Force emerges in contact. Energy is managed. Technique is organization under time pressure.

Hidden Potentials

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

The autonomic nervous system was optimized for a different world — a world full of immediate dangers, where survival depended on fast and precise regulation. The mammalian diving reflex and the automatic parasympathetic return in post-alarm mode are evolutionary tools that enable us to remain calm, coordinated, and capable even under extreme stress.

The Opportunities of Over-Reward

Endorphins and dopamine strongly reward the experience of calm and safety, especially after situations of danger. Anyone who understands this principle can train their nervous system, automate self-regulation, and channel stress responses. This creates a biologically subversive effect that neutralizes common mechanisms of stress and manipulation.

Phonetic Intoxication

Sometimes we drive to Frankfurt to look at an area that has the charm of a dented pizza box. We then eat at a snack bar where the TV is always on and where bread is served without being asked, in incredibly shabby plastic bowls. You can order whatever you want — you get tea with it. As a student, I lived in the neighborhood for a while. Even back then, I loved losing myself in the labyrinths of insane productions in the small theater in the Gutleut district. When things become too stupid for us, we retreat behind the curtain of our love. I am happier than ever before — it is almost painful.

*

We eat at Tiago’s. Tiago runs a former nature-friends’ lodge styled like a fisherman’s tavern. The maritime junk is inherited clutter from a descendant of seafarers. Tiago attracts Portuguese people from the region between Kassel and Mannheim. Immigrants who were once clearly separated from the majority society have shed almost all markers of difference. They have dissolved into the general population without becoming German. In Tiago’s restaurant, everyone gnaws at the root — regardless of which side they, their father, or their grandfather stood on when the Carnation Revolution of 1974 strengthened leftist hopes.

*

Ariane Hagestolz does not know the meaning of her family name. An enclosure can also be called a Vride or a Hag. Through several corners of semantic shifts, this leads both to Burgfried (tower keep) and to haggard and Hagestolz.

Within Hagestolz lies a designation for an heir who descended from an important man but inherited only his name. From this emerged the image of the aging (confirmed) bachelor. Even if the bachelor pursued a respectable profession, as one who refused procreation he remained dubious. He was described — marked — as eccentric. The eccentric in the community was overlooked. This fits the dimensions of Hag. The word increasingly came to describe something small and remote. The surname Hagbauer can still be found in phone books. The Hagbauer was the small-scale gardener among farmers.

The rose hip also belongs to Hag in its secondary meaning of stabbing or piercing. Yet the primary meaning also leads to to foster or to cultivate (hegen). A contradiction unites piercing and nurturing in the defensive hedge — which reunites these meanings.

*

Goya and I walk at night in the Eder floodplain. My instinct for word creation catches on the old “au.” The selected loanword alluvial (washed up, deposited) corresponds to the French alluviale, as in forêt alluviale — floodplain forest. I enjoy a phonetic intoxication.

The master of language feels excluded because I kept my thoughts to myself for five minutes. Even for me, such withdrawal can feel like infidelity. I take Goya in my arms and kiss him until he becomes accessible again in the most intimate way through familiarity. My charm is a power. In the next moment, I feel his desire.