Dolphin Address 7
February 24th 2005
After extensive Google-ing on the Internet I finally found a firm that deals in molding shapes in smaller quantities. After some e-mail exchanges I decided to visit them and discuss the possibilities to create a state-of-the-art WaterWing in synthetic material.
There was a distance to be covered though: the firm is located in Munich . Now I initially thought this was about a thousand kilometers from Berlin , but on closer inspection this turned out to be only 600. That gave me a pleasant mental advantage of 800 kilometers. The weather forecast predicted snow, but I was going to be careful anyway.
After Leipzig the white-out comes alive and soon I see the snowy roadside seamlessly convert into a likewise colored sky, leaving trees and bushes hanging in the air. Occasional windmills loom in the verges and wield their strokes through the ghostly haze. Scores of snowdrift fool over the tarmac and get sucked up between car wheels only to spatter next on my windshield. Soon fat snowflakes are chasing each other in anticipation of the bus.
The occasional ‘Raser’ (very fast driver, there is no general speed limit on the Autobahn) whizzes by in a flurry of white powder. There is plenty of melt water on the street to keep the window wipers in continuous motion, leaving like dirty fingernails on the windshield. The haze is getting so dense that I see the taillight of my fore-runners before their contours, as if it were night. An all-white night. Presently everyone drives the snow to the rim. Looks like this means doing Germany at 30 km. an hour. Still there are idiots that drive unlit.
After a day of driving I see things moving that are actually standing still. As if the soul stays behind. I guess you could call it a feint and that this is the natural reaction to the less natural sensation of experiencing the world in speed mode. It feels like being in a boat, gently drifting through a visionary field and I try to understand it as a recent-event-screen that I project upon my perception. I have only a limited influence on the direction of movement and find myself most comfortable when yielding to the flow.
Particularly parked cars move without actually changing place, but even the photographs of Verena that I call up on my laptop seem to move their lips in trying to tell me something that only I can understand.
On one of the parking places that I stayed overnight I saw a car moving in the rear mirror. It really moved, I could tell this in relation to its background. Just when I was really getting exited about the power of this ‘trompe-l’oeil’ the car drove away from behind me. I shook with laughter in the safe certitude that I’m not crazy by my own standards.
Munich was something else. Pending negotiations it does not seem courteous to reveal any of the content and once decisions have been made only the outcome is of interest. I left Munich at dusk in a cheerful mood and felt like sharing this with a fellow human being.
Jan Ploeg, Munich after 600 km., February 24 th 2005
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