Ground Zero

24.IV.24

For twenty? twenty-five? years, I have been exchanging postcards with a friend. A question is posed on one card, an answer given on another. The only two rules: the space available has to suffice, so the text must be both sparse and pointed, and truth must always be spoken. The other day, I wondered about the feeling of »great emptiness« that occasionally arises in a person’s life. The sensation that makes her think: Was this all? The feeling that consists of transience, humiliations, and glamour. What does she tell herself in such moments? When I think about what I myself might have answered, I am at a loss for words. The occasions when the sensation has come over me are not countless, but too many to be dismissed or called a coincidence. Then I come to my senses, realizing that speechlessness is probably the beginning of everything. The best answer was given by Kurt Tucholsky in a different context: »Where there is a hole, there is an edge.«