In the morning, when practically everyone is still asleep, I get up and greet the day with a run, which in Vienna leads through the 7th district and at least once around the Ring. On Sunday, too, because sleep research says you should get up at the same time every day, and for me that's pretty early if you apply the normal parameters.
On the last Sunday, therefore, and most of it was as I had last experienced it a few weeks ago. If you pass this stretch of road on Sunday, you will come across the testimonies of Saturday night, which many people can only describe as a successful night if there is no memory of it at all.
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
This Saturday night, finally open again after a long shutdown - without clubs and such things open Saturday night - might have seamlessly connected in terms of content where the so-called Corona measures knocked out normal nightlife. The pavements are quite normal and abundantly littered with piles of broken glass and puddles of vomit, interestingly designed in a reddish colour spectrum. Red wine? Heart's blood?
On one corner, a small group of hangover aspirants stands talking about something or other, unintelligibly, but still loud enough that no one else around can sleep either.
At Schwedenplatz, an orange-breaded system reveler has more than his hands full with removing rubbish from the grassy areas. But no one applauds, which everyone can probably understand, because from now on he is no longer system-relevant, but a normal Turk who just does his job normally, I'm sorry, after all he is paid for it and should be happy that he has one at all. He should be happy that he doesn't work in a media agency, because I'm just saying: short-time work and home office are normal there ...
Here we go again, baby! Welcome back!
Everything is back to normal, hurray!
In the meantime, the unaccustomed irritating smile has also vacated its place in the faces of strangers, because that is Grant's regular place, and this place has now been taken over again by Grant, the good old Grant, the one you don't recognise only when you look intricately over the edge of the mouth guard into people's eyes, as with the irritating smile. You feel Grant through every baby elephant, right down to the marrow, even from behind.
Normal again at last!
Soups of the most diverse recipes are cooked up and shoved over for others to spoon out, from now on everyone is the next to themselves again, and without keeping the soul health safety distance of self-reflection at least the size of a baby ant. Economic necessities are good justification for anything that promises - at any cost - an effect, now even smoother than normal: #Ihavemircoronanotwanted
So now it's back to normal, so to speak. New normality, as it was framed in good time in anticipatory appeasement. After all, you don't know what's coming, what's going to stay and what's still to come, and whether the wish for "everything the way it used to be" under the term "normality" will actually come true. Then one has not promised too much, one has said it right away, at the resurrection sermon.
Hm ...
Normal state ...
Apparently, new normality is when we pretend that everything is the same as yesterday, only from now on it's officially normal again. In between, we smelled a bit strong in the home office, and the homeschooling wasn't that bad, to be honest...
For some of us it is certainly not "normal", not even in a new way. There are jobs gone and incomes gone and lots of other things that used to be normal and should be, and that's all, but certainly not normal. But what about now?
Do we need a second wave or a third?
And where has the #miteinand suddenly disappeared in all this confusion?
Where has the ever-popular #gemeinsamschaffenwirdas gone?
Has anyone actually seen the #togetherwearstrong lately?
Has it all been disposed of with the old jumpers in the magic-cleaning three-step plan: take it in your hand - doesn't make me happy - get rid of it?
In the many conversations with the people around me, we agree on one thing in great unanimity: what is left after the last few weeks in terms of learning value and applied experience is by and large as big as the income of many people in these last weeks: Zero.
Here we go again! And it's down to the nitty gritty.
What else would be necessary? The second wave?
Did we really only have one problem with what we had in these last weeks, which is now halfway rid of?
How can anything else succeed that is not normal but necessary?
Just a reminder noted in the margins of the case number statistics: the climate is still in intensive care and will only get better if we all understand with each other that we all have to understand something, change something in the substance and not just pretend and then go back to normal.
For that we were in the global training camp for the last few weeks, and for a few moments it looked like we were really halfway match fit, we of team humanity. But what do you do with a penalty taker in front of an empty goal who doesn't slam the ball over the crossbar, but instead hits himself in the balls as normal and then mistakes the final whistle for applause? The coach would recommend him a new club, or find one himself. Or resign.
Yes, the only thing that would be normal now in view of this state of affairs: resignation! And therefore here is my interjection: Let us resign normally! Now, all of us. Yes, to collective resignation and full speed back to everything that is normal. Maybe we can at least do that together. Because there is obviously no hope.
But then I think of the sentence by Václav Havel: "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something has meaning - no matter how it turns out."
Is that normal, Miss Flora?
While you have to explain to shameless cashiers in their dysfunction as corporate leaders that you can't pay dividends and at the same time apply for state aid, something completely different is also happening.
You can also discover things like that on Instagram: In Salzburg, for example, there's Fräulein Flora - Salzburg's young city blog. The operators, above all Eva & Matthias, say: "We make the city the way we like it! They do this adorably and at the same time show how close the lifestyles of Pippi Longstocking and Sisyphus can actually come. And they do something else: While multi-billion corporations like adidas, H&M, Deichmann, C&A, hunkemöller, pimkie, Galeria KarstadtKaufhof etc. immediately suspended their rent payments and consider that normal, the steadfast Miss Flora says this >> https://bit.ly/3e929nr
As Salzburg's local medium, a fixed component of our income is the advertising of local businesses. Be it announcements of events or the presentation of new products, new openings of shops, restaurants or services that could be interesting for you, our readers. These cooperations have not materialised in recent months. Nevertheless, we decided not to apply for the hardship fund. We were and are of the opinion that funding should go to the entrepreneurs who had to close down because of the authorities and thus lose their livelihood. On the other hand, we did not dismiss anyone or put them on short-time work. No forced leave was imposed because: What kind of holiday is that when you have nowhere to go and it is also quite uncomfortable in Salzburg? Right now, at least we think, we have to stick together as a team. And not lose our nerve at the first gust of wind ...
You can find something like that stupid according to normal norms, or even clumsy, but one thing it certainly isn't is normal, is it?
On the contrary, and that's a good thing.
"Normal is dangerous", I never tire of saying to all those who want to hear it, and even louder to those who do not. What we have perceived as normal was and is normal mainly because most people do it and thus elevate it to the statistical norm. But normal in the sense of natural, self-evident, good and proper, or even proper? That what we live as the norm in our civilisations is normal in this sense is not even believed by those who make it up... It is possible and practical, comfortable and profitable, perhaps even clever, often quite helpful and effective, but: meaningful?
Street sweeper with learning value.
Humanity - that is, we - in its globalised interconnectedness, sits in a collective storm for the first time, thus has a common story for the first time, can prove itself in it as a heroine and transform into its best version, for its best. We have a common adversary, Corona, and as always in mythological true stories, this antagonistic force reflects our greatest shortcoming as it is equally our most effective teacher. His could be - in the subject: "What you always should have known about yourself, but didn't want to admit until now", which can also and especially be mastered in homeschooling . And we would actually have had a great chance not only to become normal again and confuse that with success, which we still have to pay off forever, but to become better.
And it wouldn't have been easy, but it would have succeeded quite easily, at least on the way, had we not only liked and shared the countless #miteinand-#gemeinsamschaffenwirdas-#togetherwearstrong postings, but also understood them.
You don't have to be a behavioural economist or a New Age guru to understand this, you just have to have seen an episode of "Starship Enterprise". Since "Avengers" at the latest, we clearly know that we can even defeat the Chitauri and achieve any other goal if we combine our individual special abilities and steer in one direction. We don't even have to be friends for that (although that would be better and more fun anyway).
Why is this so important? Because there will definitely be no vaccine or app against the climate crisis. But the solution has long been invented, and there are no superheroes in it to fix everything.
The street sweeper "Corona - Episode COVID-19" is in fact the prequel to a franchise that couldn't be better thought up at Marvel. The "Pandemic Collector's Box" (Unlimited Edition) will make it into every household, and production of "Climate - Mother Earth Strikes Back" is already in full swing.
Normal like Charlie Harper?
In each of these stories, there is always the same setting. In them, humanity is the heroine, experiences a collective threat in its seemingly safe haven and can only master it if it sets out together, masters the threat together, learns from it together and applies what it has learned in its old world in such a way that this old world does not remain normal but becomes a new, a better one.
If the main character doesn't change, then you have a completely different kind of story format, a sitcom for example. If the main character were to change at the end of an episode, the concept would be broken. If Charlie Harper in "Two and a Half Men" suddenly stopped being what he perceives as normal, it would be the end of the show. In a sitcom, that's actually funny, but: do we really want to be Charlie Harper? And be replaced by Ashton Kutcher after 177 episodes and get hit by a piano at the end?
I want - and I know - that Václav Havel is right. And Jyn Erso in Star Wars: Rogue One "We have hope. Rebellions are built on hope." Who can launch something like that? Miss Flora can. Miss Thurnberg can do it. You can do it, I can do it. Each of us has the chance to do it every second, and even if that chance is only one part per thousand: it's there. Which is enough of me interrupting.
So at this point I go for a quick morning run around the well of despair, once again spouting from flared nostrils as a prayer wheel made flesh the Margaret Mead mantra: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Let no one stop us.
No one should prevent us from becoming a little wiser every day. Our values in our story help us to do this, because they give us orientation, bring order into our lives and into everything else, because character proves itself before, in and after the crisis, one way or another.
My grandmother, old Story Dudette, would now interject what she murmured into Charlie Harper's ear when she returned from her morning run to the Beverly Hills Hotel and found him there in the Polo Lounge under a curb swallow: "No Story. No Glory."