151* To Where the Wild Things are

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

150* I’ll be drinking Irish tonight

An Irish stout in an Irish pub with some Irish music played by an Irish lad named Twohey.
Though I have no plans to travel to Ireland anytime soon, my mind is filled with all of the adventures I will have on my upcoming trip to Cape Cod. Close to home, yes, but still different to what I’m used to. New places, people, and experiences. Sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, sunrises and sunsets on the beach, and throw some lighthouses in there too. Plus a full day in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which will culminate in a poetry contest celebration at a local brewery there.

I’ve been struggling with a battle between myself and burnout lately. Taking on too much, as I often do, but becoming aware of it before it turns into a problem. These travel plans are perfectly timed. A week with no phone or computer, no work. Just exploring and creating.
Solitude. Quiet.
And that Irish pub was the perfect place to let my daydreams run wild…

FMQP+92 Newport, Rhode Island

149* On-Ride

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

148* My Taj Mahal

I know–it sure doesn’t look like much. An old mattress on the floor, boxes piled high, and not much furniture.
I don’t know the last time I felt “at home.” It’s something I was searching for.
I wondered if I would ever find it. I wondered what it would feel like if I did.

A little apartment on the third floor of an old building in an old town.
Beneath these slanted ceilings, I feel comfort, safety, warmth. I look forward to coming back to this place after a long day at work. I find myself wishing I was there when away for a night. There’s satisfaction: this little tiny corner of the world is mine, at least for a little while.

Is this home?

95FF+HM Westerly, Rhode Island

147* Done!

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

146* A New Thing

I’m way overdue in posting this. Aside from busy-ness, tired-ness, and other excuses, I didn’t know what to write with this photo. I still don’t.

This is a photograph of Stonington Gallery in Stonington, Connecticut. It was the first gallery to “represent” me and my artwork. In the photo you might be able to make out 3 of my photos scattered around the room. The owner, also named Sarah, is a wonderful human. On this Saturday, I went in to order some custom frames. I’m very excited about these frames.
They’re pretty plain, actually. A simple black metal frame, 8x10inches. 4 of them. You can buy 8×10 frames anywhere, it’s one of the most common frame sizes. So why did I spend double or triple what a normal store would cost to get these standard sized frames custom made?

They signify my future.

The plan goes something like this. Lately I’ve been absolutely adoring small sized prints of my work. I’m talking 2x3inches, maybe 4×4 at the largest. This is a new direction for me. Photo prints, cyanotypes, solar plate etchings. I’m endearingly calling them my “tiny prints”. I just love them. I wanted to elevate my presentation. These 8×10 frames are high quality. I will cut custom mats to fit the tiny prints. Imagine a 2×3 sized print inside a frame that’s about 4 times larger in its dimensions. It’s going to be beautiful.
These tiny prints will be going into galleries. They will be submitted to contests and exhibitions. They will be sold at markets and online. Maybe I’ll make a book out of them.
It’s new work that excites me. Not only am I excited about the possibilities of the work itself, I am hopeful about what the results might be. Will this elevate my practice? Will it bring a new audience to my work? Will I be noticed by other galleries? Book publishers?

Not to ramble, but I have one more thing to add. I recently realized how much my thinking limits me. When someone asked me what I would do if I made an income that is 5x higher than my current job pays, I dismissed it as an impossibility. But who’s to say that? I think I’m capable of more than I think I am. And so these frames and small prints signify everything and everywhere I might someday find myself. All the good that might happen. The unexpected joys. Success and contentment.

84Q2+38 Stonington, Connecticut

145* Thoughts of a Sick Boy

“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

143* Waiting for Godot

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

142* This is how it starts.

 

A snowstorm starts with cloudy skies. As the moon is obscured, we think: it won’t be so bad. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Then the snowflakes start to fall. A few at first, then faster, till the ground is covered. We shut off the lights, lock up the house, and head to bed. As it starts to pile up, we think: what if I’m snowed in? what if the roads aren’t plowed? what if we lose power?

After a while, we drift off to sleep. Anxiety clutches our dreams as we toss and turn. We think: I wonder how it’s going outside…

Then morning comes. With some apprehension we get out of bed and open the window curtains. The fresh snow is beautiful. There are maybe a few inches on the ground. The power is on. No trees fell. All is well. We think: I knew it wouldn’t amount to anything!

 

997F+MH Charlestown, Rhode Island