Korridorium

♫ Jólagjöf ♫

21/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. 24 lit­tle doors. Behind the last one, a piece of choco­late awaits me. I already know that from the past few years.

♫ Inside the Tem­ple of Braga ♫

22/398

“I enter the cor­ri­dor just like every­one else,” said the Mas­ter to his vis­i­tor, who had asked how he might find his way through life.

“Are you, then, a seeker like me?” the vis­i­tor fur­ther inquired.

But the Mas­ter shook his head. “The path forks; there are many pas­sages to choose from—long, short, straight, sharp-turn­ing, lead­ing up and down stairs—and most end in dead ends.”

“That is pre­cisely the trou­ble,” the vis­i­tor lamented. “In this labyrinth, I can­not find my way.”

Once again, the Mas­ter shook his head. “Labyrinth? That would be a sin­gle, wind­ing pas­sage that leads to the cen­ter through many loops, but with­out any branches. What you are describ­ing is a maze.”

The vis­i­tor hes­i­tated. “And how, then, do I find my way through the maze?”

For a third time, the Mas­ter shook his head and repeated, “I enter the cor­ri­dor just like every­one else.” Then he smiled. “But beneath my steps, the maze trans­forms into a labyrinth.”

♫ Smṛti ♫

23/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. But don’t assume that I just slip in and out quickly. No. I take my time. Ini­tially, I make sure not to read any words, not even acci­den­tally. Instead, I start the sound­track and lis­ten to it with half-closed eyes. Then, when I’ve devel­oped a feel for the sounds, with­out eval­u­at­ing or cat­e­go­riz­ing them, with a begin­ner’s mind­set, so to speak, I dare to take a first look at the text—at the first words, the first sen­tence.

Is it the one I expect? Yes. The begin­ning is always the same. Nice. Car­ried by the accom­pa­ny­ing music, I ven­ture fur­ther down the cor­ri­dor. Con­fi­dent on one hand, but also a bit fear­ful because around every bend, an unnamed ter­ror may lurk.

Yet, as in a dream, all mis­for­tune will be mere imag­i­na­tion. Slowly and with delight, I feel my way for­ward, explor­ing cau­tiously. Most cor­ri­dors are short, much too short. Some­times, how­ever, they con­tinue within me, before my mind’s eye, in the rhythm of the accom­pa­ny­ing music and the flow of my thoughts and feel­ings. The first step is always the same. But all the oth­ers…

The sound­track fades away. I open my eyes. And step into life.

♫ Uppgötvun ♫

24/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. This is where we agreed to meet, should we lose each other. And sure enough: the urn is on the win­dowsill.

♫ The Camp­fire Lizards ♫

25/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor.

[Notes for the trans­la­tor:

The sen­tence with which every­thing begins is a lipogram exclud­ing the let­ter A. Sim­i­lar lipograms include:

• text 5 (exclud­ing E),
• text 9 (exclud­ing I),
• text 15 (exclud­ing O),
• text 21 (exclud­ing U)

and finally text 25, exclud­ing the last of the vow­els.]

♫ Enmeshed in Clouds (Wood­stock Mix) ♫

26/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor. A lively bus­tle reigns here. A woman in col­or­ful, flow­ing robes greets me with a smile and a kiss on the fore­head. She leads me to her friends, who are gath­ered with some chil­dren around a fire, singing, danc­ing, and roast­ing marsh­mal­lows. I clearly please other women in the group as well. They feel me, nes­tle against me, and weave flow­ers into my hair. As I try to move on, one of them pulls me to the ground and offers me a smol­der­ing lit­tle roll of paper. The cor­ri­dor doors—I see now—have been painted with fan­tasy worlds, man­dalas, and flo­ral gar­lands.

I promised my peo­ple I would not halt my search until I recov­ered the Tju­runga, with­out which our shaman is pow­er­less. And yet: Can I not linger for a moment to recover from the rig­ors of the trek? Per­haps I should learn the lan­guage of these peo­ple and find out what awaits me at the end of the corridor—and behind the many doors they haven’t opened in years, decades, or per­haps ever. The cheer­ful mood of these peo­ple is infec­tious. Yes, I’ll stay. I nod to the women, let­ting them know I accept their kind invi­ta­tion. Per­haps I will find the Tju­runga here among them after all. A wave of dizzi­ness washes over me from all the new impres­sions. The smol­der­ing paper stem has burned down, and some­how, I know the smoke will never taste bit­ter again.

♫ Moravec’s Para­dox ♫

27/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor, illu­mi­nat­ing the low vaulted ceil­ings with my torch. As a tal­is­man, I carry the ancient “Scroll of the Hid­den Cham­ber” with me. The draw­ings on the walls are faded, but oth­er­wise com­pletely pre­served. I am look­ing for the pharao­h’s car­touche. It must be here some­where. I deci­pher, “Behold my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Ozy­man­dias? But the tomb of Ram­ses the Great was already dis­cov­ered here in the Val­ley of the Kings a long time ago! Per­haps one of his sons is buried here.

My mus­ings are inter­rupted: A muf­fled sound causes me and my Egypt­ian helpers to whirl around. The ground beneath us trem­bles. The gigan­tic stone slab, whose pur­pose we had puz­zled over dur­ing the exca­va­tion, has slid down behind us. The entrance is sealed. Even with dyna­mite, we would­n’t be able to get out now.

My helpers, after a brief, des­per­ate panic, col­lapse to the ground, whim­per­ing. I, how­ever, walk on. An unopened tomb that has eluded grave rob­bers for mil­len­nia – and I am the dis­cov­erer! As long as there is air to breathe, I want to dis­cover if the bur­ial trea­sures are truly untouched. Per­haps I will behold the hoped-for riches with my own eyes before my torch is extin­guished for­ever.

♫ Infin­ity Shuf­fle ♫

28/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor and imme­di­ately jot it down in my jour­nal: “I enter the cor­ri­dor.” Since I started using a tablet instead of a note­book and pen, I can record what I do and experience—how I spend my day—much more directly and in real-time. I can also share every­thing impor­tant as a tweet right away. Before going to sleep, I can retrace my daily rou­tine on my Twit­ter account, divided into small frag­ments.

What did I come in here for? Oh, right, I’m look­ing for the tablet’s charg­ing cable. It says so right here: “I’ve mis­placed the tablet charger. Maybe it’s in the kitchen.” I can’t find it any­where in the kitchen. “But in the kitchen, I can’t find it…” But now the tablet makes a strange elec­tronic noise, drop­ping in pitch, like a dis­ap­pointed “Oohch.” I’d love to note and tweet that, since I’m hear­ing it for the first time and it obvi­ously needs to be doc­u­mented, but now the thing won’t accept input on the vir­tual key­board; instead, it saves the text as a last-resort emer­gency mea­sure and shuts down.

What now?! How am I sup­posed to write this down? In the kitchen, there’s a roll of paper tow­els, and in a drawer, I find a pen next to some tealights. I need to record all of this! But the pen won’t write on the paper towel. I lick it, shake it, the whole nine yards, but it just won’t work. All of this is at risk of being lost because I can’t write it down. My eyes fall on the cut­ting board. Could I carve some­thing into it with a knife? At least some key­words? So much has hap­pened already. Prep­ping paper tow­els, lick­ing the pen, con­sid­er­ing the cut­ting board… How am I sup­posed to remem­ber all of this? And on top of that, try­ing to mem­o­rize the act of mem­o­riz­ing! I need to find that cable; that much is clear. All my thoughts, the excite­ment, my actions—just when things are finally get­ting dra­matic and life is really pop­ping off, I can’t write it down, let alone tweet it!

I finally dis­cover the charger while search­ing for a pen and paper in the bed­room, plugged into the out­let by the night­stand. With fin­gers already trem­bling slightly, I plug it in, and the tablet comes back to life.

I type as fast as I can to catch up with my life again.

♫ Game­LAN-Party ♫

29/398

I enter the cor­ri­dor—the one designed to boost my short prose blog’s Google rank­ing, plung­ing right into a search engine-opti­mized, or SEO, copy. This text aims not so much at its read­ers but pri­mar­ily at Google’s search rank­ing algo­rithm, seek­ing to feign being infor­ma­tive by focus­ing on cru­cial key­words like “cor­ri­dor” and “short prose.” In real­ity, its sole pur­pose is to repeat­edly and sub­tly insert and vary the search-rel­e­vant key­words (such as “short prose” and “cor­ri­dor”) through­out its con­tent. The goal is to trick Google and its mys­tery-shrouded rank­ing algo­rithm into believ­ing it’s a vital con­tri­bu­tion to the field (e.g., cor­ri­dor short prose or short prose cor­ri­dors), thus earn­ing a high PageR­ank and a cov­eted spot at the top of Google’s search results.

How­ever, we must­n’t suc­cumb to a nar­row cor­ri­dor or tun­nel vision: Atten­tion-grab­bing web­sites should­n’t overdo the “cor­ri­dor” key­word in their text, and def­i­nitely should­n’t resort to repeat­ing key phrases (e.g., “short prose, short­est prose, ultra-short prose”) in white text on a white back­ground at the bot­tom of the page ad nau­seam. This is no longer even con­sid­ered adver­tis­ing poetry or prose but sim­ply short­sighted, because Google now penal­izes that with deval­u­a­tion and rel­e­ga­tion to the lower, for­got­ten reaches of its search results cor­ri­dor.

In short: “Prose” of this kind is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and plays into the hands of the com­pe­ti­tion. In other words, the cor­ri­dor is long, the prose short. Or, to put it even more blandly: Here you will find what you’re look­ing for and can finally fol­low your des­tiny (of which you prob­a­bly had no inkling) and enter the short prose Kor­ri­do­rium.

♫ This Sud­den Hal­lelu­jah Feel­ing ♫

30/398

Ich betrete den Kor­ri­dor. Einen Moment lang bin ich hier allein. Gleich wird mein Name fallen, und ich soll raus auf die Bühne treten. In dem Leih-Frack ist mir unwohl. Mit der Fliege am Revers fühle ich mich wie zum Karneval verklei­det. Ich schwitze in dem unge­wohn­ten Aufzug, und als ich mir über die Stirn wis­che, sind da auch schon die ersten Schweißperlen. Oh Mann! An meinen Magen darf ich gar nicht denken. In was für eine Sit­u­a­tion habe ich mich da nur gebracht?

Dabei – führe ich mir vor Augen – habe ich doch jetzt endlich die Chance, viele Men­schen zu erre­ichen. Aber was soll meine Botschaft sein? Wie kann ich etwas bewirken, nicht nur in der Presse und der Blo­gosphäre, son­dern ganz hand­fest in der Welt?

Meine schweißfeuchten Fin­ger umk­lam­mern den Zettel in der Frack­tasche mit den Noti­zen für meine Dankesrede. Dies ist die eine von zwei Ver­sio­nen, die offizielle, die ich mit den Ver­anstal­tern absprechen musste. Die andere, inof­fizielle, geheime, existiert nur in meinem Kopf: eine Kamp­fansage ans Estab­lish­ment, ein flam­mender Aufruf gegen die all­ge­gen­wär­tige Prof­it­gier und die gedanken- und gnaden­lose Plün­derung unserer Ressourcen – der lit­er­arischen und mythol­o­gis­chen, die unseren Kindern eine leere und lebens­feindliche Welt aus lauter Worthülsen hin­ter­lassen wird.

Vom Saal her dringt gedämpft Applaus zu mir. Gleich ist es soweit. Ich zerknülle den Zettel in meiner Frack­tasche und inner­lich den mit den Noti­zen für meine Rev­o­lu­tion­srede. Ich werde da raus­ge­hen, den Kor­ri­dor ver­lassen und die Bühne betreten, um dann ein­fach das zu sagen, was mir ein­fällt – indem ich mit dem Satz anfange, den ver­mut­lich alle von mir erwarten, ob sie’s wis­sen oder nicht, und dann impro­visiere, wie ich es immer tue, immer schon getan habe.