Aleš Šteger > Quotes

“Hundreds of ladybugs had taken shelter from the winter in the crevices of the decayed windows. From there, they broke into the apartment in commando squads. My joy at that first sighting of the ladybug spreading its lower winglets on the rim of the jam glass, flashing three spots of fortune, soon turned into something tragic and Greek, a bloodied slaughter. Like in Ajax, I had to pluck ladybugs from my toothbrush every evening and in the morning shake out my shirt that, overnight, was infested with too much luck, and at lunch, I'd fish kamikazee-ladybugs out of my soup bowl, their Etna's crater in the middle of the round kitchen table. When I shut my eyes and held the hose to my ear and heard the little crackle of tiny bodies sucked into the eye of the tornado, I couldn't remain neutral. Putting away the vacuum, I consoled myself with sentences of friends who, after a beer or three, like to repeat to me the axiom that sooner or later, living in the city, each person discovers himself to be the murder of his own happiness. They were genuine Berlin ladybugs, they'd occupied the windows illegally like my friends in apartments from which they were later evicted.”
― Aleš Šteger, Berlin

“Über mir leuchten hell die Bibliothekslampen mitten am Tag. Es dämmert mir in diesem Augenblick. Es sind Glühwürmchen, es geht um sie. Solange sie leuchten, vor allem die in unserer Seele, werden wir in der Lage sein, zu lesen. Manchmal braucht man nur eine winzige Flamme und ein geliebtes Wesen oder zwei, ihre Nähe, ihr Bei-uns-Sein, unabhängig davon, wie viele Jahrhunderte Unterschied unsere Uhren anzeigen.”
― Aleš Šteger, Logbuch der Gegenwart - Taumeln

“The word 'Dorf' lies, although the Dablem Dorf station is covered with straw. Arabian students hang out in front of the entrance to the underground, and only the German kiosk of the kabob seller clues us in that the bus did not arrive through a secret passage and set us down in Morocco. The University buildings are hidden among trees, intertwining paths and signposts, which exclude each other. The arrow points to another arrow 3 m away, which is pointing back, perpendicular to the first. With signs making sure no one can get lost during his search, he searches and searches and it seems entirely irrelevant that he can never find the place he is searching for by tracing the signs. A Mobius strip, the circular blindness of the streets, and exhausted Minotaur are harbingers of the paths of this place, which only multiply behind the revolving door of the Ethnological Museum.”
― Aleš Šteger, Berlin

“Alles, was uns umgibt, ist das Spiegelbild unserer inneren Welt.”
― Aleš Šteger, Logbuch der Gegenwart - Taumeln

“Man merkt erst dann wirklich, was Sprache ist, wenn man nicht einmal das Grundlegendste zu kommunizieren vermag.”
― Aleš Šteger, Logbuch der Gegenwart - Taumeln

“It's as though all the strings between the almighty and this man were ripped away, and he was left, a discarded marionette lying in the middle of the street. He gazes up at me and his smirk freezes the marrow in my bones. His bones, not mine, belong at Kudamm. It wasn't only Nazis who prohibited the crippled from begging. There have been others repulsed by the gaze of less-than-romantic possibilities of what we are.”
― Aleš Šteger, Berlin

“Est nachdem ich aufstehe und mich ans Fenster setze, verkündet eine hohe Frauenstimme mit einem Echo, fast als ob die Engel sängen, die Ankunft des Hochgeschwindigkeitszugs "Shinkansen". Die Stimme ist schön, durchdringend; es ist die Stimme der Technik, die Stimme der Machinen, die Stimme von Beton und Schienen.”
― Aleš Šteger, Logbuch der Gegenwart - Taumeln

“Noch vor dem Beginn des neuen Tages entfaltet sich ein klassisches Drama vor mir, ein Kabuki-Spiel, wenn man so will, um sechs Uhr morgens, auf leeren Magen, an einem Sonntag. Sieben Stunden vor der Zeit, die ich als meine eigene in mir trage, sieben Stunden vor der Zeit der Menschen, die die Sprache, in der ich schreibe, sprechen.”
― Aleš Šteger, Logbuch der Gegenwart - Taumeln