NOTEBOOK

She wrote to herself, alone. Line by line. The text took shape. Told of her worries. She roamed the house. Her friend was out eating. The pill took effect. She took it at seven. The text — a mountain. Insurmountable. Her friend came late. She was still sitting at the computer. It was already nine. Greetings flew against her skull. She didn't return them. What was she writing there? No reaction. She wrote a manifesto about their relationship. She saw it. The mountain broke away.

The writer wrote for an invisible audience. His homeland torn apart. His wife slept elsewhere. The readership no longer existed. Perhaps it never had. He didn't believe in success. Considered it undeserved. Prizes piled up in the corner. Dust settled on his name. It had once meant something. Somewhere in between lay his new manuscript. Waiting for something to occur to him again. The pages empty. The portrait hung crooked.

She was turned inward. One body. One spirit. Something lay buried inside her. Another body. Another spirit. She set out to see the world through other eyes. But remained trapped within herself. Seeing life through another's eyes seemed impossible to her. Her mirror image only reflected one body. The spirit did not answer. She lingered in the room and could not reach herself.

She didn't sleep. Mocked her. Smelled of jasmine. Success was overrated. Her silent readership applauded. Fame followed after her death. She roamed through the dark waters. The waters did not respond. No wave. No echo. No resistance. Today too she sat before the paper and wrote. The words danced quietly along. Her language light, yet unstoppable.

She cooked him his favorite meal. Seasoned it. Let needles fall. He ate it all up. Spoke of his work. She witnessed his end. Looked at him innocently. Something inside her loosened. She was free. He fell to the floor. She left.

He ran and ran. The compartment grew larger. He lost himself among the apes. Something blocked. Something was no longer there. The stone creatures followed. They crept slowly behind him. Steps grew dull. Voices quieter. Until it echoed through the entire corridor. They called him a traitor. His words displeased them. He ran, leaped from the compartment. Words without addressees. In the darkness he dug his grave. Lifted earth. Sat down and vanished.

Sunday. He circled the desk. She drenched in sweat from the evening. The child waited. In vain. Neither spoke. When it moved out, both were nine. It was Sunday. He went to the sofa. She drank. The child waited. In vain. When it disappeared, both were still nine. He sat down. She beside him. The child played. When it looked up, both were gone.

He didn't sleep. He didn't eat. He vegetated. Looked at the weapon. Drew. And fired. What remained? A body. No one inside it. She laughed.

The wound gaped. He was not there. No one heard her screams. She lay there at night. In dreams he appeared. Followed her. In between something was missing. Father he called himself. Progenitor he remained. The wound festered. What did he leave behind? Shards.

Probably the truly real life took place beyond his reach, yet as always, access to it remained denied to him today too.

The blockade lifted. What was thought lost. Now lay free. He told her about the incident. She called him an idiot. He wrote about it. Got praise. Recognition. Writing had ruined her. The blockade had been good. It kept him from the desk. Now her face lay there. And the old man's.

Mother beat her child. Dreamed of the time before its birth. It grew. She kept beating. Until it crawled away. Then she stormed into the room and dragged it out. Scolded and struck it. Mother beat her child. Out of habit. When she left. She left it alone in the apartment. Locked it in its room and thought no more of it. She drank out. That made her happy. Her death came suddenly. It made nothing better. Life remained a war.

The worm ate the bird. Back to the beginning. Today he kissed the needle. Sat down. Spread his wings. And flew away.

He heard her snoring. The gaping wound ran between them. She screamed in the mornings. He heard her breath creeping through the dark house. Sometimes she ran into walls. He trembled. Her snoring shattered the hallway. He fell. Could not defend himself. The floor turned fleeting. She screamed. He staggered through the corridors. One more blow landed. He lay drenched in sweat on the mattress. She snored. He lay on the floor.

Viva Las Vegas. The money devoured itself in minutes. The women at the machines fed it coins. He. Became. Addicted. Seven as lucky number. Missed. Lost. Sums. Always. The bank consoled him with coins. Earlier one was safe. Today one loses. The light dimmed. The place empty. All just a wild dream. He lived for the bin.

Earlier he learned not to be like the others. Today he adapted, just to avoid being spoken to.He changed his name. Pleased no one. He changed himself for them. Pleased them even less. He changed his views. They said he had sold out. He dug a hole. They stared. He vanished. They courted. It helped nothing. The critics were proven right.

The language lay withered on the table. The table had seen better days. Who was the little flower in the background. The language looked up and immediately lay back down. It made no sense. The table moved closer. The little flower didn't see it coming. It slept soundly. When he stepped up to her, he woke the flower. She screamed, the edge lodged in her wonderful blossom. "What a boorish lout!" she fumed. But no one looked up. Neither the language nor the window.

The old school of behavioral therapy was based on adaptation for the good of the community. It was blind in both eyes. On one side to socioeconomic factors. On the other to precarious conditions. Every person was reduced to a standardized clinical picture. Traumas that led to the illness were of no interest. Instead, adapted people were produced who lost their individuality. For the good of a community that considered itself particularly enlightened.

He sat hunched on his armchair. Like a king. He had achieved everything. And yet remained a solitary creature. Could find nothing beautiful. Money devoured him. He wrote invoices. Again and again. His wife had left him with the little one. He stayed loyal to his company. The employees had quit long ago. He remained sitting. The empty office painted a picture. In which he no longer featured. The uncomfortable truth was that the dynasty was sinking. And with it, so was he.

Outside children played. Nothing awoke in her anymore. The world stood still. Only the clock ticked mutely along. Something lay there on the floor and bloomed. Tick. Tock.

Laughter in the corridors. Madman on the street. Laughter is fatal, said the doctor and pushed the patient out. J. didn't sleep for three days. They pumped him full of medication. Quieted him down. He didn't walk. Didn't eat. Drank nothing. Vomited. Laughter everywhere. Voices whispered. He grew anxious. Rooms moved closer. J. lay on the stretcher. Unconscious. Four men grabbed him. Lifted him up and threw him in the river. Laughter in the corridors.

Must literature offer consolation? No. Literature must neither entertain nor console. Entertainment fiction exists for that. My texts move rather between hopelessness, lethargy and isolation. Consolation is not provided therein. I do not see it as the author's task to soothe his readership. Whoever finds nothing in it for themselves is welcome to turn away. I prefer to write against the expectations of the culture industry than to conform to them.

After a while she realized she despised every form of collectivism. For her, unity meant nothing other than cultural assimilation. A kind of cultural sect she would rather not cozy up to.

He was not capable of raising his voice on any topics, so he remained silent when questioned about his position, when accused of not wanting to engage with the tense state of the world, and was finally made to kneel before the scaffold to be beheaded. There he was silent forever.

The father bellowed around. The mother struck the child. The child kicked the cat. The cat dug its claws in. The child got smacked. The father flew out. The mother lay on the sofa rattling. The child sat beside her and watched the mother collapse. The cat sprang from the window. The child was left alone, just sitting there. Grief was a puzzle to it.

He had lived in absurd times. Fabric fell loose around their legs. Judgments sat tighter. They were outraged about everything. And everyone. They stared at screens. Ceaselessly. Before them they knelt. And told themselves the same story. Again and again. Until they believed it was true. Authenticity a foreign word.

The limits are set. The intellectuals of tomorrow write nothing more. Are instead beaten to death by the masses. Everything sinks into the land of peace-joy-pancake. The world of tomorrow stinks of unicorn vomit. The feuilleton cowers in the corner and makes no sound. The book world consists of uniform mush. He wants to tear his eyes out. The sensitive readership howls loudly at his stench. He remained a grouch to the last.

Yes, indeed, he had missed the connection and now stood alone at the platform waiting in vain to catch another express train that would take him into the realm of grown-up fools.

The poets of today are silent. They go unseen. Only after their death do they gain significance. And then the posthumous person wonders why they have fallen apart. The literary figures of this time are the fallen angels and the mouthpiece of the future.

He stranded in the East. There his life lay buried under cobblestones. The rough way of life of the people in no man's land was hateful to him. The gap between West and East ran deep. Concessions were not made. So he sat in the pit and looked toward the sky. For him both sides were empty.

The writer writes for no one. He prefers to wander over graves. Today he researches in the name of hyperrealism. Out of compulsion. Every figure must cut. Otherwise nothing remains. Otherwise the readership throws the work in the bin. He keeps writing. Against expectation. Without hesitating. Postmodernism is a plague. One he is not immune to.

Can literature still be uncomfortable today? Do you even reach readers with your dark, reduced texts, or is it today more about plot and pace? I think it probably comes down to finding the right people. My texts deliberately refuse the readership. They don't narrate — they map states of being. Not everyone takes to that. But I don't orient myself by that. Instead I leave the readership the breathing room it needs to grasp my texts.

Let me talk about my authorship. The author of these notes is not yet thirty. But has already been through a great deal. An unfinished degree. A fractured childhood. And an absent father made him his own inner critic. He wrote and read eagerly even as a child. The dream of creating works as an author arose from his inner compulsion to communicate with the world. His shy side hates standing in public. Which is why he hides behind a pseudonym.

He hated the public eye. He preferred to go underground. Sat down at the desk and wrote his texts not out of compulsion but out of inner pressure. Perhaps he simply hadn't yet recognized the advantages of the spotlight. The light didn't attract him. Rather, it blinded him.

Perhaps more lay buried in her than it appeared from the outside. She looked up. Saw herself, then the rain fell onto the paper.

Trusting the institution brought him into difficulties. Bureaucrats were creatures without sense or reason. The livelong day they sorted and administered individuals. Sent them to labor camps or pocketed blood money. The system had turned people into apes. The tie sat too tight. The coffee tasted bitter. Like machine oil. Something got stuck in the gears. The bureaucrat stalled. Already he was pensioned off and replaced by another. The institution was always right.

The "Homopudus postmodernus" — a contrary contemporary. Carries on like Croesus. As biased as a dog and as funny as a squeezed lemon.

Psychology only helps people fit themselves better into the system, so that they then willingly throw themselves — self-sacrificingly — before all those who do not mean well by them, yet whom they believe they must please. All others see no use for themselves in this world. Therapy is pure self-sabotage.

He wrote at first in order to communicate. That bore no fruit. The addressee died before his eyes. Then he began writing only for himself. For the sake of autonomy. That didn't go well either. Something wanted out. To find common ground. To pick up resonance. So he decided to write only when he felt pressure. Perhaps that would give him the necessary self-confidence back. Or it made him even more ill. He seemed desperate.

Mother threw me into the cold world. Watched until I went under. And disappeared. That's what they call life in social trouble spots. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of her death, a story about a mother who only finds herself in the cold lake.

Today she was in good spirits. She switched on the stereo. Lay down in the bathtub. Read from the Kafkaesque madness. And didn't blush at the thought of taking herself captive. Just so as not to be used as an author's sketch. His muse had had enough.

Completely depleted, he counted the hours until he could once again rise out of reality, to glide down into gentle dreams and lose his consciousness for further hours.

His words were neither original nor illuminating enough that one could carry them out into the world to share them with everyone else with pleasure. His words were completely indifferent to them, since they didn't mean as much to others as they did to him.

The branch sawed itself off. It had had enough of the trunk it sat upon. So it sawed and sawed. Until the wound was large enough to emancipate itself from the trunk. The tree didn't like the branch's act at all. And so it swept after the branch to keep it close. The little branch bolted. Ran for its life. The tree struck roots. But it could no longer catch it. The little branch broke in two. It had underestimated freedom.

"Likes generate joy!" said the machine. "Bend yourself! Until nothing remains!" said the algorithm. "Now everyone can. The time has come. Seize the opportunity!" shouted the investors. What remained were starving apes.

His nature was too timid. His nature lay on the mattress, wrapped in thick blankets. He felt nothing anymore. A few days prior he had settled in. His nature seemed relaxed. But something pulled at him. Didn't want to stay. He scratched, dug himself into the blanket. Until he could no longer remember what he had ever settled in for. The walls had grown ears. They listened. But said nothing. He remained sitting. Stared out the window and observed the world from inside.

The sun shone. She found herself, in contrast to the rest, quite beautiful. No one begrudged her it. When all eyes are directed at one person, the revulsion crawls out of everyone.

She cut the curls from the red-haired girl. Got her in with the other women and locked the doors. The hose attached to the exhaust, the car drove off. The screams faded. When the bodies were retrieved, the men in white looked at their work. They had been good people to the last. Today too they had acted in the belief of having destroyed all the witches. So they marched back into the west wing of their institution, to transfer further patients to dreamland.

She clung to her friend. That way she couldn't leave her. Every drop of nobility was worth drinking dry. They stoned her on the forecourt. A woman slept elsewhere. Sat on her balcony and looked down to the forecourt where the friend had once lain. Now only white doves sat there.

The postmodern era — a time in which everyone could be everything and simultaneously nothing.

He walked through the rain. It was visibly unpleasant for him. The tears ran. He could not stop them. They dripped down his cheek.

An ordinary morning in the life of a human being. No false impressions, please. Thank you.

The ambulance was full. Creatures in white walked on. Dogs waited. Apes bellowed. They all looked at the clock. It was time. Time to prepare. All other eyes were fixed on the clock. It was time. Time to go. The giraffe smiled. Her two little ones had sprained a leg. Now it was a matter of waiting. The gorilla in the wheelchair was puzzled by the long wait. The dogs licked their wounds. Creatures walked on. It was a sunny day in May.

Even his wife knew nothing of his affair with the young woman. Equally she knew nothing of the little daughter who had come into the world after the woman became pregnant by him. Until the moment the girl stood at her door, to finally meet her daddy in person. So he had to confess the truth about his love affair to his wife. The next morning she filed for divorce once and for all.

After he had laid down his entire human nature and left it behind, all that remained to them were his wretched words, which he had not taken with him and from which they still hadn't grown any wiser.

The young man caught sight of the young lady and planted his seedling in her. So from her belly a little plant grew, and from the young lady — who after months had long since withered into an old oak — a blossom arose, into which a young man, upon glimpsing it, promptly planted his seed, so as to let a little plant thrive in her belly too, that with time should grow and blossom into a splendid flower, into which yet another young man would bury his seed.

He blamed himself for nothing. He had done everything for her. Nobody knew about it. He understood nothing. Next door a young woman slept. He heard her snoring. The gaping wound ran between them. She screamed in the mornings. He heard her breath creeping through the dark house. Sometimes she ran into walls. He trembled. Her snoring shattered the hallway. He fell. Could not defend himself. The floor turned fleeting. She screamed. He staggered through the corridors. One more blow landed. He lay drenched in sweat on the mattress. She snored. He lay on the floor.

Silence is the purest form of ignorance. The readership doesn't carry you. It tolerates you — as long as you function. One false note and it turns away. Expect nothing from your readership. It only waits for the moment to plunge the knife in your back. The moment you cave, you belong to it. So don't cave. Or worse: it stays — and makes you harmless. So write against it. Not for it. Be hard. Be disruptive. Everything else will be forgotten.

The critic's mouth was bound shut. He called it censorship, they called it sensitivity. His criticism hurt. So it was no longer permitted. From then on: everything sweet. Everything mild. Everything honey. The books were stroked. And no one asked anymore whether they could bear weight.

Did you know work can end fatally? No? Now you do. No one killed him and that's exactly where the problem lies. It was no breakdown. It was his end. Ten square metres sufficed. The clock kept running. Only he no longer did. This is no exaggeration. It is an observation.

One evening Fridolin entered the pub around the corner. Not because he wanted to, you should know. Only because he didn't know what to do with himself. He sat at the edge. As always. The drunk smelled of stale courage. "You're not one of them." Fridolin said nothing. He was good at that. "You're one of those who disappear." Someone laughed too loudly. "You know what's worse than me? You. I fall apart before everyone's eyes. You fall apart without anyone noticing." Fridolin opened his mouth. Nothing came.

He cleared his throat. All eyes on him. The text lay before him. "Herzlich Willkommen" it said. He cleared his throat. Then he began. Formed words. Swallowed them. Self-doubt overwhelmed him. Sweat came. "Herzlich..." he swallowed. All eyes on him. A clearing of the throat. The doors closed. The room stuffy. "...willkommen." Chairs scraped. The first stood. More followed. The crowd walked out.