I should stop looking shocked all over the face while my thoughts stray and my eyes are focusing the child and its broken kite. And maybe I should stand up and help the child to make its kite fly again. Maybe ...
A cigarette later ...
"Hm ..." - I take a closer look, turn the broken kite carefully around, under the carefully watching eyes of the little Miss focusing its kite in my hands. - "Any idea ... ?" - I hold the kite up to her again to hopefully get more informations about the tragic accident which has caused this kite to look so damaged. Her eyes are now on me. Wide-eyed, lurking, but snoopy. ... A slowly shaking head. While her eyes still stay on me ... - "Hm ..." - I put on a solemn face and look asquint at here. She perks her eye-brows and gets curious about what comes up next. I take another look on the object of desire, the kite, and her eyes adhere in my face, in the face of the stranger with the cigarette in his mouth and her kite in his hands. I find the spot where it is broken. I try to make it enthralling and take some of my cigarette papers slowly out of my pocket to wrap it around the little kites wing strut to patch it while the Miss keep her eyes glued at me.
Patching a kites broken wing and making a child behind a railing happy. What is this synonym for now? Future? She's on tiptoes now to catch a look from top of what I am doing, switching focus, starring at my face and the kite in my hands back and forth, again and again. The patch is done and the kite seems fixed. The eyes of the reticent Miss turn wider and wider until I hold the kite out to her. I can see a little smile in the laughter lines below her eyes while she carefully moves the kite out of my hands into hers. In that moment the mother of the child enters the scene and breathes a sigh of relief in the moment she realizes her missed kid. "Mom! Look!" The child holds the kite out to her moms face and I think: "Oh, it finally can speak." Her mom turns around from her to me and smiles thankfully at me while I light my next cigarette.
I follow the shapes of both walking across into the sunset of this huge field, a wide stretched public park, which formerly was an airport back in the days, when this city was split by the Berlin Wall...
