Writing in the free fall

...and in just one hope: that you can ever hear me

Hi there

Oh, no-no-no-no — do NOT subscribe to me. Forget about me. Don’t even think of me. Because I have an ulterior motive. There is something I want from you. And this something is neither your money nor love nor attention, it’s much-much worse:

I want you to read my books.

Nothing else. No donations, no likes, no subscriptions.

Just read my books. Good old books.

Well, maybe not old (not that old at least), but please be fucking honest – you miss that feeling of being smart (not just seeming smart) that costs you nothing and wants nothing in return from you.

Among all that monetization of your priceless human attention: call-to-answer content, doom-scrolling, 24/7-news loop, cyber-stalking, crappy ads, the entire world of screens and the same stupid memes over and over again, intertwined only with extortion of likes, donations and subscriptions, and making money off of people’s pain and loneliness ...doesn’t it feel that good old books are pain relief and salvation? A breather at the very least.

Reading requires a lot of time and intellectual resources — true — but everyone knows that it’s worth it. So old-fashioned books of two or more hundred pages in whatever form are one true pure love. Nothing beats it.

And this is the only thing that I want from you:

I write about the war in Ukraine,

the occupation of Hong Kong,

the adventures of young mobster martial artists,

and the inter-allied patrol in the post-war Vienna,

about the Great Silk Road,

and nightmare Taiwan — the Island of Ghosts,

a bit on Crusaders,

and a tiny little bit on the hypocrisy and shallowness of modern news media,

about the reunified Germany,

and life of a young cliché-model couple in China,

then there is my palinode — a public rejection of previous thoughts and beliefs in the form of an audiobook (and audiobook only, there is no and never will be a text to it)

and a summary of me being the worst student in the world to cherry-top it all.

And that’s it.

Nothing else. No subscribe and donate button here, no PayPal, no copied for god-knows-which-time “it’s the same price as a cup of coffee” explanation of extortion.

So don’t even think of subscribing to this substack. There will be no newsletter, no benefits for a paid subscription, no exclusive content, no noble feeling of giving someone money just because you like them and having nothing in return, no pure philanthropy, no nothing.

I am not for sale, my books are not for sale, whether I like you and am grateful to you is not for sale, so I don’t want you to subscribe, I am not that kind of writer. Neither ░P░U░S░S░Y░ ░i░n░ ░b░i░o░, nor ░S░U░B░S░T░A░C░K░ ░I░N░ ░B░I░O░

If you still read it, you probably ask the question: Why is that? What’s wrong with this chick?

Well…

It’s not because “I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all,” it’s because I care so much what you (yes, yes, you personally, I am talking about you) think about me, that I can’t bare being ignored or unread by you. And the only way I can keep on writing is to close my eyes and never see any numbers that would betray that no one likes me and no one reads me. I know that it will break my heart.

(by the way, the flashy phrase about “I don’t care” comes supposedly from Coco Chanel, who will appear with her SS-lover Walter Schellenberg in one of the above-mentioned books but I won’t betray you in which one)

Some formal crap (so that you don’t have to google it):

Hell is my real name. It’s German. Means “light.”

I will never tell: how old I am, where I am from and how many men did I have. Just make peace with it and don’t be a crazy cyber-stalker, don’t waste the precious time of your life on googling someone’s personal details. Not worth it. (I’ve been there, I know what I am talking about).

I am currently busy with epically failing my studies at the University of Vienna where I moved from the Free University of Berlin, where I failed already my studies in Global History. Before that, I have failed rather just simply and modestly than epically at my studies in Sinology at the Lomonosov State University.

Apart from that — nothing. That’s all I am doing.

I still can properly speak neither Chinese nor German, I just pretend. And I am too stupid and too inconsistent to do any better, or at least to pretend good enough so that someone would believe me. I pretend that I speak, everyone pretends in response they believe me, since we live in a polite world (at least offline), and people most easily agree with things they don’t care about. So don’t ask me a stupid question: how many languages I speak. Yes, I know, I know, I know… everyone is obsessed with numbers and a number is exactly what you want to hear, when you ask this question, but don’t be like that. It’s even more stupid than I am stupid, so get over it and be bigger than that.

This world is already sick with intellectualism and sex without these obsessive stats and numbers for everything. Everyone wants to be well-educated and no one really wants to read Hegel, and every app is a dating app, everyone attractive you see on the screen is to be immediately researched if they are married, fuckable, and can be approached for a date …sounds familiar?

Good old books, as said. Good old books and physical touch and eye contact. That’s what you’ll never get from cyberstalking, dating apps, and Twitter-battles, but really crave and long for.

Sorry about this one, it is not in my power to get rid of this last button, so just ignore it and do NOT