Ronald McDonald's New Child Care Strategy

Everywhere, 30 April 2008. Ronald McDonald has launched a global campaign against children unsatisfied with their Kid's Meal Package. "Children need to learn who's boss. They cannot grow up thinking that costumer satisfaction is key to success. Studies have repeatedly shown that underachievement is often linked to unconformity and children cannot grow up just wanting more and more. We have decided to take action - children who don't like our food, or who think our toys are not fun or save, well, they need a good and hard hiding, like in the old days," a clown-faced spokesperson was quoted saying. According to Ronald McDonald, big business have to put their foot down in the current global financial crisis and show who's really running the show. Counter-strategies also include educational activities, such as the one shown in the picture above. "We would like to expand our educational strategy to areas such as making children work for their food, like they do in Africa, and then we would like to include women into our activities for gender sensitivity training. People need to know that each penny donated to the McDonalds charity reaches the target group hard and fast. Though there are still some legal issues we have to take a look at we expect our character building capacity to expand by about 18% this year, so we're really chuffed."

Wildlife in Essen

National Geographic would have had a field day. Just came back from a long walk with my father and baby brother in a nature reserve along our beautiful springtime river Ruhr. And guess what - we even saw three large water turtles, lazily lying in the evening sun - right on the log in the middle of the picture, a duck with nine fluffy ducklings floating by. They got really scared when I went closer and they frantically swam towards their calm level-headed mother. Spring now has a firm grip on people's lifes around here, and all those hibernating joggers, cyclers, fishermen, canoeists etc have crept out of their homes and holes. The city meets nature and canadian geese are the supreme rulers of our local river paradise.

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

I shall submit three entries to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest of San Jose State University in California. It challenges entrants to submit the opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels. So, this post shall test-drive my entries for the categories "general", "romance" and "science fiction". What can I do to make it worse?

General:

Martha was nibbling on her grand opulence sundae as a lorry-sized megapnosaurus smashed through the exuberant front panel of the Grand Palais, crashing Lord Edmund’s playful birthday costume party with odorous guts splashing right up to the miniature Buddha on the 18th century mahogany cabinet in the adjacent piano room, but Martha still couldn’t make up her mind if she had a good time.

Romance:

On a warm and breezy midsummer evening in the picturesque harbour town of Isla Cristina, traditional fishing-boats gently dandling in the evening sun, Lucy considered a sensation of moribund confection at the “I love you” Hank had just spat with germinal intention over lobster and caviar mousse, and excused herself, the evening song of a lone orphean warbler disturbed by noises of unorthodox disgorgement.

Science Fiction:

“I will not tolerate this insolence any longer”, Captain Zone Serrati barked while fingering for the “kick me” note posted on his back, but nobody really cared and after a brief, yet utterly futile, moment of suspense, Zone decided to sulkingly ignore the rest of the crew, intent on settling the score once they reached their final destination in the distant galaxy M87 half a century later.

Goodbye, and Good Luck

This is goodbye to magnify, the thread and needle, sweet and lime,
A hunch, a weak and futile lie - the urge to sing a lullaby,

To share, what won’t be shared again,
To purge, to heal, to chance, sustain,
To chase what’s brazen into light,
To gain and conquer, reunite,
The story of a gentle friend,
That signified with wonderment.

My friend, I’ve seen you snoop and pray,
For Paragon, the God of May,
Protecting love and luck and play,
Treads softly over heath and hay,
His antlers care to touch the frail.

My dear, I heard you cry tonight,
For Grampian rain is quite contrite,
We carry our precious freight,
The ribbon of a scattered kite.

Nightswimming in Zanzibar

Inspired by Katy's nightswimming meditation I remembered something beautiful. In august 2001 I stayed at a small hostel on the southern east coast of Zanzibar Island, trying to relax after two exciting, mind-altering and frustrating months in Tanzania.
Zanzibar had been a myth and wonder of my childhood years. There was a German popular song about it and I had starred at its shape and name on a map of my father's comprehensive atlas of the world.
Now I was in Zanzibar, but it wasn't what I had wanted. I couldn't stay on the beach, as I couldn't bear the begging children asking me for a pen for school (their parents probably send them to generate income). I couldn't stand the tourists (of which I was one), for their lack of courtesy towards the locals. And I couldn't get to know any Zanzibaris, due to the insurmountable cultural wall between us (human interaction stripped to its bone of survival and dissipation). So I decided to bugger off back to Dar and my beloved YWCA, where I had spend two weeks talking, chatting and mingling with all sorts of people - students, development workers, tanzanian politicians and two tanzanians who became my close acquaintances.
On one of my last nights on Zanzibar something beautiful happened. We, i.e. me plus three fellow aberdonian Students whom I had been on a workcamp with and again met in Zanzibar, listened to "Nightswimming" by REM. The song had never really been that important to me before, but that night it was suddenly clear - let's go nightswimming! While the others found the idea rather awkward and went to bed, I jumped out of bed to dress bathing gear.
It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen: The sea on Zanzibar's east coast is so shallow, that you can see kelp and white sand shimmering through from below the waterline for half a mile into the sea. The sea was calm and the moon nearly full. When I stepped onto the beach I was an only soul with a vast and surreal watery patchwork carpet of white and black right before me. The moon was bright enough to see fish swimming, as if the carpet was alive. It was low tide and I waded through lukewarm water for some time, standing in the watery carpet which was all around me. I wanted to swim and kept walking into the sea, but the carpet was endless.
When I got tired I turned around. I knew something special had happened and the image stayed with me, keeping a shred of the Zanzibar wonder of my childhood years alive. I happily went back and crawled into my bed, my companions already sleeping save and sound.

Smultronstället

This morning, right after getting up and scratching my bum while looking for mail I made a discovery. There are wild strawberries growing on the little patch of garden in front of my house! Four tiny plants right under my nose, merrily sitting under a rhododendron, taking roots and making oxygen. I wonder how they got there.
Incidentally, "Wild Strawberries" by Ingmar Bergman is also one of my favorite movies. Its orginal title is "Smultronstället". It is the story of an old, pedantic, emotionally cold and detached man, looking back on a life of work and studies. He is recalling his past while travelling from Stockholm to Lund to receive a honorary degree from Lund University. During the trip, he has nightmares and daydreams about his youth, family and impending death, forcing him to reevaluate his life in order to find peace of mind. It is a beautiful and bitter-sweet, but positive movie.
The swedish word "Smultronstället" describes a place, somewhere amidst the wilderness of the swedish forest, under birch or pine, where the sun quietly touches upon a soft mossy spot to ripen wild strawberries. It also refers to a place children treasure, where they share their secrets with their friends. Bergman uses it figuratively to describe a most private place in one's own mind, where some memories and secrets, bitter and sweet, are kept. Though the movie is black and white, it has brilliant mood and color, and some images are so beautiful, I wanted to cry.
So, I'll keep watch over these four little buggers. How could I not see them in three years?

Are you an onion or a mango?

Is human personality more like an onion or more like a fruit, say, a mango? Are we made up of spicy layers that can be stripped away until all eternity or do we hold protected a seed with all our basic makeup right in the middle of us? I'd like to think I am a fruit bearing a seed, doing all the stuff fruits do, with a core protected by juicy flesh. Who wants to be an onion? But did you know there are egyptian walking onions? Possibly you even know one personally? And what does it mean that the mango seed gets harder, the riper the fruit?
Anyway, depending on the sharpness of the knife both onion and mango can be easily cut right through the middle.

Pantoufles

"Il y a moins les buttes qui on fait craindre
aujourd’hui que le bruit des pantoufles."

Tansania, Juli 2001

Draußen scheint ein halber Mond so hell, daß er Schatten wirft. Ich habe ein Sternzeichen gesehen, das könnte Herkules sein. Ein Kind rief und ein Hund bellte. Was ich in mir trage, soll gesagt werden. Was geboren wird, soll leben. Ich war ein Kiesel, und wenn ich wiederkomme, trage ich fremden Sand in meinen Schuhen. Wenn ich wiederkomme, gebe ich Dir nicht die Hand. Auch werde ich mich nicht wie eine Decke um Dich legen. Wenn ich von ferne komme, wirst Du mich lächeln sehen.

Dezember 1997

Am Samstag habe ich Ingo kennengelernt. Ingo ist etwa 60 Jahre alt, Alkoholiker und furchtbar unglücklich. Im Suff jedenfalls. Er schwankte an einer Mauer entlang als ich gerade nach Hause ging und weinte und schrie herzzerreißend. „Ich kann nicht mehr! Ich will sterben!“, weinte er. Ich fragte ihn, ob ich ihm helfen könne. Er sagte „die Erfahrung macht das“; er betete weinend zu Gott und wiederholte ständig: „Ich habe eine verantwortliche Stellung, ich bin ein geachteter Mann im Betrieb!“. Dann war da noch ganz viel Familie und Heimat in ihm. Er sprach mit starkem schlesischen Akzent und fragte mich mehrfach, ob ich Deutscher sei. Ein gebrochener, hilfsbedürftiger, aber nicht empfangsbereiter Mensch, der von seinen guten alten Werten mit voller Wucht eingeholt wird. Ich bin mit ihm ein Stück mitgegangen und schließlich hat er mich zu sich nach Hause auf eine Tasse Kaffee eingeladen. Daheim wartete seine Frau, die sogleich sagte: „Iiiingo, wò wahrst dù? Haast dù ahlles eingekauft?“ Ingo hatte nur Eier und Brot eingekauft, für den Rest hatte er gesoffen. Von den Eiern waren acht kaputt. Da wurde mir klar, das es das Romantische im verzweifelten Säufer nicht gibt. Ich sagte: „Du brauchst Hilfe.“ Er wehrte entschieden ab und sagte, er würde nur ab und zu was trinken und er wäre bestimmt nicht krank. Er wäre ein starker Mann und zur Zeit nur in einer Art Pechsträhne, die vorübergehen würde. Er widersprach sich innerhalb von Sekunden. Er gab vor, alles wäre in bester Ordnung und brach im nächsten Moment weinend zusammen. „Es gibt Dinge, mit denen jeder selbst zurecht kommen muß. Ein Mann soll sich nicht helfen lassen.“ Zwar widersprach ich ihm, doch gab ich irgendwann auf. Da war nichts mehr zu machen und ich fühlte mich schließlich einfach unwohl. Ich täuschte vor, gehen zu müssen und verließ die zwei. Die gute, starke Frau und der kranke Mann, den die Leere völlig unvorbereitet traf.

About Loss

People are different
They open a map of the world
To point at places where their lives unfurled
They work brains on gravel roads
Until knackered and moribund.
They pour poetry through pasta sieves held in the middle of it all
Like suspended on a long arm –
And then turn the revels of unconditional love
Into pulp.

What I cherish is the way
You let me be who I wanted to be.
I have the memory of your arm
- it was so bruised, like jilted charm
And your skin was so thin
And you studied the pathology of concrete,
But yet you glued a dancing couple into the night-sky over wild wheat
And the thought of the best of us made me shiver and shake.

You were my paradigm. I gave you love,
A marmalade jar full of fire-flies,
Made up stories and quirky tales,
An afternoon in the park and the summer breeze,
Idiosyncratic music when I couldn’t speak
And a song for your soul to seek.

Yet people are different
And while they operate on the revels of practical love
They may choose to amputate.

Leaving you coming back again

I am a tree
Trees sleep when they like
They spread their arms
And let the wind do the rest

I’m on a 24 hour bus trip
Each time I wake up, I’m at another place

So when I had been back home for a while,
And a friend asked me: Did you arrive?
Are you present and alive?
I had to say no, for what I had left on the bus.

Just like that day on the airplane,
When it had stopped in mid-air
And my drowsy brain
Took the moon-cratered landscape of the wing
For the country where I was heading.

Dinge, die ich in Lüttich auf der Straße fand

Eine Haarnadel
Eine Haarspange
Zwei kleine braune Kacheln
Zwei Feuerzeuge
Eine „frische Farbe Notiz“
Eine volle Dose Bier
Ein Werkzeug in Schlüsselanhängergröße
Eine Schachkönigin
Einen Bleistift aus China
Einen gebrochener Rückspiegel
Eine rote Rose
Ein Schneckenhaus
Eine „the Doors“ Schallplatte („Who scared you“)
Eine kleine grüne Murmel
Ein Foto eines Judokämpfers
Einen blauen Plastikball.

Wishing Well

I wish I could scream on a fun-fair
I wish I could sleep cat-like
I wish I could paint in a snail shell
I wish I could walk in a clay-pot
I wish I would blossom with my shoes on
I wish I would dream of a shipyard
I wish my spine would crack
Like the back of a book. Open.

The days before flying was discovered

Tonight I dreamt about an archaeologist, who was searching for the reason why, when he was standing on a lookout and couldn’t find anything, a passage in an old book had said, that he would find answers at exactly this place.

So he was standing on the lookout, digging the dirt to find something buried, when the perspective changed and I could see the scene from above.

The mountain facing the lookout with the kneeling archaeologist looked from above like his own face. All he could see was a part of his chin but he couldn’t make sense of it: It was in the days before flying was discovered.

I Jump

From the top of a hill
Back into the wind
There are only two lights
And the way you hold yours
Shuffles my feet
On top of the dune
Hushed sand below

Work

What am I working on this morning,
When cloudlets pass the rising sun
And might make you sneeze
Or meet another one
Who just discovered a favourite place
As you might now?