So we've been conned out of 320 Euros. We were beind kind and naive and much too trusting in the general goodness of humanity. While I still believe humans tend to goodness when they are not put under pressure, I have to face the fact that humanity is indeed under pressure.

It felt like abuse. Physically dirty and sticky, and the whole world cast in a darker light. I look at a large oil painting of mine and can't help but feel how flimsy a fortification this is, just a bit of colour and love spread over a thin sheet of cloth, and holding it up against a world that seems to be out to get especially those who want to do good, well, feels ridiculous.
I don't care so much about the money. If it had just been stolen, well, shit happens. But it was cajoled out of us, we were being set before the decision to be kind and trusting or not - and that makes it so, so abusive.

A circle of thoughts starts, such an old, old enemy: To be safer, you need more money. To get more money, you have to stop caring. Noone who grows rich can do so while staying a moral person. And even if you get a lot of money - to keep it, you have to let go of any ethical principle. So you're either safe or good.
And I fight these thoughts, but they're very sticky indeed.

I walk up the long, long escalator at Bahnhof Mülheim, to catch my train, and look up. The sun is out again, and the huge chestnut tree fully green, starting to bloom. A little bit of elation crawls through the fog. I rest my eyes on 1900 architecture and the house says:
"Gut Ding will Weile / Durch das Schöne / Stets das Gute" (something like "Good things need time / Through Beauty / always Goodness")
And for a second, I'm happy: Oh, hi Cologne, are you talking to me again?

But then I remember that Hitler was an art historian, who wanted to make the principals of aesthetics as he understood them permeate every aspect of life. No, beauty is relative, and the differing ideals of it, and the religious believe in their all-encompassing importance brought wars upon humanity. It doesn't always bring goodness.

I catch the train - at least it's relieably late, most of the time, and go to work again. It's just adhesives, for chrissakes, but it's also money, and a whole lot of it. I'm managing accounts that by now scratch 50.000 Euros, which weigh heavily on poor interns' shoulders in the large company who ordered the webpages. And I love the Flow of it - not the money, but the work itself. The neccessary attention to detail, how I have to switch perspectives all the time.
How my boss tells me, the last ten days were the first holiday ever where noone from work called her - because I was there.
How some brand manager decides to let us do more for them, because we seem to be able to handle their chaos.
It's simple success, and it is a hard drug.

I'm writing our offers, throwing around these large numbers, and they feel so thin. And I start to try out the weight of money. The 320 we lost were not thin to us. But the 32.000 for this or that number of language versions of a webpage... are.
The heaviest money I ever had were the 1.000 the London poetess handed me in a show of trust so that I would help her with a huge, huge problem - at a later date.
The thinnest were the 1.200  I earned every month working at a bank.

On the next day, I hand one of my very last Euros to the guitar guy at Bahnhof Deutz, who plays and sings every morning, while hundreds, thousands of people walk by. This being Cologne, many stop for a quick chat. He was gone a few days, apparently with a cold, and peopel rush by, calling out: Oh hey, welcome back!
It's a heavy Euro.

Life is shockingly banal, and I always believed knowledge and beauty shall save our souls. But although I know so much by now, surrounded myself with beauty and even manage to create some from time to time... I watch documentaries of Monty Python or short snippets of the Glee team, and somehow, ever their lifes felt banal from time to time. What saves us is not the art we make, but the connection that art forges between people.
What good would "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" have been if it hadn't made people laugh.

I don't want to write a book some literature historian in times to come recognizes as beautiful. I want to give as many people as possible some kind of catharsic moment. And if I can do that better through fanfiction than high literature, so be it.
The best fortification against the dark side of humanity is the good side of it.

I managed to visit only a very few people in the last two months, but even an hour here, an hour there was so very good.
I come home and our wall says: