A chicken won't change its spots - Pt. I

A couple of months or maybe even years ago I found myself stuck on a train with two peculiar strangers. I had met none of them before. Both figures that had been imposed on me by by father fate that day were blank sheets and yet full of sustainable impressions as I would later see.

On our joint journey from A to B, my fellow travellers and me were mostly hiding our voyaging faces in phones, books and behind thoughts or closed eyelids in polite and appropriate silence, and only rarely a pair of eyes furtively wandered across the compartment to spy the land and catch a glance of the others in the room.

The discrete and subdued gestures reduced the scenery to such minute proportions that are typical for those kind of moments that we share with unknown people in confined space, those moments in which silence and constraints of space set the tone and create a human density that yields just the right ambience for serenity and contemplation.

The second class compartment contained six seats but only three of them were taken - with me being the lucky one to have an entire row to myself, my reserve and travel utensils. The two gentlemen opposite me were hardly what I would describe as noticeable or striking but neither were they unattractive or unpleasant.

The young man sitting opposite right to me in the direction of travel and next to the window looked fairly tall although lolling into the corner like an overly cool student parading his indifference and laxity in the class room. The fine lines around his eyes were clear proof of the fact that his schooldays were probably long gone but his attitude and posture still clung to more than just one complex of adolescence.

He seemed utterly absorbed by his frequently humming and vibrating mobile phone, and his two hands scurried nimbly over the miniature keyboard barely allowing themselves to pause in between. His slightly glassy and red eyes seemed glued to the happenings on his phone and barely showed a wince. Once or twice he looked up to catch my eye and a certain coquetry emerged from the so far anonymous ground between us. And while the train rattled obstinately along the track I couldn't help but wonder which kind of mobile conversation he was engaged in.

The person sitting next to him was an elderly man who had a bald head, which strangely contradicted the full and snow-white beard that adorned his wrinkly face. His moustache was interspersed with a couple of isolated dark brown hairs that seemed to be the only witness of his faded youth between the grey and white bristles. The man read a book and a pair of rimless glasses slipped down his nose whenever he turned a page. I didn't manage to make out the title of the book but I am sure it was rather amusing since every now and then a friendly and somehow familiar smile escaped his otherwise composed countenance.

I don't know why but for some reason old people have always made me sad. Even if they smile or probably because they do so. Whenever I face the graciousness and contentment of age, I turn into a sniveling sentimentalist who has just learned that life won't last forever.

And so I found myself torn between my attempts to philander with the man to my right and the compassion I unsolicitedly felt for the gentleman to my left when the train abruptly came to a stop in the middle of nowhere with no station in sight.

~ to be continued ~

danger [ˈdeɪndʒə]

Danger is a condition. A state in which the potential and imminent implications of a risk or threat are turned into the actual exposure to peril. Whereas risk provides opportunities to take counteractions and precautions, a person who is in danger is directly exposed to the possibility of injury, loss or damage. Risk is controllable and dirigible. Risk can be eluded, restricted. Danger, however, is a little less lenient. Danger is evil.

And the evil can wear most diverse gowns. Today it may appear as the incarnate portrait of the depraved, dressed in the black cloak of human malice. Tomorrow it might dance impetuously around the corner as a smug beau called cataclysm.

No matter which of the forms of evil may afflict us, one thing comes always with it: its draconian grip, its relentless breath that it blows into our defenseless necks and the stifling severity of its company. And to make it even worse, evil is probably the smartest symbiont we can find. Its host? Human vulnerability. Death. Eliminate the latter, and the evil will die a wretched death itself. No death, no danger. No danger, no evil.

Personally, I can live with the brothers Danger & Evil as long as there is no human intention behind them. Natural catastrophes? Well, what can we do? Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Accidents? Drive carefully. Wear a helmet. Mind the gap. Illness? Quit smoking, and stock up with the greens. And, last but not least, add a good dash of luck.

When it comes to the human form of evil and the danger attached to it, however, I lose my footing. To me it remains uncertain if the Homo Malignus cultivates the images of its selves to serve the ideas we have of it, or if it has established itself within them as one of its numerous identities.

Nothing is more dangerous to a human than mankind itself. The tables have long turned. The Homo Sapiens is the hunter, not the hunted, and the comprehension of human fears and anxieties alone can stage the cruelest barbarities. Someone who is able to relate to the effects of a disaster, can create the greatest calamity and terror we can possibly imagine.

And yet or maybe because of the above, we remain the only species to thrive on the kick that comes with risks. We are lucky enough to look at the world through a kaleidoscope of humanity and to live in cultural, moral, political, social and economic civilisation, and thus we have systems at hand that help us control risks to such an extend that only rarely we face situations of danger.

We are relatively safe which is why our subchallenged brains creatively create all sorts of innovative anxieties. We are afraid of clowns, butterflies and germs. And every now and then the adrenaline junkies among us indulge themselves in a bit of risk. No risk, no fun. Ego trips to the land of adrenaline, serotonin and endorphins. High speed, great heights, long distances - only to dangle on an alleged string (or a parachute) for a couple of highly thrilled moments, in which our bodies recreate the cocktail of hormones that once helped us to survive - back when we were the hunted and a middle link in the food chain.

All in all, it is clearly evident that most of us are so privileged that the lack of danger lets us crave for risk, and that the common collocation of the terms risk and fun doesn't sound depraved in our silken ears.

Danger is a condition.

Danger is a condition that I have been conditioned to fear.

Fear is something that I have been conditioned to fight.

So, to me danger is something that shall be fought.

Danger is a state - but shall not become a state of mind.

"Life can be magnificent and overwhelming - That is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live." ~ Albert Camus (An Absurd Reasoning, 1942)

I never believed in Groundhogs

It is Sunday and I have a plan.

Tomorrow I will thwart the groundhog's bestial plans and paint the canvas inside the never changing frame with ever changing colours.

And even if the record jumps over the same scratch over and over again, I will have space on the break.

I will put on another record, I will close my ears.

Come on, let's get stuck with the beat, stuck with the beat.

Let's press "refresh" and freshly restart.

Let's pave the road with prophecies that will fulfill themselves.

And if we don't like what we see, let's run away.

What we don't see, shall not see us.

The blind might be overlooked by the dynamics, that are way too dynamic these days.

And even if the milk for the morning coffee will be sour one day, our mood won't ever be.

And I will be happy to only have two feet, and on them I will wear my own shoes.

And I will be happy to only have one self to be aware of.

The other selves have to be aware of themselves.

And some day, I will build myself a parallel universe without an orbit.

And I will sleep at daylight, with three closed eyes.

And I won't sober up since nothing will be sobering.

And the treadmill will tread in vain and into empty space.

And I won't ever again stand still. Down times ruled out.

And I will only stay at places that are windy and breezy.

And should I stumble across monotony, I won't flip but flip the pages of the street map.

And I will get as old as the hills that I climbed,

and when I am 86, I will sit down next to you and we will decide that we never liked beer and move on to champagne.