as happiness is impossible in this world, I invent heaven

publication with images and text;
Photos and text by Marita Bullmann
Design by Benjamin Gages
1st edition – 25 copies

For purchase, please contact me.
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Text in the book:

Prologue:
It’s not that my world smells so good.
I just enjoy living.

1:
I wake up with a new sensation.
I lie still and stare out of the window.
I’m a stone. Unmoved for ten thousand years.
For a short moment everything might happen.
The room is flooded with my dream.
Many, many little moments from the beginning to the end.

2:
I sit on the green plastic chair and adjust my shirt and shorts.
Fluorescent lights are constantly, timelessly droning.
It feels as if they, not the stars, had shone over the long creation of civilization.
I observe the people around me.
I can’t tell if they are young or old.
Are they from the present or the past?
Probably they are simply time travellers.

3:
All these days are held together by my fragile memory.
Each year seems repetitive, yet somehow some things will always change.
I pass by the rubber tree every day.
It looks just as exhausted as I am.
I am in great need for certainty and I finally realize there is none.
This insight hurts immensely.

4:
I would like to invent all kinds of happiness.
More than anything, we are sick of our own problems.
Hugging is so moving – so basic.
Two people embracing each other.
Maybe when spring is here, everything will become easier.

5:
It seems endless.
My decisions are neither right nor wrong.
The walls are covered with my lifetime.
It is distractingly present, quietly insistent.
I watch the sunlight sparkling on the water and feel a tidal swell of loss.
It is too late. I’ve been waiting too long.

6:
The journey back is difficult. The rain got stuck there.
My exhaustion turns into a source of energy.
I got lost in my lonely thoughts.
Everyone has feelings, but hardly anyone can articulate them precisely.
Our common ground lies in the wounds of our soul.
I returned, but maybe no one asked me to stay.

Epilogue:
The present is created by an accumulation of pasts.
It dared to mean nothing and so it demands everything of you.