Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

On days when the ground is as shaky as daddy longlegs in their webs or when the turn of tide becomes a revolution, when uncertainty is a reliable invariable or when your brain is hibernating under a blanket of summer stories, it is about time to stop thinking and cling to the things that are set in a carefree stone and to grab a butterfly net to recollect them.

Those things, we don't argue about. Those things that are manifested in our genes and egos without conversion right and do deserve some acknowledgement whilst they are flapping their funny wings.

I am talking about the petit trivia, obscure foibles and aversions as well as the compulsive rituals that always have and always will grant maximum satisfaction or horror to our wide-eyed selves.

For instance the ridiculous fact that we try to pick up four peas at a time with the tips of our forks when nobody is watching or that we sometimes still try to not step on the cracks between the paving stones. Or the joy that comes over us when we find a particularly chunky piece of chocolate in our Stracciatella. Or, to keep to this sweet example, about the fact that we insist on putting Ben & Jerry's Phish Food into the microwave for exactly 27 seconds and under no cirumstances eat it with anything else but a soup spoon.

About cringing when somebody plays a soprano aria or drags us into a musical theatre. About loving the wind because it is leading us to believe that the seaside is waiting around the next corner even when we are positioned in the heart of the continent. About never sleeping on trains and counting trees instead, about rescuing lost earthworms and turtles, about wearing our favourite and worn-out jumpers although we have a million impeccable ones. About saying million instead of three. About not being able to sleep late, about smoking a cigarette out of the window when the whole world is asleep and being happy just for that reason. About hating the steel guitar with all our hearts and radically dismissing every song featuring the latter. About turning on the light in the middle of the night because our neighbour told us earlier that the house was haunted. About loathing board and card games. About not buying a book because we don't like the title. About buying a CD simply because it has a beautiful cover. About the irritation that we feel when someone overtakes us on our morning run. About not having the heart to delete certain songs from our iPods because we would feel guilty due to an utterly stupid sensation of nostalgic obligation although we never listen to them. About rather getting soaked than carrying an umbrella along. About playing G-flat major pieces only because we like the black keys.

About being human. About being us. About our very own small joys and pleasures. About being able to be silly as, afterall, a brainy man once said: "Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down in the green valleys of silliness."

And, now, lets have a frugivorous drink and use a see-through straw to cull the berries.

A Night Owl's Linear Secret - To whom it may concern

A carousel of voices. A social combat. Conversational wisps are competing with random blobs of treble and basses that drop down from the speakers in the corner.

She is struggling to catch the words that are addressed to her and to turn them into something actually affecting her. The lips, they move to make a point. The eyes are worse, they ask for applause, they cry for attention. She takes a prolonged sip of her white wine, a sour brew that is offering her a million sweet reasons to dive in and sink into oblivion. The aftertaste puts her into red alert that is immediately defused by the benign gaze of her night's companion.

He is observing everything she is trying not to be, and still, when their eyes meet, his devotion is reflected by a brief flash of warmth in her chest. At the mercy of the personality he imputed to her, he breathes in every single move she makes. Every word she utters is cautiously stored away in his mind and recompensed with authentic understanding.

She finds herself unarmed confronting his natural nature, she finds herself disarmed by his blemished perfection. And so her ratio and her reason shake hands and sign a contract of romance. But with every clause they add and with every consent, the apprehension in her grows and translates itself into a heartbeat of a noxious accelerando.

She knows that the iron band around her throat that is accompanying the allegro is called blind panic, the only Achilles' heel shared by ratio and reason. Panic has been responsible for the fatal ends of numerous reasons.

And she also knows that her rational way of being has encountered the strongest enemy that it could have found at the front of affection: affection itself. Affection for someone her ratio wouldn't even have put on the substitutes' bench. So, while her ratio was doing a dirty deal with her reason, a feeling rose from the dirty ground without leaving footprints and sent it's fellow fighter panic onto the pitch to win the game.

But this time she and her ratio would have found silent but true pleasure in victory - one without edges, one without deflections and sounds - but pleasure nevertheless.

Now, all that is left is that crystal-clear emotion that is targeted at someone out of sight, someone out of reach. All that she holds in her hand is that fiery feeling that is laughing at the perfection seated in front of her because it doesn't give a damn about perfection. Her ratio's prey has died with it's hunter while the affection's victim remains unscathed in the shadow - for as many reasons her reason had, as few reasons her heart could present. Her ratio aimed at the future, her affection, however, is aimless and wallowing in the hollow present.

Numbed by her discovery and stirred by the panic, she empties her wine, charms her companion - who is still carrying the alleged banner of victory - off to buy her another drink and stands up from her chair.

She stumbles through the nocturnal crowd and across a dozen bees in her chest until she finally reaches the door and steps outside to walk away while her back is frozen with the fear of being caught. And while she paces through the parallel universes of the passers-by, she can hear her ratio cry while a smile finds her face and the allegro becomes cantabile.

"Do nothing secretly; for Time sees and hears all things, and discloses all." ~ Sophocles

Mala malus mala mala dat

Today's topic is hard to swallow for someone who counts on the basic goodness of humanity. Today's topic is hard to cough up for someone who inhales euphemisms just as artlessly as oxygen. Today's topic is The Evil and the impeachment of it's existence.

Before I try to get to the bottom of this unsavoury matter, I shall utter, however, that I presuppose that we all share a common understanding of what is good and what is evil, and I will build my thoughts upon the assumption that our acquis communautaire is the moral idea that has been established with Kant's categorical imperative: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

This moral law unveils the evil at one blow. The shape of the evil, however, is a blind spot. It is the gown it wears that bestows the imprint on it's blank face. And gowns, it has a great many. Today it may appear as the incarnate portrait of the depraved dressed in a black cloak, whereas tomorrow it might skip impetuously around the corner as a smug beau. It remains uncertain, though, if the evil cultivates such images of it's selfs to serve our ideas or if it has established itself within them as one of it's numerous identities. No matter which of the latter may afflict us, one thing comes always with it: it's draconian grip, it's relentless breath that it blows into our defenceless necks and the stifling severity of it's company.

But the evil doesn't exist autonomously. The evil is born from two like-minded figures that bear the names Egoism and Greed for Power. It's parental home has a sign over the door that says Selfishness and in the backyard Empathy and Justice are laid to rest.

When it comes to the Evil's life expectancy, I refuse and will hopefully always refuse to give up my naivité and my trust in the good. I do hope that some of the evils will die if you treat them with either tenacious ignorance from above or fight them openly with an adament sense of justice from within. I do hope that the good shall triumph over the evil simply because I have to believe in humanity at large; and I will cling to my greenness as long as I can - even if some might call me a fool.

"For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." ~ William Shakespeare