H. Adler - The Journey

The mounds in this garden are lavishly decorated, and each is named. That’s something special, as workers drag in special blocks of granite that require great effort as well as expense. With chains the blocks are lifted and placed above those who can do nothing against the fact that the stones are set directly above their skulls. But there’s comfort in this strange custom, for now the dissolute once again possess something that, at least in the imaginations of the living, cannot be taken away. The dead are condemned to silence, but the stones must have pity on them and, amid all the ornamentation, proclaim the wonder of their names for all to see.

Whoever has a name enjoys his simple existence and has not left the society of whatever world in which the slightest hint of a name still brings him joy. “All ye rejoice, for we have a name!” Holy choirs sound beneath the ringing of bells that swing to and fro and that do not shatter. For that would mean existence is endangered, there being nothing to denote it with gusto. The dead are not erased, rather their names are instead proclaimed far and wide. Their legacy outlasts their contempt, their misery, and all sadness. For existence has erected a monument to itself that towers above them.

Existence is all that remains, an almost incomprehensible collection of the detritus left over. The one who lives, who cannot live there, feels like a helpless stranger. He is someone who is led past and then through. He still has eyes and can see, he’s not dead, even if he can do no more than express what he observes, thus becoming a ghost imprisoned and dressed as a living figure. The dead man made of stone is not absent for long and needs no outward shell, since he has one and is one. The ghost newly transformed is added to many other ghosts of his own kind, all of which appear in similar manifestations, possessions being one of them, even though there may be few left, or few that are allowed or granted by higher powers, versus the power of the wrongful owners who have ensured their own control over existence and make no distinction as to whether what they have seized are things that belong to the dead and are what remains of them, or indeed if they belong to the living who want to own them for themselves and make their claim to them. However, the living cannot do so, since after the creation of the laws that caused them to cease to exist, they are not what they really are, having instead become goods that have been taken, which, since they are not things and therefore do not exist, can no longer be proprietors that one can either count or recognize as people, but rather are ghosts clad in different forms whom the unbelievers retaliate against whenever they make themselves visible, harming them in ways that any of us can suffer but that one should never be forced to bear.

The chain of people driven on through Leitenberg consists of ghosts because only a few inhabitants of the town have the ability to see them, their own eyes having practiced looking deeply into the eyes of people whose essence they recognize but who are not essential at all. And so the inhabitants run around, mostly women and children who busily move and jump about without thinking. Their eyes are either closed because they possess the countenances of dreamers, or their gaze wanders, looking straight, though not entirely through what is not completely alive. Nonetheless they look at a specter that to them is not real, though they don’t lash out at objects they are not accustomed to seeing, their gazes drifting off endlessly. Gazes that see clearly become few and far between, because once they become empty of thought they are fleeting and no longer exist. They represent something that cannot easily be controlled, even though the otherwise helpless are provided with free security, presumably only through the merciful desire to maintain, amid totally collapsed or never achieved order, some kind of legal structure, though not through the will of the secured or the power of the guards, each member of Leitenberg participating in it, as well as all of those outside the town, no matter where, as far as the world reaches.

It doesn’t matter whether it is so or not so. It either looks different to you all or you don’t see it at all. In any case it will pass and you will pass on. Or you’ll simply stand there unable to move and everything will pass by you. But it’s not as if you have not experienced any of this; none of you is so shut down that you feel nothing pressing at you from outside or within. None of you is free of this fate. Indeed, none of you can stop it, which is why it’s called fate, yourselves voyagers journeying toward a specter that appears everywhere. Should anyone bother to try to find out what happened, it will already have passed. And so everything passes. Even though things continue, they also fall apart, and thus nothing survives.

This or that is picked up along the way and lifted up to be assessed for its worth and placed together symbolically with similar things that have been collected, different relationships drawn between them, the unexpected possessing its own inward reality and attesting to the fact that something else indeed still exists. Distinctions become obvious as soon as the symbolic power of objects ignites as effigy and meaning is gradually restored to them in the movement of the flames. Entire worlds can indeed be destroyed, which the thinking person appreciates — thought is nothing more than memory, which is why thought is also a kind of memorial, and so its content is always outstripped, its desire being always to exist in the present, among whose thick webs it presses on into the endlessly pressing gaze of the possible, which is the future — and yet nothing remains of thought, because whatever is thought has already passed, time having already passed, namely into the helpless past, the realm of all that remains of what has flowed into reality as manifest desires that have now come into being, though through their becoming they have forfeited their essence and their truth.

Only because thought takes pity on the tiny bits that remain is there something on which everything rests and that can be relied upon. There are some who easily say it is so, and with some measure of hope. For then people would have sufficient reason and excuse to accept everything as is, to construct it before themselves, to build it themselves. How long it lasts depends on the strength of the builders. Usually it lasts for a long time; the fear that results in protracted endeavor sees to that. An endeavor is a concern that tries to protect itself and that doesn’t want to let itself turn into a satisfied effort, whereby the continuation of real relations is realized amid total flux.

The sinister is buried or, without anyone noticing, is thrown out with the rubbish that the town hauls away once a week and dumps onto open ground near the Scharnhorst barracks in Leitenberg. There all despair is tossed away and forgotten, for so much intense disgust is associated with the useless that the community has decided as one to block it out of their immediate view, and in exchange for pay for this equally important and despised task, they let the unfortunate people cart it all away, away, away so that it is out of sight, out of mind. Only the rats love what’s normally thrown out, as well as those rarities that they are not shy about. Thus near the camp, the rubbish lies there and rots, unobserved by most, despised by those who must look at it or who see it by chance. The plants themselves thrive, growing fat and lush with spreading leaves and tiny buds, shamelessly indifferent to the rubbish that nourishes them.

Today it is much quieter in Leitenberg than when the hauling away of rubbish was a sacred ritual and taken care of with loud fanfare. Back then a man moved from building to building with a handbell, stepped into the foyer and rang loudly, the sound echoing joyfully up through each floor. What it said was: “Listen, people, and be happy, for right behind me the garbagemen are coming to haul away your rubbish!” Many impatiently waited for the herald, while whoever had forgotten today was the day had the chance to be saved by the envoy’s bell. Then all the housewives and maids would run out of the apartments with buckets and boxes and gather before it building’s front door. Vigorous chatter erupted as they kept a lookout for the expected wagon. And indeed it was only a little while before it lumbered along slowly yet steadily, the cart swaying as it passed over the cobblestones. Two powerful horses were hitched to the wagon, the driver never having to yell “Halt!” since they knew their task so well that they stopped at precisely the right spot in front of each building. The sign to move on was given with only a casual click of the tongue.