11th of May to the 18th of May

Hello everyone! Today, especially the fathers out there. Today is Father’s Day. A day when traditionally men of all ages, but let’s say starting at 14ish head out, walk, bike, and wander and get plastered. It’s a great day and usually, the weather is nice. My friends and I have postponed our day to Saturday - a day when we will walk through the woods have backpacks full of beer and enjoy some Czech cuisine at some point. We will also talk, walk and laugh a lot and grow together as men and fathers. So yeah, life is good and I have been in the lake today and will probably end the day with a comedy show that I will attend because it is fun. On to the stories.

11th of May: “A rhyming couplet”

Fire, fire slay the spire and dethrone the king

When together, we are many, and our actions sting

12th of May: “Exquisite Corpse #1”

This is an exercise where writers pass a story around sentence by sentence. So anyone up for that for like 10 rounds? (20 sentences total)

13th of May: “What’s your sign? - find today’s horoscope and check the accuracy”

I hate horoscopes and all that cold reading stuff that charlatans around the world spew out. So not surprisingly I find the horoscope today just as much a general drivel like any other day. I’m a Leo and apparently, I am very creative today and should share my plans with other people, otherwise, that would be a waste. Okay. I should also accept my weaknesses and that is totally fine because nobody is perfect. Duh! Also, a bodily imperfection or weakness could show today and I shouldn’t expect perfection to live more relaxed. I’m 38 so I guess this is my belly, still cuddly and since the fasting, it is also shrinking a bit. Horoscopes are drivel and I hope you never pay for one. I remember being scammed by some sort of monk in Thailand with some magic tricks in a book. Instead of being awed, I was furious to not have stopped that heinous magic show earlier. I did not part with any money but I feel said for everyone how did.

14th of May: “Completely change careers or life direction - where would you be?”

This is tough. Because I did so many things and landed in different places. I guess if I completely would have changed life direction at some point I would be where I am from. I think my life direction would forever have changed if I would have decided to never study outside of my hood. The Erzgebirge (ore mountains) in Germany. I think I would have stayed a firefighter volunteer, I would probably work in a local branch of a bank or would be an IT guy there. I would have never traveled outside of Germany. This writing exercise would not exist, because I would have never learned English to a certain level. I would live in a house and I probably would also have a small family, but not as genetically diverse.

15th of May: “The last time behavior made me uncomfortable”

I consider myself to have a high threshold for uncomfortable stuff. The thing is I do get uncomfortable around a certain type of people. When I am around German rednecks and not the loving kind I get uncomfortable. When hubris gets the better of some people and they take their comfortable life for granted and complain about something they have no idea about and judge heavily. Usually, that shit is racist, sexist, or just dumb. The more people know the less they state that they state that they completely judge a topic and binarily say that X is the solution or Y is the definitive and right answer. There is a German TikTok Meme that perfectly encapsulates these uncomfortable interactions and I guess it is an audio from some sort of interview where a guy says: “Those refugees, especially the single men. They are really child soldiers who are sent here on a mission to build a new race of people and secure our land because we Germans shall be annihilated” - often it is just one person in a video being uncomfortable and the captions are something like: “you drive your 50+-year-old co-worker home”. This type of behavior does exist and even a hint of it makes me uncomfortable.

16th of May: “Text from an unknown number”

Since back in Germany I think I have received Zero texts from unknown numbers. In China they were mostly spam, but also some fun ones. One of the best ones was a text I have to paraphrase and translate into English that went something like this:

“Hello, this is Liu. You were not home today. Don’t worry I work for the police. I am happy to get to know you and would like to drink tea with you.”

Turns out, that was not really a spam message. It was really some dude. His name was Liu something and he was working for the police or something adjacent and yes, they do like to hang out and have tea. I met him sometime later on and for a while when I was living in that little flat he was texting occasionally asking what I am doing and extending invitations for tea. The texts stopped once I moved apartments. A friendly fellow who was probably spying on me or at least checking what that one foreigner in that corner of Zhabei was doing.

17th of May: “A creative block and how to get over it”

Thankfully this doesn’t happen to me a lot. I am also rarely ever bored. So I try to get over this sort of block, when and if it happens with just some actions. Doing something. I go on my bike and ride to the lake or I go to the gym and listen to a podcast. Then I make my workspace as pleasant as possible with tea or coffee and maybe a YouTube video in the back. Then I just find the tiniest sliver of inspiration from somewhere. Anywhere really and I write down a sentence or two. From that moment on some sort of flow starts. So just doing something and being okay with doing something different for a while is totally fine and tends to get me into gear.

18th of May: “Aster Chriseldis - the woman in a coma whispers”

“Aster Chriseldis, Aster Chriseldis, Aster Chriseldis…” - this is all that she has said after falling into a coma. So who is this? All we know is, that Mary was good at her job. Really good. Brilliant. She was the top private detective north of the border. She was able to track people like the best hunters would follow deer tracks. She shadowed everyone involving infidelity, that was a daily thing and then some sort of religious cult. She was run over by a horse carriage in buttfuck nowhere. Now it is up to her child to figure out who Aster Chriseldis is. Aster is not that much of a popular name these days, so she figured out that this person must be her Mom’s age or older. Aster is also a gender-neutral name. So she had no idea if she should look for a man or a woman. Given the religious cult that she was investigating and its conservative gender ideologies, it could have been either a male or female name and Aster has traditionally been used for women. “Chriseldis, Chriseldat…” - she had no idea what to do with the last name. The town the cult is operating from has a phone book. In 2023. Crazy. Chriseldis under C with two entries. A.Chriseldis and T.Chriseldis. Boom! Both are located at Backwoods Ridge the last house at the end of the road. The road that Mary got hit by the horse carriage. There was the hot lead. “I’m coming for you Aster!”