Pantha Rei Pantha Rei

A body, a grave, or a memory. What is gone first?

Everybody needs a wingman.

And when he held the dandelion in his hands he could feel for a second that what they say is true, that everything in the universe is connected.

He: Don't we have a full life? She: Yes, but I fear very soon we will feel very empty.

Plants are the easiest way of bringing something living into your life.

Can any tool be used as a weapon? Will we ever invent something that will not be misused for malicious deeds?

On that day Rupert understood that learning and teaching are fundamentally the same thing.

She: Look, how beautiful! He: Beautiful? One does not need to be a botanist to see that this fruit is rotting! She: And one does not need to be a mycologist to see that this fungus is flourishing.

Beauty is the result of paying attention.

We cannot see more than one thing at once.

If there is too much light in your life you will miss the contrast.

Peter was quite surprised when he found out that there was a codified version of the law of nature.

He paused for a minute and wondered how long it would take him to look at every little detail of the tree in front of him. And this tree was just one out of many.

She: We still need to decide where to go for our free weekend. He: Yes, we do. Before we discuss it, could you open the window for a few minutes, please? She: Sure. I want to go to the Netherlands, by the way

On that day he learned two things; that beauty does not need to be in focus and that closeness does not require proximity.

Lying on their bed he realised that every thread of the linen was a barrier between them and that he lacked what it required to overcome them.

And as he was staring at the speaker in the even darker corner of the room he wondered if technology was maybe the monster that we have invited into our houses.

She: This pasta looks a bit like a handful of mealworms. He: It does, but it certainly tastes better. She: How can you be so certain of that?

Nobody is a better painter than mother nature herself.

Our, the human, world is a collection of things that are held in position by force.

It is the simple things in life that allow us to cope with its complexity.

On March 27, around 5pm, a witness discovered an unsecured piece of chipboard lying in the streets. He immediately called the emergency services. A team arrived at the scene only seven minutes later. They were able to prevent the worst and no one...

Kitsch is best described as the feeling left behind when you eat so many sweets that you feel sick.

At times we rediscover the value of things.

When was the last time that you have seem something truly new?

At which grade of decomposition does as rose stop to look beautiful? When does she stop to be a rose?

When the colder colour signals the warmer season to come.

Get inside, kids, playtime is over.

I stand by the idea that cultural inheritance is equally as strong, if not stronger, than the genetic one. Thank you, Oma and Opa. Miss you still!

The orthography of a word has no direct connection to its semantic, but is arbitrary.

The everyday life of the past, through the filter of nostalgia, is all too often misunderstood as some kind of prolonged holiday.

We love what grows, be detest what withers.

The true art of nature is not timing, but repetition.

Sometimes one has to turn the world upside down to see things for what they are.

Fred's mood changed immediately to the better when he saw that someone was offering free boulders to passer-byes.

In every group there are multiple communications happening at once. Have you ever tried to follow more than one of them simultaneously? If so, how do you dare to claim to understand the cause of anything?

Sometimes one hopes to turn around the life one lives or turn it off just for a day or two.

'Feeling orange' should be established as a term for those feelings that come with new beginnings.

Harry wondered if the new shop might be a bit too avantgardistic for this neighbourhood.

Cables are the chains that constrain our lives.

He found this photo of him hanging at a wall in his parent's house and wondered who the fuck this guy actually was and what he was like.

For a brief moment Thomas thought he understood the concept of five-dimensional space

The best camera is the one you have with you in the right moment.

The blinds lured him with the colour of Spring, but when he lifted them it was still Winter.

A paradox: neurons preserve the past by continuously changing.

Rob suddenly fully understood just how hard times had become when for the first time he saw a drunken stuffed animal begging in the streets.

He wanted to walk off into the dark, but then the sun rose.

When he woke up from this dream he went over to his desk, took two random coins from his wallet and placed them in a little bowl next to his bed. Then he searched through his files until he found his last will and made a little handwritten note...

How to ridicule the ridiculous?

Rüdiger thought that the fresco of Borja was maybe not the only piece of art that had suffered from a botched restoration attempt.

If you live in abundance you become blind to it, eventually.

The perfect form is one that stemmed and grew with the function.

On how many tables in the world you will find a napkin, two bottles of water and a calendar right now?

When Robert looked out of his window he understood that he lived in an ordinary prison.

There is a strange power in making things yourself.

Robert found that it was a lot harder to open new doors if he already knew what he would find behind them.

He stared at the ceiling until dawn broke and in the twilight he thought he saw a moon of Saturn flying by.

The daily ups and downs.

Jennifer could not help the feeling that something was staring at her.

My writing class teacher once told us that every writer should have a copy of a book by Dan Brown in her shelf. If one day she should doubt her own writing abilities she would just need to take it out, open a random page and real a paragraph to...

Categories; invented by the mind to make life easier by taking mental shortcuts, more often though leading to mistakes due to generalisation.

It is often said that entropy is an expression of the disorder, or randomness of a system, or of the lack of information about it.

Sometimes words are just padding.

Just look up every now and then.

Waiting in the car he was grateful for the rain and how it protected him from the others.

Nervennahrung f (colloq.), German, idiomatic, lit: nerve food or nerve nutrition; food consumed to comfort in situations of stress or discomfort; usually of the sweet type, like chocolate or ice cream. Sometimes savory like potato crisps.

For a split second he thought his bag was smiling at him.

She: I think I understand now why we like cats so much. He: Now why is that, then? She: They always look like they are having the sweetest of dreams.

The further things are away from us, the harder it gets to see what they are. Yet we form opinions.

Does the dark side have better biscuits or are biscuits with a dark side better biscuits?

When there is just no enough workspace in the workplace.

We too often forget about the things that are holding the world together.

The distance between your fingers and the keyboard can be harder to overcome than the one from here to the moon.

Like most people Reginald just wanted to become rich. When he was about to blow his nose he became rather angry that he hadn't invented something like the disposable tissue yet.

He: Where have you been? She: Some corner of the world.

Nationalism stinks.

When she slammed the door behind her, the turbulence snuffed out the candle.

You can translate peace into as many languages you like, but you will fail to explain it. This strive for something for which we have words, but cannot find the right words to describe, is a good proof that we all believe in something.

Just when she thought 'will it ever stop raining?' it turned into snow.

Sebastian kept the growth on the back of his hand a secret from his doctor, because he hoped that it might one day kill him.

Tunnelblick is the inability to take notice of what is happening around you because you focus too much of what is lying ahead .

Brian woke up from this lucid dream about a sunny day at the beach and the first thing he saw was a piece of driftwood on his pillow.

Persephone had always been somewhat taller than her older sisters, but this time it became very apparent.

And on that day pineapple Pedro left his shelf in the supermarket behind and went out into the world.

He: Do you think hand-knitted socks are uncool as a present? She: Definitely! If you are under 20 or over 60, that is. But at any time in between they are just the most wonderful present one can receive.

While sitting at his favourite spot Gerald thought that, unlike sex, sitting by the lake is better to be enjoyed alone.

Papier ist geduldig , German, idiomatic, lit: paper is patient ; Meaning: Statements on paper can be arbitrary, random or wrong. 'Not everything written/printed on paper is true', 'anybody can write arbitrary statements on paper' or 'you should not...

You can't download nature.

Before she left him, his, now former, girlfriend had spread one of his jumpers across the bed.

Behind his sofa Claudio discovered some wild growth that did not resemble anything he had seen before.

When the waiter brought him the ice cream he had ordered, Tom wondered if it had been returned at another table. It was just a hunch, but something seemed not to be quite right.

Can you cross another path without interfering?

When walking past the gate Simon saw a single cherry still hanging from the tree in his front garden. It obviously had missed its chance to drop from its branch and grow into a tree of its own. He became quite sad when he realized that he was not...

Martin got the feeling that he was over-prepared for the problem at hand.

On her Sunday walk Heather found a street that would be the perfect place for her new home.

Suddenly historian Roberta realized that for the last twelve years she had placed her hot pots and pans on an old Mexican artifact.

When Ralph had turned out the light he noticed a new constellation on his desk, emitted by the stand-by lights. He named it 'the Elephant' and went to bed quite proud of himself.

When they stood in front of a shopping window she pointed at a porcelain figurine and said 'Now that is beautiful!' and for him she immediately became a lot less beautiful.

Every nut you eat was taken by intrusion.

Every reflection breaks the subject.

How are you supposed to tell top from bottom without an external reference?

Everything tastes different away from home.

A leaf.

And so for the new year he promised himself to do all things differently, just like everybody else.

One book almost finished. The next one ready. Just what to fill the pages with?

She: Which way to go? He: Does it really make a difference?

She: What are those things? He: I don't know. She: What do you need them for? He: I cannot remember.

In front of his neighbour's house parked a hearse. How do they say? The old man went home ? No, he thought, he has been home all along, but he went back to where he came from.

Gregory's mood did not improve when he learned that not even the birds wanted to hear his story.

We tend to overestimate the recognition of our own lives. Take a step back and you probably won't understand what you are doing. If you do, though, you will struggle to find any excuses.

One unifying element of all religions is the assignment of certain positive qualities to fire. Sit in a dark room for a few minutes and then light a candle and you will understand why.

'tis the time of the year.

Do the Elements have a face?

And while she stood freezing at the bus stop she wondered when humans had given up growing a winter coat. And why.

We sleep in the same bed and yet have completely different dreams.

We cling to a tradition from the East, even if most of us do not believe in large parts of its mythology anymore. And those who show the least believe in it are the ones who most eagerly try to defend this tradition against a newer mythology, which...

Oscar understood all of a sudden where his problems with the other people came from; his heart beat the other way around.

For the living it is very easy to feign death, the other way around it is a lot harder.

Humans are so frightful that they have to build borders all the time. This is mine and that is yours, or better: this is mine and I will not share it. Every century there seems to be a period where people overcome these primitive sentiments for a...

Robert had bought a highlighter that had been on offer. When he came home he realized that he had nothing to highlight. He decided to write down in his diary how cheap the highlighter had been and then used the highlighter on that line.

Rebecca decided that she would sell the horse right the next day when she realized that it not only had longer, but also thicker eye-lashes than herself.

When Simon cleared out his late aunt's attic he suddenly became aware that through all these years of grumpy misery and nasty habits she had been the keeper of the Holy Grail.

Today I met an angel in training. The wings were still provisionally, but clearly visible.

The German word for cock, 'Hahn', etymologically descends from the word for Singer. In that respect Boris Johnson might be a singer, too.

We receive whole sentences and yet we always only hear single words.

Sometimes it helps to state the obvious.

When Helen came home that night she understood that the sad little stuffed bear on the shelf was the only friend she had left in the world.

The distance between the moon and life is 400000 km.

On the 23rd September, 1987 John Myers from Portland, Oregon, decided that from that day on he would stare at another part of the wall in front of him.

As a boy he had always dreamed of running off on a boat one day, as deckhand or steward. Today he knew that one can be of lesser importance without leaving one's home port.

After making her bed, she wondered how it really would be to walk the valleys of Mars.

Let me tell you a story about a story in a story.

All things are at once, no matter if we see them or not. Nothing lies to us as much as our attention, it randomly gives weight to information, removes it or ignores it. We claim to struggle with the idea that time might not be linear, and we do, no...

On his way home he found a rose that someone seemingly had lost in the streets and he understood that he was not the only one for whom love had died that night.

At a few occasions every year it is socially acceptable to live out one's desire for the existence of a world next to the physical one. It is not only tolerated, but actually encouraged to try to summon various spirits. Magical thinking is part of...

On his walks through the fields Robert had an epiphany. That everything moves in circles is not only an assumption or a conclusion, no, it is an observable fact.

When Reuben tried to make a portrait of himself, he had to learn that one cannot get hold of the self, since its edges are blurry and the whole is rather fuzzily defined.

When Jennifer found a maccherone in her box of tissues she was intrigued if that was the result of some weird mishap in the pasta factory or if someone was trying to send her a message. If that was the case what would be that message?

The paint thief left his fingerprints in the most clumsy way possible.

She woke up with a start not quite recalling what she had been dreaming about, but her body felt feeverish, and then she saw it again, this eye that she had been running away from in that latest nightmare.

Any symbol has as many meanings as it has observers. That is what she thought at first, but then she got frightened that it might be a curse of some kind after all. Just because she had never experienced magic did not mean that it does not exist.

When Debora bought a new colour camera to replace her old black and white one, she had to learn that certain things stay as monochromatic as ever, no matter how new the technology.

He: I wonder; what are spiders doing in their spare time? She: Well, I guess they are hanging around somewhere.

Every time Harold passes by he wonders what is being held back by those bars.

She: That poor person living in there... He: It could be worse, the roof could be on fire.

Why do living things grow?

On that day Alexander learned that -against common believe- seagulls do not fall for just every story you tell them.

So much to write with and so much to write about, yet the page stays empty, day after day.

She: Look, a rainbow! He: So what?

The idea of yesteryear's hardship filled his heart with lightness.

And when Robert had finally found a way out of the dark woods he realized that the day was almost over.

When the little robot realised that it had developed consciousness it became very sad.

The breaking waves roll over me in the middle of this desert and while I try to close my ears with the fingers of my hands the sun comes out of hiding.

Harrison woke up to a gentle reminder that there is other life out there. Different from his own hermitical existance.

Sometimes we find ourselves standing in the shit of others.

He: I've got this graze from running this afternoon. Seems like I really need new shoes. She: The advantage of physical injuries is that most of them you can wear with pride. He: You mean as opposed to other injuries? She: Yes, exactly.

Symmetry is a feature that does not change under certain transformations. What is the greater error, when we fail to observe it or to perceive it in absence?

Suddenly Joshua wondered if he had gone too far with his funny remarks about hairy legs.

When Peter looked into the drain he gained the errie feeling that something was watching him from the other side.

Whenever you strip the wallpaper off the wall you remove a layer of memories. They might still be there but they will be triggered less frequently.

After seven years and 22 days in her cell Mary all of sudden noticed that there was an open door in the hind wall.

Looking in the past just let's us see the future that we will never have.

When Thomas found half an egg-shell, about the size of a small melon, in his dimly lit bathroom his first thought was that he'd hopefully find the other half before someone stepped into it.

She: I think the Buddhists got it wrong as well. He: Why do you think that? She: Well for them orange represents the immortal soul. But I promise you in a couple of days you will see that this flower is very, very mortal.

Sometimes we wonder what the function of an object might be, and then we guess based on its form. Equally we question the form of certain objects, knowings their function. This search for causality is one of the many curses that comes with the...

On the day of her 50th birthday Helen suddenly realised that she had totally forgotten to have children.

If life is a river then you can either stand on its banks and watch it flow by or you can decide to swim in it. But then you are dependent on its current and you will never know in advance where it will carry you the following day.

The meaning of life is life.

He: I wonder which poor person lives in that shed. She: I think if you live happily in that place you must be very, very rich.

When Timothy had just started lamenting the cold he was reminded that he was not so bad off after all. He, as opposed to some others, at least had a warm jumper to wear.

At first Gilbert was a bit confused to find an orphaned construction sign standing around for no obvious reason. Then he realized that it made total sense, considering how broken the world is.

Sometimes objects become symbols. When these objects then are destroyed or damaged we experience grief, sometimes as bad as if a person had died. Those are the moments that should remind us mostly of one thing: not to give too much meaning to...

She: I think the story in the Wizard of Oz has been mistold. He: How so? She: I think in fact Dorothy was willing to give him her heart. I mean he was a woodman after all, so probably quite well built. He, being a man, of course did not get it and...

Everything, but really everything is just what it is in contrast to something else.

She: It looks a bit like a grave. He: Trust me, there is something dead lying underneath.

After a long and exhausting day at work Richard had to find out that even his domestic insects held a grudge against him. He decided to smile more often.

The here and now is easier to bear with when you do not know what is on the other side.

He: Now that is vulgar. I wonder what a visiting Buddhist would say to that. She: Nothing, I guess. Perhaps put on a half-smile.

She: Fiat Lux! He: OK, but please turn it off before you leave.

Since they had moved in 17 years ago they had not once been up the attic. Today that was going to change.

Rupert was absolutely sure that there still had been five peanuts when he left the house. He would need to call pest control.

Rose was quite sure that something was wrong about finding a spider in her freezer.

Into the total silence broke the fear. Robert wished he could see. Anything at all.

When Aaron was told that he just had to follow the ant trail he did not expect that it would be such a rocky road.

He: It looks just like the one I removed from my bedroom a couple of hours ago. She: Well, it is clearly on its way back there. Next time save her the effort and leave her where she is, will you?

All of sudden Harold found last night's discussion if life was brought to Earth by some kind of space-alien a lot less absurd.

Siv felt a mixture of discomfort and joy when she saw a supernova going off in her cup of Earl Grey.

While they sat there and enjoyed the sunset together, Martin wondered why he had not come here every other day for the last four months.

When his neighbour's dead tree had fallen into his garden, Michael pondered for a second if he'd rather see the neighbour himself lying there in the grass. He quickly decided against it as in his opinion there were enough flies around already.

When Robert had come back from the beach he left the shell on his desk. Later he did not dare to turn it over because he feared there might be a crab living underneath.

When Mildred received the usual parcel from her auntie she was quite displeased with the present itself, but bursting the bubble wrap bubbles kept her entertained for hours.

For the last seven years Maurice had been staring at the little window on the other side of the road, sometimes for hours. Always in hope that a pair of eyes might show up behind it.

Margaret was lying in the grass and the wind made strands of her hair dance like stray flames of a bonfire. She spotted the most beautiful daisy imaginable and for one very brief moment she forgot that just a few hours ago her husband had died.

When Robert took off his cap, the one he had been wearing almost daily for the last four years, he realized that there was a thin blue line woven into the fabric.

If you seek intimacy, you can find It at any given time -for free- in the arms of Gaia.

When Rupert woke up one morning, he realized that his bedroom window wasn't real but merely painted on the raw plaster. He decided that the most appropriate thing to do was to reduce his rent.

She: Flies are a bit like most people I know. He: In which way? She: They mostly just care for all kinds of shit.

A repeating episode in her dreams was how she was chased by this horrible hound-like creature, which had thousand and thousands of teeth but no throat. It would come to maul and shred her, but never to swallow what was left of her.

Is life beautiful? If you've answered with yes: why?

And because all the other scientists really don't want to, the philosophers are still the only ones dealing with aesthetics.

He: These thorns are really annoying, every couple of metres one gets stuck. She: They are just doing their job; to remind you to walk slower and pay more attention to what is around you.

When Robert came home from work late he found a dead grasshopper on his desk. He wondered if during his absence a terrible crime had been committed or if his neighbour wanted to send him a message.

She: I have a business idea! He: What is it? She: A travel agency for people who want to take a break from the world!

He stared at the old trawler and with it at a past that was not his own. He was surprised when he realised that one was as irrelevant to him as the other.

Our pathways are like the arms of a clock. Every second that we wait they will point to a different destination. Just when it is the right time to take them is not for us to know.

We have created a world that made us dependent on things that, at the bottom of our hearts, we do not want.

Be still and breathe.

The problem will dialectic is that our brain is not really built to accept two contradicting realities. No matter how hard we try, we will always only be able to accept one fact for one moment to then switch and accept the other one for the next....

How wonderful would it be if there were little trees growing in the valleys of my hand, split by tiny brooks and inhabited by microscopic animals.

And if you still have doubts that our language, any language, is insufficient then just have a look at how often very different things are labelled with the same adjective. Where is the precision in that?

For those of us whose hearts weigh lightly, he wears his brother's mask; to let not fright be the last to feel . But if past his trick you see and still not fret, but welcome him instead, he might allow for one last time for you to to wear the...

He: Ugh, a moth. She: A butterfly of the night! They are equally as beautiful as the other ones, just different.

Can you lock yourself in, without locking the world out?

He: Do you know the story of the raven and the fox? She: I certainly do, yes. I just find it very implausible. All the ravens I know would have shat on that insolent furball.

I walk past this tree almost every day and barely take notice. Yet isn't it a whole world in itself? With conflicts, struggle, wounds, life, death. And beauty.

She : Do you think that plant is suicidal? He : Nah, I think it is a trend-setter. In a couple of weeks all of the plants will be yellow.

It lives so far from home, in a safer place now, everything it needs it finds here in abundance. Still it defends whatever it has. Ferociously.

It will never be the same again.

Nothing in nature just is. Everything always comes with something else. A lot of things only exist through the contrast they build with others. We should learn from that.

Here is the brother of Gold, having Silver as sister, deemed to be the envoy of Venus, yet wearing the garbs of Mars, molded in the shape of Beauty to deliver a message of Love.

He: What do you think it is? She: A part of the Milky Way, albeit a rather small one.

He: No, of course I don't believe in spirits. She: Well, then walk through a field of corn at night and listen to the voices in the wind. After you have done that, repeat what you have just said.

She: I can predict the future, it seems. He: How so? She: I can see the road on which we shall walk in this water drop.

Violence is not a matter of size, strength or power.

He: Whenever I see these fences I think how sad it is that there are so many barriers in the landscape. She: Really? My first thought is always how to get past them.

When I had, accidently, interrupted their yoga-class the girls made unmistakably clear that I was not welcome.

Wherever we go, there is always something above us and something below us. Yet we only pay attention to these things when there is an obvious entrance; a door, a ladder, a lift. Maybe just looking straight ahead is not enough.

When life bears no fruits you can always harvest your own artifacts.

One day you will look in your diary and you will not remember if really nothing had happened that day or if you were just incapable of finding the right words to describe what happened to you.

For some objects it is not sufficient to look at them with our eyes, we need to explore them with our hands to really see them. The same is true for people.

When sadness reigns and days are bleak then go outside to rest for a while in our mother's arms. She will tell you a story of growth, rebirth and new beginnings. The way that mothers do.

When she found her grandmother's old casket she wondered who had shed the tears on its lid.

She woke up in the middle of the night. Not with a start, more like a gliding from one world into the other. She rubbed her eyes and noticed that light was piercing through the curtains. She set her feet on the floor. The boards were still emitting...

d a r k n e s s

We try so hard to keep our thoughts, we'd love to see them around for all eternity. Yet we fail to conserve them. Our technology and its artifacts wither faster than our natural stores and here as there our symbols are too weak to describe and...

Pfifferling n , keinen ~ wert sein (colloq.), German, idiomatic, lit: (it is) not worth a chanterelle ; Of very little or no value

The wind carries the seed, and our voice. Unless it pauses halfway. Then nothing can grow where it should and what could have been learned is lying dead wasted or to be found for whom it was not intended. This is where new things emerge and new...

The sun had almost set and I was tired of the city and its obstrusive grey. My feet were aching as they had carried me a fair way. When I discovered this little field in the middle of the road I asked myself if I maybe should take off shoes and...

He: The opponent that can have the best of me still needs to be born! She: Hmmm, maybe, but how about that big one over there?

Sometimes objects carry you wider and more reliably than some of your friends.

She: How are you getting on with that list? He: I am making good progress, I think.

Today I've had bread on my plate. So I have no reason to complain about anything.