Monat: Dezember 2015

294

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

What does this we (the baby, you, I or the baby, you or the baby, I or also only you, I) mean, we ask ourselves, and already we know one answer. Saying we is a pleasure (which it would be not be hard for us to turn into a vice). We is a word we need to invoke. Ever since our baby’s arrival, it has unfolded its entire meaning (without any addition from our side). While in the past it merely signified an enumeration, sometimes a commonality, now it is already much more than a commonality. It’s on the tip of our tongues (and may at times leap from our hearts) to assert that much more than a commonality can only mean oneness. But it doesn’t mean oneness (we need only to look at one another, you at the baby, me or I at the baby, you or the baby at you, me, us). We are not one (isn’t that wonderful!), and yet we say with the greatest conviction (and rarely was it easier for us to pronounce the truth): we!

 

 

293

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

What is intangible about our baby can only be his becoming (instantly we notice the insufficiency of this concept, but we can’t think of another). Considering only the two of us (you, me), how much more tangible we are, how easy to recognize, how constant, how unchanging. You know me, I know you (all things considered). There are only few moments when our aging and passing moves into the present. There is little in the way of our calling ourselves eternal beings. At any rate, we content ourselves with what we reveal to each other, we are not mysterious and are almost unhidden; we are good at holding on to each other (even when we are separated for days and nights). How different from our baby. We virtually have to convince ourselves of his existence, through touch and with words, it is so hard for us (no matter how tired we may be) to interrupt his presence, and again and again we point something out to ourselves that we have either overlooked or misinterpreted. We are not at all as sure of our baby as we would like to think, but neither do we doubt him (as we do ourselves at times), because our doubt is too small for his way. And so sometimes, today, now, we are pilgrims and our baby is the oracle. He lifts the stone (which he found somewhere), holds it out to us and we understand: This is how we see it today, tomorrow we will see it completely differently.

 

 

292

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

It is the first time that we don’t know (for just a few moments) where our baby is. We have lost sight of him, and not only the sight of him. We do not limit the feeling that grips us by assuring each other that of course we know where our baby is (just a moment ago he was pulling at the drawer of the baby changer, we had just left the room to read an SMS, he must still be in the bedroom, the furthest he could have crawled is the kitchen … ). The moment of loss is too precious for us to allow it to vanish (dissolve) with a quick reassurance. We prefer to set out in search of our baby. We search for the baby. Seek it. Are convinced we will find it (not because we know that he couldn’t have disappeared).  We search out of conviction. (The baby is squatting behind the open bathroom door and is examining the cracks between the tiles with his fingernails. He doesn’t notice us.)

 

 

 

 

 

291

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

Sometimes we develop fantasies about our baby’s future, indulge them, not for too long (and a little guiltily). There’s not much concrete detail in them, more a feeling of how he may develop, a hovering sense of that part of his future world which we will get to know, and the part that extends far beyond our time. These reveries are mostly a kind rapture (prompted by an ecstatic response: to a touch that was intended for us, a sound that names us, a glance that seeks to penetrate us). And so we practice a benevolent betrayal of the present. A weak footing in the present, which we forgive ourselves, which we neither cultivate nor condemn. It passes. And soon we return to the vanished future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

290

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/verlage/hanser-box

From his throne our baby resolutely tosses things to the floor, sends a brief glance after them that is both surprised and indifferent, and eagerly turns to the next things. Quickly and nimbly he sees to it that the table is cleared, and soon the air in the baby’s realm is emptied of things. He who thinks a baby doesn’t know what it is doing, does not know his baby, we think, and he who thinks a baby knows what it is doing knows his baby even less. The truth is difficult for us to discern, for our infinite fidelity to things veils our perceptions and feelings (each time a thing breaks, we feel a stab in the heart). We would like to reinterpret the baby’s respectless interest in things and assume that his actions must have some meaning (that at least they must serve the necessary function of wiring his brain). And then – since no one can see us – we briefly (very briefly) imitate the baby, grab some cup (one of those we have long since stopped caring about) and smash it to the ground. It shatters with resounding pomp, and seeing this, we are as dumbfounded as our baby.

 

 

 

 

 

289

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Procreation, we think (while comparing our big toes: the little big toe of our baby, your little big toe, my broad big toe), when does it happen? Surely not at that single moment that all the fuss is about? Procreation, procreation, procreation – it’s constantly moving, gliding through and with us through the day and the night and into the next day and the next night. It’s the conveyor belt we’re all on, impossible to jump off, impossible to stop (what would happen if procreation could be interrupted? We try to imagine it, for fun – a cruel kind of fun –, but it can’t be interrupted, that’s one thing it can’t do). It’s our conveyor belt? Yes, for it alone takes us to where we always wanted to get to, where we want to go when we want to go somewhere we can’t get to by ourselves, that’s for sure (here our big toes nod. Your big toe and my big toe consciously nod, our baby’s big toe unconsciously nods – and this nodding by our baby means nodding to us much more than our own nodding does).

 

 

288

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

With the baby begins our forgetfulness.  Walking in the city today, I lose first a glove, then a clip that serves to attach something to the handle of the stroller, finally (but what am I saying, finally?) the cap of a pen (I wanted to make a note, I don’t remember of what). None of the baby’s things gets lost (you say, just wait), I give them particularly careful attention. I could believe that my mindfulness of the baby goes along with a diminished mindfulness of my own concerns. Or simply: our memory is not sufficient for the abundance of things. But it’s not only the limited scope of attention or memory, it is forgetfulness itself that is grasping at us with great (but well dosed and benevolent) force. It is we who will slowly forget: this is not something that only begins after we die. Our forgetfulness is an unmistakable sign of this process (in which we simultaneously forget ourselves). It does not surprise us at all that therefore today (on our walk through the city) we experience ourselves as beings of an almost radiant presence. (In my exhilaration I almost feel like deliberately losing five Euro.)

 

 

287

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Often enough in recent months we have told ourselves (while watching the baby, no matter whether he was asleep or awake): So that is our child, our child, isn’t that unbelievable! And now we are looking for this disbelief, at first not even trying to ferret it out, as it always showed up instantly; then, when it doesn’t want to do that, we make the greatest effort to find it in this deliberate way, we honestly (and almost furiously) try, but the result is unequivocal. Our disbelief has vanished, completely and irrevocably! And now it would be impossible for anything to prevent us from calling this new, fresh truth unbelievable.

 

 

 

286

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

From time to time our baby seems transparent (maybe it’s our candid, unjudgmental gaze that promotes such effects, by seeing them). It is as if the right perspective could reveal every secret of every conceivable time. The secret of the person our baby is and will be. A flight of faces (no different from individual clouds sailing across the sky) is what we call it (the sky remains, the faces pass). That is our baby, more than any character, any personality, any will, any self. Our baby changes aeons the way we change his diapers every day. Who are you?: that can only be the ultimate, the last of all questions. And yet and yet: our baby (the one in the dark violet tights that keep slipping over his toes) is precisely this person.

285

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

http://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/buch/babybuddha/978-3-446-25239-4/

oder über den Online-Buchhandel

Even though our baby only just ascended his throne (no, we lifted him into it), his regency began quite while ago. We never really noticed it (now, when he swings his scepter — s wooden ladle — we recognize it instantly). It’s true, we served our baby form the start, but we never saw this service, which was rendered with devotion, passion, and humility,as related to his ascension to the throne. Profane and secularized creatures that we are, we lack experience with overlords and principals in the classical sense (also with masters, whom we regard als relatives of those two). Will the baby follow the same path as we did? Did we not also once sit on this throne, in order, after so many years and decades of development, to submit to the rule of the one who sits enthroned today? What will come next? (Our baby swings his scepter with a soft wrist, designing snakelike shapes into the air. At any moment the ladle may slip out of his hand. We will immediately pick it up and give it back to him.)