Turning Danger into Performance – Egoists of Love

Alisa and Virgil run along the ancient exercise trail, which the people of the Eder valley never adopted and which has been picturesquely overgrown over the past fifty years. The ancient wooden structures look like artifacts from a fantasy era. Aerial roots arch triumphantly over deadwood.

Two hours later

They sit in the Kasseler Hof. Hanne Mansfeld, née Schleim, wrings out her dry hair. A gesture of despair at the onset of erosion, corrosion, and mold. The worst things are not visible. They cannot be smelled either. And yet they are there, lurking as ambush hunters on the scale of microorganisms. The chemical composition of life drags a long tail of problems for property owners behind it. Since the Erfurt-born Hanne married the dynastic Eder valley man Hans Mansfeld, she too has come to know the hardships of the wealthy class.

On Hanne’s menu is “Z… schnitzel,” although the regulars’ table sisters Marianne, Sina, Malia, and Alisa have suggested to the woman married into the family that she should write “paprika schnitzel.” “Z… gypsy,” they argue in unison with what is still not the dominant opinion, is too close to “N…”.

Hanne bristles. She insists on the romantic added value of a chimera under parhelia of condemning degradation. Only Philipp Deppert, a provocative figure somewhat detached from age, follows her. He interprets the politically incorrect term “Z…” in its censored repetition as an act of resistance against enforced consensus in the room. The scoundrel stands at the bar, speaking condescendingly to the regulars’ table. He now finally has a party he can vote for with enthusiasm (after years as a non-partisan professional troublemaker in Berlin).

Many Facebook friendships have already dissolved within the circle of conspirators because someone on Facebook made derogatory remarks about Africans and African Americans. Meanwhile, Alisa explains to her students: the relationship between language and power is demonic. Language first legitimizes enslavement and murder through a course of degradation, and then lets grass grow over it. The destruction of the Z… baron is both prepared and denied in language.

Two weeks later – Near-natured remoteness

They follow the lower course of the Eder toward Bettelkopf in the Kellerwald. The original Kellerwald field and place names end in ancient Germanic endings such as -a, -mar, -tar, -loh. These refer to settlements that entered cultivation before the year 800. After the Frankish expansion, colonization continued under comital supervision in the High Middle Ages. Later settlements often fell into desolation due to poor soil. Alisa knows some of these abandoned places; it is a kind of remote knowledge. Who even knows what a “Wüstung” (deserted settlement) is?

The settlement of the region goes back to the Bronze Age. On the hills one finds burial mounds and ramparts. Cult and war were treated as part of a unified conception of existence. Even the first spear carried an intent to represent something, Virgil claims at least. Alisa points to artifacts that have remained unnoticed for centuries. Yesterday I wanted to plant an erotic scene… so beautifully on a mossy ground, with birdsong, the aromas of nature, and dreamlike lighting. Alisa in backlight. Do you see her too, dear N.?

She looks at Virgil. His appearance brings a smile to her lips.

“Alisa, my darling.”

Alisa knows exactly how he wants her, and she complies, aroused by the immediate effect.

N.: Alisa glows. Is it intentional that a garment slips in the game between the two? Soon the second will fall… her shoulders, the beginnings of her breasts… she turns in front of him, her dress falling to her hips, slipping further… a gentle touch between the shoulder blades makes her shiver tenderly.

T.: Through your eyes I see Alisa turning before Virgil, offering him the view of her long back. She even pushes out her hips as surplus. Alisa and Virgil can do a lot with details. They are not egoists of love. One’s pleasure presupposes the pleasure of the other. Otherwise there is no pleasure. Then it is nothing. Intelligence, education, fitness, and Qi are devoted to eroticism as part of an unspoken agreement. Nothing is taken for granted or simply wasted. Everything has an inscription. Every blink signs the moment. Yes, I am beautiful for you, and you are beautiful for me.

Alisa and Virgil hike through Alisa’s homeland. They reach Maden on a scorching hot afternoon in July. Maden lay at the center of the Hessengau. Today it is a district of Gudensberg. Until the 13th century, a subordinate Landgrave of Thuringia was also always Count of Gudensberg. Alisa and the Khan stop at the inn “Zum hessischen Jäger.” For generations, the traditional inn has been run by descendants of a famous Hessian. Johann Conrad Wilhelm Mensing (1765–1837) saved the treasury of Kurhessen from Napoleon. For this he was ennobled by Wilhelm I. Before his flight, the Elector had ordered the concealment of a fabulous fortune, which eventually reached him in over a hundred chests in exile in Prague.

One must consider how much intelligence, resourcefulness, courage, and restorative patriotic devotion—bordering on stubbornness—was required to serve so devotedly a man who insisted on the title “Royal Highness” and clung to absolutism. Mensing had no real reason to support Wilhelm. The son of a Karlshafen blacksmith had escaped poverty into the army and experienced the hardship of a mercenary soldier in America and Flanders.

At the same time, Malia and Agravain enjoy a moment of near-natural remoteness behind a birdwatching palisade in the self-regenerating Marschbach moor. Agravain comes from the Eder-Hessian lineage of the Battenbergs. Even if some claim the family died out after 1300 and was only revived in the 19th century, as a grandson of the Count of Gudensberg one knows that the Battenbergs continued in the male line, produced kings, founded the House of Hesse, remained loyal to the princes of Lorraine-Brabant, and branched into the British House of Mountbatten.

Malia and Agravain move together in naked rhythm. The flows of Qi merge in the bed of cooperative arousal. Agravain’s member springs with movement. Malia’s eyes promise him his whole happiness. He synchronizes with her breath, and the two move toward an almost simultaneous orgasmic duet.

Meanwhile, the recently recovered N. and T. meet in the Eder valley forest on a patch that was already called Eichwald around the year 1100. A potent superstition protected a burial mound in the oak circle until 1926 from major disturbances.

The court law once made Ruprecht of Gudensberg-Waldeck the judge of Ederthal. He personally carried out his death sentences in the oak circle. People spoke of the “Galgenhurst.” “Hurst” meaning grove. The word did not persist as a place name.

The Eichwald was a royal forest. I know official notes about economic interventions in the Middle Ages. Oaks provided good construction timber, acorns were used for fattening pigs. War-related clearing and natural devastation spared the population until an old-growth stand was finally mentioned. Among the extensive forests, Alisa was first encouraged toward love. The Eichwald has always been a stage for declarations of sexuality. Every Eder valley woman completes ceremonial and courtly encounters there before turning eighteen.

The dramatic setting opens toward the Eder; the Klingenbach meadow lies behind the Krimmer Trutz. Stunted pines characterize the peat bog into which knight Ruprecht fled in the summer of 1073 when things went badly for him. No image survives of this warrior who may have experienced, for the first time, the disgrace of hopeless flight. In this forest, many had already lost their lives, whom Ruprecht followed onto sour, unstable ground overgrown with grasses. On this ground, T. now rests beneath N. The considerate lover offers himself as a support to the recovering woman. He kisses and licks her erect nipples rising from pink aureoles. N. feels him becoming hard and stimulates his penis with her pulsating center of pleasure, already flooded by an intense flow. The free Qi flow amplifies arousal many times over.