“What does Jalousie mean in German?” The child wanted to know. The Germans call that just like the French, I replied, “Blinds”. The child looked skeptical. “The French invented it, and the Germans found the blind so good that they just adopted the word.” I explained how parents explain: Without a clue, but in a friendly voice. We were driving through a tunnel in the car. “The pane glows red,” said my son, and I was grateful that he was still too young to want to know anything about light refraction. The blinds seemed to have been forgotten, it was now about car headlights.
In the evening in bed the blinds came back. It was also about cake. It took me a while to realize that I had completely ignored the topic in the car. Because the correct answer would have been: “Blind means jealousy in German.” Unless the story my child told me about a particularly beautiful cake was about how he had a big argument at the École maternelle over aluminum slats in front of the window. How worn out my brain is, I thought.
“Cheese Porn Odyssey” was the name of the event, and it wasn’t just a title
A day later I realized: It’s not just my brain that is worn out, we are all fundamentally worn out. I stood next to my neighbor, the friend of the nicest neighbor in the world, in the queue in front of the laboratory on our street, where you can get PCR test sticks up your nose. We met by chance, just as people used to meet by chance in the pub. It was almost as nice.
My neighbor asked me how realistic I think it is to ventilate a Covid infection. In this case, the experimental setup was as follows: His primary school-age son has Covid, four of them live in two and a half rooms, which in Berlin would probably be called chambers and not rooms.
“Not that realistic,” I said. He nodded. Then we told each other surprising Covid anecdotes. First the one where something looks really bad and then ends well, then the others. In the afternoon I canceled my visit to the vernissage, which I actually wanted to write about at this point. Stars! Art! Alcohol! I would have allowed myself and you. Instead, I shuffled the internet in the evenings. And there I suddenly really woke up. I saw the invitation to a 24-hour cheese and techno festival in a castle in Auvergne. “Cheese Porn Odyssey” was the name of the event, and it wasn’t just a title. It was actually about eating raclette and then listening to very loud music before or at the same time. I didn’t find any DJ names in the invitation, but the exact cheese name: Saint-Nectaire.
I almost woke my child to put his hand on my heart: “Look, that’s how it feels louvre “But that wouldn’t have been true. It was longing.