Chapter 2: recognize
feeling at home
The melodious territorial song of the blackbirds wakes me up at first light. The white lilac tree in front of the bedroom window exudes an intoxicating smell. When I wake up, the bed next to me is empty is empty. A strange change, as over the last few decades, it has been mine that was so often the empty spot. Once, when I was really excited about finally buying a holiday home for us, Kaja just said laconically:
“I don't even know what you mean, we've had a nice, big holiday home for many years. Exactly this house here! You have a holiday home, even including a housekeeper! At best, you'll be here over the weekends. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, you'll be running around between the Arctic and Antarctic at pretty much all latitudes and longitudes at the same time! Even your secretary was recently confused by having to book you a hotel room on two different continents for the same night because you crossed the date line that day when you flew nonstop from Australia to the US. But like any albatross, you'll find your way back to the nest for a few hours at least every other weekend. I don't want to know what you're cooking up in between when you're not working! But we trust each other, don’t we?”
However, Kaja's nonchalance, melted away as quickly as a winter's snow in the spring sun, as I began to rapidly approach retirement age. As a counter question, I sheepishly interjected the cliché that after how many hours the prehistoric Homo Sapiens would actually have been allowed to give up hunting the mammoths with which they tried to feed their clan. Slowly but surely, this clichéd argument began to wear thin, especially when I tried to justify my weekly working hours. How many hours would a Neanderthal have to put in chasing a saber-toothed tiger before he could just let the saber-toothed tiger be? Seven hours, eight or maybe twelve? And who would pay him overtime and the surcharge for the night hours, especially if he didn't bring his fur home after an unsuccessful hunt? Hardly any of my employees were able to avoid this most memorable lecture, because I presented such theses to them frequently on a regular basis.
For me it is nothing other than a kind of late Roman decadence with which quite a few of our contemporaries today try to decouple the basis of their livelihood from the contribution they make to it individually. Well, maybe I'm just one of the last Stone Age cave dwellers who not only captures enough to feed his own clan, but also an entire tribe? Isn't it everyone's moral obligation, provided of course for adequate remuneration, to dedicate all of their talents and performance to the benefit of the community?
When such statements came to the attention of the employee representatives, my reputation as an exploitative Manchester capitalist was once again confirmed. The reputation that preceded me often saved me from having to intervene personally, because just being threatened with me was the ultimate punishment for some of my people—whoever thought he had to intimidate anyone with my sudden appearance out of the blue. One could just as easily understand this narrative as a constantly self-reinforcing prophecy if one tried to maliciously accuse me of that.
longing for home
My thoughts are still wandering while an open argument seems to have broken out between the blackbirds in the garden, so that their quarrelsome nagging also finds its way into my consciousness in order to gently guide me back to the present. Isn't it nice to wake up in the morning with a feeling of security, in familiar surroundings? With almost childlike wonder, I step from my bedroom straight into the light-filled space of my gallery. Have I forgotten how beautiful and colorful our house is? Curious memorabilia in the form of valuable treasures are presented everywhere, as if they were the relics of our shared life, Kaja's and mine. As usual, I sit down at my large desk, let my gaze wander around me, and it never tires of lingering and moving on, following the reminiscences of a fulfilled life. Nothing ties me to the ostentatiously opulent armchair anymore, because I finally want to take all the objects I've collected into my hands so that I can touch them again, or just to be able to look at them up close and undisturbed.
The silk c