Books by
Davy Dallas Peng

this book started with a rather simple note on facebook. the day before, my mother had told me about a visit to the doctor, where she was greeted with the words: “well, you don’t look too good”. the appointment ended with the advice: “go to the cinema”, when my mother asked about alternative treatment methods.

the doctors had previously discovered an aggressive breast cancer in her. 42 lymph nodes were affected and the breast had to be removed. now the question was whether my mother wanted to undergo chemotherapy or not. there wasn’t much hope in terms of orthodox medicine and so my mother tried to consider alternatives. to approach them. a visit to the cinema was certainly not quite what she had in mind.

my mother was very frightened and helpless after she returned home. she was afraid.

to experience this did not let me go and does not let it until today. and so I wrote the following note at facebook:

“there is not much that prompts me to write these days. for once i simply enjoy the peace and idleness. enjoy time passing and the good in it. and then every now and then a moment pervades all that has been gained and i still have to sit and give space to certain thoughts that would otherwise not be viable cowering in nothing.

i know there are fates that many of us share. grief, loneliness, illness. i myself have been given such a robust body in this life that i may and do thank myself every day for this life. many of you or your loved ones do not feel this way.

when a diagnosis occurs that is generally considered life-threatening, the perspective, the view of things changes very quickly. the only thing that comes to the fore is to survive. to share this life a little longer with all those who would be left behind.

in order to achieve this primary goal, we turn, searching and hoping, to all those from whom we believe we can get help. this is a good thing. asking for help and donating help is a wonderful thing, a joyful undertaking. and so, in the course of time, help that relates to the body, but sometimes also restricts it, has become professional. and it is exactly in this professionalism that those who want to help reach their limits. all those who are only human, with needs, worries, joys, burdens and desires, reach a point where all they want to do is go home, watch football, see their loved one, go to the parents’ meeting.

then you get medical advice like “go to the cinema” when you ask for alternative treatments. then you stand with yourself, with your own fate in the city, surrounded by things that are trivial and mundane, in a sea of hope and fear.

and yet there are paths that lead out into the countryside, into the distance, into a future, back into life. far away from religions and miracle healers.

your own feeling, your own self, your own ego, your own body! you yourself know what to do, what is best for you. in relation to your own creative power, your own strength to create, to recreate, everything that is done to you from the outside in terms of medicine and good, is nothing. it is nothing. you decide every morning how your life will be, consciously or unconsciously. you always decide. and you can decide at any time to die or to live, whether you are sick or healthy, whether you are here or there. there are days, years, when i don’t want to decide at all, when i just want to flow, out of a glass, into the city, to the sea. and then there are days when you and i just have to decide. days when others decide about the direction of our life. by a diagnosis, by a judgement, by denying you the power and strength over your own life. not out of malice or self-interest, just because they don’t know any better.

we possess all wisdom and knowledge of this world from birth. “no molecule is ever lost” as helmut schmidt said after the death of his wife loki. and this is just as true from a biological point of view as it is from a spiritual one. all our lives are one, connected by the tides, by the laws of nature, by birth and death.

should you now have reached a fork in the road in your life, where you do not know which of the two ways you should go, because you feel that neither of them suits you, then build a new road.

you are not alone. you are not the first. you are not the last.

what i would like to do here is to put the power and responsibility over your own destiny, over your own life back where it belongs, into your own hands. because there is always a new day coming. here but also over there.

if you are now faced with a diagnosis, with a judgement, then decide for yourself what you are able to do with it.

have courage if you want to have courage. walk upright if you want to walk upright. look ahead if you feel like it. eat, drink, smoke, believe, hope, love, live if you feel that you should do this, want to do that, are not ready yet.

and if you like to be completely with yourself, completely without complaining, just with yourself and in a garden looking at the sky, looking back at the past and waiting for nothing more, if you feel like it, do that too.

but whatever you do, do it with all your heart. even the drinking, even the smoking.”

as far as the note on facebook.

my mother then died 3 months later on 13 June 2011.

she had never been to the cinema again and she had never read this note.

now that it has been more than a year since i wrote this note, i have noticed that the desire has matured in me to elaborate on the topics that have been mentioned. i would like to write a book that contains the things that i would have hoped someone would have said to my mother, or that someone would have said to me as a loved one. lately i have had so many conversations with friends, acquaintances and strangers that have given me the desire to bundle all the writing i have done during all the dying i have accompanied and to bring it to life.

grief and love connect and know no borders, no religions, no sexual orientation, no skin color, no differences. they only know what we have in common.

and when a ladyboy in thailand mourns his beloved, he feels the same as when a mother in berlin mourns her fallen, beloved son.

one does not talk about death. many things cannot be explained to the environment of a dying person, a person in mourning, if they have never had similar experiences.

when my father died of cancer, it was hard for many of my friends to understand what i was experiencing all of a sudden. until then we had been out clubbing together 5 times a week, i was a presenter on the children’s channel and spent most of my time driving around dortmund in a convertible with my best friend and going shopping.

but death meets us everywhere, at any time and always. and i would like to claim that this is a good thing. that’s why i want to drag death onto all those dance floors i dance on at the weekend. not to spread fear and terror there, but to teach him discofox.

the texts for this book came into being through entries in my notebooks, through typing notes into my mobile phone and through this unique phenomenon called life.

And I would so love for you to take this book and make it your own.

if you make it “your book of life and death.”

one of my favorite authors is iyanla vanzant, an absolutely bonkers afro american woman whose real name is rhonda harris. but when she had an african fortune teller read her from chicken bones, it came out that her real name is iyanla. and since then she’s been calling herself iyanla and writing books. and before you ask, no dada peng has not been read to me from chicken bones.

one of her books “one day my soul just opened up” i made my own back then. i read it, i wore it, i shared it and i wrote it full. on the chest i started and didn’t stop until it was written all the way full. and i found that glorious.

therefore i would like to invite you at the end of each chapter to make my book of living and dying your own, to make it your book of living and dying and to write it full. we are thus embarking on a journey together that begins here and now and ends sometime, somewhere. just as our lives will do. and just as here at the end of each chapter, we also have the pen in our own hands in our lives and each day is a new blank page that needs to be written full. So, if you like, take my hand and let’s begin. let’s just jump.