August

It’s 5:02am. I’ve been awake for over an hour. Slowly it becomes bright. On the ceiling of the room, the light of the street lamps draws geometric figures. Soft sounds of the city penetrate through the closed windows. I lie on the daybed and remember as a child lying in a bed in Athens, Ohio, 64 N Shafer Street. We visited the grandparents Spine, my mother’s parents.

The meaningless writing of red letters on light paper is like Roman Opalka’s number writing: there is a beginning but no end. The end of life is the end of number writing. The end of life is the end of letter writing. The end of life is the end of writing.

Keep writing. Without stopping, without dropping, without thinking, without meaning, without reason without will. Only with the instinct to move the hand.

Suddenly I remember: Renzo Piano is the name of the architect who designed the Palace of Justice in Paris. Out of listlessness, I looked at what I wrote yesterday — and suddenly the forgetting stops. Although there is no relation between this name and what I have written yesterday. The remembrance is back. The nonsensical remembrance of this architect’s name. So now this name is on paper, a name with no meaning. His name might as well be Penzo Riano. That made no difference. Because what do I have to do with him? — A lot! So many times I have passed his Palace of Justice, amazed, seen it glow from afar when I cycled from Paris back to Asnières late at night. I remember taking photos on a wonderful evening and sending them to my family on Whatsapp. I take the smartphone in my hand, open Whatsapp and search for these photos. Nothing found. Wrong memory?

Memory builds my life together. It is not my consciousness that decides what I remember, which traces remain visible. The subconscious mind does this. But even everything I don’t remember stays there, is stored somewhere, has left a trace somewhere in me.

Or not. Who knows.

And then there are the constructions in which something of its own is built from something experienced and something fantastic: memory of something that did not exist. I transform everything perceived into ME. And in the process, I create a reality that does not correspond to what happened. But that is somehow connected to what was. In no case, memory creates a faithful image, an image of reality. Individual elements, yes. But that’s all.

And now?

Keep writing.

Keep writing, like Roman Opalka. Just make signs. From the nonsense of moving the hand somehow create any meaning, something readable, understandable, good. On Saturday morning at 5:56am in New York, Upper West, 312 West, 92nd Street, second floor.

Immediately I am redeemed for a few moments when this sheet is described to the end and I have to get up to get a new notebook and continue to make senseless signs.

Now there are ten notebooks on the shelf with some words inside. Words of insomnia, of not thinking, of wanting to feel. This is the eleventh. At some point the notebooks will end up in a cardboard box and one of our children or one of our grandchildren or someone else will ask themselves: Should I pick this up or throw it away? It’s always, always, always the same. We asked ourselves the same question concerning the boxes of our parents, our parents have asked themselves this about the boxes of their parents, our grandchildren will ask themselves this about the boxes of our children. Things stored in an estate. Somewhere in the apartment there are still the not, not yet disposed of letters from my grandmother to Hedwig Rosenthal in Williamsburg. I don’t know if I’ll tackle this at some point. Learn to read this scripture and then read these letters: Sütterlin. Or have it read as long as there is still someone who can read it. Noe recently told me that there is software with artificial intelligence that can read such scripts and translate them into today’s Latin script. Anyway…

Please continue writing now, do not close the fountain pen and take the smartphone in your hand to start the search engine to search for software or services that decode Sütterlin font. I’ll do that right away as soon as this blunt page is bluntly full. And after that, I will try to get some more sleep, on Saturday morning, sometime between six and seven o’clock in the morning. After nonsensical wakefulness, nonsensical writing, nonsensical life. Ok, the last one I wrote only because it’s so beautifully pathetic. All this is by no means nonsensical. It’s a search. A search for ME. And a find in beautiful red letters.

Paris Palace of Justice: https://medium.com/@endurance0691/later-in-april-61b02fee7d8e