As Pierre slammed the door behind him, he saw the streetcar pulling into his street. He ran. At that moment, Pierre was just the one running to the streetcar; his entire existence consisted of catching this streetcar and not being late again. However, the streetcar driver left the door open for Pierre for a moment so that he could walk through and drop onto a seat, exhausted. Only now did he realize that his back was aching because he had once again been running with his heavy bag. The rest of the journey passed while Pierre gazed out of the window, lost in thought. When a brassy voice blared the stop of Pierre's university, he got off.
Pierre liked his campus, the green spaces, the trees that no longer carried leaves and the empty fountains. The old brick buildings and small squares where he liked to sit on the bench until he was too cold. He liked the architecture and the facilities, the food and the connections. He also liked his major. The only thing that bothered him were his fellow human beings. It wasn't that he didn't know anyone, but the people who surrounded him were disconnected from him. Pierre couldn't connect with them and felt alienated among in their presence. Pierre was good at carrying on small talk with them and greeted a ton of people on his way through the corridors, asking about their well-being. But as soon as the conversation threatened to drift down to a deeper level, he felt a considerable dissonance towards them. This resulted in Pierre not being invited to gatherings and always being left out. Pierre was trapped in an in-between world of a social butterfly and an outsider. He had more acquaintances than any other student, was greeted more often, but had remained such a stranger that he was not accepted into any inner circle. He felt out of place. And even if you couldn't tell from the outside, because he always smiled and let anyone who desired to do so shake his hand, Pierre felt lonely, isolated and trapped.
When I opened my eyes, the light was burning in my eyes. I had to summon all my strength to relax and lift my eyelids even a little. The light stabbed into my eyeball like a burning sword. I didn't know what was happening, where I was, I wasn't aware of my history, I merely was. I felt the pain of the light, I felt the fog in my mind. It felt something like a tiredness, a weariness. Like when you wake up in the morning and briefly look the world in the face, but you would rather sleep a little longer. This time, however, the gentle slide into the unconscious world felt more definitive, a little more monstrous and final.
I was slow to get used to the light. At first I couldn't make out any contours, but the more often I forced myself to keep my eyes open, the longer the period in which light stabbed into my eyeball became. I saw a lot of white, a lot of light and a few outlines. At first I perceived billowing curtains. Windows embedded in white-painted walls. A chair and a table that looked so mass-produced that they could have been in a furniture store or a youth hostel. Then I saw the end of my bed, on which I was lying, embedded in a white sheet. I noticed a clipboard attached to the foot of the bed. The room I was lying in was impersonal and sterile. I let my eyes wander around and couldn't see anything else that was in any way personal, except for a bush of lilac on the table, which radiated some life even though it was cut off and dying. Was this a sign? I tried to turn my head to look further at my surroundings, but I was fixed with a neck brace that kept my head, and therefore my field of vision, rigid. Slowly, I became aware of a sharp pain rising up my body. I looked at my right hand, which was lying outside the blanket, and tried to lift it with all my remaining strength, but it wouldn't move. It eluded my will. As my strength faded, I slipped back into unconsciousness.
Pierre woke up with the same indifference as every morning. It was hard for him to get out of bed. He had set his alarm a quarter of an hour earlier to be on time for once. But he just lounged around, staring at the ceiling. His eyes were burning. He couldn't fall asleep, but he was always tired. Pierre felt burnt out. He had to drag this morning burden through the day, only to create a new burden for himself in the evening. The vicious circle continued. Pierre heated the kettle, went into the bathroom and stood under the jet of water. Here, alone with himself, he felt free. The jet of water poured down like a curtain between him and the world, between him and his recurring thoughts. Here, detached from the world, he felt something like fulfillment for the only time during the day. He felt a state that seemed desirable to him. Pierre stayed under the stream of water a little longer than necessary, but when he finally turned off the jet and the last drops of water sank into the puddle that had formed in the meantime, the peace and hope for a better day disappeared along with the water down the drain.
Pierre poured the bubbling water from the whistling kettle into a cup and hung a cheap teabag in it. Although he was already much too late, he watched the red streaks oozing out of the teabag and settling at the bottom of the cup like mist in a valley. When the layer was thick enough and the color gradation had made its way to the surface, he dipped his spoon in all at once and swirled the water, creating a uniformity in the color scheme that matched his state of mind. Pierre burned his tongue on the overly hot water, grabbed his bag, put the cup on the windowsill and left the house.
I saw the water coming towards me. Or rather, I saw myself approaching the water. It had looked flat from above. As if the surface was smoothly undulating, like a pair of silk pyjamas carelessly thrown on the bed. My body was flooded with adrenaline. A chill like a shock ran through my body. I fell. My hands were clammy. The sweat glands had no time to produce moisture. I could feel the surface approaching. Like a wide-open mouth, it threatened to swallow me up. The roar of the waves was drowned out by the rushing wind in my ears. My arms flailed as if trying to gain control of the situation. But it was just me, at the mercy of gravity. It's interesting what mundane thoughts come to mind when you feel your end coming. I thought of my standard buffet style restaurant, an unreturned book and the warm smile of the librarian I never invited to dinner. Flashes of thoughts that wanted to tell me a story of my life that I didn't want to accept as mine and never would have. Me, immersed in the banality of life, exposed to the insignificance of my existence. And besides all that, the sweat. The cold heat in my hand, the pulling sensation in my feet that I always felt when I was on a rollercoaster or on a swing as a child. The discomfort of falling. The texture of the surface came closer and with it the spray of the waves, the darkness that seemed monstrous and dangerous beneath the surface, the uncertain and hostile. The waiting inside me, the tensing limbs, the agonizing seconds in fearful anticipation. Like when you're expecting a punch and wonder, with comical rationality, where it is. And then the impact. Muffled. Coolness. Hardness.
And then nothing.
I am currently working on a short story, which I will publish here beginning on the 1st of December. It is sort of an advent-calendar. The story board is set up and I hope I will be motivated enough to finish it! That’s why it is so quiet here. I hope you all are getting excited, because this story will go deep.
Maybe I will find the time to publish something before that, but you will see something new on December first the latest.
The shoe lying on the side of the road, trodden and worn out, disgusts us. The very idea that this thing is or has been in someone's possession makes us shudder. Who would want to own something like that? Such a dirty rag?
But if we accompany the rag through its life, we become attached to it. The worn-out T-shirt is loved, the worn-out pair of shoes wants to be put on again. We still remember it when it was new. The signs of usage tell our story. Even the dirty room, the shabby wallpaper, the littered room become familiar over time, despite our initial horror. Once a piece of history has been experienced with an object, the flaw becomes special, the flaw elevates the mass-produced item to something special, elevates it to the personal sphere, because it is my flaw that is exemplified in the object. Our own flaw, the musty smell, is glossed over. We see ourselves through an idealized veil and can never take off our rose-tinted glasses. We have the urge to glorify our flaws, our dirt, our rags and turn them into an expression of individuality. The love-hate relationship with ugliness can only be endured in contrast to our own history. Without history, the forgotten pair of shoes at the streetcar station becomes, from one moment to the next, in the light of the other person's look, un-disposed of garbage that is not ready-to-hand. Although the object does not change, without history it drains into the world of the other and thus into the sink.
The Handshake is a statement. The handshake is the toss of a coin in an American football game. The other person sets the tone with the way the handshake is performed. The squeeze of the hand can be powerless, powerful, oppressive, mighty, but also balanced. The handshake manifests the other person's attitude towards you. A misjudgment of the handshake can organize and disrupt the hierarchical relationship. If I want to appear dominant, I hope that my counterpart's handshake will be softer than my own. If, however, I miscalculate and go into the handshake with too much benevolence, even putting diplomatic leniency into the handshake, the other person can take me by surprise and put me at a disadvantage with the strong, firm handshake. How I go into a handshake is decided almost intuitively in a very short period of time. Just like the first contact with the enemy on the battlefield, the strategy with which I face the opponent is also weighed up here. Even subtle nuances such as an increasingly stronger handshake or not wanting to let go of the hand are non-verbal notes in the string quartet of togetherness. After the seemingly inconspicuous gesture, nothing has happened outwardly, but the first battle has been fought between the protagonists. One is reminded of Wittgenstein's private language. We engage in a non-verbal dialog with our counterpart and puzzle over their opening move, just like after the first move in a game of chess. The answer can be conciliatory, defensive or aggressive. But once the tone has been set, it is difficult to backpedal.
Avoiding the handshake causes astonishment, because avoiding this custom leaves a power vacuum that needs to be filled. The firm gaze, the outstretched hand and the tense posture are an offer for a private locking of horns. The handshake is the fanfare for a duel.
Even though I pursued my dream by moving abroad, I sometimes look back home and feel a bit jealous of the people who have their fixed friend circle. People you can rely on and people who know you since forever. People who were and are always there.
In adulthood it is not particularly harder to meet and get to know new people, it is just that you lived a completely different life apart from each other, didn’t grow together and now you are meeting (settled) people with their fixed worldviews, goals and quirks. These quirks are just getting more and more the older you get. It makes it much harder to stick with someone. People eventually draw back and feel like the others should make a move. This results in more loose friendships, where you are greeting each other and talk a bit, but sit down on separate tables for dinner. This manifests in not letting you play in a friendly. This manifests in standing under the shower and thinking about who you would actually call a friend in your new city.
The symbol is an expression for the taciturn. The inexpressive statement. The loading with meaning that becomes meaningless in the face of overloading. The statement that knocks you down. Opponents of the symbol react with disgust on gazing at this symbol. And yet they wear theirs. The ideology that is cast in form manifests itself in the materials through which it is displayed. The golden chain, the wooden carving, the leather binding. It is a strange form of materialism, used to go beyond itself, to transcend it. And yet, despite the artificial exaltation of meaning, it is trivialized, almost distorted, by being put on exhibition. The waving flag in the wind that burns or for which a life is given triggers our narcissism with an outstretched arm. It is the helpless attempt to make the unspeakable tangible. The desperation out of the impotence to hold on to something. And so, the form is squeezed out of the not found words and the untenable is manifested. The substance, however, remains unrecognized. It hides behind the symbol just as the word on the tongue that one cannot grasp. What remains is the frightened individual who helplessly hangs a chain around his neck. A helpless projection of one's own failure to do justice to one’s freedom. What remains graspable are merely accidentals. Just as changeable as the forms of the symbols. The failed attempt to externalize grip, which ends in accidences, is based on the erroneous assumption of seeking this very grip outside one's own horizon. The worn symbol thus becomes itself a symbol of the suppression of personal freedom. In the explication the symbol loses itself and becomes an iron chain and a firebrand of the unfree. The infantile escape into the world of symbols draws a comfortable curtain between the observer and the exposed. Symbols conceal one's own failures from the swiftly condemning eyes of the world.