Ripple

…in still water…
Uh oh. You caught me listening to the "Dead" and it is still 2014.
Another 5 h 2 min to midnight. What makes these hours so special? Lots of people making noise and polluting the air - and numbers. Sheer numbers.
These are arbitrary numbers of an arbitrary concept called time. Although I must admit that we experience the world as if there was time, I think that…wait a moment.
I don't want to explain the results of years of research on the concept of time in my blog. No. This will be reserved for Nature, Science and of course the Time magazine.
I just wonder about the difference between a fighter in Syria, who sits in his trench (or whatever they have there) and hopes for not too many explosions in his close proximity in the next few hours and a drunk teenager in a Vienna suburb who is drooling with excitement to fire his illegally imported fireworks from just across the border. Is this sanity?
No it is just the planet Earth.
4 h 52 min. Yes I am a slow writer, as you already know. The Grateful Dead still sing into my ears.
It is not very typical for me to be political in this blog.
So sorry for that.
Let's follow the road to nowhere, go down the highway to hell and up the stairway to heaven.
Be it 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, 1 2 3 4 5 … ah I'm getting into the Zen spirit again.
"Truckin'" ahhh. That's music.
4 h 48 min.
I won't tell you what I'll do the rest of the year.
That's private.
However, before I forget: To all you Bauernbergpark Men, Goschpoidls and ordinary people out there.
Please try hard to have a really good 2015.
Be wise and do every step carefully, and before you slip, have a good laugh.
Prosit…

2014

Looks like looking back. What a cool title: 2014. What can I say?
I haven't met the Bauernbergpark Man this year. Then I met St Peter at St Pieter's station. That was much better. Furthermore, there are no Goschpoidls around.
I am a married man now. That is the most important thing that ever happened to me. It educates me in being more than the sum of the parts: Emergence.
Now I look back on 2014. It is not over. The species of stupidity and genius has to blow up some millions of fireworks before it is allowed to leave.
I will hide in my cellar until the spectacle is over.
There is still war, death, famine and pestilence in this world and will be in 2015.
I am in my comfort zone, unwilling to learn any more, willing to sit in the sun and live off the fat of the land.
But that is not true. The good intentions that pave the highway to hell are with me, too. Only, to make the world my comfort zone, leave fear behind, embrace love and lose 5kg is enough work for the next decade.
So I am waiting for my tea to come to me. No, listen. My wife (the beloved one) will bring it to me in five minutes. What can I ask for myself? Nothing.
What can I ask for the world? Some more people that can sit there and be satisfied. Sit and be satisfied:
Finally Zen again. What can we hope for? (I haven't read Kant but I know people who have done that)
Good news.
I have seen a snowflake today. Something special in times of climate change. Sometimes it looks as if we are about to lose, to stumble doing our dance at the edge of the volcano. Sometimes it looks as if there would be enough cherry blossoms to make us feel comfortable.
Everything is so diverse and so meaningful that we lack the language to describe it. We pick everything apart, theorize, flee into the abstract. But what is the fact? I still haven't got my tea and I am still not unhappy. I say:"When do I get my tea?" The answer is :"I said in five minutes". That was about five minutes ago. Here we are: Eternity.
A tea-less eternity. I am a bit sad but still satisfied. I have walked heaven and hell this year. I am still here and I can enjoy my life as it is: A roller coaster ride, a ride without much tea, but with love, friends, meaning and without a toothache that left me two days ago (without taking the tooth with it).
Enough 2014.
Encore 2014?
See you in 2015, my Facebook friends and lovers.

Wordcloud Oans

The Golem

It is neither the sci-fi novel by Lem nor the ancient Jewish myth. It is about science.

Its heroes are researchers and the monsters they fight are gravity waves, neutrinos and cold fusion. Watch out. Read this book by Collins and Pinch. Tah-dah.

Advertisement over.

I would like to make a film out of this book, although the sexual behaviour of the whiptail lizard would be hard to sell to a producer.

Neutrino detectors buried deep within uranium mines could be easier to capture and to promote.

I am writing this without having read the last pages of the book, and especially the scientists’ reactions. I wonder if they understand and so I am looking forward to read the last pages of the book.

5 Minutes

5

I wonder what I can write about in 5 minutes. My typing is rather slow, so…

4

…I guess that is the first constraint. However, I can mention the Bauernbergpark Man

3

who is gone, and the Goschpoidls who can be found almost everywhere…

2

time is running out, I am really a slow person

1

and proud of it

Bio:fiction film festival

10 impressions

1  The Museum of Natural History as well as the Bellaria cinema offer a real unique atmosphere, which was even more beautiful when the musicians were playing at the gala event

2 The conversations I had were very cool although sometimes I talked too much instead of listening.

  (Hmm a very general statement, nevertheless my thanks especially go to Malthe, Rüdiger, J.J.,Virgil and Laurens and to my employers and colleagues)

3 In some of the discussions a seemingly unnecessary polarization occurred. Some people only see black and white although their intellectual capacities seem to go far beyond that.

4 I especially appreciated the tough work done by Helge and Alexander who spent lots of time observing and will spend a lot of time analyzing the festival

5 At some point I was alone in a corridor after 10p.m., the light was dim and I was surrounded by all sorts of bears, a polar bear among them. That was a unique experience.

6 The mix of people, speakers and audience alike was wonderful again.

7 I was not bored for one single second. That is special for two and a half days.

8 The after show party at Rote Bar in Volkstheater, was as nice as the one three years ago

9 It seems to be quite fruitful and interesting to organize such a festival more than once in a lifetime

10 However, this is also an ecological niche, that was miraculously filled for three days.

Ecological niche

I occupy an ecological niche in the culture that surrounds me. It keeps me going and alive.
My tastes seem unusual to me, maybe a little bit nerdy but not too much.
My work is hard to explain, but is somewhere between total euphoria (Bio:fiction film festival) and depression (useless discussions with people who love to listen to themselves talking)
My lifestyle is between Zen philosophy and fast-as-lightning capitalist acolyte.
It is time to make decisions.
It seems to be the right time.
Freedom seems to be at hand.

Eeeeeleeeectricity

Yes

Stuck in matter

Just before starting work I am stuck in matter. The material world has caught me.
I am trapped.
However, this is a good feeling. Although a way of escape seems invisible or unreachable, I am feeling fine.
Although freeing one's mind should be the objective, I am a happy prisoner now. I am here and I am feeling a sense of presence amidst all the rubbish and nice things that surround me.
And I am giving in.
It makes me a free prisoner, a paradox a singularity.
Let's get going:
I have filled a jar stuffed with coral sand and shells with gin to purify the mixture and to get rid of the smell. I do not care if it works because I have shut the lid of the container again, and I am outside and not inside of it. The alcohol is pushing the smell out of the glass and it reminds me of our time in Ireland when we collected the sand and the shells.
So the ocean is with me here in Central Europe. My material prison is suddenly filled with the smell of the Atlantic Sea.
What a nice starting point for working myself out of the rubbish.

While I am writing this IS troops are fighting Kurds near the Turkish border to Syria, farming planes are spraying tons of pesticides on GMO crop fields, new nuclear power stations are being built or tested, Ebola is finding its way out of Africa and millions of people are wondering how to get food or clean water.

What else can I be but happy, that for the moment I am not involved in any of this, be grateful to be trapped in my illusion of safety, somewhere in a quiet place on this crazy planet. I wish that any of my next movements and actions could reduce the suffering, be of any help to anyone.

As I keep passing through little moments in other people's lives I will try to give them a little of the peace I am enjoying now…

…and a smile.

Reincarnation again

…hurts. Either way. The Osiris and the Christ version.
It gives you headaches, loss of orientation and depression.
On the other hand it is nice to be back, back from the beyond.
The first Wiener Schnitzel after death or insanity is a true feast.
The first kiss, the wind and the rain, the sun and the song of a distant bird.
They are very intense.
However something seems to be lost, lost in transition, in translation, in metamorphosis.
Some elements seem to be lost forever, although they are here forever (as Parmenides would say).
Digging up the dirt again is also a very painful process.
And you promise to turn back next time before it is too late again.
Hopefully.

Man on bus aka burning man

In Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Ltd. there is a man on a bus.
In the sci-fi horror movie Event Horizon there is a burning man.
Nothing is complete without the man on the bus aka the burning man.
It is not Hamlet or Luke Skywalker, Faust or Captain Kirk, who are the key players.
It is the burning man on the bus, the Bauernbergpark Man, the Auersbergplatz Man and the man at St.Peter's station.
The world is not complete without the man on the bus.
Event Horizon is nothing without the burning man.
We trample on the weak and laugh about the feeble.
But what are we to do so.
Nothing more than grains of sand and nothing less than tiny universes.
Enough pathos for today.
As Bowie used to sing: when I die, moon-dust, will cover me....

The Master

I met the master near St.Pieter's station in Gent. He looked pretty humble but he told me that in the form of the Bauernbergpark Man he had had an eye on me already.
When he tried to bring my legs into the lotos position, we had great fun and shared a cigarette. A big moment of teaching. A true master.
Now, after receiving his teachings I am blogging myself back into sanity.
It's been a long way.
Welcome back.

Regenesis?

Everything will be fine. Everything? Yes, everything! – Given, that synthetic biologists all over the world are free to act as they want and in addition do so in a responsible fashion.

This of course is an oversimplification of what took me three months to read.

It took so long, not because it is too boring or too complicated, too badly structured or missing a story line. No it took me so long because all these four attributes can be found in passages of the book. To be fair, some parts of the book are really brilliant, rich in metaphor, thought provoking and a very interesting summary of cutting edge technology. In other chapters it is easy to get stuck.

So the book was like a pilgrimage for me, through the mindset of one of the leading scientists in his field, through state-of-the-art technology and through visions of a future full of technological solutions for our problems.

If the cloning of the Neanderthal man, or other extinct species, mirror life or space travel, personal eugenics or total extermination of viruses does not frighten you then you will be at home here. Regenesis offers all of it.

Whereas my favourite vision was the one with cheap bio-fuel derived from Cyanobacteria, the ironic criticism of Venter’s philosophic approaches in creating Synthia could fire back: Yes indeed: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.

In between the visions (he who has visions should see the physician) and the sometimes enthusiastically formulated technical details one can find very interesting stories about iGEM, SYNBERC, DIYBio and drug production.

Sometimes the book seems to be over-enthusiastic about the possible achievements of synthetic genomics or synthetic biology. However, the authors do not fail to mention certain drawbacks of every single industrial revolution in the past, and also the possible ones of the future.

Do we really have to push the frontier of technology further into the cell, into the realm of the living. Are we doomed to join the race against exponential curves of all kind.

The seven decisions or questions about the future with which the book ends, sum up all its core messages.

I won’t tell you about them. Read yourself.

And what do I think about all this. It is simple:

If we change our minds we do not need to change our genomes.

Metamorphosis

Well. I have written the title of the post without thinking about the content. But that does not keep me from writing something. Anything.
It is a kind of freedom. And it will be about Metamorphosis. That is what everything is about, anyway. Only butterflies and frogs are very good at it and do it rather obviously.
However, we live in constant metamorphosis, in constant change. Even rocks can do that.
So we are a big family: butterfly, slate, humans. Ha. I know that already, but do you, dear follower, reader, facebook friend? Open your eyes and see.
In an empty world, full of Goschpoidls and Bauernbergpark Men, we can see it every day, every second, every blink of an eye.
But how do we react? We are either angry (in the case of Goschpoidls) or frightened (in the case of Bauernbergpark Men). We are so self-centered that we don't realize that this is part of the game, of us, of ourselves.
We moan, and suffer, instead of sitting still, watching and enjoying. We ruin our days by switching on the TV or reading the news. We could do something good instead: Nothing.
It is magic.
You'll never know what you can achieve by not doing things.
The clever ones among you followers, readers, Facebook friends, Romans, countrymen and lovers will say: Yes I will starve.
However, someone might just come along and feed you, and then only your pride can starve you to death.
Metamorphosis: From Ovid, to rock formations, from frog to butterfly, to us. Watch out and fly on the wings of change.

Prove that you are not a robot

Ha. Welcome to the 21st century. Finally someone told me to prove that I am not a robot.
What else do I have to say.

Goschpoidlistan

Austria is Goschpoidlistan, the land of the Goschpoidls. A Goschpoidl is usually a male human being whose job it is to irritate you completely.

My recent Goschpoidl encounters happened on the train between Vienna and Linz and on a mountain summit in Upper Austria.

The train-Goschpoidl seems to be a social worker, a really unusual profession for a Goschpoidl. However, his task is to involve you in a conversation by making statements about your computer. After this he will make sexist or other doubtful comments and drink his beer all along. I adore him, because he looks so harmless and humble: But beware of the Goschpoidl: He is a full-bred xenophobe and sexist.

The other Goschpoidl roams the mountains of Upper Austria and Steiermark. He tries to bemoan the weather if he can and then sit on your lap for a rest.

I wonder what the Bauernbergpark Man would have to say to the matter of Goschpoidls.

Another poem (German)

Schon lange nicht mehr

Ich habe schon lange nicht mehr

Die weißen Rosen gesehen

Die rund um die Kirche wachsen

Habe schon ewig nicht mehr

Deine Stimme gehört

Wie du mich in den Schlaf flüsterst

Schon lange nicht mehr

Habe ich das Salz des Meeres

In meiner Nase gefühlt

Lange nicht mehr

Den Schnee auf meinen Händen

Schmelzen gespürt

Nicht mehr

Denke ich an jene Tage zurück

An denen die Sonne lachte

Mehr

von alldem kann ich mir gern wünschen

Doch was kommt ist ungewiss

Collingridge Dilemma

The Collingridge dilemma is about unpredictability. It is about the fact that you cannot predict the future. This sounds rather pathetic for such a nice name. I mean, isn’t it obvious?

However, it is about unpredictability in the very narrow context of technology assessment or better the social control of technology. Nevertheless, we struggle hard to avoid future analogues of the atomic bomb.

Instead of sitting still, doing nothing but sitting, we carry on to do research to become faster than our problems, our destiny, faster than light: and this in the face of the Collingridge dilemma.

An old Austrian song about the new wave of motorcycling in the 1950ies states: “I don’t know where I am going to, but I’ll be the first one there.” That is the power of technoscientific innovation. And the scientists themselves are the best motorcyclists by adding: “We are just curious”.

In the Collingridge dilemma of everyday life we have our experiences and base our assumptions on them. Maybe that is the reason why we survive. The problem is that no two moments in time are the same, and so are the places.

We keep on struggling against this constant change and so we suffer.

Back to technology assessment: After two days at a TA conference in Vienna I am sure that we need some time to catch up with what already exists, instead of pushing the frontier further. But maybe we can never achieve this.

In a world without technology, the Collingridge dilemma is gone. But will we still be there?

Black Swan

Again I don’t have to say much. This picture speaks for itself. I knew that they exist but I have never seen one before. So behold, the black swan.

Sintra

Sintra. South West Europe. Portugal.
I roam the palaces with my friend from Kasachstan, telling him stories about Conchita Wurst. Then I see him:

He is creation and I even forget about Wurst. I consider the contrast to the Lisbon suburbs that I just had crossed and think of the Bauernbergpark Man.

He would like to live in this park instead. The climate is ideal for Bauernbergpark Men...

Humble and touched I will return home.

I have seen a place with more tourists than in Salzburg.

Cool

It is nice and fascinating though, especially when you walk a bit away from the main tracks.

However, cu soon.

Always leaving town

It is time to travel again. The luggage I’ve left behind or even thrown away is my PhD.

So I am travelling lighter now.

I’ll go to Linz, Wels, Graz, Vienna, Lisbon and back. All I need to do is listen. All I need to do is to perform – and listen some more time.

This is good. There is not too much thinking involved, just breathing in, listening, breathing out, breathing in, performing and finally breathing out again. Nothing more and nothing less than that.

I have recently considered publishing my poetry. However, who cares about that. People tend not to read poetry nowadays, and you cannot compete with Rilke or Whitman.

So what.

Breathing in, breathing out.

Maybe I will put some more of my poems on the blog. However, I will have to discuss this with my manager and best man first.

This morning I read some statistics on pickpockets. Barcelona seems to be pickpocket paradise.

Lisbon is on rank 8 among European cities and regions.

So when I come back I still want to have this device and my other belongings.

So what?

Breathing out.

The traveller is always leaving town…

Trainology, Timeology, Sociogology

Trainology is the science of sitting in a train, and even sometimes standing and is an interdisciplinary endeavor. It is partly anthropology and partly sociology. And science and technology studies because the train is moving.
Case study: Why do people not grasp the concept of silent coaches?

Timeology is more of an art form between physics, sociology and time management. I have stolen the term from Douglas Adams of course.
Case study: Why is it that we cannot own time and why that is a pity for capitalism?

Sociogology is not a misspelling of sociology. No. It is the sociology of sociogols, who are a subgroup of sociologists who call themselves sociogols.
Case study: The history of sociolé.

Of course we can invent many names for sciences. Some are more accurate or important some are less entertaining. There are as many sciences as band names.
Still the guys, two rows away, keep ranting on about bullshit, as loud as possible, using the cell phone too, sitting in the silent coach.
Still I wonder, where the saying "time is money" comes from. Please don't tell me. Sure it was not Buddha who said that.
Still I miss my sociogolic friends sometimes. Discussions in the dark. Social sociology, not desktop sociology. Lively, interactive, multi-facetted.

I'm not far from home, still on the train, still listening to the silent coach barbarians, still considering:

Trainology, Timeology, Sociogology

Regenesis

This makes me wonder a lot about people’s intentions, although it seems to be about science.

I am on a train in a tunnel on the way from Vienna back to Linz and the train has stopped.

That gives me time again to consider the question: Can we simply stop?

Stop? Sit and watch?

Watch the flowers grow, the water flow by, the clouds pass?

Or do we have to be faster, ever faster to escape doom, to run to the hills, to act as quickly as possible? Be quick or be dead?

The real Regenesis would not be a material one; it would be one of our minds.

I am a preacher of slowness, of solitude, emptiness and nothing.

Not even that. I am a passenger in a quiet world, I don’t move, I sit still even at high speeds. Yes

Regenesis: Why would we want to change something that is recreated every instant.

Why, I wonder?

Solitude

Pee Age Dee

I am dreaming of a little gnome, coming up the stairs at night, giving me my academic title. It is a dream indeed. I think that I will win a Grammy or an Oscar before that.
Ah, a new dream. The Bauernbergpark Man, returning from his imprisonment, will sit on his park bench, smiling this time and he will say: "Ahh Dr Archy 2000, how are you today?"
Ok. Stop. I should stop drinking this non-alcoholic wheat beer.
I should draw another Neruda question.
Or meditate.
Or better work on my thesis.
Hmpf.

Mother Russia

I grew up in an area that was occupied by Russian troops from 1945-1955. However I lived there from 1980-1990. That was my time to occupy that land.

So my connections to Mother Russia are very loose. I do not know many Russian people, myself. Those that I know, I appreciate very much.

All I know about Russians from the post-war period is based on tales from my grandmother and all I recall is that the Russians did not have the chewing gum: the US boys did. In spite of this difference in resources Austria stayed neutral.

Nowadays the Russians have much more chewing gum than for instance let’s say the Ukraine. The Crimean people, whose flag gave away the game before the referendum, crave more chewing gum, among other things.

I think Austria regardless of its incorruptibility by chewing gum shall stay neutral again.

Signs of the Bauernbergpark Man

Last autumn he spent about five days in the park.
Then he disappeared again.
A few days ago I was walking my dog along the north end of the park, when a police car stopped. It was the third one that I saw that day near the park. They were looking for the Man.
I did not see him that day and have not met him since.
However, the policemen did not get out of they cars to look for him in the park.
"How strange" I thought and walked my dog back home, past the place where once the park benches stood, that had been the home of the Man for many a night.

Friends will be friends

In the 1986 promo video of friends will be friends, Freddie looks as if he is the healthiest one of them all. However, he was the first one of them to go.
I came across this video after spending a nice evening in my favorite bar and my favorite restaurant with one of my favorite friends. We were having a perfect time although we had to talk about serious incidents and developments around us.
Friends will be friends right 'till the end.
I am not such a big Queen fan anymore although it was my number one band 26 years ago. We all change, and the world around us changes even faster.
I am glad, that in the middle of this stream we can sometimes hold on to the tiny islands of our friendships, rest for a while and enjoy.

Thank you out there...

Information

So let’s start all over again. Empty the cup. All over again.

After huge, massive loads of information have entered my cerebrum, me being unable to hold back the throngs of bits and bytes with my thalamus, I resign, sitting in the train back home again.

I start all over again. Empty the cup. All over again.

Today you can get information everywhere. No wonder, for it is the age of information in an information society. Countless websites torture you with news of the world. Even if you restrict your interests to scientific websites and news, it is amazing what you can find. Truckloads of innovation, giant heaps of breakthroughs, countless wizards of the modern age, inhabit newspapers, TV and the web. It is fantastic.

But I start all over again. I will empty the cup. All over again.

Here, where I am sitting, it has become peaceful now. Although we are moving at a speed of 220km/h it is rather quiet. Is that an illusion? Or is everything else an illusion: synthetic biology, nanotechnology, stem cell research, IVF, nuclear power.

I start all over again. I am emptying the cup right now. All over again.

Finally, I stop considering all these technoscientific advances. Even my private worries stop bothering me. It is easy. The secret is: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7…

Sochi

Some time ago I had a very strenuous but enlightening conversation with a full-time professional blogger, who earns money from advertisements in his blog. He said that it is crucial to head a blog entry with a controversial or at least actual topic, so that anyone looking for that issue would come to YOUR page.

You might think that I am following that advice right now.

However, I want to analyse the not very obvious connection between the Bauernbergpark Man and the current Olympic games.

Two years ago, the Bauernbergpark Man gathered gravel, for his small gravel heaps, when he moved backward and scared away a bird, a sparrow by the way. This bird flew to a nearby restaurant to get some breadcrumbs for his naturally occurring hunger. He found some and as an exchange gift, he defecated on the stone floor of the restaurant garden. I came along and walked into the faeces, thus carrying along the bird excrements to my home where I left my shoe in front of the door. How the shoe and the bird excrements find their connection to the women’s ski jump final in Sochi is obvious now, isn’t it. We (Austria) won a silver medal in this competition, and if the Bauernbergpark Man knew about all that he would be very happy about it.

Zu faul (too lazy)

Zu faul zu recherchieren sitze ich hier im Railjet von Wien nach Linz. Wäre ich nicht zu faul, so würde ich nach den zwei Gedichten nun ein wenig recherchieren und was in mein kleines Heiligenlexikon schreiben. Stattdessen schreibe ich noch einen Blogeintrag auf Deutsch. Ja ich bin sogar zu faul um ihn auf Englisch zu schreiben. So denke ich mal in meiner Sprache über den Bauernbergpark Mann nach und stelle fest, dass er schon wieder verschwunden ist.

Ja, zu meinen Blogregeln kommt dann auch noch dazu, dass man möglichst auch öfter die Sprache wechseln soll, um die letzten zu vergraulen.

Und wer Kant nicht gelesen hat, mit dem rede ich erst gar nicht.

Schmoll.

News again

Today I posted some comments to an Austrian news article on genetically modified corn. The more subtle and intelligent the post was the less reaction was there from the other posters. I received most feedback to stupid and polarizing posts. “How interesting”, I thought.

What lessons can be learnt for the blog? I will stop writing about the Bauernbergpark Man in a neutral, descriptive fashion. I will just write extreme right or left (depending on the weather) commentaries on world events.

This will give me the audience I’ve been yearning for all these blogging years full of sadness and solitude. But when will I do that?

Giving up writing about the Bauernbergpark and its dwellers is harder than giving up smoking.

But I will try tomorrow. I swear.

How to write a blog

Here are a few guiding principles (the ten commandments of blogging):

1. First read a book on how to write and don’t rely on web entries like this one.

2. Don’t write a blog at all. You keep ending up reading your follower statistics too often and lose your self-respect after a while.

3. Write about the Baurnbergpark or the Bauernbergpark Man as often as possible.

4. Don’t reveal your identity. Just wait until people queue up in the Bauernberpark to watch you and your dog go past to see how you really look like.

5. Irritate people by writing about as many topics as possible, even in one entry if possible. That avoids boring your audience.

6. Change occasionally to a sort of meta-narrative, talking about your blog or talking about your own stories. That irritates people even more.

7. Incorporate words like terror attack, Djihad, president and so on in close proximity to each other to attract at least the attention of the NSAs or of similar institutions.

8. Some name dropping like “Aristotle said…” or “I don’t like Descartes, because…” is also very important.

9. Use black background and white print until someone says: That hurts my eyes. Then you have achieved one of the bloggers’ holy goals: to have impact

10. Blog on

Neverwhere German (Spoiler)

Neverwhere Neil Gaiman

 

Das Buch, bei dem ich das Gefühl bekommen habe, dass ich alt werde, dass ich nicht mehr ein Kind dieser Zeit bin, sondern schon einer älteren Generation angehöre, heißt Neverwhere und ist von Neil Gaiman. Die Geschichte ist schnell erzählt, noch schneller als Neil Gaiman sie erzählt. Ein junger Mann, etwas unreif und in einer nur vermeintlich glücklichen Beziehung und ebenso tollem Job, wird durch einen Zwischenfall in eine Parallelwelt gerissen, in das London below. Dort herrschen andere Gesetzte, vieles ist ungleich bedrohlicher als in London „above“ und auch nicht ganz so langweilig. Und das ist scheinbar Gaimans Hauptintention. Es darf niemals langweilig werden. In der Kürze liegt die Würze. Manch ein Charakter hat eine Lebenserwartung von ein paar Seiten, alles wird zügig abgehandelt. Lange Beschreibungen, subtile Charakterzeichnungen oder gar tiefsinnige Dialoge sind nicht so gefragt. So durchsteht Richard Mayhew allerlei Abenteuer, besteht ein Gottesurteil (für mich das Beste an der Geschichte), besiegt das Biest von London, was sich auch schon in Träumen abzeichnet und steht am Schluss zwischen der Entscheidung zwischen London above und London below. Jetzt habe ich natürlich schon zu viel verraten, doch wird ohnehin so viel erzählt, dass noch genug davon übrig ist. Der Siegfried des Nibelungenlieds ist ebenso zu finden, wie unzählige andere Mythen. Alles in allem ist Neverwhere eigentlich eine Graphic Novel ohne Bilder, und die Dichte und das Tempo der Handlung werden auch verständlich wenn man weiß, dass es sich um ein Script für eine BBC Serie handelt. Für mich alten Mann ist die ganze Geschichte viel zu schnell erzählt, ich kann da halt nicht mehr mit. Wer aber etwas gegen Langeweile braucht, und gerne Comics liest, der hat in Neverwhere einen unbestrittenen Schatz gefunden.