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When Nastassia learns that I have seen her father, she says she is much more his daughter than she admitted earlier. "Wanting to isolate myself becomes like a drug, and I know I can't have it yet. I am becoming closer and closer to nature, and the vision of the origin of it just pumps up into me all the time. But I don't want to become like my father, not dealing with anything and anybody. My father's a coward in a way. So am I. We both are. I'm coward because I pull back and put myself in neutral when it comes to relationships and people I really love. In my life I go toward something or someone with total energy and strength, and then all of a sudden I stop short like a rabbit and make a right-hand turn. I go on to the next, to a new surprise. I'm afraid to commit to anything, like my father. He does not want to be truly confronted, so he goes out and hangs on to the sunlight. I do the same thing, and that's why I reject it in him so much, because I see it in myself. So, I'm in neutral. I have to find pleasure and pain because pain - pain is just a word - pain is good. Through pain there is relief and sudden understanding and love. It's all connected.
Other people tell me I'm like a butterfly, settle here, and I enjoy the moment, and then I fly away. They say it's nice but it's really the pits. it's nice for a moment, it's like a rain shower, but then it stops and I'm just indifferent or cold, and then I fly away again. I always have this image of a planet, and the closer I get, the smaller it gets, and then when I have it in my hand, it is nothing. And as soon as I let it go, it flies away again far and lights up. It doesn't want to be with me yet. I repress so much. I express it with myself mainly. I write. It's not a dialy, it's a friend. It's the better part of me that connects with the confusing part. I don't write for weeks, then writing is all I long for. It's like breathing. When I write, the pores open and I feel cleansed. I'm like two people. Not the good way when sometimes you're the beast and sometimes you're the angel. But the beast within the beast is still a great beast. It's not that. I can't pin myself down. I can't make a commitment to anything. The indifferent, cruel, and ruthless part of me tries to pull the rest into it, but I have one gift, the gift of instant joy, like vitamins. That joy is stronger than the pull because the joy is connected to something higher, something beautiful and strong. This is what is the truth: I create something, and in the next second I am capable of destroying the purest thing in the world. I could drop my best friend or my mother at the most important moment, and then I would turn around and awaken desire to help out a complete stranger.
"My father told me never to follow a religion. He said it's all phony and hypocritical. If you want to be religious, he told me, love the days and love the flowers and go through life with open eyes and don't lie. Morality was a word my parents never used. Truth was the word. Truth and facing things like an animal. I worship the consistency of nature. After all that happens, it keeps renewing and growing and growing and growing, and whoever created that is God. Whoever made that live. Who knows who God is or what God is? But it's the best thing we have, and it's the only thing to hold on to. The question of how the universe began tortures me. Starting with the insects. How many thousands of different little beautiful little perfect little insects are there? And then you go on and on and on and back, and you can't find any beginning. There are facts and you can read books about it, but it is still so unapproachable. And the earth actually flies, like our souls, I guess.
"Whatever I love is connected to my parents, what they're loved and listend to. I grew up with Chopin. My father had records of African music, ugaduga, ugaduga, real jungle African music. Bongo drums. I used to listen to that music, it was like the rhythm of the body. I love Dostoyevski and Kafka and Goethe. It's not that I read it and loved it because of my parents. But we happen to have one thing, the three of us. These were the things, the books and objects I had at home, and these were the first things I was confronted with. Everything else I read after that was paler. In a way Dostoyevski and Gogol and Kafka and Goethe all say the same thing. They crave the same thing. It's so crazy. It all ends up in one spot, and it all ends up in what I learned from my parents too. The one thing is relief. It's growing from young to old to young again. You can become young again only when you're really old. And it's longing for pain, to know feeling exists, longing for darkness to know light exists. It is longing for self-destruction to know what it is that is great about love and realizing when it's almost too late that you have to live."
Kinski says she wants to direct but not star in a film she has written called Day and Night. "It is like a fairy tale that shows the day and night of hyman beings. There are two characters: a beautiful woman about thirty-five, who has never really lived, and a boy about eleven or twelve. They are not related. They are not lovers. During the day the woman screams at the boy and hits him, but at night she changes into a loving, nurturing person. To keep the day beast away, they resolve to swim out into the ocean at night, as far as they can, then wait for morning. They do, and when day breaks, the woman tries to drown the child. He holds on to her and they both drown, hugging each other."
Kinski has changed the spelling of her first name to Nastassja. She married Egyptian businessman Ibrahim Moussa, thirteen years her seniour, in September 1984. They have two children, a son, Aljosha Nakzynski, born in 1984; and a daughter, Sonja Leila, born in 1986. They divide their time between houses in Paris and Rome. Kinski's last hollywood film was Revolution, with Al Pacino, in 1985. She regularly acts in European films.
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