Last tridrive 4 Erich
Triangulation Drive as it should be – a voyage of measurement, calculating the distances that lie between us... it had been a while, but this was a great opportunity for the living to see each other and the dead to be remembered as part of a trajectory in which not all itineraries are congruent.
End of the line for Otto E. the last vestige of his material being under pressure to disappear... as we all do sooner or later; or as he himself said: “...the way from the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Mr. Nobody is short and steep” What better than to end on an artistic note – one that is not concerned with the societal trappings of careers and positions, money and fame...
(though these raise their ugly head intermittently)
Somewhere between Godot and the end of an official journey (Ende einer Dienstreise) is a release from the fetters of even the social mores of humans even after death. So the trip went from A to B (Antwerp to Bonn) where the ritual of dematerialization was
implemented – beginning with the removal of green growth, and then an attempt to break rock – in the end only slight slivers were removed... chips off the old block, and some words were said, and some rolled oats and chickpeas left behind with stones and candles, gold leaf – one of twenty-five leaves to be shared among the closest kin... or not, for we submerged some in the river Rhine in the evening by the emergence of the moon, reflecting on it's running waters... and then to burn the certificates, so that nearly nothing would be left, hardly a trace, impossible to find for one who was not there...
( B to A via D )
We were there momentarily, and still will be for a while but not for ever... a sumptuous evening meal to celebrate our physical selves before retiring for the night, moon rising slowly, no longer a blood moon as it was the night before, eclipsed by our own shadow. Next grey and rainy morning we spent at the museum to visit a show on Wim Wenders... noon saw us cross the river and heat north to Düsseldorf, to our niece, the first to receive a certificate of our endeavor (we had posted the rest in a mailbox at the hotel, but these would take longer than a personal hand-over such as this... of course we celebrated this pregnant moment with 'Kaffee und Kuchen' as is proper in Germany, and had a nice time catching up on all sorts of bits and bobs of information before we split ways: the Belgian delegation to the west, the others retuning south...
Over / in the run of Time
It was very fitting that we were able to visit Wim Wenders' exhibition after all, because I had already thought that the timing was a special coincidence, as I also saw this venture on the Rhine in the light of the road film "Im Laufe der Zeit," in which the main protagonist (Rüdiger Vogler) produces a special edition printed on the family press for his elderly father, in which he could hand over everything unsaid in black and white... I wanted to use the rockfall (bruchtsein/steinbruch) to also bring a conversation (posthumously) into the rubble, but it only resulted in a splintered fragment...
Yet the film's melancholy also crept in somewhere during our Rhine activity, and the burning on the bank was a good finale. In any case, during my visit to the exhibition, it became clear to me once again how much this filmmaker had shaped my perspective – our entire generation, actually... not to mention early works like the Hantke adaptation of "Die Angst des Tormanns beim 11 meter" and, of course, "Alice in den Städten, Falsche Bewegung, The American Friend, The State of Things, (Stand der Dinge) and Paris Texas, not forgetting 'Der Himmel über Berlin / ailes du désir"... and in general, the 'new German wave' has accompanied all along (colonized our subconscieous)... so I also think that "Germany in Autumn" can also be taken along in our thoughts here, albeit without Wenders... When I then look at the video footage of our event, I'm irresistibly reminded of "Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen / Even Dwarves Started Small" by Werner Herzog... Our action sort of was reminiscent of a futile and failed revolt...
So it was an end of an era trip – along ways we have often traveled but this time the context made it more memorable – a farewell to the Rhine, though our niece reminded us she lived just a few hundered yards from the river... so there still is a family presence.
And probably always will be.
