Author: Stefan

Frankly and just between us: I’m still feeling drained and tired. Even today, when I had my appointment at the hair salon at 8 a.m., before anyone else had even arrived. But again, I have to smile: who would have thought that my tight schedule last week, a children’s theater play, and some kamikaze-like hairstyle experiments would be the things to gently blur out the grayness of last week even further.

It’s often really hard to accept certain circumstances in life as they are. Or even to see them. Or to just look them in the eye for a while. Even though the true reasons behind the grayness of the days will certainly still require a great deal of attention, there are some other life circumstances that directly and indirectly help to lighten things up: like the fact that my apartment’s heating system is now working reliably again and has been gifted a life-extending spare part. Or that I recently, quite by chance, found myself among grandparents and toddlers at my very first “picture book cinema screening” of Maurice Sendak’s much-revered “Where the Wild Things Are”. Or that, in the coming weeks, I’ll be trying to resurrect outrageous 1980s hairstyles together with a crazy coworker.

Okay, obviously not everything’s grey – in fact, a few colors are coming back. Time to roll up sleeves for everything else coming up. Slowly, it’s getting time to let the Wild Rumpus start again!

52J7+VG7 Wels

It’s been a string of very grey days lately. As it sometimes goes with the paint pot of life. And not just that — there’s also that strange opacity in these shades of grey. It feels as though absolutely nothing can shine through Basalt Grey (RAL 7009) or Pearl Mouse Grey (RAL 7048), just to name two.

Deep thoughts. Stuck in a bath of cement.

I wonder if this, too, counts as a coping mechanism. A grown-up one. “Growing up” – what does that even mean. Doubts. Going in circles in life — but sometimes in a good way. An embarrassing funfair memory comes back to me. I never thought it would be shame and embarrassment that would pierce through the greys. A slow crumbling. Good.

 

523C+H5M Wels

If there is one thing that is indisputable, undeniable, beyond all doubt and above all else, it’s this: the general “joy-coefficient” increases by at least an order of magnitude when one can finally do something that one has longed and waited for for a long, long time. A late, wet, cold-season triumph, gloriously reeking of chlorine satisfaction.

2M62+FG Vöcklabruck

“That shouldn’t be a problem, please proceed.” was the understanding receptionist’s response at the indoor swimming pool to my croaky-voiced question about whether I could take a picture of the temperature chart for the pools – so that, if I’d really end up being sick and bedridden in the coming days, I could at least think back wistfully and with a grin about how warm and wonderful it would have been at the pools, and how warm and wonderful it might be when I return to that place in good health.

That’s how it is for me with disappointments and sobering realizations: When long-held and desired ideas or plans are finally put into action, only for reason to suddenly make itself heard to let me step firmly on the brake pedal. Frustration, annoyance – bargaining, ignoring. One of my rather dubious talents is that I can equip a certain kind of anticipation with an unspeakable level of opacity, reliably covering up everything unpleasant. Just like here. Until, in addition to the fatigue I had pushed aside for half a day, a general feeling of coldness set in. Then a hoarse voice and a runny nose. Too obvious to not connect the dots.

So, here I stand. Right at the finish line. Surrounded by warm indoor pool air and the smell of chlorinated water. I’d love nothing more than to go get changed, but afterward… it would certainly become even more unpleasant. Honestly, I almost have to laugh. The fact that reason has prevailed so narrowly – and, by my standards, actually quite quickly too – is something that hasn’t happened to me very often before. I have to smile wistfully. A non-athlete finally wants to do something in that direction again, and then this. Well, then it ends up being the same old compromise again. Humor as the savior. Me, the one-trick pony. An evergreen of coping with life. Time to let the pools go.

I frame the shot, adjust my winter hat, press the shutter. With a sentimental smile I inhale the smell of that place for a final time only to head back home again – to actually spend almost an entire week there being sick.

I’ll be back. The second time will be even better than this first, humble encounter.

2M62+FG Vöcklabruck

The very unusual-looking man in the photo is man named Karl Valentin. A true Bavarian original. A comedian. For almost 100 years he has been admired by the residents of Munich – and by me as well. Maybe someone might be wondering now, why I am dedicating a blog entry to him and my answer to that question is the following: because he kind of made me fail writing this very blog entry – and in doing so, he helped me realize something very important about myself.

Everything begins in Munich. Dirndls, Lederhosen, beer, Oktoberfest – yes, that place. It’s where I was last week for several days which included “my Saturday”. I came across many photo-worthy moments there but I quickly realized that my blog entry would – and should – focus on Bavarian humor and the special role it has historically played in general and, above all, for me personally. Like how revealing it has always been, how anti-authoritarian, how honest, how bold – just to name a few characteristics of it. It really has had a major influence on me, how it made me see life and people and how it helped me to cope with both. Karl Valentin was one of its most eccentric founding fathers of it. A true idol so to say.

But somehow, throughout the entire past week, none of my drafts felt quite right. Romanticized and idealized, an over-the-top tribute to Bavarian humor – well, it didn’t fit right at all, it actually made me even feel sad whenever I started writing about it. In the end I’d say I ended up in some kind of writer’s block that forced me to dive deep inside of me and listen to what might be hiding behind of it.

Over the days I realized that there’s a connection with my present perception of me and life around me these days and that it’s just not the time where I can go out into the world relying on humor alone anymore. That humor, right now, needs to be accompanied by something else. Anti-humor, for example, or a more factual approach. It sounds cryptic, I know – but it simply didn’t feel right to use humor as the only vehicle or topic for that blogpost where humor has been often used by me to push other, more serious things aside, to keep things light or to delay things until, well, Godot may finally arrive.

So, I let go of my original plan. I accepted that it didn’t work for my anymore, that it was a failure. A good one. What soon followed was relief. New spaces opened up, a broader perspective. And I recognized a very special irony behind it all. The circle closed. An a hundred years long one.

Back in the mid 30s of the past century Irish writer Samuel Beckett was struggling with depression and writer’s block. He decided to learn German and, in an attempt to counteract his bleak state of mind, he traveled to Germany to explore the land of Goethe, Schopenhauer, and Dürer. He arrived in a country in political upheaval, and the inspiration he had hoped for did not come – at least not until the very end of his trip. In a coffeehouse in one of Munich’s suburbs he came across the comedy duo Karl Valentin and Lisl Karlstadt. In his travel diary, Beckett wrote:

“I actually saw Karl Valentin in 1937, performing in a café-theater on the city’s edge. I laughed a lot – filled with sadness.”

Enthralled, Beckett arranged a personal meeting with Karl Valentin through a German friend. It turned out to be a very surreal encounter – partly due to the language barrier between Beckett’s Irish English and Valentin’s deep Bavarian dialect. Karl Valentin showed him his cabinet of curiosities which was still under construction in Munich at the time. One of the installations was a cinema full of wax figures, all waiting for a film to begin but, and here’s the punchline, the film never started.

After returning from his trip, Samuel Beckett wrote his masterpiece “Waiting for Godot”, a landmark work of absurdist theater that would bring him worldwide fame.

To conclude my very special, unplanned blog entry this week I want to share a few quotes from Karl Valentin. I have my doubts that the absurd wordplay and humor can truly be translated from German into English but I want to give it a try nevertheless.

“Even the future used to be better in the past.”

“The only thing that’s certain is that nothing is certain—so I stay suspicious, just to be on the safe side.”

“Today, I’ll treat myself and pay myself a visit. Hopefully, I’m home.”

“I know no fear! Unless I get scared.”

“Hopefully things won’t be as bad as they already are!”

“Raising kids makes absolutely no sense – in the end they’ll just copy everything they see from adults anyway.”

“Everything has been said, just not by everyone (yet)!”

I’ve said everything now and sometime in the future I’ll definitely go back to Munich to, maybe, see a stage performance about either Karl Valentin or Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” by myself.

 

4HPJ+2P München, Deutschland

At night, it’s less bad.

I hold my breath, I feel myself tensing up.

Every time I drive here.

This narrowness.

Tightness.

The bent guardrails.

Crumbling asphalt.

It goes uphill, it goes downhill.

I never know what might be coming towards me beyond this curve.

Often a dance with the haste of others.

Navigating and working through the fear, the uncertainty.

Mindfulness and slowness.

Daring to give in to doubt.

The surrender of just stopping and waiting.

3XC9+H8M Frohnhofen

And then, of course, there’s the other side too. The one I only subtly hinted last time.

I’m still in the middle of tidying up here, and it’s likely that this task will keep me busy for another week or longer. In the meantime I’ve divided a large basket of books among several “free book exchange shelves” around my home and some more at an “open bookcase” in my favourite coffeehouse in Linz.

Of course I have unearthed many more, new and surprising “trails of breadcrumbs” (of course just metaphorically speaking), each a more or less intense journey back into the past 40 or so years of my life. Whereas I focused in my last blogpost on how it is for me to let go or release this or that relict of my past I want to put the emphasis of my this week’s blogpost on the opposite principle, the, so to say, other side of the coin: the realization of how important it is to not let go of certain things, to keep them and to care for them more than ever before.

One prime example of what I mean is the surprising rediscovery of a tiny box full of old and beloved children’s and youth audio dramas. I’m genuinely curious whether something like this ever existed in the United States or if it’s just one of those quirky trends that inexplicably only emerged in German-speaking countries. Whether it’s acoustic adventures about and with Enid Blyton’s Five Friends, spooky audio dramas, fairy tales, or – as pictured above – the Three Investigators – it’s that I, my sister and apparently many other children of our age “devoured” these recordings.

Now, so many years later, I’m beginning to realize just how much this media format shaped me in hindsight. A two-sided cassette tape, with its ominous (yet timelessly expressive) cover art, could unlock 2×30 minutes of pure imagination through my then young ears, opening up entirely new worlds through sound alone.

Once again I find it almost impossible to put the feelings I had when I stumbled upon that box of old audio dramas in words. It’s like seeing an old childhood friend for the first time in decades again, only to realize that nothing about him or her has changed ever since. With just the push of a button, you could relive the same joy you had about 35 years ago. Happiness, nostalgia, excitement, awe – the usual emotional lineup for sentimental souls like me.

So this time it isn’t just about letting go and forgetting. It’s equally about remembering and holding on. Tidying up and reminiscing, like life itself, is rarely a straight path or a straight story. Even here that process can and maybe should meander. I find it wonderful not to act according to rigid rules. Every breadcrumb matters and deserves its place and attention. Marie Kondo would likely nod and laugh in agreement. In the end, it’s also about valuing things, recognizing their personal significance, honoring them as kind-hearted messengers of and to the past, and, ultimately: about keeping them, with double the care.

 

3WPW+FC4 Fischlham

What will come next? Right now it’s that question that applies not only to the future but also to my past.

It just came over me last week. Out of the blue. A pretty unexplainable reason to tidy up my archive, find a new order, and the hardest part for me, to decide which things to let go of, which ones I release after decades of holding everything close – and: finally laying a foundation for forgetting, to make room for the new.

In doing so, many things and memories surface. Very personal things I haven’t had in front of my eyes for an unbelievably long time and memories from deeply buried in my hippocampus. Often it’s a cheerful reunion, sometimes exciting, then sad, and occasionally quite embarrassing (like finding my old mixtapes).

It’s like following a trail of breadcrumbs back into my past—a trail I left for myself to see how much I’ve changed over the years (no more collecting habit), where I’ve more or less obviously grown (my first attempts with photo editing software are a decent witness here), where I’m still the same old guy (like a hearty love for pop culture and humor in any form), and where painful shards of the past still linger inside me (as i recently read in some old love letters from the 90s).

There are still some breadcrumbs left here that I want to follow soon. It’s fascinating – this fine line between liking and having to. And it’s nice to notice in myself how this liking is connected with consistency, curiosity, courage, openness, and ultimately: the willingness to let go.

66WM+2V6 Leonding

I was driving along in my car, almost in a trance. A grey day. Rain. No snow. No pre-Christmas idyll. Then, as I glanced out my right car window, I saw – contrary to all weather forecasts – that scene from above. A quiet, yet unmistakably astonished “Oha!” escaped me (a softly yet firmly whispered Austrian word, expressing overwhelming surprise). I slammed on the brakes, grabbed my phone, shifted into reverse, and took this completely unplanned and unexpected photo during the golden hour, somewhere amidst the lonesome fields of Upper Austria.

It often just happens that the unexpectedly good appears. Trusting in that more will be one of my resolutions for the new year. Actually I don’t like resolutation but this one feels different. Staying active. Staying attentive. Being less blinded by very specific expectations. Allowing myself to be surprised more often – in all directions. Oha!

 

3XGH+3W3 Ritzendorf

“The world is complex and contradictory.”.  

This is one of the phrases that has been crossing my mind repeatedly lately. The deep human longing for everything to be logical and simple. And yet, if it were, life would probably feel quite barren. The incomprehensible complexity of life is, at least in my opinion, a kind of metaphysical “perpetuum mobile” that continuously spits out wonders. Be it friendships that, against all odds, suddenly “happen” (a warm wink goes out to Rhode Island) or seemingly trivial things like reflections or thoughts that travel through this miraculous complexity across the world, only to be rediscovered, expanded, altered, or even remixed over and over again.

The saying my this week’s blogpost is all about originates, so the story goes, in Central Russia in the mind of the author Andrei Platonovich Platonov. It comes from a dialogue in his utopian-philosophical book “Chevengur”, which revolves around two people talking about a fish. Years later it’s this passage that catches the attention of the controversial Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, who incorporates the thought of that dialogue into the lyrics of a song for the soundtrack of one of his more famous films. That song is sung by none other than Iggy Pop and finds its way into my head sometime in the mid-’90s, from where it now embarks on yet another journey through this blog post.

The phrase, the story, the dialogue, the lyrics goes as follows:

This is a film about a man and a fish…this is a film about dramatic relationship between man and fish…the man stands between life and death…the man thinks…the horse thinks…the sheep thinks…the cow thinks…the dog thinks

The fish doesn’t think…the fish is mute…expressionless

The fish doesn’t think…because the fish knows…everything

The fish knows… … everything.

PS. I’m no vegetarian. At least not yet.

3Q3G+4W Schwanenstadt