Small Circles: EGOisms by Toralf Sperschneider

EGO 1

Two images have begun to bleed into one another. We walked out of the blinding

daylight of the cheerful morning into the twilight of a small train station. The train’s

interior lighting switches on and flickers. In the window my blurred reflection

appears. The pane becomes the border between the inner and outer world of the train

on which I’m sitting.

I actually quite like getting the train and provided its tranquillity is not polluted by

the clamour of other passengers, I can look out of the window for so long that it

almost becomes meditative. Since I discovered photography for myself, I see the

world around me with much keener eyes. A photographer is ‘someone who writes

with light’, think I heard something like that in a film once, sounds pretty cool.

Somehow my senses are constantly looking for subjects for this poem or script.

Again and again my gaze leaps, captures the next image, glides with it a little

through the world whizzing past and stumbles once more into the train speeding

forward until the barely perceptible rhythm becomes a kind of trance.

But now the world I see through my train window is passing by more and more

slowly as we approach. Outside on the platform and even inside in the aisle, people

are forming a guard of honour, the monotonous rumbling of the train gets quieter,

and the low hum of the engine wins the upper hand. As soon as we stop the cabin

fills with the sound of people; a wave of bodies spill out and another wave brings in

the next group who make themselves at home on the banks of the cabin. Small

vexations that are soon overcome. When I am on the train, I prefer the visuals

without the audio. So now and then I take the time to bore into the pictures of nature

framed by the window. Sometimes without even thinking about it the many impulses

join together into a short and flickering film. Almost like the droning melodies of a

radio accentuating the background noise.

Unfortunately, a lot of the images you see out of the window are ugly. If there were

ever a set designer, it’s clear: he frequently didn’t put any effort into it. Probably a

freelancer, who responded to the call for tenders by underquoting and in doing so

priced himself out. And now he must see what he can pull out of the bag with the

few resources he has available. So, unfortunately, that’s what I must do as well. The

clients never care about things like that. Images seen from train windows just have to

be there, there are no quality controls or anything. There just can’t be nothing there.

That annoys me. Even with a small budget, more could have been made out of the

surroundings by somebody with an eye for design. But I don’t want to be too hard on

the set designers. Most of the time they can’t help it. They just want to survive too,

to have their own scenography office with a few employees and a secretary.

A few of the creatives responsible for designing these landscapes are real aesthetes. I

appreciate their products and feel moved by them. Beside a competent composition

of an open living space with a carefully assessed fore- mid- and background, they

have arranged remarkable colour combinations. These impressions can stay longer,

as far as I’m concerned, I have no problem with them clinging to my retina for

longer. But even their half-life is unfortunately limited by the conditions of the

moving train.

Nonetheless, characteristic of all the impressions out there is the outstanding image

resolution. You’ve got to give them that. Good depth of field, that is if my eyesight

is up to it. That distinguishes them from the shady reflection which emerges on the

windowpane of the train interior. That’s why I love what’s outside a thousand times

more. Clarity and definition have always meant a lot to me, and I envy anyone who

doesn’t have to wear glasses. To always have a clear view of your surroundings,

without any tool or magnifier, is a blessing. I see myself in the glass again, see the

people who come in and fill up the train.

Perhaps someone else is looking out of me too? Funny thought. My body as the

border and the little person wonders what’s going on outside. And he sees the

reflection of his own border as a reflection and so on. Like the story of a man

reading a book which tells the story of another man reading a book…

As the train platform begins to move away, my shadowy copy in the glass fades into

near unrecognizability. The train station disappears, the world speeds cheerfully and

gradually past me again faster and faster, like a new skin being pulled over the train.

Tunnels swallow us up and spit us out again. Sublime bridges stretch over the

valleys between wooded mountain ridges. A total absence of ideas and the greatest

possible fascination for these postcard landscapes alternate with one another.

No longer troubled by unsolicited standstills, we pass through a little village, cutting

through streets protected by several red and white barriers. Behind a half-decayed

factory building, a vibrant yellow-coloured wall gleams as it gets gradually closer.

Embellished with curved ornaments, I can read a piece of graffiti as we pass by. It

imprints itself on today’s memory-film like a well-selected tagline.

“Today’s a stunning day.”

Brilliant! That’s it in a nutshell. Someone should really write that with light, well,

take a photo of it. As quickly as this image arrived, it sadly leaves my train window

again and after the last, small, increasingly sparse houses standing around, I see a

graveyard approaching. Even from far away you can make out the gravestones, like a

sombre army that has been hastily thrown together and that forms a guard of honour

waiting to be awakened from its slumber by true love’s kiss. They’re not in a hurry,

perhaps they have not yet received the telegram commanding them to fire. They lie

in wait there, the stony watchmen; big and small, they show me their backs and their

patience. As we pass the graveyard, a colourful dot becomes visible between the

graves; a woman gets up from a crouching position. Something is living there

amongst the dead. With her right forearm, she brushes the greyed hair from her

forehead. Her hands seem to be dirty — from pulling up weeds or planting flowers;

there’s no way she’s digging up an urn. The woman remains standing and, using the

back of her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, she looks in my direction allowing

her gaze to rest upon the train speeding past. A small shadow falls over her face,

covering her eyes and nose and obscuring them. I feel our faint connection, and

although she certainly can’t see me, she brings life to this place and thus becomes

the living centrepiece of my image of the day.

Small Circles: EGOisms by Toralf Sperschneider

EGO 2

The ten o’clock train advances menacingly and for a short while it roars and rumbles

through my head, challenging the atmosphere of silence that envelops everything

here in the graveyard. I wonder whether I should read my destiny from the number

of coaches as I did all those years ago when I was a little girl, one be cursed, two be

blessed, three’s a letter, four’s a guest... carriage by carriage it rattles past and takes

its stressful little disturbance away with it again.

I’m already looking forward to the silence — the train having passed by — the

silence which lets me to be as close to you as nothing else can. Glittering extracts of

my own background play like a dazzling silent film in the train windows and then

the raging monster disappears and is swallowed up in the recurrent noise of the wind

and the birds around me. If graveyards didn’t have such a sad background, you

might find them quite beautiful. Something between living and lifeless nature. There

are hardly any other places where you can get as close to this almost tangible

transition as here.

Why this lump still hangs in my throat, even after all the time that I’ve been coming

here, trying to make it slightly nicer for you and comfort myself, I don’t know. There

are phases when I manage to make you stop being dead, you regain some colour and

tangibility, as if you were just living in another city. In these moments, time has

pulled away/pulls away the sheet of sadness lying over me, just for a brief moment.

Whereas on other days that sheet smothers me like a wet, heavy blanket; it’s

boundlessly present again, and I can’t imagine that other city, it doesn’t exist.

Meanwhile, at home everything is fearfully normal without you. After your

children’s childless years, you even have a little grandson, who will only ever hear

stories about his grandpa or be shown a photo in which he’ll a stranger. A reminder

of you which reminds him of no-one.

Even the last objects which you somehow touched or used have long since been used

up. Some I threw away and was pleased finally to be able to. The achievement of

letting go. I didn’t leave anything, no toothbrush or shaving materials, I didn’t even

have the heart to finish eating the bar of chocolate we started. What was I supposed

to do with your glasses, which didn’t fit any other eye, and behind which I could

only see your face? What about the records and CDs? I don’t listen to any preprogrammed

music, especially not yours, I can’t listen to any of it without seeing

you sitting in the armchair nodding along. I prefer to leave the radio on in the

background and occasionally hum along to something that never belonged, that

never belonged to us. If I’m unlucky, the radio team still finds a way to rummage in

my grief, and Mr. Presley or another one of your musical flings sings out of the

speaker. For a while now I’ve even been managing not to switch off the radio in such

nightmarish situations, to enjoy the dull sting these songs trigger; I think of it as a

gift of being a little closer to you again. I just stop moving then, no matter what kind

of chores I’m in the middle of. I stand still so as not to disturb the moment. Not until

the next song or until the voice of the radio host returns does life flow back into my

limbs and reality return.

As a child, whenever I went to the cemetery with my grandmother I always

wondered why, even twenty years after grandfather’s death, she still sat on her bench

at the end of the visit and took the time to cry. She could grieve as if at the touch of a

button. Now I’m beginning to understand. On the one hand, twenty years no longer

seems as long as it did when I was a child, and on the other hand, the instant of your

death simply travelled through time with me. It couldn’t be dumped somewhere in

the past or just disappear like a tiny dot on the horizon, instead it hounded me

incessantly. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore, but that moment is clear and obvious

in whatever I do.

At home, whenever I put all the garden tools in the basket it’s completely normal,

it’s become an integral part of my everyday life without you. No tightness in the

chest when I fetch the watering can out of the cellar, not once when I unpack the

memorial candles, stuff the matches in my jacket pocket and pull on my old shoes.

The short walk here is mine and mine alone. The two of us never had to do it

together.

The little plants in my basket looked at me inquisitively, wondering where their new

home would be — and I smiled, the way I’d smile at you, because I can do

something to make you happy. Of course, I’m only really pleasing myself, but the

beautiful thing about it is that, in all this busyness, I am near to you. With every

movement, even shopping at the garden centre, finding the plants, I am with you. A

language of flowers that no one can hear.

And then when I enter the cemetery and am greeted by the first grave stones — by

now I know all the names engraved on them by heart — I’m overcome by the urge

once again to work out the ages of the deceased. It’s unbelievable how young many

of those lying here were. Some of them I even know from my childhood and youth.

Back then, they were adults to me — we looked up to them or made fun of them. In

those days, the elderly really did seem very old, particularly as they acted and

dressed their age. Without feeling even the tiniest bit like them, I have long since

outstripped them. The dead and the grave stones around here are all like stopped

clocks. My time is permitted to run on, like me, whenever I am not here with you.

The never-changing last few metres past the Virginia Creeper hedges, turning onto

your street, heading towards your final resting place as if drawn by a magnet. Then

the incomprehensible: your name in stone, and now the past crashes over me like a

tidal wave, always new, and anxiety creeps up into my throat whenever I read the

engraved letters. That’s why every time I only look briefly, a quick peak. Then

promptly look away again, like back in the days of class tests, scared someone would

catch me cheating. No one saw it, my hazardous glance into inconceivability. But it

comes very quietly closer again, the ticking of the clocks that point to NOW. Hope is

like a memory into the future.

I relax as I work on the flowerbed. Joy, silent joy, comes to me, because I can do

something for you. I’m a little proud; the flowers look really pretty in their damp

earth and will soon feel at home with the other plants. My hands are black with earth

and I reach into the watering can to rinse them off. The dirt comes off and disperses

into little clouds in the water. I water the bed and in doing so return the earth to

where it was, to you. I don’t want to take it home with me and it doesn’t belong in

the drain, it belongs here and I at home in my everyday life, which has become a bit

more normal again, which once more belongs to me. Am I a loser because I have lost

something, lost you?

At the end, I sit down, just as my grandmother did, just as I do every time when I’m

with you, on the little, white bench by the grave, an intensive being-with-you, a

return to the times which we went through together.

Your little notebook. I fish it out of the basket and flick through it at random, then I

point at a spot and begin to read your words. Perhaps even today I am still looking

for answers, even though the question never really comes to mind. Still, the police

and the prosecution believed at the time to have found all the necessary information

in it. “Winter solstice,” I read quietly aloud to myself. I like these surreal worlds of

ideas: your escapes into dreamy disassociations. Your poetic collages of clashing

unrealities have always embedded something wonderful in normality. And yet I

should have recognised your contempt for life in fantastic, absurd texts like this.

“My face sank slowly deeper and deeper into the soft snow and gradually the white

sea solidified under me and became a barrier. Somewhere far, far away, a small

section of the horizon ruptured, and a slim slit opened up between the sea and the

sky like a horizontal curtain. Scraps of light sprang up and through them I caught

sight of a vague and blurry shape moving and as it became clearer it stood out from

its background. The shape seemed to glide softly and smoothly from one position to

the next, but without any system, without rhythm and without revealing itself. And

suddenly all the snowflakes which had settled on the ground began to detach

themselves from the floor again, to rise, at first very gently and then blended into a

fine glitter, a fabric of light and crystals. Any hold the blanket of snow uniting them

once had was now lost — they prised themselves away from each other and floated

silently in the sky. It was quiet, even solemn, my surroundings became emptier and

far above me I saw the little spirits vanish into nothing.

The rift along the horizon had become gigantic, a divide was no longer recognisable

and everything seemed to turn into a great solitude. The movement between the

leaves of the sky and the earth had grown into a faraway melody, absorbing

everything into itself, it swelled and subsided, felt its way into new territories with a

soft, quiet whispering, like little floral tentacles, only to melt into them a little later.

A smile filled me up, warm contentment glided into every region of my body and full

of expectant stillness I readied myself for the arrival of the all absorbing, heavenly

dream, I felt betrothed to everything that is to come, that already is, and that will be,

to be one with no divisions, but in total completeness.”