FEBRUARY 2004: The school that I am in now has a swimming club and I am over the moon: I am part of the swim team now!
FEBRUARY 2004: Looking at stars falling in the Sahara.
FEBRUARY 2004: I come out for the first time: to my best friend. We're sitting in a pub, the conversation goes in that direction, we both realise it, neither of us says anything, it gets later and they start clearing up around us. Finally he asks me. We end up talking for another two hours in the car outside his house.
FEBRUARY 2004: I am elected to the communal parliament. My father is suddenly talking to me again after months of silence.
MARCH 2004: It is Sunday evening. My mother is ironing, my father is smoking his pipe and watching TV, I am sitting at the computer. My mother says they are separating and she is moving out. Suddenly everything makes sense and everything is falling apart. I cry and slide off my chair onto the floor. My mother hugs me tight, my father is stunned.
APRIL 2004: I am back in New York again for the first time and stand in front of the ruins of the twin towers. The damage in the area is still drastically evident. I remember my many previous visits and experiences I had there. And at the same time I can see the images of the attack before me as if I had seen it on TV yesterday.
MAY 2004: I am sitting in a kitchen. The pizza is going cold. The pianist doesn't want the baby.
MAY 2004: I make the performance «Paradise» together with tg Monk.
MAY 2004: I read books by David Grossmann and Haim Omer.
MAY 2004: I am accepted as an assistant professor by the Faculty of Science.
JUNE 2004: I travel with Ton to Mongolia for the second time. There, we decide to have a child together.
JUNE 2004: My best friend Florian and a girl I know well are now a couple. Over the phone Nils blabs the news, before they can tell me in person. I am speechless. My dream that I might yet have Florian all to myself shatters. I cry for the first time about a guy.
JULY 2004: I accidentally hear my sister ask our aunt into another room for a conversation. We have agreed that to thank her for her help in looking after our dying mother we sisters will give her a piece of jewellery. I stand up and join them and my sister looks at me full of hatred.
JULY 2004: At night I sit on the edge of the bed wrapped up in a woollen blanket together with my mother with the door to the terrace wide open. She leans her head on my shoulder and we are one. Now. Because we both know she is dying.
JULY 2004: We danced all through the night. I cycle straight to school drunk and stoned. I stink of beer.
AUGUST 2004: I arrive in India. With its poverty, chaos, confusion, its masses of people, smells and colours, the country washes over me like a wave and sweeps me off my feet.
AUGUST 2004: The first day of class in year five. The girl next to me is drawing and I watch her eagerly. We become best friends and draw together all the time. By the end of year seven I know I want to concentrate on art.
SEPTEMBER 2004: Finally I have found what suits me: I start studying socio-cultural animation.
SEPTEMBER 2004: I eat pizza in Rome, the whole crazy company is there. We sing Italian socialist songs. Fa doesn't look at me, but our feet touch.
SEPTEMBER 2004: I walk through the gate to go away for a year. My father cries, he's all alone now; my mother is strong, she lets me swim free.
DECEMBER 2004: I fall in love with a woman for the first time and everything becomes confusing.
DECEMBER 2004: My first long-term relationship comes to an end after he is convicted of a crime. He is in Waaghof prison. I feel like I'm in the wrong film and am fed up.