It happened in a flash. I slid across the asphalt. Time dragged on before my eyes as I watched the events unfold as if in fast motion. My motorcycle was about two meters ahead of me, sliding on its right side, slowing down, and finally rearing up one last time like a creature on the verge of collapse. Then it fell onto its left side.
It was as if I had sensed that I would fall. As if a door had opened, allowing me to catch a glimpse of the future. It wasn't the first time. But as always, when such images stormed from my subconscious into my conscious mind, my intellect raised its doubts. Where did these images come from? Had they risen involuntarily from my subconscious, or were they projections of my mind, which wanted to give more weight to its arguments in this way? I opted for the latter possibility, brushed the images aside, and decided to make my way to the Kimbo Run despite my fatigue and a much too late start to the day.
I parked the damaged car in the underground garage and dragged myself up the stairs to the second floor. Once I got to my apartment, I threw the torn pants in the trash and took off my clothes. A leaden tiredness came over me. I carefully lay down on my bed and closed my eyes.
My life has always been forward-looking. I can hardly remember the few moments when I felt I had arrived. In fact, the past plays a minor role in my life. When other people reminisce, I have to laboriously leaf through my inner diary, which I never kept, in order to contribute an anecdote from my past. That's why I tend to remain silent on such occasions and leave it to others to present themselves in the light of their stories.
I hate standing in line and shouting, "Here, here, it's me, can't you see me?" That's how I see the behavior of many people. They submit to a predetermined order and elbow their fellow human beings to push themselves forward one or two positions. And for what? For the illusion of getting something valuable. Yes, it must be valuable, otherwise they wouldn't all be standing in line and pushing forward, the fools.
When I think like this, it's not a good day. It's an angry day. A day when I have no mercy for my fellow human beings. They annoy me, some of them disgust me. When I'm outside, in a busy place, in a shopping mall or in the pedestrian zone, it feels like I've landed in a comic book. The bodies are unflatteringly exaggerated—caricatures, the faces are grimaces. The proportions are lost in both the big and the small. This reveals what is hidden most of the time: the simple-minded, the ugly, the trivial, the devious, and the evil.
Fortunately, these days are rare. They are days when I am exhausted. Time has passed. I have wasted my time on the necessary. "Necessary"—the word says it all: necessity, compulsion, coercion, rape, bodily functions. "Necessary" sounds like rape and smells like shit. Damn it, am I really the only person in this world who has the smell of shit in my nose when I do my daily necessities?
And that's what has always driven me forward: the smell of shit in the here and now and the realization that life doesn't have to smell like that. There have been and still are those few moments when life smells like lemons, the sea, fresh grass, weed, love—like happiness and joy.
My parents tell me that as a child, I spent hours building imaginative things with building blocks. It must always have been an inner need for me to build something beautiful from loose individual parts. Yes, I had a wonderful, sheltered childhood and loving parents. They made sure that everything smelled good. But as my awareness grew, that disgusting smell crept into my nose.
It's this awful stench that I haven't been able to get rid of since. It clings to this world. Linguistically, excretion has its origins in division, separation, and isolation. And so my breath caught in my throat when a few boys stood in front of me at kindergarten and made it clear to me that I didn't belong. They were imitating what they themselves had experienced. The caregivers divided the children into good and bad children. Some got a sweet dessert, others got nothing.