Category: Ramblings

The ancient Egyptians believed that, after death, their pharaohs had to go on a journey of rebirth through the netherworld, through the twelve hours of the night, just like the sun god Ra did before them. The story of the twelve hours of the night is written in the Amduat, a funerary text, which was…

The story of the original sin is told in the third chapter of the Genesis. It is said that the snake told Adam’s wife, who does not have a name in the version that I read, to taste the apple from the forbidden tree because then her eyes would open, truly, and she would know…

Another year is over and things are standing still by moving quicker than I know to walk. It’s been the year of             home-coming, re-settling job-starting, overtime-making protest-going, speech-writing, signatures-collecting             pizzas in piazze in Verona thesis-working, myself-presenting, on a copper platter of thistles piercing-forsaking, beatles-forgetting-and-remembering like I do almost every year missed chances and…

Did you know that the French revolutionaries introduced a new calendar after the French Revolution? The day they abrogated the monarchy was pronounced as the first day of “An I de la République”. Every month lasted for 30 days, divided into three decades of ten days. The twelve months were named after the seasonal occurrences…

runaway girls instead of runway girls they fled from a world of constraint and shame with nothing to look forward to but everything after they’d secretly unchecked the boxes on their father’s app enabling their own freedom so that they could be allowed (technically) to break free, to run away, to any country which was…

Was ist es an Worten, das uns bindet? Ein Mensch könnte tausend verschiedene Dinge tun an einem Tag; abgesehen von den überlebensnotwendigen Beschäftigungen wie essen und atmen kann er auch Dinge rein aus Spass tun, er kann fernsehen, oder sich mit seinem Sternzeichen beschäftigen, oder stricken, oder eben auch: Lesen. Wieso tun wir das? Was…

Naiv zu sein ist das Privileg der Jugend, sagt ihr, und belächelt uns, werdet zuweilen wütend, weil Greta euch ein schlechtes Gewissen einreden möchte. Wenn naiv zu sein das Privileg der Jugend ist, dann ist eure „Nach-mir-die-Sintflut“-Haltung das Privileg der Alten. Stell dir vor, wütend zu sein, weil junge Leute sich plötzlich doch einmal für…

sea eyes and ocean arms and a thousand waves crashing against your body with nothing than a quiet cry and a loud sigh for help to look after it and love it and cherish it and all the things it does for you; to sustain you and carry you from a to b from here…

‚The world is not more than a disc, anyway’ said everybody and Galileo Galilei proved them wrong. ‘The moon is unattainable, anyway’ said everybody and Neil Armstrong proved them wrong. ‘We are fine, anyway’ said everybody and the world will prove them wrong.   That is the structure of the human mind. We had the…

There’s a German saying that goes: “No master has ever fallen from heaven”. That is very true for a lot of things. It is also true for writing.   365 days is a long time. In some ways, it seems like it was only yesterday that I wrote down my little list of new year’s…

The last time I went to London, I was with my mum. We were staying at a nice hotel and London was just this dreamy city, this chunk of people and places and houses and stories that I was only allowed to visit on occasion, peek in for a short weekend before I had to…

You are breathing fire, a phoenix risen from the embers reborn and yet the same as always; strong and dark and clever and good.   You are breathing fire because it has been spreading in your lungs a small spark planted there when you were born, feeding on all the small and big injustices that…

London in autumn is a strange kind of beauty. Skies are blue and endless, marred only by the yellow leaves imprinted on them by the old oak trees in Regent’s Park. I live in an old brownstone block, the windows of my flat have white frames and red bricks framing the round end and sometimes…

that was something unheard of before but then she was crowned queen and she decided that a kingdom befitted a king and so would a queendom a queen which is what she called her speck of earth   and her people planted peonies on their windowsills and welcomed wayfaring strangers, and paupers, and kings alike…