Monat: Februar 2016

354

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

With the baby at our side, the dream of living (of being alive) has become clearer and at the same time more real. It is a dream (not dreamlike) that has now, over the past days, weeks, months, evolved, as it were, into its true splendor (as if previously we had only dreamed in seclusion)—evolved, that is, into its own awakening. It is not as if we (you, I) were dreaming, for otherwise, how could we tell anyone about this dream? We are dreaming, this is new, even when we are not dreaming. We are dreaming, but we (you, I) are not the only ones who find ourselves in this dream. Somebody led us into it, led us out from our sleep. For this dream does not need sleep in order to begin, indeed it needs nothing less than sleep and sleepers. (This is surely due to the fact that our baby keeps us awake, that he constantly pushes us into awakeness; this small, adamant creature does not tolerate sleep. Strictly speaking, we haven’t slept for nearly a year, and even while sleeping, we are awake. Perhaps some day we will sleep again, we think, gazing at our baby, the only being we know that is deeply, truly, fast asleep.)

 

 

 

353

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

Like a living definition of what one doesn’t have: the baby (our baby, we immediately hasten to add, which has the remarkable effect, not of weakening the clarity of the definition, but of strengthening it.) The baby sits there, eats his banana slices (slowly, thoughtfully, sometimes looking up to follow his fingers from the bowl, where they select a slice, to his mouth, which he is filling faster than he can masticate the banana to size and swallow it), with a serenity that has neither forgotten us, his observers (parents, students), nor retained us in memory. Our baby is (sits and eats) completely by (and for) himself, unlost in himself, leaving us with our (itching) question: and what about us, when will we exist again? No presence of another human being could be more pleasant, more genuine, more peaceful than the presence of one who is completely by himself, and yet: when our baby is no longer by himself (at the end of his banana meal?), will we then exist for him? Will we return to his eye, his consciousness, his being? End of the banana: our baby laughs in our direction. As if what was just a moment ago (his unlostness) had never been at all.

352

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

I am grateful for this time. In two respects. First, that I am able to experience what I am experiencing with our baby: the pleasure and the duty (mainly the duty: strange!) of following this smallest and most inconspicuous of masters and the impossibility of straying from this path. Second, that I even have the time for this! The time! Did I just take it? The conditions were propitious or else I (we) made them propitious. That was a kind of advance practice or anticipatory practice (the only one) our baby assigned to us before his birth: See to it that the conditions are favorable! Take your time! Take it! Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t take it. That was like a small, friendly encouragement and a call to arms against time-consuming, time-killing conditions, against the kind of paradoxical life model that produces and is the product of time famine. Already before his birth our baby began attesting his ability to take all the time in the world for his own development and success. Without any secondary consideration he determined the time of his birth, and he has been living this way ever since. Whenever we try to interfere with his time, he rebels instantly, a rebellion to which we immediately submit. And then we are amazed at our baby’s impatience when his food does not arrive at the table (in his mouth) soon enough, at the scolding, the screams of rage spurring us on, exerting us to not just hurry but rush (to the point of sweating), and ask ourselves, how is it possible that we are grateful even for this hustling.  

 

 

351

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

As though we had never noticed this before: a door, once opened, can be closed again. Our baby’s delirious love of doors has now been enlarged by this possibility. For days on end, on his sliding, tottering, rambling path through our apartment, he has opened or tried to open every door he encounters, but suddenly the opposite procedure gives him more pleasure. To accomplish this, he does not use the door handle, which is too highly placed for him, nor is he stretching to reach it. He presses the door in its frame with both hands, or slaps against it, again with both hands, lightly at first, then more forcefully, until it falls shut with a bang. His pleasure in shutting seems greater to us than it is in the act of opening, perhaps because opening requires more skill, concentration, and practice, while shutting is accomplished with a little force and sufficient impetus. His pride is greater in opening a door, while in closing it there is more pleasure and joy. Doors separate and connect rooms – we imagine it must be a basically shocking experience (which eventually matures into understanding) as well as a fascinating one (which can open up all sorts of possibilities later), and that the point of it becomes surprisingly obvious very quic kly. In our opinion (less yours than mine) there is a connection between our baby’s young ability to open and close doors and the pleasure he finds in withholding his arm when we try to put on his sweater: with a teasing look our baby chuckles and has us staring clueless into the black depths of his sweater’s arm (to discover a loose stitch in the fabric that was so beautifully knitted).

 

 

 

350

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

And again and again we hastily slip back into the adult’s perspective, from which we believe (abetted by a little compulsion, belief and superstiton) we must observe our baby.In doing so often enough, the baby himself slips away from us. Back to the baby’s perspective? But one perspective or the other is not the alternative. And if it is the alternative, it is not important for us. The opening of doors is happening at the right moment (our baby has caught fire. He stretches as far as he can to reach every door handle. This stretching is a glorious act of self-transcendence: who among us could do the same?): this is not a law and has noting to do with a theory about the phases and moments of a baby’s right development. The right moment inheres in the act and can be observed if we abandon every kind of perspective: it is a mystery that can be experienced, concrete, in front of our eyes (enough! Here is another instance when we ought to put brakes on our enthusiasm. No sooner have we learned something than we already stop stretching. To ensure that this does not happen, we observe our baby again, and again, approaching a door, stretching and stretching, and opening it).

 

 

 

349

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

I ask you where our baby is, you ask me where our baby is. We both think: he’s with you, our baby must be with you, didn’t we both (you, I) just hear him squealing in another room? A few minutes pass, then we realize: our baby got away. There follows a long moment of horror (which is actually very short). The sense of paralysis that befalls us forces us to hear a horrible thumping (a thumping that knows no inside or outside; when we lose this difference, our horror is always particularly great). Our baby got away! We leap to our feet. The first thing we see are two light strips slowly moving in the darkness of the stairwell. His waterproof pants, we think at the same time (you or I dropped them off in front of the door to our apartment after coming home from the playground in the afternoon). Then our baby emerges from the blackness, we turn on the light (to be on the safe side, it seems to us), yes, it is our baby, having a try at the suspender of his waterproof pants. We see him and think (again at the same time): so he’s able to open the door to the apartment! Later we laugh at this incident (concealing from each other the fact that we knew from the beginning everything would ultimately come down to this, and precisely this: our baby’s disappearance).

 

 

348

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

You’ve been with us for nearly a year, I think, and make no fuss about it. The desire to pause and look back is alien to you. As though you could only look back nowhere. You seem so big and strong and powerful to me and yet you are so small and weak and powerless. Through you I learn the nature of real power, which can never rest in a single person. This is how you teach us (your mother, your father): what we learn from you, you immediately practice with us. How does this practice work? This too is a mystery. You never say, do this and that, or don’t do this and don’t do that. Nevertheless we understand you exceptionally well. You teach us to look within in every matter, to search there for what is in our nature (you, who often act as if you never turn inward). There is no being that speaks to us whom we could understand better than you. We are receptive to all your teachings, because they never make us ashamed. Sometimes we no longer recognize ourselves: are we really like that? (Our baby was given a bear as a present, received it with interest as it was handed to him, honored the giver with a friendly smile, examined the bear for a while, then leaned it against a pillow, and has since excluded it from any consideration. No nudge of encouragement, no vocal prompts, no suggestion that he might appreciate the cuddly toy one more time has any effect  – he rejects them all.)

347

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

How seriously we take our family! In this stance we are not unimpressionable, doubts leveled against us jar and offend us, but it seems unthinkable to us that they could rock our foundations (this familial gravity is quite universal. Sometimes it is more a wish or a dream, pathos or kitsch, but even this magnification and elevation cannot in any way impair its profound power). We are fond of this gravity in the same way that we are fond of our baby, it is what makes it even possible for us to love him, just as inversely it is the baby who puts us in the position, not of getting serious (when necessary) but of remaining in the state of seriousness (not having left it in the first place). And so, in the museum today, when we arrive at the painting, The Holy Family in a Wreath of Flowers and Fruit, the effect on us is almost magical. Are we dreaming this serene and gaily colored gravity, which is not being exposed to any ironic interjection, any conceited carping or supercilious mockery (as though that were the most worthwhile reason to go to a museum on a workday)? Untouched, this seriousness fills the space around us and within us, a fulfillment that is not unrelated to the proscription against touching the painting on the wall, and to the command always to maintain a certain (even if only a small) distance (though the wish to lean toward it more closely is not interdicted). (The baby in the painting does not look holy at all. He has a parrotlike face whose seriousness has slipped into distress. He is sitting in a semi-erect position on his mother’s lap and is reaching for her breast. Our baby sits up too. He raises a hand and waves at the picture. He’s waving good-bye.)

 

 

 

 

346

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

On his way to having his diapers changed, the baby takes along a small empty candy box, which he now tries to open. It’s hard for him to stick his fingers into the small opening on the side, the box keeps falling out of his hands. He turns over on his side, grabs the box again, turns back, and starts anew. On and off he chews at a corner of the box, until the cardboard softens, then he shoves his fingers under the edge of the top until it lifts a little (basically he doesn’t want to really open the box; rather, he wants to reach into its insides and dismantle, rather than understand, its construction; or, he wants nothing, and his concentrated activity, to which we impute an objective, is nothing more than being-his-own-self in a random thing). Then the box lies forgotten off to the side above his head. Our baby is speaking, his modulation is strong, animated, rarely repeating itself. Silence follows. And his gaze, directed at us (while we put on his horizontally striped tights). Someone is looking at us who knows the difficulties that are involved. Who recognizes his problem with the box, the problem of factually commenting on it. Who could solve everything, but can’t. Who has to wait. Then Someone is gone again, drowned in his own gaze, which welled up just a moment ago.

 

 

345

Das erste Jahr Babybuddha jetzt auf:

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

Our baby’s hand is looking more and more impressive to us. It’s becoming more beautiful by the day, just as its capacities are growing day by day. This hand does not rush things, not even when quickly grasping for something. Its grasping is always simultaneously a sensing, feeling, and studying of what is inside it, what it is holding. Oh, to be grasped just once by this small, soft hand, like that walnut (which it has surely been holding for the past hour)! Our wish to be in the baby’s world is great (mine is probably greater than yours; there are reasons for that). To be in the world from out of this hand and to reach into the world (sensing it, feeling it, studying it) through this hand. We float along in this reverie. (Our baby has put the walnut on the chair, and as he climbs into our lap with our support, we reach for the nut: it is saturated with warmth; its hard shell feels soft; it is warm like an egg still warm from the hen, an egg brooded in the baby’s hand, the same baby’s hand that now lies on our shoulder, curling around it, encompassing us from out of that little hand, until we feel warm, and warmer and warmer: now the baby is brooding on us, we think with conviction, that can take a while).