For now, Nana’s travel adventures come to an end. Perhaps she’ll share more with us later. In the meantime, here’s a little story material from life’s general store.

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“The tantric revolution (a thousand years ago) brought its followers similar liberating innovations as many a political upheaval in Europe many centuries later. It did away with the notions of a patriarchal caste system and taught freedom, equality and inclusion based on the common divine origin of all beings.” Diana Sans

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“We grow through the same obstacles that bring us down.” Yoga proverb, handed down by Christopher Wallis

Spaghetti Straps and Limestone

Nana poses like a model, spaghetti straps sliding over the remains of a limestone wall that once defended a rugged spur of land. Three thousand years ago, soldiers may have stood here day and night. Stone bones and flint tips lie in a nearby shaft, echoes of lives long gone.

A doctoral student in military architecture observes:

“The fortifications and cultic functions of the complex align with high points in the landscape, framed like towers, fostering focus and vigilance. The strategic value has prompted defenses across millennia. In the Iron Age, a rampart crowned the hill. A commanding spring horizon remained a site of significance well into the Middle Ages. Basalt and tuff, layered with shell limestone, shape a defiant terrain that sparks the imagination.”

Holger, the photographer, melts with excitement at Nana’s natural, uninhibited presence. She does not notice him. A gust of wind welcomes her fully into the now. A woodpecker drums the air. Horses gallop in the distance. A beetle dreams of pistachio ice cream. Two woodpeckers toy with each other’s beaks. Raccoons move in rhythm with a chaconne, guided by the magical mist that hangs over the hill.

Sometimes, experience obstructs intention. Nana wants, at times, to let a Hinz or Kunz—whether fantasy, thought, or person—into her space. But the world, reacting to expectation, blocks the way:“You cannot enter here.”Holger’s feigned harmlessness, the way he had spoken about Stiftung Warentest results moments ago, tells the bouncer at Nana’s emotional disco a story of inadequacy.

“Stiftung Warentest is a non-profit German consumer organization, by far the most well-known foundation in Germany.”—Wikipedia

Life once closed down like a Sunday supermarket in the last century. Holger’s tastes never appeared in the station-kiosk novels. He lacks the imagination that guides a person through the world.

Intoxication becomes a salve for loneliness. Holger longs for love, yet it surfaces as dark fantasies, knives sinking into an acquaintance’s flesh. It is never enough for anything beyond a passing encounter. He does not have the words to name his deviations.

“I know I’m not normal,”he admits.

Sitting in front of the TV with his mother, murderous thoughts flicker through him. It is her fault, he thinks. She gave birth to the monster. She should die. Everything is old: the blankets, the sofa, the television. Nothing should be so relentlessly aged. The house, the shutters, the staircase—all eternal in decay. Even his mother seems ancient. Her love is absent. Shouldn’t a mother, at least, love her child if she can do nothing else?

“Can’t you love me, even for a moment?”he asks.

Nana can—but she does not know why. She does not see the puppeteer whose strings she pulls. The tension softens briefly. For a moment, she misses the rare joy found in extraordinary people navigating complex gender tensions. The troubadours of deviance, the masters of erotic concrete poetry, offer her nothing here. She doubts Holger seeks to expand his erotic horizons at all.

She notices a woman in a costume that reminds her of Lady Di. For Nana, Lady Di is shorthand for the kindergarten teacher masquerading as a grande dame.

Nana wonders how some people manage to go for walks.