11th Christmas Market with Mimamai

Cold, cold, cold. As helper of Christmas Market Mima the November reality makes me shiver. My body is longing to sit in a warm room in front of screen. A wonderful job, isn’t it? It is!

In our group everybody advertises his/her ego. The bigger the misery the louder sounds the SHOUTING. It reminds me on Muhammad Ali: 'I'm the greatest champion of the world today!'

For Eleven years long all my left energy supports Mimamai in her Christmas Market. On a grey rainy Friday we arrive in Bamberg. We don't get the key for her holyday apartment. This location is only 10 minutes walk from her 10 hours working place. She sells her Christmas Candles and children's toy in her four meters Christmas hut.

Her VW Transporter, our summer house 'Sea Cow' surprises us we strange sounds from the engine. Next Friday I have to bring the car to repair this fault.

Every hour we call up the owner of the apartment for the keys. The keys we finally get at 5.00 p.m., when the foggy rainy daylight changes into darkness.

Cold, cold, cold.

The keys we finally get at 5.00 p.m.,

We drive to one of Mima's many friends - working with her for years. 'Fritz' is a carpenter, who realizes Mima's new idea to present her candles in a tower of light. Fritz has produced a wonderful artwork. In his home burns wood in an oven and warms up my body. First time on the day!

But we had to wait one hour there in the dark little village. I leave Mima and escape in a pub. Strange people around a table sip their beer like me. Strange talks what and how these hard working people eat: 'When I'm hungry, I don't boil my sausages.. I swallow the flesh raw and cold, why should I prepare my meal?'

A cold feeling in this pub gives me the creeps. It's a feeling like being together with wild animals. I'm one of them.

Nandana sends one SMS after another, but it was never possible to reach her in a call directly. I talk on her answering machine: 'These SMS are exhausting!' But in the middle of the night my cell phone alarms me twice again with her SMS.

My body is tired from sexual exercises the last decades. Nandana feels like the last partner to play these games. In high summer time she spoke on our answering machine inviting me for her pleasure. 'Four nights in heaven' followed. After each night I asked her: 'Any complains? Now or never!'

'No, no, no complains', she squirmed softly. All day we dance in the sunny mountains like preparation for lust in the night.

Mima's new idea to present her candles in a tower of light

Mimamai did her summer job on the week end, Mimamai was happy to have me back in her arms. Happy I am to live with her. Happy we help us together. It's a hard job as market wife in a market hut. It's hard in the summer. For a desktop worker like me it is incredible hard in the winter.

So I help my woman like she cares for me. It's a continuous give and take - and the joyful days with Nandana was a part of Mima's give for me. Around Thanksgiving Day Nandana's complains get louder and louder. It's part of this giving game, a man has to take, isn't it? It is!

Words and letters, behaviour and possessions - all and everything are somehow polluted with an egoistic self advertising. This is like mechanical robotic armour around me and everyone.

The mystical light shines through this armour, when the solid shelter cracks somewhere and somehow. Getting older and colder my armour is cracking more and more. A silent smile decorates my lips in a glimpse of direct connection to the mystery behind the mechanical robot.

Getting older and colder my armour is cracking

The mystery reveals a deep lost helplessness behind mechanical masks. Mechanical masks present a winning attitude like my joy to gather with people in our group and share letters without conditions.

When expectations for self advertising fail,, follow frustraions. Frustrated people don't advertise themselves any longer and leave in disgust or go into silence.

This leaving or silence even shouts louder: 'I have found a better way to heaven and to success!’

Mystery provides an opposite teaching: the success for heaven is a failure on earth.

Like a grumpy doter left alone my lips smile watching the scene of SHOUTINGS and silence. Tons of acidic mockery around my ego glitter in chains of words: 'Nobody can't cheat me anymore, because I have cheated myself all life long!'

Thanks, no teacher needed, life was my teaching. Life is teaching again and again.

view over the river from Mimama's apartment in Bamberg