It’s interesting, Mercury retrograde is just around the corner, and already today stories long past their prime are being recalled in my mind. For example, with a literary review of the old English books: Whenever a new lesson was due, the corresponding dialogue was first read with distributed roles. I can still remember it very well. Beforehand, there was always the role of the “storyteller”, who introduced a situation in an explanatory way, but also described the action between the spoken passages. I always liked being that storyteller, the living link between the lines.

I’ve read plenty of stories over the years since then. Often, however, much remained on the surface mentally, and I had even more questions afterwards than before. So there was always the longing for the one, the true source that is profound and real, although also – when I finally found it – answers came to questions I didn’t even know I had before. And many an answer was a rather difficult stone to digest. Truth often weighs heavily, so it takes strength to stick with it, even though you actually feel weak and small.

I have also written quite a few stories in the meantime. However, the connection between the lines has not always remained alive, and in the course of time many a bond has come to an end precisely because of this, but this is also part of being a “storyteller”: such a story usually consists of individual chapters that have to end at some point, otherwise there is no development, and you will never know how it ends. Again, without mental strength and focus on the essentials, this is very difficult to endure. The further one gets, the fewer companions from the past remain by our side.

And then, finally, there is this one story that we ourselves write anew every day, namely our own. By no means did we come into this world as a book with blank pages. We may not like individual chapters as much today. Back when we wrote them, we fatally didn’t give much thought to the consequences or simply chose the sentence structure that was most convenient for us. Then we turned the page, opened a new chapter and wondered why we suddenly no longer found ourselves in the colorful flower meadow, but in a place where it no longer felt comfortable at all. In retrospect, we can only understand this if we also look at these earlier chapters in retrospect, because they are decisive for the overall plot of our book and have contributed significantly to the one page, the one line, where we are right now.

So our book has been with us for quite a long time throughout our entire history of existence. And there are just these pages that are already filled: Here we cannot simply erase the text, nor can we tear out individual pages. Every little detail belongs to it, black on white, and is inseparable from us. Today, the silk ribbon is embedded as a bookmark on the current page. However, there are white pages ahead of us that are still completely blank. We can start now, right NOW, to describe them in the best possible way, so that at some point in the final chapter the storyteller will hopefully tell of how we will all meet again in the colorful flower meadow.

All the best, your Sabine

Music contribution: Peter Gabriel – “Book of love” (with lyrics)