The Thing Place

My God, what’s going on now? Women can ask nasty questions. What’s wrong? I’m braking! I notice that! But why? Why here so suddenly and so unmotivated? What does unmotivated mean? Why can’t women understand this? Oh, what do women mean here? Nobody can understand this, nobody or only a few.

There was an inconspicuous pile lying on the edge of the road next to the tree guard: earth, sand, asphalt residues and stones, paving stones. Some road construction worker had had to dig a hole in the road for some unknown reason. And then he had to go through the asphalt and through the layer of pavement that had been hidden underneath and had been dormant for years. On such occasions, asphalt quickly resurfaces the hole. Nobody wants to lay the stones again, and therefore nobody has any use for them anymore, nobody except me. And that’s why my somewhat unmotivated and, I admit, a little too abrupt braking.

Do you see the stones there!! I have to have these! Wait! But not with the new suit! Always these objections! All right! Then I’ll set off again straight away.

I just couldn’t leave her there. It was impossible for me.

I was excited to get home, jumped into my old clothes and sped off again. It’s unthinkable if they have now been taken away and sent to the rubbish tip…

They were not.

So once again thirty paving stones were added to my storage pile, to my precious treasure mountain.
What can’t you make from such stones? Paths, edges, slopes, benches, pillars and walls and a place for things. At the moment I was collecting and saving for a thing place, for my thing place.

What is that? Don’t you know that? A thing place is a very special place. This is a place where our Germanic forefathers did all sorts of important and celebratory things. Most of the time there was also a small or larger fire. For me the fire is crucial.

Where else are you supposed to burn your bushes, your fruit tree cuttings, your cardboard boxes and all the splintered boxes and rotting chimney logs? I need a place for things, a place for my Easter fire and all the little fires throughout the year. A place in the middle of the lawn, a fireproof concrete slab, a quarter of a meter thick and lined with the most wonderful stones in imaginative circular patterns from all the large, medium, small and smallest paving stones collected, large enough to hold a powerful fire and economical enough not to Too much lawn to swallow up, just a garden area.

Just building it, laying the stones and grouting it is a pleasure. Work too. Secure! But more than that, joy, fun, pleasure, enjoyment! And then, four weeks later, when everything is hard and dry, bone-hard and the concrete has dried pale and the stones lie neatly in their circular patterns and shimmering in their various structures, yes, that’s something!

What’s the point in the drudgery of cutting trees in January? I don’t care much about thinning out the conifers that have gotten too big. Why do I care about the dragging, the sawing and all?

Once the mountain is layered, often in the February snow, when the supplies are piling up, and everything is a little dry and the sky is clear, then nothing can hold me anymore. There is still so much lying around in the garden.

February and Easter, the mountain is set on fire. Yes, and when the red gold of the flames flows together and the snow around Thingplatz begins to melt, then I sit there in the early, hazy February twilight and watch the bizarre play of the smoldering logs and logs, perched on my old chopping block. There is a slightly fire-tempered beer next to me. My face is comfortably warm from the nearby embers and my back is warm from the thick jacket.

A few early stars dare to compete with the smoldering coal, the Lufthansa evening jumbo glides heavy and sedately, almost whispering and with glittering rows of windows, towards the nearby home airport. A tiny, shiny, hurried Sputnik makes its way silently and in the rhododendrons a blackbird complains and complains. Then everything is perfect and I dream away until my wife calls me to dinner:

Boy, life is wonderful!