The three most expensive things

"How beautiful that sounds, 'synchronising the dream paths'... there's something shamanic about it." M.

*

A Greek had only contempt for work, and that included art. While later people in the bright centuries considered the art of antiquity to be the measure of all things and celebrated the genius rather than the craftsman in the artist, the Greeks were particularly offended by the specialization that every art requires. The free man was not a specialist. He made no effort, except in sport and war. Musicians, poets and sculptors contributed to comfort as service providers. They were counted among the philistines who inevitably missed the perfect existence in the state of kalokagathia.

*

"The three most expensive things a brain can do: move your body, learn something new, tolerate uncertainty." Lisa Feldman Barrett in an interview with Nele Pollatschek in the Süddeutsche Zeitung

*

"You have to give with one hand and take with the other. No one will pay attention to both at the same time." Susie Yang

*

"Of course the movement is important, but the movement is not the essence. The essence is the mind that connects with the qi. "Mingyur Rinpoche

*

The Athenians tortured not only the accused, but also witnesses. Unfree people had to repeat their testimony under the torture. In the Greek view, slaves were indecent people. Their low status was associated with a corrupt character. If a slave died in court, the only thing that could be negotiated was compensation. The ancient world associated unfreedom with the guilt of the unfree. Nana likes the idea of ​​being able to cope with such atavistic views. In her own words, she is both "granite and rainbow" (Virginia Woolf). In one fantasy, she receives her first erotic kiss at the age of seventeen in a fishing village on the Tyrrhenian Sea. Eleven years after her first tangible desire, she travels to Castiglione della Pescaia again. She stays in a boarding house. Her landlady turns out to be a well-read and enterprising contemporary. Giuseppina is determined to find the mermaid to whom Nana owes a reliable memory.

She speaks of childhood love. That is too much to say. Matteo was simply the beneficiary of adolescent curiosity; the other was groping for the future, which was as necessary as it was inevitable.

Nana is caught in the first lockdown of the Italian variety. The horror of Bergamo is imminent, but the traveler is still only amazed at the standstill of public life as a consequence of state decrees. We have already moved beyond Giorgio Agamben's "L'invenzione di un'epidemia - The Invention of an Epidemic". While the philosopher speaks of "hectic, irrational and completely groundless emergency measures" and a merely "suspected epidemic", the "Eccezione virale - Viral State of Emergency" (Jean-Luc Nancy) begins.

Giuseppina immediately reacts and offers her only source of income full board. On the first evening of lockdown, there are grilled anchovies, spaghetti and lots of wine. Matteo shows up. Death and life, the Maremma coast and the lemon groves, spaghetti, Corona, wine, Boccaccio and Botticelli: the associations are arranged allegorically as if on a votive tablet. No one can overlook the biblical-archaic dimension. Nana sighs secretly as the dinner drags on. She starts to warm up. She digs the right words out of the drawers. She doesn't expect much from Matteo.

Giuseppina plays matchmaker, and of course Matteo is tied down in every direction. Nana offers him a look back at the freedom of his youth. Her desolate room tells of the indifference of those who settled here before her; neglected people who occasionally drag themselves to the sea and can never deny the precariousness of their circumstances. Matteo shows no initiative, the narrative thread breaks.

Survival Machines

We are survival machines. Life knows no other function than to preserve itself. All emanations of the second evolutionary cycle also serve only this purpose. The conditions for our survival were inscribed millions of years ago in routines that we are largely unable to decipher. We have information that is older than humanity. All physical reactions have genetic roots that are millions of years old. They act constantly, almost uncontrollably. As soon as we become aware of this power, we are suddenly stronger than before. We then understand that, despite all our considerations, we are setting our sights on the wrong goals, things that burden us, that increase alienation. We only have to be clear about this in order to be superior to all those who consider their existence to be a social matter.

In the Uni sports center Cornelius trains the purposeful exploitation of an affect to load an uninteresting muscular work with feelings of pleasure.

Thoughts drive physiological processes.

Cornelius motivates himself with the sight of two shiny, wrapped women's butts constantly shaking in an ideal position like in a porn fairytale. Since he can no longer ejaculate, such attractions are sometimes painful. Sometimes it feels as if the semen is trying with all its might to escape through a sealed hatch.

Conservation is not a concept of nature. Use it or lose it. Practise puts brain in your muscles.

Glowing with gloom, Cornelius accepts an offer. The athletic beauty is called Ariane. She comes from ... let's take a little time to go back... the Atlantic coastline of North Carolina forms a curve in front of the Outer Banks. Because of countless accidents, the area is called the "Graveyard of the Atlantic". Those stranded in the 16th century became the founding fathers of a tribal society that consistently refused to accept civilization. Subcultures flourished in the swamp. Maroons formed defiant communities. Brigands recovered from their seafaring among lizards and oaks, plane trees, palms, cypresses, wisteria, myrtle, sedge and beaver lodges. Scavengers sought refuge on the banks of Arcadian lagoons. Everyone heard the beating of herons' wings.

In a marshland that refuses colonization, extreme outsiders still live according to Stone Age, elementary rules in the furious present. Cessna Columbo grew up in the originality outlined above with almost no care. She searched for bark beetles in bark canals. She talked to raccoons, crabs, snails and mussels. At the age of seven, the daughter of a mentally burned Vietnam veteran could already set traps, read tracks and lay false trails. Although she lived in a more isolated situation than almost any other child, she played like any other child. Her school was nature....At thirty-nine, Cessna died giving birth to her daughter Ariane, whose father remained unknown. The orphan was given German adoptive parents, who soon became the victim of a robbery and murder. Relatives who remained in the Old World took the child in and gave it their names. So it came about that Cessna Columbo's only daughter went through her youth course not on Ocracoke Island as Ariane Columbo, but in Kassel on the Fulda as Ariane Bindewald. The adolescent was amazed every day at the lack of joy in life in her surroundings.

Life is something wonderful after all. Ariane und Cornelius retreat to the dead wing, following an ancient route. They peel off their plastics and then tick off point after point. After the second orgasm, Ariane becomes suspicious.