Our ancestors lived in conditions that demanded an extremely finely tuned interplay of perception, movement, and neural control. Every hunt, every flight from danger, and every use of tools activated sensitivities that today remain largely untapped. Animals master abilities such as magnetic navigation, echolocation, electro-tactile sensing, or subtle vibration and directional perception at an extraordinary level—and we carry the same archaic systems within us. Yet in the modern world, these potentials mostly lie dormant.

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We possess a treasury of biological technologies that are evolutionarily optimized. Most of the time, they lie dormant because our way of life bypasses the atavistic neural, physiological, and sensory pathways.

The Night of Yucatán

Humankind survived the night of Yucatán like a mouse underground. It cowered in cave passages. It had come this far because, as prey, it had seemed insignificant to the dinosaurs after a simple calculation of effort versus reward. As so often happens, evolution hit the reset button after a catastrophe, and a minus variant prevailed. Thus came the triumph of the gram over the ton.

Phonetic Intoxication

Sometimes we go to Frankfurt to look at an area with the charm of a dented pizza box. We then eat at a snack bar where the television is on and bread is placed before you in incredibly shabby plastic bowls without being asked. You can order whatever you want; tea comes with it. As a student, I lived in the neighborhood for a while, and even then I loved losing myself in the labyrinths of insane productions at the small theater in Gutleutviertel. When it becomes too silly for us, we retreat behind the curtain of our love. I am happier than ever, almost painfully so.

We eat at Tiago’s. Tiago runs a former nature-lovers’ house in the style of a fisherman’s tavern. The maritime junk is heirlooms from a descendant of seafarers. Tiago draws Portuguese people from between Kassel and Mannheim. Once clearly separated from the majority society, almost all have shed their distinctive traits. They have merged into the general population without becoming German. In Tiago’s inn, everyone gnaws at the root, regardless of which side they, their father, or grandfather stood on when the Carnation Revolution of 1974 bolstered leftist hopes.

Ariane Hagestolz does not know the meaning of her family name. An enclosure can also be called a Vride or Hag. Through a few twists of semantic shifts, one arrives both at Burgfried (castle tower) and at hager and Hagestolz. The name Hagestolz contains a designation for an heir who, although descended from a notable man, inherited nothing from him but the name. From this came the old (entrenched) bachelor. Even if the bachelor pursued a proper profession, as a refuser of procreation, he remained dubious. He was described (marked) as eccentric. The community overlooked the eccentricity. This fits the dimensions of Hag. The word increasingly designated something small and remote. One finds Hagbauer as a surname in phone books. The Hagbauer was the small gardener among the farmers.

The rosehip also belongs to Hag in its second meaning of prick and poke. Yet the first meaning also leads to hegen (to nurture). A contradiction unites pricking and nurturing in the defensive hedge that reconciles the meanings.

Goya and I walk at night in the Eder floodplain. My inventiveness with words gets caught up in the old “au.” The selected foreign word alluvial (washed up) corresponds to the French alluviale, as in forêt alluviale – floodplain forest. I enjoy a phonetic intoxication. The master of language feels excluded, as I have kept my thoughts to myself for five minutes. Even for me, such a withdrawal can feel like infidelity. I hold Goya in my arms and kiss him until he becomes accessible again in the most exclusive way through intimacy. My charm is a power. In the next moment, I feel his desire.