The Last Return 17

[Top photo of the Frankfurt People’s Bank in Bad Vilbel: the rule of money/capital means efficient, hard linearity of concrete, organic nature dominated and hard-pruned for human shade maximisation, contrails jetting us middle-classes cheaply off to nowhere at the cumulative cost of ecocide. Photo below of wind farm next to and replacing old Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power station near Schweinfurt between Bamberg and Frankfurt, taken from the train.]

Saturday 11^th May

Back in Bad Vilbel at our rented apartment. It’s great to see some old friends arriving just to see us all the way from Berlin. V. and G. are young artists (working in theatre and sound constructions) with their two kids W. and G. who stayed with us while on a working holiday in Australia. W. and G., about ten and nine, bring their liveliness and energy into our adult social field, positively changing it in subtle ways. They go to see a live theatre performance in the old castle by the Nidda River called ‘Pippi (Langstrumpf) auf den Sieben Meeren (on the Seven Seas).’ They love it. They say it contains topical references to plastic ocean pollution and the Fridays for Future student strike movement. One person booed.

Walking through the usual dead, hard surfaces geared to traffic and sales of Bad Vilbel’s shopping street, I catch my heart opening whenever I see those vibrant, sustaining expressions of life: babies, small children, dogs.

Sunday 12^th May

It’s Mother’s Day today, and the sun is out again, hooray! My old friend E. has been very kind enough to organise a poetry reading for me, putting out the word through her friendship networks. The event is at her partner W’s sculpture studio he shares with a painter in Fechenheim, an old industrial quarter in Frankfurt’s east, near the Main river. There’s an old chemical factory, founded in 1870, Cassella, in the vicinity.

To my pleasant surprise there are about 40 people there, considerably more than I am used to at poetry readings. Although it’s a bit chilly, it’s a great venue among the sculptures and workshop vibe, and I read for about an hour and a quarter, in the original English, with some rough, fairly prosaic, German translations and elucidations. Reading, I sense that the audience responds more to the louder, more performative and histrionic stuff, so that’s what I mainly deliver, although I hadn’t intended to. Although I feel the German translations are a bit prosaic and don’t work as well, the resonances and responses are generally positive.

I am thrown into momentary confusion when a woman loudly guffaws at a line talking about noticing the stillness around plants and trees. In open audience conversation afterwards, a probable Green Party supporter, possibly the same woman who guffawed, takes umbrage at my satirical ‘Green Sonnet’ list-poem, ‘non-politically correct’ and implicitly critiquing the usual predominant belief in green capitalism and technical fixes as ‘solutions’ to industrial-capitalist ecocide and an uninhabitable planet. Stupidly, I start to get defensive, but then notice, and deflect.

Green Sonnet

green building green car green energy green

footprint green tax green urbanism green chip

ecohouse eco-community eco-fascism eco-label

ecophilosophy eco-region ecocide ecotax

ecotechnology ecotherapy ecotoxic eco-warrior

carbon trade carbon tax carbon sequestration

carbon emissions carbon neutral carbon offset

biochar biobank biodiversity biofood biofuel

dollar yen euro franc lira peso pound

yuan cent centime penny pfennig nickel

dime quid bob farthing anxiety depression

bipolar melting drying dying drowning

fleeing borderline starving narcissism

selfieselfieselfieselfieselfieselfieselfie

 I notice that performing in front of an audience, even quite small ones, seems to bring out the ego-pattern or ‘actor personality’ so very quickly, at least with me; the focussed attention-energy of an audience can be very strong, and maybe we actors or ex-actors are often, unconsciously or semi-consciously, in the business of seeking and sucking up public validation of our shaky identities. Now all do it on social media. However, at this reading the quieter, more meditative and recent poems, which I had intended to focus on and where this egoic dimension is somewhat less, are not really in demand. Two older women tell me that what I’m doing isn’t poetry but prose. Some ask about how to buy my books since I hadn’t brought any to sell.

Afterwards about twenty-five of us repair to an Italian restaurant. Because of the crowds there for Mother’s Day, it takes about one and a half hours to deliver our pizzas. The convivial atmosphere at our long table is great. V, G and their kids W. and G. say farewell to head back to Berlin, and B. and I are sad to see them go. M. and his partner G. leave us to return to Kassel, declaring their intention to visit us after their flights to meditative retreats in the hip enclaves of Bali and Byron Bay.

~ by Peter Lach-Newinsky on August 16, 2021.