Nicolai's Site

Annotating-Literature Post-Mortem

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Because I’m a deeply insane person who loves making more work for myself, I volunteered to update the annotating-literature website(fn Ilea, my annotations are incoming this time. To be frank, I almost added them to the website during testing it.)

Tech Stack

I’ve recently built a lot of websites for a lot of different people because that’s something I enjoy doing. Usually, I prefer 11ty because I think it’s sane to just ship static files wherever possible. For this website, however, this was not going to work, as the editors are less technical than I am.

At first I wanted to use Kirby, but this proved more trouble than it was worth: the regular pages we have are very simple, but the annotations are custom and need to be saved as TEI XML. I solved this by building a custom sveltekit app. I had never worked with it before and usually try to avoid javascript/typescript like the plague, but it wound up being fairly pleasant—even if I wound up relying more than I would have liked on Claude to help me with building errors and warnings.

For styling, I dugout my old tailwind-css skills and then went insane(fn There have been a lot of changes and things like my Mac being in dark-mode, but displaying the website in light-mode caused me a lot of headaches, but I really enjoyed writing some CSS again—it’s been a while!)

The Process

The process was wonderful—I met our dean to talk about the new website and she told me to burn the old one to the ground and rebuild it from scratch however I pleased(fn What wouldn’t I give for all my tasks to be like that! One of many reasons I could never work as a freelancer.)

The Feature Creep

My spec sheet was very vague(fn My fault—I didn’t ask because I feared any answer), so the new website wound up with more features than the old one:

automatically generated author pages (I think those are nice—now they only need someone to add some content and a photo)
the CMS-part (I was only tasked with re-implementing the viewer, but I thought it’d just be easier for everyone involved, if I moved all the parts of the website into the svelte app and gave all of it consistent styling and a single place to edit)
the TEI XML renderer (this one is on me because I brought it up and suggested implementing it in a way that made it easy for editors, but it drove me to madness—people from the humanities should not be allowed to write tech specs)

The Design

I quite like the design I came up with; we’ll see if I need to do some redesigning. I went with Gentium Plus and an off-white background to recall old books because the annotated texts are fairly old.

I’m still not a huge fan of the icons I used. The design of them is nice in general, but I would have liked something more hand-drawn / rough around the edges to fit the vibe of the design better.

I used a nice, bright shade of purple as the accent colour because it’s a colour I like and no one complained(fn Another win!).

Overall, I think the design is fairly generic and unobtrusive, but has a lot of nice touches, so it’ll hopefully be acceptable for a few years. Most of it is bundled in a few separate files, so it should be fairly easy to change if the powers that be decide on it.

Summary

I really like building websites!

On Quitting

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Just now, I was drunkenly on the phone with my sister and wrote a terrible text about quitting the play I’m in. I’ve rarely done things as freeing as cancelling that play—a play I’ve dreaded for literal months! I can barely wait to wake up tomorrow and have a fun event to look forward to.

Website Post-Mortem

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It’s been a few days since I launched this site, and I thought it might be worth documenting what I’ve built here, both for my own reference and for anyone curious about the technical (and often insane) decisions that went into it.

Why Another Website?

Good question. I already had a website. It was… fine? But I’ve always wanted a website I actually like and for now this is that site. It has support for .fountain files which is something I’ve recently started caring about deeply, but nothing anyone else probably cares about.

The Stack

This is, unsurprisingly, another 11ty project. I’ve been using 11ty for our theatre websites and I’ve grown quite fond of it(fn It’s simple, it’s fast, and it works. Mostly. Usually). The whole things is hosted on Cloudflare Pages, so it just automatically builds and deploys when I push to GitHub. Why Cloudflare Pages and not just GitHub pages? I have designs, I swear—this is not just complication for complication’s sake.

The architecture is fairly straightforward:

Nunjucks templates for layouts
Markdown for posts and stories
A custom Fountain processor for theatre scripts (more on this in a moment)
Pagefind for search
A frankly irresponsible amount of custom JavaScript for various features

The Fountain Problem

Here’s where things got interesting. I’ve written a lot of theatre scripts in Fountain format (it’s basically markdown for screenplays), and I wanted to be able to just drop .fountain files into my site and have them render nicely. This meant building a custom Eleventy extension.

The solution involved:

Parsing Fountain’s key-value metadata
Converting the screenplay syntax to semantic HTML
Dealing with smart quotes, scene slugs, and all the little formatting quirks that make or break a script

It works! Mostly! There are probably bugs I haven’t discovered yet(fn It can’t handle characters speaking simultaneously yet, but I guess I just have to keep my scripts minimal for the time being), but for my purposes it’s solid enough.

Fonts, Fonts, Fonts

I have gone slightly overboard with font support. The site has an automated font system that scans src/assets/fonts/ directories and auto-generates @font-face declarations based on the folder structure. This means I can just drop a new font folder in and it immediately becomes available site-wide.

Why? I wanted really good font support, but I hate having to write @font-face declarations and I can easily style different blog posts, stories, and plays differently. Will I do this? Time will tell.

Is this necessary? Absolutely not. Did I spend way too much time on it? Yes. Do I regret it? Ask me again in six months when I decide to change some fonts and forget about how this all works.

The Easter Eggs

I love an easter egg, so there are entirely too many. This proved fairly annoying because I didn’t want to set cookies, so they persist via localStorage, something I have no great understanding of. If you break something, let me know.

The Stats Page

I built a /stats/ page that analyses everything I’ve written on this site:

Total word count, items, averages
Writing style evolution over time (lexical diversity, reading grade level, sentence rhythm)
Seasonal patterns and heatmaps
Language breakdown
Punctuation personality (how many em-dashes do I use? Too many)
Title brevity analysis

I love stats and charts, so if there’s an interesting stat you stumble across, please tell me!

Things I’m Still Not Happy With

The JavaScript is embarrassingly inefficient (and it’ll never get better because I hate JavaScript)
The fountain parser is not portable at all and doesn’t handle the full fountain spec (this will only get better if it’s something I personally need)

What’s Next?

I should sit down and write content or, at least, go through my Obsidian vault and upload my entire archive. Will I do this? The stars will tell.

Script Editing

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Editing the theatre scripts was among the biggest mistakes I’ve made—I thought it’d be a fun activity to kill time, but now I’m reading the same sentences 20 times, trying to add some semblance of style and sense.

Theatre Website Post-Mortem

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve finally finished our new theatre website (something which took far longer than it should have because my first version broke due to various PHP issues I still haven’t been able to fix (ugh ugh ugh) and I then kept kicking that can down the road) but it’s finally live now.

Tech Stack

After being burnt by PHP, I decided to just use 11ty like I did for the other group(fn This is something of a longer story—I originally joined the Sternenwanderer, but then wound up putsching/leaving with some others because we had differing conceptions of how the group should be run. In the beginning, we were a sub group, but then split properly a semester later—and thank the gods for that! Point being, that I made two theatre websites using 11ty, but, frankly, the Sternenwanderer one is fairly rough; I took a photography theme and did some light modifications and then mostly stopped caring because it really wasn’t my business anymore.), but this time chose a saner foundation. I settled on the excellent 11ty-excellent and went from there. So far, the website is fairly close to Lene’s defaults and design, but I plan to tweak this more as soon as I find the time and manage to figure out our group’s aesthetic a bit better.

Design

The website just runs now(fn If only I could get PDF downloads to work, but they refuse to, no matter how often I follow the instructions—yet another problem for future me. ) and looks nice enough. Soon-ish, I’ll implement more fonts so that each production uses the font we used in the brochures and nicer galleries and cast lists—it’s one of the few website projects I’m looking forward to at the moment.

Updates

I think this is a sticking issue—the website is hosted on GitHub Pages, and I do worry that no one will ever update it after I’m gone. Guys, updating it is simple enough, and I’ve written a fairly extensive tutorial.

On Trying To Write (Really, Seriously)

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I don’t know exactly why, but for the past few years, I’ve written much less than I’d like to admit, and I’ve been meaning to get back into seriously writing for the longest time.

I think it might be my theatre hobby (which takes up far more of my time than any hobby should), it might also be the incessant need I’ve developed to edit my sentences while I type them.

So I’ve decided to challenge myself (like I did in February, writing, but never publishing anything) and will just be forcing myself to upload my ramblings—there’ll be a few of my friends who read my stuff and that’s cute and all I want. No reason to strive for perfection.

We’ll see how it goes!

when i'm an old man

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

i rarely think of the future, but sometimes i dream. i shall, of course, wear purple. but, above all else, i dream of a place so much better that people will criticise me for prejudices we haven’t even begun to imagine.

this is why i fight for tomorrow. for a better future. a future that will cancel me and all other progressives—we have been rendered conservative, hopefully obsolete.

there is nothing that we owe to anyone, but we choose to indebt ourselves to those that will never to come to know us. it is our duty to leave them a home that’s habitable, peaceful, and ever-ascendant. there is no meaning to life, but we choose to make it our mission to leave a better world behind.

Goals

Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve always loved writing(fn Well, more the idea than the process which is usually rather tedious for me. There’s some precious times I get in the flow, but often I write because I am compelled to do so. And then there’s having to share. ) and I used to think that I’d just be someone who writes in the future—whether that be an author or a journalist—but with age I’ve thrown more and more roadblocks my way.

At first, I’d refuse to write anything down if I wasn’t completely committed to my phrasing, then I’d get stuck in endless edits(fn Not editing per se. Mostly telling myself that I needed to edit it, never doing it and then starting a new short story or blog entry, or new project.), and recently I’ve started telling myself that I’ll do more blogging and throw my fiction on a page on the blog, and then I just didn’t do it.

I‘d spend months thinking about how I’d like my website to look, halfheartedly build it, get frustrated at my vision, and then start anew. Which, of course, is ridiculous: it’s incredibly simple to host a webpage and it being out there really is the only thing that counts. If you write something interesting, the page loads, and your text is legible, it’s perfectly alright to have a bare-bones website that’s not going to win any design awards.

But now I’m here, with a cute little website and no more excuses. I’ll try to write one post a week—to get back into the writing habit again—and I’ll see where it goes.

Bigger and Better?

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

For a while, I’ve wanted to leave my Fachschaft to move on to bigger and better things (the next ladder of inane university politics because I have many friends there), but I just can’t bring myself to do it.

No matter how much I complain about the Fachschaft, it’s something I’ve been involved with for years that has brought me joy and sorrow, but above all, many new friends and opportunities. I’ve mostly decided to leave by next year (I promise I’ll still be there, just less—we need new perspectives and people and I’ve done my share), but I still don’t know if I trust the next generation—I may love them, but they were not the ones to bring us back from death and get things moving (ever so slowly, but still moving).

Trust is given, not earned and I’m throwing my heart at you in spite of myself—you have my faith and my approval, for whatever that’s worth.

I think the only way I’ll ever know is if I leave, write down email addresses and all the secret little tricks I know, and let them know I’ll be there to support them.

I’ve organised pre-courses, gotten us back in with the BBP (a bunch of lovely people!), and been involved in shaping the future of our department, and I think that’s about as much as one can do without turning the Fachschaft into a one-person show.

If you’re in the Fachschaft: I’ll be there, but not in all the meetings and I’ll do less organising, but you’ll be able to reach me for the foreseeable future.

Cheers, Nicolai

Is Life Not

Tue, 04 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Is life not what happens in between the tension of freedom and obligation? Sit and listen for a while as I tell you a story.

===

I dream that we are at the beach and I walk into the waters. It is too blissful, too free of implication, too true. I do not deserve it and neither do you. I spend my days waking next to you, working for our betterment, and then I return to that dream every night. I think it means to tell me something, but I refuse to listen. You leave one day, without telling me. We both knew it was coming, always knew it was to end this way—peace is not for us. Now I spend my days alone, standing at that same beach, and dream of us together, still working for our betterment. Sometimes I see you at the beach and you see me, but we ignore each other with studied levity. I wonder if we share our dreams, if we ever did. I like to think you do—an indulgence shared until the very end.

===

Our lives are ever touching, never intertwining, always parallel. We both are too strong to admit this weakness, too weak to admit this strength. We sit in bed, me on the left, you on the right, and talk about the future neither of us believes in. We hold each other, talking about those who died before they became people to us, we dream of their deaths—violent and gruesome and invariably induced by us—and awake the next morning grave with our dreams. We know, but we don’t talk as not to sully our idealisms with the reality of our emotion.

Mit Dir

Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Mit dir bin ich groß und klein, was auch immer du brauchst, aber jetzt bin ich alleine und falle schrumpfend in ein schwarzes Loch. Wie soll ich ohne dich sein? Warum soll ich ohne dich sein? Ich bin Nase und Lunge, immer noch deine Atmung kopierend, wie früher in der Hypnose im krampfhaften Versuch in dir Trance zu fallen—damals konnte ich nicht loslassen und jetzt will ich nicht.

Ich rolle mich zusammen und falle in das Nichts deiner Abwesenheit. Die Zeit ohne dich streckt sich in die Unendlichkeit.

Wir haben uns nur im Schlaf berührt, aber ich will dich nicht mehr missen. Ich wache morgens neben einer gähnenden Leere auf.

Ich habe deine Präsentation korrigiert, nicht aus Zwang, sondern weil ich denen, die ich liebe, helfe—ungewollt und ungefragt. Lass mich doch bitte dein Leben organisieren, wie alles werden muss.

Ich habe den guten Friedhof erwähnt und deine Augen brannten mit meiner Leidenschaft. Deine Freunde, fehl am Platze auf dem Sofa tuschelten und warfen einander bedeutungsvolle Blick zu, die du nicht sehen kannst.

Ich will es nicht sagen, kann es nicht sagen. Nicht vor ihnen. Ich will dich nicht zwingen, mir eine Antwort zu geben, aber ich brauche sie.

Wir treffen uns morgen um Snacks für das Nichts zu kaufen. Ich erinnere dich daran und du hörst mich nicht. Du willst es doch auch. Lass uns beide doch einfach einmal allein zusammenkommen.

Wir sind im Kino und ich will deine Hand halten. Ich strecke meinen Arm aus, unauffällig in deine Richtung und ziehe ihn zurück. Immer wieder.

Ich will einfach nur zu deinen Füßen sitzen und meinen Kopf in deinen Schoß legen.

Ich habe dich gefragt und jede Sekunde, die du mir nicht antwortest, fühlt sich an wie eine Stunde.

Du hast nein gesagt und ich bereue, dass ich dich gefragt habe. Ich wusste von Anfang an, dass es nicht gut enden kann, aber ich hab das Herz vorausgeworfen und bin ihm gefolgt.

Ich bin alles, was du willst, aber du willst mich nicht.

What am I going to tell you? That you figure in most of my dreams? That you are my blue flower? That I yearn to touch you? I cannot impose like this on someone, anyone. If love means anything, it means consideration—just because I scream inside, does not mean that you must know. I must steel myself, learn to grow content with what is and ignore the fig tree of possibilities. We can’t all live within idle fantasy. to make possible reality and its rules. The greatest devotion we can show someone is to swallow our emotion and aid in their betterment.

I often think on our entanglement and that I ought to love someone akin to me—someone who strives to leave behind a better a place, someone who swallows their emotion for the sake of the collective—after all we have no one but each other, but then I remember how I resent myself and the duty I foolishly keep placing upon myself and I think back to you. I could never exist outside the system, outside ambition, outside the collective. I have so long denied myself that I have lost track of who I am and what I want. I only know that I am me and that I want you—selfishly, foolishly, irrationally.

sometimes

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT

sometimes i am tortured by dreams of success—it doesn’t matter what it looks like, it’s always dreadful. ich weiß nicht wieso, aber ich kann mir einfach keine zukunft vorstellen, in der ich—oder irgendwer, tbqh—erfolgreich und glücklich zugleich ist. sind diese beiden konditionen nicht irgendwie negativ bedingt? man kann glücklich sein, man kann erfolgreich sein, aber beides zugleich? colour me skeptical. Ich saß damals also an meinem Schreibtisch und dachte über das Wetter nach—wie genau sollte ich meine Reaktion auf den Verrat des Wetters (diesen schmählichen Temperatursturz, der mich in eine Erkältung und eine Sinnsuche warf) ausdrücken? Ich bin nicht überzeugt, dass wir dafür Worte haben werden, egal, wie lange ich das Schreiben noch herauszögere (und, Gott, wie es an mir zerrt—als wäre ich ein Raumschiff in unglücksel’gem Flug auf ein schwarzes Loch—jede kommende Sekunde dauert länger und meine Gedanken werden langsamer, bis sie endlich in ewiger Länge vergehen)

Oh, ein Wort macht alles ungeschehen. Und ich will nicht die Rache der Maria, ich will ihre Verzweiflung. Und ich schreie. Und ich bete. Und ich weiß nicht weiter.

===

Das also ist des Pudels Kern sagt mein Vater und ich starre ihn an. Was will er damit sagen? Ich weiß, dass er ein Deutschabi hat. In der Situation ist der Satz einfach fehl am Platz.

===

I feel like my insanity is rending my soul at the edges of my vision, a cacaphony of a thousand voices and I need to let them all in.

===

Ich sitze in der Wohnung und schaue aus dem Fenster. Ich darf nicht, ich kann nicht.

===

Ich wünsche mir, dass der Tod mich besucht wie Emily.

because i could not stop for death // he kindly stopped for me.

Ich starre in die Nacht und ersehne mir seine Umarmung. Wie er wohl aussieht.

=== Mein Großvater redet von hehren Dingen und ich denke an den toten Hund im Garten. Daneben meine Großmutter, ewig deplatziert und doch am Ziel. Er steht auf und bittet mich doch endlich den verdammten Rasen zu mähen. Deswegen sei ich doch gekommen. Ich sage erstmal nichts und starre auf das vertrocknende Blumenbeet. Was für Rasen? Seit meine Großmutter tot ist, breitet sich das Moos aus, hat inzwischen fast alles gefressen—nur im Kreis um die Verscharrten hält sich das Gras, es wächst groß und stolz, ein Grabmahl über das man sich nicht streiten braucht.

Unser Familiengrab hat immer noch keinen Grabstein. Sie ist sechs Monate tot und wir haben uns immer noch nicht auf die Schriftart einigen können. Ich verstehe nicht, warum wir sie nicht auf den alten Grabstein schreiben können. Zögern wir den Stein hinaus, weil die Urne fehlt?

[discussion about the font on the grave stone (humanist grotesque for grandmother, but what of the rest?)]

Ich stehe seufzend auf und mache mich auf den in den Schuppen, der schon immer zerfällt. Neben dem Rasenmäher steht die Sense und ich lächele ein bisschen in mich hinein. Es wird nichts weggeworfen. Ich hole die Verlängerungskabel und stolpere fast über das Vogelfutter—die Vögel warten seit ihrem Tod—und fange an zu mähen.

Die Vögel in den Apfelbäumen singen mir ein Lied von Sommer. Der Hund kommt, gibt mir den Ball und holt nicht wieder, weil er verzogen ist. Ich lache und schaue Richtung Haus. Er sitzt wie immer im Dunklen, gebeugt über Kontoauszüge, von denen er sich regieren lässt und hat mich schon wieder vergessen. Wenn ich zurückkomme, wird er mich unwirsch begrüßen, ich werde ihm Kaffee kochen, die Investitionsvorschläge der Bank absegnen und ihn den Papieren überlassen. [Eigentlich hat er ja gut investiert, sagt meine Mutter. Sie ist mit ihrer elendigen Ezigarette verschmolzen und nimmt mir übel, dass ich nichts von Betongold halte. Die Wohnungen sind schon fast im Wert explodiert.

Ich nicke. Ja, ja, aber deswegen hat er sie doch nicht gekauft. Er wollte uns an sich fesseln, wollte, dass wir hier gefangen sind. Wie er es war. Ich wünschte ich könnte eine rauchen, aber das tue ich hier nicht. Wir müssen die Diskussion nicht haben.]

===

Ich schließe die Augen und sehe ein Skelett vor mir. Gefangen in vertrockneter Erde, die Arme einladend ausgebreitet. Das kann keiner von uns sein, im Tod noch offen.

===

ah, the first stirrings of life in its miserable glory. jetzt kriechen sie alle aus ihren betten, den schlaf im auge und

der rauch kräuselt sich langsam nach oben—er will auch nicht gehen, muss aber dann doch und sieht die straße von oben. er ist von der schlafstadt nicht beeindruckt und sehnt sich wie der raucher in die toskana. oder vielleicht nach frankreich, so ganz sicher sind sich die beiden da nicht, aber es ist ja auch noch früh.

es muss sich entschieden werden, aber niemand will. der tag vergeht sich im nichts, umspielt die familie, die wieder mal—immer noch?—über das testament streitet, obwohl sie alle das gleiche wollen.

Haunts and Homes

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Their faces were, thanks to the lights hanging above, a tad too bright and devoid of shadows. She motioned for him to sit down in one of the elegant chairs, then did the same, waiting for him to start the conversation. She had done this for a long time now, but she still felt the same rush whenever she had a new guest on for the very first time—after all, there was always the chance they’d surprise her. She’d given up hope—whenever she was foolish enough to hope, she was proven wrong, as though she were in a drama explicitly written to torture her. After a lingering moment of silence, he started speaking, slowly, delicately, as though he had a great tale to tell.

‘It feels strange to the back…’ He trailed off, legs crossed, a blank expression on his face. She waited for him to continue, then offered up a suggestion of her own: ‘Home?’

He shook his head a little too long, then hesitantly continued.

‘God no! I mean, yeah, I did grow up here, but it doesn’t feel like a home to me, if that makes sense. It’s more like a prison I escaped when I moved abroad to study. I just… don’t belong here. I’m a little too atheist, a little too gay, a little too liberal. Growing up, I felt like I had been cursed by the universe for a crime I committed in a previous life… I spent my adolescence dreaming of bigger, better things… And when I finally got to experience them, they weren’t what I was looking for. No matter where I went, I felt like some sort of misshapen blob tumbling from one awkward experience to the next. So I came back and here I am. Triumphant. Jubilant. Still that same blob, only more jaded. And in a way, nothing has changed, even though everything is profoundly different. It’s the same alleys, but now I know the misfits who’s been here before me, trying not to drown. All those artists I’d dismissed suddenly took on a new relevance: we were alike. Most of us were a little too gay. The only difference was that they were a lot too liberal and a lot too atheist. They had a much harder time, and it makes me feel like an ungrateful brat, because I complained endlessly, even though I had it easy. I wasn’t bullied. I wasn’t persecuted. I was just an edgy teenager who didn’t want to fit in and then… didn’t. And then I fled abroad, to live in that mystical place that was everywhere but here. And it wasn’t mystical, because life isn’t. So I’m here, trying to explain why you should vote for me, even though I’m a misshapen blob.’

He leaned back in his chair, a smile on his face. She nodded, searching for something to say in response. He had come on her show to announce his bid for governor, peddling—she’d assumed—some canned story about feeling homesick abroad, coming back, yearning to improve the home he so adored. She was unsure what to say. Usually, those interviews played out in similar ways, hitting the familiar beats. She never listened. She didn’t need to. Not that the election mattered. It was a pretence more than anything else. He didn’t stand a chance. He wasn’t the candidate of the party that had ruled since they had become a constitutional monarchy, then a republic, then a part of another country. They’d simply traded one arcane overlord for another. She almost felt sorry for him.

‘Well, maybe you could try to actually do that,’ she said, a wry smile on her lips, ‘you’ve not done a great job of that so far.’

‘I mean, yeah, but… yeah…’ He wrung his hands, as though trying to find an answer somewhere within them. ‘I feel like honesty is the most important thing in a politician. Complete honesty and transparency. You shouldn’t present in the best way you can, but rather in the most honest way.’

‘So, authentic?’

Sombre Reflections

Tue, 21 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I’m lying in my bed, heart beating like the wind, listening to Yumeji’s Theme, pondering why my writing morphed from playful fantasy to overly sombre ‘literary fiction’ when I transitioned from German to English.

I remain convinced that the English language in itself doesn’t force one to write sombre meditations on the human experience—without ever finishing them—neither do I believe that the mere passing of time is the reason why I left genre fiction behind me in favour of some sort of dreamlike magic realism teetering between magic or realism, never satisfying me. I still wake up, full with excitement for a world of temples, filled with magical symbols, and elves, but I just can’t bring myself to write it, or even to plot out the details of the world. It’s as if I’m trapped in a perpetual cycle of haphazard world building, unable to escape. So I just script world after world, never transcending the outlines, while remaining strangely focussed on how exactly elves’ ears twitch with excitement.

Whenever I wrote in German, I used to devote myself to describing the floor and its intricacies in unnecessary detail, barely able to cram in a few lines of dialogue or plot. Now, I tend to obsess over colours or feelings—or Elven ears. The odd thing is that I haven’t managed to finish writing anything at all. In retrospect it seems beyond unbelievable that my misguided attempts at high fantasy managed to attract any readers at all, yet my epic had almost two thousand. I don’t know why or how, but I’m grateful for each and everyone who decided to gift their attention to me.

Another thing I’ve changed is protagonists—in German, I favoured girls. Now, boys, isolated, weathering a tempestuous storm alone at midnight, dominate; mostly because I’m simply not able to write convincing dialogue. I’m not even sure if I manage to sound convincingly human in person; I like to believe that my old writings sparked with wit and were fun to read; my current efforts all skew to the melodramatic, attempting to ask questions about life itself—I don’t think they succeed, but at least they try.

Whenever I look back, I seek to find out what happened, but I’m not sure.

Gas Station Stories

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

~~Summer had always been my favourite season.~~ When I was a small child, our parents had always taken us to the lake house, where time flew slower, heat lingered longer, and the summer air was ripe with promise. Even now, I feel a profound sense of fulfilment whenever I think about summer—its promises before me, waiting to materialise. I would never have imagined summer to be the season I would choose to take my life. Neither would I have thought myself to be the kind of person to do it so publicly.

===

There was a dreaminess in my steps, as I walked across the yard of the lake house, each step heavier than the step before. I hoped the rope I had found in the attic would dangle my lifeless body from the mighty maple that stretched endlessly upward, its branches heavy with the orange leaves that coloured the memories of my childhood summers. I shook my head. I knew it would. Despite being old, it seemed strong—a thick rope made of hemp, a rope that could handle everything I could demand of it.

‘What?… You can’t fire me—I’ve always been a diligent employee…, I… I don’t deserve this… Just give me a chance to prove myself.’

I could tell my pleading was in vain. The HR manager looked at me, ready—eager even—to tell me to leave before he had to call security. I felt as though he enjoyed this dance of ours: there was something about him that told me that he hadn’t simply found himself in the position, but rather sought it out.

His shirt had a starched collar and I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that all his wife did was stay at home and take care of his laundry. It was all she did; she got up in the morning, fixed him some kind of breakfast, then went and got a fresh shirt, starched a collar, and laid it out for him to wear to work. Their marriage had to be a dead one, one of secret contempt and prolonged silences during dinner.

‘I’m sorry, but the economy…, I’m sure you understand.’ He cleared his throat, a bit too practised ~~mechanical~~, then continued, ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to find a job in no time—you’re young, you’re qualified, and we wrote you an excellent reference.’

Of course he had been wrong. I had not been able to find a job—after a few months spent piled on the living room sofa, waiting for replies that never came, my savings had molten away. I had taken a part-time job at the gas station. Graveyard shift—the pay was better and afforded me the luxury of continuing to live in my flat, blissfully unaware of the changes unfurling during the day. I had tried to start a blog to chronicle my experience, but given up.~~No one wanted to read post after post about someone so utterly lost in life, devoid of dreams and ambitions.~~ I would have liked to tell my story, but there was no story to tell, no narrative to forge, and so I didn’t. I had thought about branching out into politics or criticism, but I could not torture myself sufficiently to produce something of adequate quality. Like everything I had done or achieved before, it was competent, but lacked soul—like me.

It had been freeing to give up, just as it had been freeing to become a night-person, wasting away behind a counter in a bright blue uniform. I felt vaguely threatened by the new gas pumps they had installed—you could just pay at those, using your card—but then been assuaged by the realisation that the night customers preferred to use cash.

I liked to imagine their lives: a couple driving home from a holiday somewhere up North, both of them tired, now stopping for the last time before falling into bed, a few teenagers buying some beers for their party in the woods, a lonely writer buying some instant noodles for a midnight dinner. It made me feel closer to the anonymous masses that rarely acknowledged me, only telling me the number of their pump, showing me their ID, or, in rare cases, waving their card before tapping it against the terminal, then signing to receipt.

It was a lonely experience, holed up behind the counter, languidly hitting buttons on the cash register, standing up sporadically to get cigarettes or tobacco. On busy nights, I would have a co-worker next to me—usually a teenager tapping away at their phone, barely realising there were customers waiting to be deserved. I found solace knowing that I didn’t have to speak to anyone, so long as I worked with one of them. They didn’t tend to stay for long. A few months at the most, before they found something more desirable.

‘Sorry to disturb you, but do you sell eggs?’ She spoke with an accent he couldn’t quite place and looked at him with bright eyes. I was sure she was some hotshot lawyer or software engineer. She didn’t quite fit in, dressed in a light grey blouse, cradling a packet of flour and a carton of milk.

‘Making pancakes?’ My voice sounded stilted, painfully forming words. ‘There should be eggs next to the milk—‘ I stood up to gesture to the small fridge next to the dry goods. ‘If there are none I can go in the back and fetch you some. Any preferences?’

‘Yeah. Got a craving for them.’ She shrugged and placed her items on the counter. ‘And unless, I’m as blind as my girlfriend says, I’d have seen those eggs. I’d prefer organic, but you don’t have those have you? I mean,’ she gestured toward the milk, ‘that one’s the dodgy kind you don’t buy in a grocery store…’ There was a twinkle in her eyes. I was not sure why—it was three a.m. on a Monday, yet she seemed happy, excited even, to be here. I felt like there was something gravely important I had missed.

‘Afraid we only have non-organic-not-actually-specified eggs.’ I tried an apologetic smile, but wasn’t sure it worked. ‘I’ll assume you want them nonetheless…’ I turned around and fiddled with the lock to get into the storage room. I didn’t know if we had eggs in there—normally, a colleague of mine would go to the grocery store and pick up a handful of cartons to sell.

Luckily, we had three cartons left, all filled with ten intact, white eggs. Medium. I handed them to her. ‘Would you be so kind as to put the other two in the fridge?’ She nodded, still smiling. My voice grew smoother, taking on a normal tone. ‘Thank you so much. Will that be all or do you want anything else? Cigarettes, a coffee?’

‘Oh no, thank you.’ She held up a hand, before digging through her purse to produce her wallet, elegantly shaped, black, the logo of a designer applied in gold. ‘I really shouldn’t drink a coffee this time of night.’ I scanned her items, savouring the satisfying beep the reader made.

‘That’ll be $12.15. Cash or card?’ Silently, she produced a credit card, proceeded to tap it and wished me a good night. On her way out, she gingerly placed the two egg cartons in the fridge, before turning to me and waving goodbye.

From that day onward, she became a regular, buying groceries every two or three days, always wearing a blouse, carrying an expensive handbag on her right arm, sharing little nuggets of her life. She was an editor for some obscure magazine I’d never heard of—they were popular abroad, she said, winking at me. Her girlfriend didn’t like her working so much, it made her feel as though they were drifting apart, inching away midnight dinner by midnight dinner. She found it ridiculous—‘just because I work late, doesn’t mean we’re strangers sharing a flat’—and would look at him, demanding assurance. Sometimes she took a coffee, then mention how much she regretted it the next time she came—how it’d kept her up all night.

‘So, what’s your story?’ She asked after a few months, clutching spaghetti, pesto basilico, and cocoa puffs, chipper as ever. I had only seen her sad once—a feature she had put a lot of effort in had been canned for being too political.

I wasn’t sure how to respond: would she care to listen? She tended to just throw questions at me, then turn to leave. It was as though the air of open conversation she so carefully projected was nothing more than a farce designed to garner trust. Whenever she was around me, I felt elated somehow, as if her attention alone made me more worthwhile a person. Looking back, it feels strange—almost improper—to trace my downfall to the conversations she would reprint in her magazine. At that point in time, I’d already considered myself fallen; after all, I had no career left and idled away in a gas station, stagnant, removed from the realities of life.

‘It’s the most basic of stories,’ I said nonchalantly, scanning her spaghetti, ‘I was fired and then, you know…, settled for this.’

‘Why don’t you come to my office and we talk about your journey? They really like stuff like that back home… misery porn, if you will, to distract themselves from the banality of their lives.’ She had never told me where ‘home’ was, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t here, and it was worse. ‘Being stuck in a dead end job at a gas station, working the graveyard shift. What does it feel like to fall like this? Great stuff.’ She placed her business card on the counter gingerly and waited for me to read it.

===

‘No, no, all big cities are alike…, all of them glimmering monuments to capitalism,’ she paused for a moment, then continued in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘no matter how communist the government professes to be’

Going to the Museum

Sun, 20 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

All those upper middle class people looking at a deconstructed barbecue grill and you just stand there, warning them if they take one stop too many toward the sacrosanct line.

Not assembling something isn’t art, you think, it’s not doing anything. A barbecue grill doesn’t come assembled. It comes in exactly the way the artwork before was arranged.

Your mind wanders to the print they sell in the museum shop.

modern art = i could’ve done that + yeah, but you didn’t

The text is set in Arial, black, maybe 20pt. It’s centred on a white background. The print costs more than you make a day. It’s a bestseller. You don’t really understand why they buy it—it’s incredibly easy to copy. You also don’t understand what’s artistic about a pithy statement everyone’s seen on Instagram rendered in the most basic way possible.

The cafeteria’s somehow more sterile than a hospital. You think it’s because the floor is seamless and the bar counter is made of one piece of white plastic. The tables and chairs are so designed as to be uncomfortable and a single platter of mediocre hummus costs €18. The museum has implemented a no tipping policy and made you get rid of your tipping jars. Some people who could be your grandparents smile at you, then tip. The younger ones don’t. They order on their phones, barely noticing you when you bring them their order.

The museum has installed a new video exhibit. It’s part of a series on Marxism. At first you’re excited. You overhear the curator talking about it—it’s supposed to be groundbreaking. It turns out to be a series of closeup shots of the new iPhone, interlaced with an old love song.

You feel like Apple could’ve shot the same video. It feels just as slick, just as helplessly detached from reality.

Next to the séparée, is a long analysis of the piece. They had to take down a set of Kollwitz paintings to make room for it. In it, a contemporary philosopher writes about the significance of the video. It is, he lectures you, an insightful reflection on Marx’s criticism of the product. ‘The object is rendered beautiful, it is a fetished commodity, forever, tantalisingly out of reach,…’ You stop reading, having lost all interest.

You wander through the hall of reflection.

And they have this piece by Damien Hirst and they say it’s made from ‘plywood, glass, metal, printed paper’, but really it’s just a bathroom cabinet filled with packages of common drugs

A few days ago, one of the visitors talked to you. He had the startlingly white teeth of the upper classes and spoke with an accent borne of elite schools and universities. You felt patronised before he ever opened his mouth to ask you how it felt to guard the trash in the museum. He looked nice enough, sincerely interested, but you couldn’t tell him the truth. You smiled and said that you appreciated the opportunity to spend your days around art. He didn’t seem to believe you, but didn’t press you. He smiled at you, somewhat wistfully, then went back to his family, and stopped his grandfather from walking into an exhibit—a disco ball suspended from the ceiling by an industrial metal chain—before turning back to you and smiling—apologetically, this time.

You can’t help but feel like most artists are really scam artists. You think of joining them, but you doubt you could ever make it—you don’t have a degree to sell your disassembled furniture.