Colossal Amplifier of Arousal

Our biological systems have been optimized over millions of years — yet our modern way of life barely makes use of their potential. Rediscovering our atavistic ranges of possibility requires the integration of movement, attention, and reflexes. Resilience can be trained.

Sympathetic states of alarm ensure survival, yet modern stress situations can render these subcortical responses dysfunctional. The return to safety is neurochemically over-rewarded. Dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin intensify the experience of security, stabilize the system, and make the parasympathetic response trainable until the nervous system links the experience of safety with reward.

Strength emerges through contact. Energy is managed. Technique is organization under time pressure.

We possess a treasure chamber of biological technologies that have been optimized by evolution. Most of the time they lie dormant because our way of life bypasses the atavistic neural, physiological, and sensory pathways.

"No word remains still; rather, through usage it continually moves away from its original position — more often downward than upward, more toward the worse than the better, more toward the narrower than the broader — and in the mutability of the word one may recognize the mutability of concepts." Goethe

Adorno recognizes "an irreconcilably gaping contradiction between poetically integral language and communicative language." Goethe had already looked into this abyss. Faust II was forced into "a linguistic decay that had already been predetermined."

Theodor W. Adorno, Notes to Literature, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Suhrkamp

The opposition between "objectified, familiar speech" and elevated expression — high style ("only what is drawn toward the abyss of ridicule contains enough danger that the salvific element can be measured against it and succeed") — results in a secretly reconciled relationship. "The two hostile media are at once one and never entirely separated from each other."

One can say this much more simply. In Shakespeare's time there was no distinction between high and popular culture. People consumed theatre without any particular reverence for the stage event or its performers. It was undoubtedly a form of television.

Marek slipped his hands into Elena's shorts and explored her body. Shivers swept over her back. She gave him her first sounds of pleasure — in conscientious fulfillment of an agreement. She felt the Qi level in her inner pool rising, while red and yellow mists spiraled upward along her spine. The experience of Qi was manifoldly pleasurable and, within the complex whole, acted as a colossal amplifier of sexual arousal. Therein lay the secret of full-body and multiple orgasms. Every good song contains Qi. That explains fan ecstasy. Few people can deliberately bring about such an effect.

Marek could.

Even Elena's twin sister Aline had fallen prey to his murky virtuosity, at a time when the sisters were no longer in contact. For Elena, the estranged sister had ridden a Frankfurt drug express all the way to its final destination. Acts of self-destruction that seemed unstoppable; in the floodplains of Ederthal, people discussed Aline's downfall in rhythm with the news from Frankfurt's station district.

Perhaps they were only apparently unstoppable acts ... The file on Aline Steinbrenner's drug death was closed after third-party involvement had been ruled out. Marek did not appear in the tableau. The family's mourning border framed an empty space. It almost seemed as though a foreign object had to be placed beneath the ancestral soil of the Steinbrenners. They held their course toward the family grave. Aline remained enclosed within the customary care of the local cemetery. At last, she had found peace at the kitchen table of belonging.

What Aline had experienced as liberation had been captivity. And now the other daughter of the retired detective Alwin Steinbrecher laid her head upon the scaffold of infamy and presented the murderer of her sister with her throat.

Marek compared the sisters. Elena was wax in the hands of this master of Qi eroticism. He delighted in her devoted innocence. The sadistic pleasure kept him on course. It stabilized his desire. Had Elena possessed even the slightest suspicion of Marek's demonic nature, his touch would have felt like hellfire upon her skin. Yet she perceived only exquisite refinement. A mountain guide of extraordinary stamina led her from one summit of pleasure to the next. From time to time he allowed her to fall, yet strangely these deviations from the ideal route left no lasting imprint on Elena's memory. She was startled episodically and, the next moment, completely forgot what she might never have forgiven another person for.

Elena overcame a barrier of shame when she complimented his endurance. She believed herself obligated to demonstrate equal willingness to act. In truth, something strange occurred. Her autonomy faded as quietly as a dream dissolves upon waking.

Dear M.,

I wish you a good morning. Let us see where the journey of the story goes today. I myself am curious about my own ideas. The twist involving Marek reading pulp fiction emerged by itself yesterday. The visualization shows exactly what I saw and experienced while writing. This still improvised and untested sociality between the couple. They have already sailed around the entire world on the intimate vessel, yet the familiarity of everyday actions is still absent. The formality of the beginning. There is a deep ravine. On one side, they have immediately given each other everything; on the other, they have not even shown each other photographs of their grandparents.

I am telling the story through the means of magical realism. At the moment, I feel like paying a visit to Elena's North Hessian homeland. Consider the external circumstances: a just-completed lesson in Yi Jin Jing beside the Eder River and its floodplain; just beyond the borders of a small university town that once, as a residential city, played a significant role not only in Hessian regional history.

Can you see the panorama?

Alisa emerges naked from the river. She lies down on a warm glacial boulder in the shadow of a menhir that looks like one of Obelix's toys. The stones along the bank resemble glaciers from the last great Ice Age. She does not remain alone for long. A jubilant noise announces a children's Qigong group led by Sina. Alisa withdraws; she is not in the mood for commotion.

Hours later.

Arousal stretches the moment like a bow drawn before the shot.

"You are open," Virgil observes with audible satisfaction.

"I am for you. Only for you," Alisa assures him. Her receptivity is boundless. Virgil slowly circles her like a sculptor who shapes a work not with his hands, but with his gravity.

"Resistance is not an enemy. It is a teacher."

Alisa is not in the mood for instructions. She could climax on the spot; the pleasure switch lies within reach, and the charge is certainly powerful enough. But this is something entirely different from the celebration of togetherness — the way she loves to experience it.

"Please," says Alisa, "we can continue in a moment. I thank you for every lesson, but right now I want something else from you."

"Show me how much you want it."

Alisa gladly does so. Oh, how she loves peeling this controlled man out of his armor. Then Virgil becomes once again entirely the teacher — whether as lecturer, trainer, or instructor, it is woven into him as a vocation — and his desire is directed toward her effort. Naturally, this too is a disguise for pleasure. Yet the same is true for both of them. Alisa would have to throw stones while sitting in her own glass house to accuse Virgil of it.