Monat: Januar 2016

325

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

I’m happy to persist in my ongoing life (as for your ongoing life, there’s nothing I can say about it, as though eternity were always only one’s own; the eternity of our baby on the other hand is obvious: it is presence itself; the biggest riddle is how I manage to feel mortal and eternal at the same time, without even having heard a single religious word or promise. Happy afterlife of faith.) Happy afterlife of faith: that’s our baby. Am I living on through our baby? It doesn’t look like that (a few kicks against my chest while he lies on the changing table produce some clarity: Don’t kid yourself, Dad. But I’ll gladly preserve you from seeking your ongoing life anywhere other than in yourself, in fact I’m preserving you from seeking it at all. — A few more kicks from the depths of the uncontrolled, hard to anticipate, powerful, unbridled, they make my chest vibrate. The little feet hit their mark with a bounce, my head too, like a boxer’s jabs, a match between unequal opponents, refreshing, a pleasure I spur on by briefly grabbing his feet. Right after I let go go of them, they explode, and our baby laughs, cackling, without looking at me. It’s easy to kick-box without looking at one’s opponent, the cord of the heating lamp, or something else up there, is more interesting.) Oh, yes, I’m happy to go on living.

 

 

 

324

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

How impudent and provocative this aliveness of our baby is! All of a sudden it hits me like a blow to the head (a blow that makes the whole body quiver all around): I am going to die. A peculiarly exciting, unsettling thought, which a moment later is calming, throws open a door, unclutters the view. Fright is followed by joy, joy follows the fright. I am going to die – finally (with a glance at the baby) an abstract sentence finds its meaning, yields the sense of its reality (this is what we want in all our sentences, that they step out of the shadow of abstraction; and is what we fear in all sentences). And there our baby still stands before me (I’m still on the couch with a sore throat and a stuffed nose, in a fever), he’s clutching my scarf with his left hand, a chubby-faced impudence in his look, reminding me, no, not of my death but only now evoking it in my consciousness (I’m almost tempted to say, only now enabling me to think it). And then the grip on my scarf tightens, I have the impression our baby is leaning back, hanging on my neck with a kind of cozy comfort, making himself nice and heavy, and in the tensile force that is throttling my throat, I am no longer thinking of my death but of my eternity.

 

 

 

323

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

So he has stayed. And will remain. Our baby has learned to know and appreciate us as dear and suitable people (this is how we imagine it: his star following us for decades, spying on us, before he made the — happy, painful — decision to come to us. Blindly, deafly, in complete ignorance, we agreed and made it possible. Then you made it possible all over again. We got together, and out of the day-long, week-long, month-long test phase the certainty arose: we want to stay together. The will to stay, to stay together, is big, has to be big, how else would such an arrangement be possible? We assume there is intention, not fate, behind everything. It is a fact that today is precisely the day, that right now is the minute, the instant, when we decide, have decided, to maintain a living connection with each other all the way to the natural limit, even though we can’t furnish any proof of this decision.) So: he has stayed. Just as right now he is standing next to me (I’m lying on the couch, with a sore throat, a stuffed nose, a temperature) and gazing at me (into my glazed eyes) for the past five minutes, holding onto my scarf with his left hand and allowing me to think in peace: In a fever everything looks lighter, thoughts are more palpable, babies more real.

 

 

 

 

322

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

We put our baby to bed, hold him in our arm until he shuts his eyes and slips off into sleep, wait a few more minutes for the pact with sleep to solidify, put the baby in his Babybay (this name delights us), then quietly leave the bedroom. Abscond, sneak away: for a moment it feels like a small betrayal (calling it small makes us feel better). Why should we keep sitting here, when we are a few hours away from our own sleep, we tell ourselves (convincing ourselves of the rightness of our action), there’s no reason to watch our baby while he sleeps when we’re just one or two rooms away, nothing can happen to our baby (and yes, we’re also relieved that he’s asleep, because now we have time to take care of our own business, relieved that our duty and responsibility can take a rest along with the baby.) But that little betrayal won’t leave us in peace: our baby there, asleep, we here, awake. It’s not possible to follow anyone into sleep, we think, why should it be different with waking? 

 

 

 

 

321

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

Snow has fallen, enough to go sledding on a small hill in a nearby park (to give it a try. We don’t ask our baby: Do you want to go sledding? We say: We want to go sledding. It’s always like that. We never ask him: Do you want to do this or that? We only say: We’re doing this or that. This is how it goes and that is how it goes. We don’t ever need his consent in order to do something. We know when we can do what — usually. We have a good sense for this, coming from nowhere. Our baby does not need to trust us. What is that supposed to be: trust? A crooked word from a later time, from the time of doubt. If at the later time, the time of doubt, we manage to get by without trust, we think, we will have made it. But that has nothing to do with sledding, but only with a time about which we can’t and don’t want to say anything.) One of us (you, me) rides with the baby, the other watches. From above (as you or I drive of with the baby) or from below (as you or I arrive with the baby). Our baby is all bundled up. A bit of nose, cheeks almost wholly hidden, a hint of eyes — that’s all that’s peeking out from the wrapping. Our baby sits immobile between our legs on the sled. He is silent and glides. Then it snows even more, thick, leisurely, drifting flakes. We don’t see much, just this densely wrapped bundle with us (you, me) on the sled. No nose, cheeks, eyes. Just a gleam shimmering out from under a small hood. Maybe it’s only the snowflake melting on the tip of our nose.

 

 

320

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

And death (the baby’s outrageous proximity to it, which we noted with alarm in the beginning) has absconded. He leapfrogged across the baby, as it were, in order to hide (though maybe he won’t be the same any longer: a leap like that can change one) at the other end (far, far away). Our baby lives, he lives very vigorously (with more vigor than we do, it seems to us; one more reason to be his students). His vigor in living, here, with us, in our house, in our city, this country, this continent, this planet (no, our baby is not wandering aimlessly), cannot be overestimated: he seems to be altogether inseparable from it,he seems to be vigor itself, a miracle! (In the beginning we couldn’t see it this way, our baby had to gain this strength by conquest, persuaded death to take that leap, who knows? Now he is chewing around at the root of a violet — passionately, but with a look that does not want to acknowledge that passion — and there is nothing to prevent him from doing so.)

 

 

 

319

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

How very much we are bodies (it’s so easy to forget)! Contact with our baby takes many forms but is never more intense than through the proximity of our bodies. Is there really any other kind? Is not our speaking, laughing, humming, of the body? Our glances and thoughts, our care, even our happiness? Just now it feels difficult to be aware of any other issue than that of the body. The scent of our baby may have befuddled, his gurgles besotted, the softness of his skin enchanted us, so that we are incapable of finding anything deeper, higher, or more spiritual. The body is sufficient, because there is nothing that could complete our encounter with the baby. The body separates and connects us (the baby, you, me) at the same time. However, it seems to us that all this takes place in a bigger body, and we permit ourself the gaffe of reaching for the word of a predecessor who takes the soul from the body in order to put the body into the soul. (There we are, the three of us, on a bed; who is it that call us three?)

 

 

 

 

318

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

Our baby’s joy has long since infected us (never have we done less to fend off an infection), gratefully we swallow this healing poison whose supply will not be depleted in a lifetime. Our baby rejoices: at the skipping crows, a dirty bottle cap, our coming home, the golden chain around his aunt’s neck, the clicking of a tongue, the new, warm bedcover, that man over there (Ma, Ma, Ma), the noise of an excavator (Gra, Gra, Gra). Naturally the question stalks us: What will become of joy, this joy, this joy of the beginning (all over again: the beginning)? Instead of giving an answer, we rejoice that the question arose (just as our baby rejoices at every question he does not understand). Without shaking us, joy makes us awake, it is the element of awakening, is awakening itself. So we rejoice at what we are thinking, saying, believing (while the grumpy, joyless, haughty philosophy professor from the neighboring building comes around the corner, as always looking at the three of us with slight disgust, on his way to a hard day’s work on the truth, a job that will never end. Our baby points at him with jubilant glee, and we are unanimously happy to meet him).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

317

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

Our baby’s hand reaches for everything (at least that’s what it looks like, that is how we interpret this hand’s ever resent readiness to reach and grasp; and a corollary that suggests itself is that for everything also means for the whole, as though our baby did not know the difference between the particular and the whole, as if the particular were just as much the whole as the whole is the particular and only the act of reaching for it makes this abolished distinction visible, and without the reaching and grasping everything and the whole, along with our suppositions about it, remains vague and pale). And we? We are, for the baby, the barrier that comes down (not without regret) to prevent misfortune and damage. Of course this makes sense to us, our baby must not reach for razor blades or the knife or the candle flame, but it is precisely this understanding that blinds us to that which we barriers are beyond the limits of necessity. We believe it is no exaggeration to say that our baby, who comes from the whole, is prevented by us (and we cannot do otherwise) from remaining in the whole. (Here our mind reels before the power that is using us to carve out its path, we let the baby reach for the unbreakable bowl and swing it around until it slips from his fingers, performs a tight loop and then crashes against the small tiles of our kitchen floor where, to our surprise, it breaks into two parts).

316

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

Sometimes we (the baby and you, the baby and I, or the three of us together) cause a disturbance or get in the way. Outside in the world. Already on the sidewalk in front of our house we take up too much space and are too slow. Crossing a street is a challenge for us, the length of the traffic light cycles is intended for speed-walkers. So we must be counted among the sick, the old, the disabled rather than the young, the healthy, the normal. Stairs, trains, doors (especially the self-closing kind), none of them were made for us. Soon the stroller (that small, light, practical vehicle) seems like monster to us. It’s better to buckle our baby to our back, hide it there, and move swiftly and agilely through the city like all the other swift and agile pedestrians. But even when being transported in this way, the baby will not release us from slowness. It’s hardly possible to be fast with the baby. Lifting him off our back to lay him down somewhere, feed him or change his diapers, takes time. And it’s hard to find a suitable place; then we’re getting in the way again, or making some kind of mess. We’re not complaining at all. To move about with the baby sharpens our senses, keeps us awake. We are happy to be in the way, but not for the sake of the others. Be your own obstacle, get in your own way, we call out (but maybe we’re just whispering it to ourselves while our baby stands between our legs)!