weird writing

This strange sensation of season changing in the middle of a season happens every summer. For a week or so, it just feels like autumn. Gloomy and rainy and uncomfortable. It’s a time where I don’t look for the company of people, but for the company of things. They are always around anyway. Most quite silent, others making noises and a few making just not quite the noise of perfect functionality. It’s a bit like humans, but if it gets too much you can just pull the plug or put it in a box. I mean, I get that everything is out of what once in a while; the weather, everything else, you, me, and whatever is left over. That’s just how it is, could be worse for sure. Imagine ticking straight on time all the time, that would be awful sooner or later.

Just because its about two decades into the 21th century really doesn’t mean everything goes smooth. In fact, it feels like everything is going all terrible and cannot possibly be managed. That just always makes me watch old movies I probably don’t quite understand. Even the ones older than me. I just watch them, curiously, looking for familiar things. Everything is differently the same, more or less. Maybe a bit less out of whack than reality. Why do the unfamiliar things seem more familiar than this alienating present times? They good company, really. They aren’t very quiet. If I really want to overdo it, I hook up the VCR to the CRT-TV and stare into the dot matrix. Or I cheat and plug in the DVD player. That box has a remote control. Very futuristic. There’s an old console stacked on top of that boxy TV too, on top of the DVD player. It has a wired controller, but I only own one or two games and I’m quite terrible at playing. Just never got the hang of it.

Sometimes just reading a book is good too. But it’s very quiet. For those cases, there are a few stacks of MCs to keep me company. And some Walkmans. Personal stereo music cassette players. Five or so. Maybe 8? Only the red one really works. It got refurbished and all, its smooth as new, ticking away on its brand new centre gear wheel, pulling a magnetic plastic tape around and making noise. It doesn’t have auto reverse tho, bit of a bother. The green one is very nice too, not a real Walkman. But plays tape too. Just need to be careful at the end of side B, sometimes it gets stuck. The violet one too. At least the MD players never do. One of them is about as old as me, it feels less out of whack than the newer one with the weak laser that can’t record anymore. Still, no matter how wonky they are on some days, they are great company.

One could argue that Tuesdays are the most ordinary days of the week. Mondays certainly are not, they are more of a culture shock after the weekend. Wednesdays aren’t either, you are used to the week by the middle of it. Thursdays are neither, the week is over soon and they are annoying to spell. Fridays are basically weekend; Saturdays are legally weekend and Sundays are just the thing at the end of the week when you almost get used to it being over.

It must have been a few years ago by now, in a night not much unlike this one, just a bit colder. Rather than a light rain, there was a light snow stumbling out of the dark city sky. The cobbled street in front of the house looked the same sparkly, dull wet it always does. For ever gloomy in this small town that was supposed to be so big. Since it’s an old street lined with five-or-so story houses where the increasingly gentrified people crowd at night, the streetlights are only on one side. And still emitting the faintly golden glow of old, energy over-consuming bulbs. They burn through the quiet night anyway. Nobody here is up before 7:00 and the bakery doesn’t even open before 7:30, it’s such a bother in case you want an early-early breakfast or actually have to work early for a while or catch a train or something at dawn. Many things to be found at dawn yet my favourite remains sleep. 

Anyways, even I sometimes wake up at night and can’t sleep and wanted around as much as one can run in a circle between a bed, through a hallway corner, into a slightly damp kitchen. And then of course there’s no choice but to look out of the window. Not that anything ever happens there, really. Even during the day there’s barely anyone passing though. Sometime during some summers ago, the street got blocked by a whole bunch of prefab balconies that got flown into the courtyard of the house opposite-ish with a damn huge crane. That’s literally the last thing that happened here, ages ago. 

However, back, during that one winter night, when I looked out the kitchen window, registering the first snow of that year, I saw someone unexpected. A rabbit was sitting in the dim light of the nearest streetlamp, two houses down the road. Maybe looking at the snow. This night I didn’t see a rabbit. It’s a bit sad to be honest. It’s a good change of scenery to see not a human in this town, they are really taking overhand. 

A couple of days ago, a few blocks south of here I saw a squirrel. Climbing up a tree. Terribly h exciting you would think, country bum, aren’t you? Here in town, it was in fact such an unprecedented occurrence, a random stranger talked to me. Separate me wearing headphones, imagine that! He said that “a few years back there where lots of squirrels in my courtyard” and that “these days you just see them as mush on the street, usually” really, old man, really? I wonder why. 

Doubt it’s due to all the cars around here, filling up more space than there is parking. “Must be all the new people moving here, it’s becoming popular around that market square” oh yeah, been there years ago but somehow that all got unaffordable. “It used to be a lot cheaper than the supermarket!” well good for you, I’m not old enough, imagine if they change the streetlights here to LED or something, then that long long wide street won’t look like golden UFOs floating above it when it’s foggy in the evening. “Nah I can’t imagine they will ever improve the lighting around here, it works just fine, doesn’t it? Anyway, don’t want to keep you, funny seeing that squirrel wasn’t it.” And off he went to lunch somewhere in a burrow in one of the five-or-so story houses, a few blocks south. 

This likely happened some two weeks ago, maybe three already? It was one of those cold, clear, yet clouded, late winter days as they get more and more common, with their pale grey sky. At the time I was visiting my mother, her place is in a neat, yet boring area, way out of town. Lots of trees and a bunch of small lakes. Nothing to see there. A bit boring, to be honest. But the real estate bubble has been pushing prices way up recently, so it’ll be hip out there in a few years no matter what.

We went on a walk that afternoon, a not-too-long and not-too-short sort of walk, around the lakes, during off-season it’s not crowded. All the trees where bare, a grey mush scratching the grey sky, standing in sky-grey puddles in an awful lot of trampled mud. Barely anyone was out walking their dog – Mother really doesn’t like dogs.

We didn’t talk much; it was the slightest bit too cold for that to be comfortable. My breath turned into tiny clouds blurring my vision, when the wind blew from the wrong direction. That’s what walking in circles around a big hole full of grey water gets you, I suppose. A whole variety of water birds with cold feet was around, not doing much either. Maybe they were off-season, like the tourists. Dreaming of warm summer days and being better off.

The wind picked up a notch, starting to clear small patches of clouds away, rippling the mirror-like lake surface with tiny waves. Not that it bothered the ducks much. But, they were like they always were; the moment one flew up, most others followed without overthinking. Brimming rays of light soared through the clouds, revealing a partially covered sunset in all sorts of colours. The light beamed over the dull winter landscape, causing water patches everywhere to glitter and one of the ducks, hurrying after its friends flying up from the lake, to look golden. I’m still confused about that impression. Mother never saw it. Maybe she didn’t look, maybe she never sees the same things as me. Maybe it was simply my mind playing tricks on me. Or probably some strange light effect.

Das Eichhörnchen rannte rasch über die ruhige Seitenstraße, unter ein geparktes Auto am Rande der Grünfläche. Hektisch knabberte es an einem Ast, der im Laub auf dem Boden lag, schaute sich aufgeschreckt um, als nahe ein Fahrrad vorbeifuhr und eilte über den Rasen zum nächsten Baum und noch einen weiter. Mit großem Satz sprang es hinauf, viele Hüpfer und Astwechsel, bis ganz nach oben in die spärlich belaubte Krone.

Eine große Krähe, die im Tiefflug über die Straße segelte, schwang sich mit einigen mächtigen Flügelschlägen höher und höher, bis sie auf einem dicken Ast im Gipfel desselben Baumes landete, ein gutes Stück über den Dächern der alten, umstehenden Häuser.

Das Schwarze Auto auf dem Parkplatz wurde ungelenk ausgeparkt und weggefahren. Der Mann, der immer um halb Vier jeden Nachmittag in den Park kam näherte sich mit seiner Zeitung.

Die Krähe saß noch eine Weile auf dem Ast, flatterte etwas umher und schwang sich dann ungesehen wieder auf und war davon.

In some corner of that room was a big box, an old cigar box. Those boxes are one of these weird objects that just seem to appear one day, never leave but are impossible to tell whom they originated from. In fact, if you’d ask Eiry about it, she couldn’t tell you where the box came from even if she wanted to. But she had other things on her mind anyway, the times where strange, between jobs and between lives, she was somewhere between still packed boxes in a temporary place. One of those temporary things that take a longer while than they should take anyway. Most likely Eiry didn’t mind that at the time through. She was quite used to the moving around and about after all.

The contents of that old cigar box where proof of that. Part of the proof. The contents had long spiled over into various tins and cans and other boxes. It was Eiry’s postcard collection. Of places friends and family had visited, and of places she had been to. For a very long time she had written to herself every year, from wherever in the world she was living at the time. Dear M., I hope this card finds you well…

Since getting some mail was one of the greatest things to happen when you live in a city, with all those people you don’t know, it seemed important to her to ensure she got enough of it. With the years it grew into one of those habits that are forgotten about until that one day – never the same date – comes and wants to be taken care of. Those cars where in that cigarette box. Lots of big cities, lots of small towns, cliché sight seeing cards, serious single motives, some black and white ones even. All those places had changed since they had their portraits taken. Some places piled up like the boxes in the next room. Solid, popular places, always crowded, always looking at their best.

This year I will finally go to university. Wishing you all the best in the future.

Who would have thought the economy crisis would prolong this persistently? Better days surely will follow…

We went on a holiday cruise this Christmas, it was very lovely, I hope we can go again next year!

Pieces of memory, attached to printed on cardboard pieces, stamped and dragged three times around the globe. Whenever holiday trips where in short supply, Eiry would go over the vacation cards. Whenever her own yearly card arrived, she would look through the old ones and put the new one in the right place – it wasn’t a chronological order but a geographical. Time is relative after all. In some ways the same places caused similar thoughts, wanting to leave, wanting to stay, seeing the same people growing to be different. Not necessarily anything new was to be found in those piles of cards. Still, a comforting habit is better than a destructive one.

My Grandmother is really old now. Almost a century, almost as old as Grandfather when he died some years ago. So to me, they always have been old. I barely recognize her anymore after not having seen her in a while. But she only barely remembers me anyway. When she’s having a bad day, she can be a rather nasty old lady, knowing exactly she has no clue what’s going on but pretending like a little child, so she’ll get candy. It’s rather estranging. The woman who’s looking after her full time, every day, every week, every month of the year always calls her Madam M in her broken way of speaking the language.

The house is still more recognizable than the inhabitants, even through it too fell in the bad disrepair of older and older age. When I was still a child it always seemed so big, with so many rooms and an endless supply of things never seen before. Old stuff, new old stuff, battered up old objects out of use with no point of being kept. The household of old people remembering wars and lack of things more than the internet of things and never ending supply in supermarkets. You could go there and if you’d look in the right corners find stuff older than you still with price tags in old currencies. It was like some parallel world where the real time never even knocked.

In some ways it got worse by now, with nobody entering some rooms for weeks and months now. If you cross over the cobbled yard, to the outbuilding with the disused garage, but left to the old carport, right of the small, old workshop (which is still stocked with the weirdest, rustiest and most unusable things it could possibly contain), there’s a wooden door. With an old, rather misfit key and some swearing you can unlock it if humidity isn’t too bad on the day. It leads into a narrow passageway, past the door of the old outdoor loo, the former pig pen, some disused nooks and crannies, a root cellar into the hillside and so on. There used to be an old metal bathtub in that back courtyard to collect the rainwater for the garden but it’s long gone now. The whole yard is overgrown and the stones that hold back the hill are loose, and it all looks a bit dangerous to enter. It probably is. But if you cross over that and walk up the flight of overgrown stairs along the hillside you get to a terrace with broken up floor surface.

If you remembered to collect the key hanging in the passageway, on that hook mad up of loose, old electricity cable, you can unlock a glass door on the other side of the terrace (otherwise go fetch it). Behind that is an almost empty front room, there’s an old metal stove that hasn’t been used probably since someone put it there, and where the chimney is the water is leaking in. If it was rainy the days before there are often some small lakes on the old linoleum floor. There’s an old desk there and some rather poor looking chairs and the old nativity scene set up with all the figures sits on it for no reason. The wallpaper is peeling off the walls, some old, framed picture is holding it up on one wall. The corners and windows are full of spider webs and the air feels heavy, moist, and unmoved for a long time.

Through the door to the left is another room, it has a carpet and more peeling wallpaper, a green flower pattern with more mould near the chimney. But the roof isn’t leaking there yet. There are two kitchen cabinets there, the old school ones to keep the good dishes in, with glass sliding doors in the centre but not too high, and a wardrobe with stacks of old suitcases piled on top of. Another wonky desk with some chairs around finishes the room, it’s almost like someone’s old dining room. In the cabinets there are lots of old dishes, some glued together and used beyond repair, some still new in their boxes. They all smell terribly thought. Everything in that room does. If you take some new-old towels or beddings from the closet you have to wash and sundry it for weeks before the smell goes away. It’s the moisture and the mould, it all slowly creepy into everything and never wants to go away again. In one of the cabinets are stacks of old letters and postcards, lots of them never written, some of them from people I’ve heard of, to people long dead before I ever met them.

Some years ago, I found the black silk wedding dress and paper flowers of a wedding way over a century ago. It’s a room where time feels broken. I can never stand it in silence. It’s as if you get lost so suddenly that you forget where you came from. The few electronic devices there are old enough to have plugs with ceramic parts for insulation and braided wires.

There’s still another room, if you go through the next door. It has a bare concrete floor, with a wooden hatch that leads down somewhere. On the old, dirty white wall there’s grandfathers beekeeping coat and the hat with the net, just hanging there for over a decade. Some empty boxes are in a corner and there’s nowhere else to go. If you step back into the surreal room in the middle, you can see the dead butterfly in the spiderwebs at the window from that angle. It’s been there for a long, long time too but hasn’t lost its colours. Of course you can sneak around the room for the millionth time, there probably would still be something new, like those old, cheap knives with the brittle plastic handles that someone brought from Paris during the last war or something like that.

“What do you mean it’s real?”

“It does look very much like most parts of a homo sapiens skeleton.”

“So someone murdered someone and put their skeleton in the garden shed?”

“No idea.”

“But you ought to know!”

“Do I look like some novel private detective?”

“Totally.”

“Not at all. Besides, in novels all the facts are always so neatly arranged to be picked up by the detective and the murder is well arranged to be caught but this is real life. And I’m not a detective.”

“You’re not trying to figure out the crime then.”

“What crime?”

“There’s a skeleton in front of you. About nose height. You clearly see it too.”

“Sure but all dead people are basically skeletons. Well unless they end up in a bog.”

“In a bog?”

“It dissolves bones and leaves the rest.”

“You give me nightmares.”

“Same.”

Some uneasy silence followed. Raindrops falling on the tin roof of the shed failed to fill out the silence by all means. The two just glazed vaguely at the skull, which glazed back, silently.

“But you know about skeletons, right? Like the detective in novels.”

“My friend, I’m an archaeologist. Still not a detective. I’m also not wearing a shabby suit and don’t have a detective agency with some very hairy cat waiting for me. Or a secretary that does all my paperwork. Man, I kind of wish I did have a secretary though. Or a cat.”

“You can borrow my cat...”

“That’s not the same.”

“How about my best suit then?”

“Men’s ware doesn’t suit me that well.”

“Tragic.”

“Fits to the rain then.”

“And that skeleton.”

“It looks very old to me. The bone surface is uneven, partly degenerated, some bite marks by rodents on the femur here. Those teeth have never seen a dentist. Or a modern toothbrush. The molars are completely worn down. It’s not a young person.”

“So its old? Like from a medieval graveyard old?”

“Could well be.”

“Then it’s not a murder but just some ethnically, clean of murderous intent old skeleton hanging out in an abandoned garden shed?”

“Ethnically clean?”

“No clean of murderous intent...”

“There are no ethnically correct skeletons in anybody’s shed. Or closet. Or basement or wherever. Not even necessarily in a graveyard.”

“Not a murder victim,  I said.”

“How do you want to verify that? Could have been poisoned or strangled or sliced up for all we know. Or starved or drowned or—”

“Stop it. I get it. It’s still a skeleton in a shed and we don’t know who it is.”

“An adult homo sapiens.”

“That’s not a name of someone.”

“How does the name make a difference to a skeleton?”

“It doesn’t but it would for me.”

“You’re just a skeletton with some more flesh on its bones.”

“I’m really going to have nightmares.”

“You’re the one who summoned me in a shed with a skeleton on a rainy afternoon. I could be home watching Inspector Barnaby on the telly.”

“Aha, a detective series again. He would try to solve this mystery!”

“No, he’d go home and have tea and wait for the plot to move on. Until eventually recent events would be connected to the skeleton which didn’t present itself with cause or context. If this were fiction, it wouldn’t be a thing of its own. Well maybe but then more like a Maltese Falcon.”

“A bird?”

“The Maltese Falcon is an old movie and the falcon is a statuette that doesn’t do anything as object int he movie but to drag the plot ahead.”

“So if there where a skeleton in a shed in something with a plot that pile of bones would be the cause of a scene?”

“That’s how I’d write it.”

“You’re an archaeologist. Not a writer.”

“Really?”

“No then you’d also had to be a detective and have a cat and a secretary.”

“And a detective agency.”

“Yeah. Maybe with a less leaky roof than this shed.”

“The plot probably wouldn’t allow for that.”

“A plot with holes? Did you run out of budget?”

“No but how about we just do what everyone else clearly did before and just let the skeleton be whatever it is and go have tea or something?”

“Now that would be uneventful.”

“What do you expect? It’s Sunday afternoon and it’s raining. Nothing’s ever going to happen on such a day.”

It feels like it was a really long time ago, but it actually only was in the later half of middle school, probably. Back then I helped out an Auntie of mine on most weekends at the little café she had in the village. One of those aunts who you’re not actually blood related with, you know? At the time I didn’t like coffee at all, and was also as bad as ever with calculating all the tiny expenses in my head on the cent as you can imagine. But still, some Saturdays and most Sundays I went there, my darkest pair of blue jeans (usually reserved for school) and a top as black as I could find (so mostly also dark blue). Auntie ran the counter, made all the coffee and tea and sliced all the cakes in perfect pieces. She made those cakes herself every day and they where the best cakes on the planet. Everything home made in the back kitchen of the place, which was a former bar. The whole establishment was quite spacious for a café, you came up the back door – the front one towards the street being usually closed – from an outside sitting area overlooking a small lake, into an open room with big window fronts either short side equipped with various small and two longer tables, to the right of the door the counter and the three stairs up the kitchen, behind the counter a curtain to the other sitting room, up two stairs.

Her sickly husband ran the kitchen in those days, which mostly meant keeping on top of the ever-growing mountains of used dishes, pre-washing them and feeding them to the industrial dishwasher. And sometimes preparing an ice cream sundae or warming up the soup of the day. After not too long, that kitchen was where I was usually kept to help out – that and cleaning up the dishes outside when the other one or two servers who helped out had too much on their hands. When I was done working, I’d note the hours on a post-it and leave it on the kitchen counter. Some days, when the man was in the hospital, I had to run the kitchen alone. Got scolded a million and one time for being a bit slow, no matter how much faster I managed to keep going. The pay wasn’t really good, but back then, getting an extra thirty or forty quit was a lot so it didn’t really matter.

Mostly I was paid in cake. A plate of what was left at the end of every Sunday I worked – on Mondays the place was closed and someone needed to eat it. On weekdays there wasn’t too much going on anyway, less customers meant that when I sometimes dropped by during week to get some school work done in quiet, I’d get a free milk coffee or cappuccino. When the weekends went slow I also got these. And not some rip off, no the most fancy kind of coffee-iteration a coffee shop could come up with. Always. She made them for herself too, with all care and precaution and it got cold over work more than once. But she kept making them for herself and for the staff. Because she cared. She cared to make them nice and perfect, she cared to home-bake the cakes and get them done on point, she cared to have the place as clean and neat and all the glasses polished spotless enough to make them invisible. The glasses had a different towel than the cups and the silverware had yet another one. From where I came from I’d never had gotten the idea to even do such a thing. Nor to dry off the dishes that came from the dishwasher either. Or, to make myself the nicest hot drink I could possibly create. Or not to wait until the day way over to clean up some spilled drink or swipe up cake crumbs. Everything was constantly looked after and cared for and maintained at best possible skill and effort. It wasn’t cheap coffee she used either, it was carefully picked out, hand roasted coffee produced locally. Always freshly grinded.

I started to like the fancy coffee, it had nothing of the weeks and months old filter and instant coffee I was familiar with. That effort cost a lot energy. Eventually I didn’t had time the last summer of middle school due to finals to finally be able to move up to the path that would take me to university, and Auntie had to close the café down due to financial troubles, issues with the landlord and the health of her husband. There’s someone else running a tearoom there now, the sitting rooms got a makeover and looks really posh now, with all the fake gold kitsch they could find. But I wouldn’t go there anymore, the cake isn’t homemade anymore, it’s delivered from some bakery in the closest town and the coffee is the mass-produced, mechanical roasted, at-some-point-ground stuff you get everywhere. Basically, the place lost all it gained from the care and attention that Auntie put in it, and apparently, it’s still disappointing people who came because of the good cake they had years ago, when she still had the café.

Just because all cats are cats, they are not all the same. Not even remotely. But nevertheless, let me introduce you to a very particular one. Cat Winter is a very friendly cat, and his fur is white as snow. He is also rather small, a bit tiny maybe. His ears lay flat at the sides of his head, so he always looks a bit sad. It’s not that he doesn’t try to smile – in fact he does try all the time, but somehow it always looks a bit sad, too. His small, heart shaped nose stands out a bit as well, it’s a rather uncommon shape after all, you wouldn’t see it every day. Cat wears glasses – red-framed, round, rather thick reading glasses. Sometimes they almost slide off his flat nose. But he doesn’t mind much. Since Cat’s eyebrows somehow seem to start in round dots, they complement the shape of the lenses, rather than making it look odd. All in all, I must say, Cat is the most adorable cat I know off. Despite the common name, his blank white fur is quite rare, white save for the ink smears at the paws, but those spots would wash off. They come from the matter of the fact, that Cat works at the local library, he stamps the cards in the back of the books, organizes all the mountains of paperwork in the back offices and, most importantly, he is the best librarian to ask if you are looking for a book, but aren’t quite sure, which one. And yes, by local library I mean the old, washed grey stone one, with the big pillars at the front that make it look more like an ancient temple, than a well heated, public space to sit and read good books for free.

It must have been maybe a week ago, that I’ve met Cat last, on his way to work. He always commutes there from his place nearby, well usually he walks, but on rainy days he likes to take the train. He always says rain gives him such a bad fur day, that he’d rather stay out of it as good as possible. On first sight I hadn’t recognized him – only when he spoke up to me, I caught a glance of his red rimmed glasses hidden between a wide-rimmed hat and a thick blue scarf wrapped up till around his nose. His paws here dug deep into the long coat’s pockets, a classic umbrella hanging from his left elbow – he tried awfully hard, not to bother any other pedestrians with it. As expected, he complained a bit about the weather, just like cats on a rainy morning do, when they’d rather not had to have jobs and rushing into the city for work. We exchanged all the polite stuff, too, that two have to talk about, when they accidentally meet in the first week of a new year. It made me feel rather grown up, although that part was rather dull and phoney. After the formalities, Cat told me about his last day at the library before the Winter Holidays.

Cat had a busy time that day; the reading hall was packed, and everyone was looking for books to read during the just-so two weeks the library would be closed for Winter Holiday and New Year’s celebrations. With all the commotion going on, it was only by chance that Cat found Morpheus the Goat almost chewing on a new, pricy and picture heavy book on leaf plants. Of course, Cat politely redirected Morpheus to the cooking book section so that he could give some proper leaf courses a try over the holiday.

To his disgruntlement, he then found Kiki the Cat sneaking around on the top galleries in the reading room, which are of course off-limits for visitors. She was fishing for a peculiar, rare fishing handbook, since she would visit her Aunt at the Great Lakes for New Years. Of course, the book was hiding in the basement, where the heaviest books are kept which you can’t usually borrow, and upon the weight of the handbook, the black Cat didn’t seem too happy with her catch, but she promised to bring it back on the first day, when the library would open again the following year.

A confused croaking led Cat to N. Black, the Raven, who sat beat-scratching on the stairs to the tower, where the poetry was kept. With some on and off and convincing he could be persuaded to decide on a poem collection by Pangar E. Ellado, before he shed even more feathers all over the staircase. Of course, the Raven then forgot to check out the book properly, and the entry clerk Dove had to fly after him, to remind him he did indeed need to get that odd-looking card in the back of the book stamped and his home address noted in the libraries’ papers, just in case he might forget about bringing it back and all.

Meanwhile, a tiny Mouse by the name of Reid was digging through the handbook section, making a bit of a mess. When Cat asked him what he was looking for, he stated an interest in ‘extended gardening’, whatever that meant. Cat looked around a bit, searching for the right book. But when he found something written by a bloke named Binford, Raid seemed to find that Cat was rather insane for even suggesting that particular author. Of course, that only made Cat want to find a good book for Reid even more, so after a bit of digging around on his own, he produced a collective work, thick and knowledgeable-looking, which the Mouse deemed fine enough to spend the holidays with.

Moving on, after resetting the whole handbook section, Cat almost slipped after stepping in a puddle, that suspiciously looked like fresh sea water. Tracing the trail of wet spots, with a mop and bucket in his paws, he found Umi the Seal, who had trouble reaching for the higher shelves in the cartography section. It seemed, like she was looking for an atlas, since she was intending to visit some family quite a bit off coast. Cat found a special, waterproof atlas for her and decided to suggest at the next staff meeting to move the water-resistant collection to a lower shelf since the trouble seemed common. Of course, he then had to help Umi checking out the book, following her around with mop and bucket, without it even remotely being time to mop up the floor yet.

The day seemed long and only getting longer, while the reading hall grew more and more crowded. Cats, in their nature, really dislike these kinds of busy places, with all their noise and happening, so Cat ended up retreating to his office upstairs. He wanted the Winter Holidays to start already, so he could curl up at home, read novels, have milk tea, maybe even set up his shiny samovar and not be bothered by everyone with their book requests anymore. Not that he didn’t like these requests, he took quite some pride in always finding the right book. At that very moment it simply seemed a bit unfair to him, that everyone always got good books recommended, and he never did. Close to falling asleep in his armchair, which stood next to the crackling heater, he almost jumped up to the ceiling, when the door suddenly slammed open, and his boss, Eugen the Owl stepped in, quite puffed up. On second look through, Eugen didn’t seem upset with him, but rather a bit freezing, so Cat took some book piles off the second armchair and offered it up. The Owl settled in the cosy chair, de-puffing quite a bit to fit in, he adjusted his green bow tie a bit and gave a tired groan. You might imagine it yourself, but owls are neither early birds at the office (and if they have to be, because they are head of the place, they don’t like it), nor do they fancy crowded places. Cat and Eugen chatted a bit, without keeping track of time, since Eugen had misplaced his pocket watch. Eventually, they came upon the topic of Cat’s popularity for book recommendations, and when Eugen found him sulking slightly on the matter, he offered to pick Cat a book to borrow over the holidays for himself, for a change. Warmed up and in better spirits, they went back downstairs, where at least the crowd seemed to have started to vanish into thin air bit by bit.

Everyone was a bit more tired than usual around closing time, the staff swept the floor of the whole place and the last, closing time-resistant readers, who tried to dodge the cold weather outside, out of the reading hall. For better or worse, they stumbled over a bunch of lost things. Some keys (of Morpheus the Goat – the entry clerk Dove went to deliver them and hence got off early), a pocket watch that wasn’t ticking, and a tiny, well wrapped package. After having finally thrown out the last bookworm, they came together at Eugen’s office for a quick meet-up. It turned out that the lost pocket watch they had found belonged to Eugen himself, how had been suspiciously late after misplacing it some days ago. The archivist Mole took out a red string and attached the pocket watch to the Owl’s vest so he wouldn’t lose it until next year, just to be sure the library would open again in time. This reminded Eugen of the book recommendation he promised to Cat, and he handed him a handbook on knitting from his personal collection, as well as yarn and needles to try out the whole thing during the holidays. Lastly, the package had been found to be addressed to Cat Winter, whom we know well by now. Cat carefully unwrapped the present and found a red bow tie inside, in the exact same colour as his glasses. A tiny memo, signed with a small pawprint, read Happy Winter Holidays.

And this, my dear reader, is how Cat got his red bow tie, the whole story, as he told me himself. He also asked me, to send you the warmest Holiday Greetings, from the libraries’ staff and all the bookworms there, and on top of that, from me, there’s a cheerful Happy New Year.

Or: the winter where I preferred to keep my black leather gloves on to put the groceries in the fridge. Or: the night was darker before, but the masks are still falling

It was one of those days. I hadn’t left the house in maybe two weeks. It just made me want to leave it even less. But one does not have that much of a choice when it comes to lack of toilet paper, toast and mustard for diner. With the winter sun standing low, I ended up waiting for darkness to pull its blanket over the town. The moon was thin, yet the night didn’t seem particularly dark. Restlessly I put on some dedicated outside-world clothing, pulled the panda-pattern mask over my face, and tried to put it in a comfortable position, plugged my ears with headphones, pulled a knit cap over my head and finally put on my computer glasses as well, they filter blue light and cold winds just fine. Not forgetting my black leather gloves of course, during the winter season they don’t even look that suspicious. In the end, I was barely recognizable, which is always a nice bonus.

Climbing down the stairs in the hallway, it seemed the light on the floor below was broken, again. It was moderately dark there. Outside, a freezing breeze swept over the streets. Almost ran unto a jogger while trying to step out the front door. People are such a hazard these days. I made my way through the empty but rather littered with parked cars, side streets of the living quarter, to the small supermarket at what’s supposed to be a marketplace, but it’s also just stuffed with sleeping cars. Counting two lost face masks on the sidewalk, I found the store to be acceptably almost empty. Trying to remember and gathering all the food stuffs from my grocery list (and hunting down some toilet paper), of course forgetting the eggs, which are at the front door, so I had to go through the whole place again to fetch those last. The next morning would see toast with bacon and egg for breakfast. A rare, posh breakfast, but sometimes that’s just necessary.  

Back at my place, I stuffed the eggs and bacon and mustard in the fridge, still wearing gloves. I was confident enough in my strength to still go to another store just after. Putting the things in with the gloves still on sort of felt like backwards-cliché-burgling the fridge. Not wasting much time, I went out again, the light on the floor below still not turning on, into the somewhat dark night. There where more strangers on that way, some talking to each other. She is in the hospital, needing to be ventilated. --- So she’s better now? --- Yes, still in the hospital… --- A typical high-at-risk-person, yes? --- Uhm--- All the stores closed up, everything upon request also for pickup available. A whole new level of window shopping. In the bank, a young man with his mask pulled down under his chin, sat leaned at the heating, staring at his phone. Nearby was a lost face mask, not far after another one.

In the store, everyone was supposed to attach a clothes peg to themselves and take a basket. So I did. And run in the store in circles. Picking up a toothbrush, tooth paste, a box of tissues, looking for the right shampoo and shower gel, barely remembering the right size for trash bags. Queuing at the checkout, someone had trouble paying with their smartphone. Apparently restarting the app did not fix it, so he handed out some cash instead. The woman just after kept rearranging the things the had piled at the cash register. I piled my stuff up to, paid the horrendous bill, and stuffed all in my backpack. The muttered bye must have been too quiet to be heard.

The longer I sit around in this town, without actually going to town, the more I realize, how foreign, how fremd it is to me. In a way I barely know the town anymore, I’ve grown so distanced, might just as well have moved away to another planet with a town that’s similar, yet not the same. That’s just what it feels like. I don’t go out anymore at all. Some weeks – or was it months already – ago, an acquaintance of mine took me on a walk around the area, for some work-related scouting out. Of places from photographs about a hundred years ago, trying to find those again. Somehow that was the same feeling of walking through a foreign city, in a way. It got lost in time badly, smashed up good some seventy, eighty years ago, then again maybe fifty years ago. It changed it’s very core to a point where it no longer is recognizable. The mentality of the people some generations ago seemed to have been different, for their cared for their city a lot and looked after it, ever since I got here, most places have left an impression of neglect and desperate lack of maintenance on me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I never tried to like the city, the problem is just that I only sometimes feel at home in the bubble of my tiny flat, as long as the weather is fine and it’s not starting to go mouldy in the corners. The landlord is one of those people who’s car costs evidently more than the cheap-rent place you got stuck in and who is unlikely to have 99 percent of your 99 problems, which mostly are caused by lack of income and a lacking landlord, since they are their own lords. All in all, at present time, I’m quite willing to just leave this place behind. I still do love the sea very much, but it’s not like I’ve seen it in half a year. It’s supposed to be close by, yet in reality its so far out of reach, it might just be on the moon. I can see those as their flat shadows at least, while the real one is frozen up in black and white photographs of the times this town was still more vibrant than it ever seemed, since mankind invented colours. 

It was some time last summer that I’ve met a certain winter penguin. Walking all the way home from some unimportant something – it was a nice warm and sunny day – and that day I took the longer route. He was just standing there, next to someone’s gate, in front of the lawn, on the sidewalk. Rather tiny, not quite reaching up to my knee, wearing his warm scarf and that hideous hat with the bobble, the red one with the golden stars, that he likes. At the time I must have appeared rather confused through, really, he did seem somewhat out of place no matter from which angle you looked at the scene.

Maybe I had stared at him or something because the next thing I knew, he greeted me politely and asked, what time it was. Seems to me like wrist watches never really caught on, with penguins having flippers and all, since wearing a watch around your ankle just really isn’t very fashionable. Luckily – having wrists and all – I had my own watch on me that day, the digital one, and so I replied “2:23pm”.

He gave me a good, second look – “do you, by any chance, know what bus line leads to the sea?”, he asked.

That needed some consideration on my side – besides being a very vague direction request, being in a harbour town most bus lines came close to the sea eventually.

“Line 62, departing every hour at 31 minutes at the nearby university stop should take you to the piers at the ship museum downtown, if that’s somewhere near where you’re looking for.” The penguin looked around, probably for the university, whose main building was hiding just around the corner, behind some trees and houses.

“It seems close enough. Thank you very much for you time.” He turned to his right, waddling straight into the wrong direction.

“Uhm, sir, the university is over there, down that street to the other side, turning right there at the traffic light…” With no comment on that, he turned on his, hm, heels, then waddling towards the right direction. Out of curiosity, I decided to follow him a few feet – he was rather slow anyway.

“Actually, would you mind if I came along, Mr. Penguin?” – he hadn’t given me his name, but neither had I, so that was the most polite way of directly addressing him, that I came up with. Through, thinking about it now, it would be rather awaked if someone would call someone Mr. Human, or Mrs. Human. But that just didn’t occur to me at the time and I hadn’t had realized who he was back then. Again, he didn’t reply to me, so I added “I’ve been meaning to go to the sea for a while now.” Keeping up his – rather slow – pace, he looked up at me, maybe wondering, how a human like me could have any business with the ocean. “I’m uhm, I haven’t been at the sea for months. I guess. Somehow I’ve been missing it.” I was now walking beside him, we where getting closer to the bus stop.

“You’re living in a harbour town; how come you haven’t seen the sea in so long?” That was the toughest question yet. I had no idea, really. While still lost for words, we crossed over the street, it seemed like I had just quietly joined in as a travel companion for now. – halfway though the interview.

My watch said 02:32pm when the bus came in sight. I showed my ticket, but the winter penguin just hopped in in front of me, without bothering to make the driver even notice him. He was waiting for me on a window seat in the back, but please don’t ask me, how he got up there on his own. I sat next to him, as he as looking out the window, almost as if he had never seen the town before. It made me wonder, how he got where I had found him. “I don’t know why I never went to see the ocean. I’m usually not really going anywhere in the first place. But I’m going with you now anyways.”

“Maybe better late than never.” he replied, still looking out the window. “This is a nice little town you live in; when was it founded?” Another hard question, no clue – again. How was I even supposed to know that? Did anyone in the whole town actually know?

“I don’t know.” and again he didn’t bother to reply. Quietly, we looked out the window and I felt like I was seeing those streets and houses and people for the first time myself. Which I absolutely did not, I had taken the 62 line often enough before, going downtown and to the main station and all. Still, they didn’t seem the same, or, as they had seemed to be before at least.

It was a short ride to the ship museum. Right next to the modern passenger ship terminals, it was situated in a building from a time, when more than just luxury cruises got shipped out here. The penguin hopped out of the bus, skilfully avoiding people’s heels and pointy umbrella spikes. Easily, he found his way to the nearby shoreline, through finding a stretch of pier that wasn’t fenced off was a bit harder. It took us the better part of ten minutes, maybe.

“I’m starting to understand, why you haven’t seen the sea in a long time.” he said, standing at the pier next to a large wooden museum ship from different times. Seeming absent minded, he glared at something far away at the horizon, that I couldn’t see. I tried to see, what he was seeing, unsuccessfully.

“It seems I just had forgotten it’s there. And how big and breath-taking and endless it is.” After a moment, the penguin nodded. For once he must have found something agreeable, as if it regularly happened that land mammals forgot about the existence of the ocean when they didn’t occasionally where thrown into it something.

“That happens,” he answered me, “as long as you find your way back, it’s not lost to you.” That seemed like a peculiar determination to me, at the time at least, and I decided to try not to forget about that vast sea stretching out below my feet any time again soon. It’s not like it was easy to miss, or hard to find.