And this week...

week americain

or

Georgie's in town

or

Jürgen is not in town

or

in reference to this blogger's mind while posting a dozen headlines.

The quest for the cure against indecision.

no, for fuck's sake, this is not gonna be the woche italiano. i'd rather stop eating that food, which is allegedly italian, but was stolen in an asian country a thousand years ago. stolen, as the world soccer championship title was indeed not.

they just played a better game and won.

as far as beauty, grace and style of playing, that have seemed to be inspired by a hollywood screenwriter task force, are concerned, we won. (we =the country i live in, germany)

man, we really knocked their socks off.

that drama, that euphoria.
it truly remembered what normally is not our strength, but the main export and most relevant and "truest art form" (AFI) of north america.
a thought which alludes my hope that these four weeks didn't only mean a change in who we are or whatever we may be. nope.

my hope is that, after watching that four week long film about a vision, a team and ultimately US (in this case as the Akkusativ form of WE not the short for fattest country in the world), WE may truly gain a whole new, better and more noble and honest perspective on STAGING, visions, FICTION, imagination, (optimism), and the power of a three act play, heroes and idols. ........

the way i see it now, this little introduction leaves us with slight american allusions. which is just fine, as i'm trying to turn over to the introduction of this -due to my lazyness- already ongoing week.
because this. is going to be.

the week americain.

well, we all strive for placative adjectives, don't we?

so what i actually want to say is, that one week after independency day, the week that our box offices are reopened to the never drying flood of cinematic imports (ironically the import americain is in this case fertilized by a german export, Wolfgang P"ie"ters"e"n) we

1st
got to celebrate the 64th birthday of actor harrison ford (july 13th) (look for some piece about this incident in about 50 years. or probably within 22 year when i'll be turning in my Harrison Ford obituary. See you then.

and

2nd
(as you will see i am surprisingly able to write about some other stuff then movies)

see the first post-Mainz visit of the president americain in this our country. beware stralsund! close your sewer tabs and shut the windows, get into the cellar and pray (or rewatch the game against sweden)! cause george bush is coming to town!

the 3rd thing pain strikingly fact americain occurring today:

you all know it already.

Klinsi's dead.

Well...not really of course (but who knows in this age of clones and doppelgänger). i'm just thinking of him as one of the first non writer, politician, professional capitalist, musician NATIONAL HEROES of our post war nation.

now he killed himself, as a lot of great heroes did it, to keep their honor (a sword would do). for me personally this is the time to suggest the killing of henry jones jr. in indyIV. only this way can he withstand the Caribean Pirates' pressure and the rocking of our adventure film throne. but that's off topic.

all i can say now is ...farewell to Jürgen Klinsmann. may he go, where so many germans went. where so many famous germans live. and where the return once they get the old Heine backslash. if the good old german heimweh will strike Klinsmann down...he's going to return. even to our myth of soccer.

is that eschatological or what?

THINGS I FEAR WHILE HEARING THE PHONE RING

gymnastics



For about one year my former passion and close-to-full-time-occupation is put on hold. It all started out with the obvious "learning" excuse, employed by almost every healthy procrastinating 19 year old student. It's the tool for everything you ever have been wishing to reject.

Me: Sorry that I didn't come to the training that often recently, but finals are ahead and the work is just massive, you know?

Trainer wife: I know, your schedule is just soooo tight. Just try to shevel some space for training in the future.

[That's the worst thing: she's just so understanding. Why? Maybe because she never had finals herself.]

Four months later:

Trainer wife: We're missing you [tone: relatively kind, as usual. When I got the offer to train with a more successfull group of a friended club that was lead by a domina person who never spoke in friendly tones, I rejected the offer. One of my basic wrong decisions of the road away from success?], thought you were not here anymore...hahaha [typical mid class woman around 40: I wanna lead an average life, not mediocre, average...but I've got my passsions: Dancing and gymnastics]...hahaha

Me: Well, you know, college is tougher than expected [so true...]...not much of the ole easygoing student atmosphere left there. I just come home when training's finishing [particularly true]...

following: Promise to arrive on a certain date...I won't appear ....due to examination, paper writing or other work.

While the summer proceeded, the finals already in my back, I continued to stay home, pretending to forget the existence of the gymnastic hall down the street. Maybe I chose the whole gymnastic thing as some kind of a symbol for a sinking life, the pre-final, school life of preservation, innocence and ease.

I was laying on our balcony, sleeping, as if I had been awake for the past twelve months. Pretending to forget that I was supposed to go to the gymnastics training at 6 o'clock, just as I'd been doing it for the past ten years.

Thus I slept.

With the lack of training visits my fear to accidentally meet my trainer couple on the street rose drastically. Everytime I'd leave the house the thought of running into them determined my conspirative looks and secret moves.

Practically my house is right in the middle of the relatively short way to "the hall". About 300 metres are between "the hall", me and the couple's place (they're sharing with two little children.). Not much space to find any trees or other botanics to hide.

The memory of going to "the hall" goes way back to the times, in which I learned to write and read. Gymnastics was there in my life since I can remember. And since it began to exist with and for me, there was a steady rise of skills and challenges, of power and success. I got better and better and better. I guess the "gestreckter salto", that just happened out of a failed flick flack (too high) was the climax of my gymnasticle life. The downfall already started when I a till that day- super kind kid started to do little cravings with my fingernails on the leathery top of the wooden boxes you use for certain gymnastic practices.

On that day, my image changed.

Then there was that incident, where I came close to driving straight into my then pregnant trainer wife. When her child was born and under recurrent influence of our team's "hall"-education I almost "dropped" her son in an unforeseeable playing accident. (I wasn't actually holding him up on my arm. I was just driving him on the little vehicle for the "M

However, as time went by I came to understand that

a) gymnastics ( or Turnen, as we call it in this country) is a great physical education, one of the few kinds of sports that keeps all parts of your body in pretty astonishing shape (or harrasses the most unknown parts of your anatomy). In addition to that it is great fun to watch all of that: The dynamics of bodies in motion. One of the greatest tricks of gymnstastics though is the specator's conviction of easyness, the lightness of a flying floating human body, the power of legs, feet, hands, arms. No other sport -besides track and fields- gets to be that pure and honest.

b) purity is not what comes to mind when I see these 15 year old bulimy sick girls with too muscular arms, too muscular legs and a bad haircut. It's not a pretty picture if these doll like kids strive off their bathing shoes to do their artificial as usual salto, flick flack bla bal line...as usual...just to get into their bathing shoes again , so that they can walk into the dressing room to throw up.
It's that kind of artifical atmosphere, that is up in the air even at the lowest of regional competitions.

I've recognized now that, as far as gymnastics is concerned, theory is far beyond what happens in real life. I don't want to learn the parts of exercises, that seem to be invented for the next 100 years of gymnastics history.
I want to do a sport that manages to challenge me on a creative level. Because creativity and dynamics are two of the main elements that ought to make this sport what it is...beautiful, surprising and stunning.
A possibility to show off what we're able to honestly do with our body in grace.

Slowly I start trying not to think of my gymnastics while hearing that damn urgent sound of our ringing phone. Try not to think that the male or female part of the trainer couple is on the other end of the line. Try not to think about them while walking down the street.

There are still a lot of other things left unresolved in my life that I fear confronting, when hearing the ringing phone, though. For example: My neighbour who borrowed me some cope of a freaking musical that was staged a couple of years ago in our hometown (my brother acted in the second part of it). (Damn, I haven't even opened the copy. Gonna throw it in his mailbox tonight, when it's dark.)

For now, I gotta go to the tennis court. Gotta play within an hour. The past three matches were damn good...as far as my own results were concerned. By any unlucky chance I will see my trainers car parked on the lot in front of our courts, because they will be on the annual team competition.