The Beggar's Diary, 09.09.2007.- Filch is late, terribly late, and everywhere in town there are people running. The people are running towards an imaginary goal: 42 km (the marathon). Filch had forgotten it, but, of course, today is Muenster Marathon. He sees a runner with the number 6347 on her chest! So there are at least 6.347 people running at this very moment!
He cannot cross the streets, which means he cannot take his usual path. There are steel fences everywhere directing his hurried pace, and his only consolation is to think that cars are not allowed at all in the inner city, those public space killers (the cars, he means).
The irony is that, precisely in the overly managed public space of Muenster, one really starts to imagine just how public space would be without rules. Chaos? Filch does not think so, and that's the irony! With no rules imposed from above, a new, wonderful and organic order would develop by itself. A little utopia where there is no more right or wrong, but just a lot of attention paid to one another.
Filch's utopia.
That's why he's late. Because walking around the city today is like walking in a labyrinth, and because he muses so much. And then, amidst all the fuss at the Prinzipalmarkt—the marathon’s finish line—he sees Gustav Metzger’s Shattered Stones. (Perhaps this is the right place for Filch to admit something: when he heard Gustav Metzger talking about his work and saw the bright eyes of the 81-year-old artist, Filch fell in love with the work.) And so, although they lie in silence, unnoticed by the hundreds of cheering supporters, for Filch they are the most real thing here and now. Why? Filch couldn't tell. The first woman crosses the finishing line and the crowd goes wild.
All the sculptures on the marathon’s path look lost: the center of the "Zone," "Unsettling the Fragments," "Blume für Muenster," "Shattered Stones," "my-fi," "The Beggar's Opera," are all pushed aside by another use of public space which is now making a hell of a noise. Filch longs for the silence of the Spiekerhof. Once he manages to get there, he meets some visitors. A family whose son is finishing his Islamic and Arabic studies here in Muenster; two young girls, one of whom speaks with a Scottish accent even though she’s not Scottish, but her boyfriend is she admits in the end; and a young man called Stan Pete who makes funny sculptures. Stan gives him a parking ticket that still needs to be paid. "“Well, what a nerve.”" says Filch. Then, all of a sudden, a woman addresses him thus:
"Are you Charles Filch? Do you still have the wool to knit?"
"No, I'm sorry, I took it out of my bag when I met the Bundespräsident."
He thought it wasn't a good idea to approach a President and his team of security agents with two knitting needles. She says she has something for him: a letter and 4 candy bars ("Dreemy" - is that the name of the candybar, Filch?). He'll understand when he reads the letter. And she leaves as hurriedly as she appeared, saying:
"Remember, September 30 is the day James Dean died."
What? Is this a hint to a new scenario for his end? To drive a Porsche 550 Spyder into a real head-on car crash? And is he supposed to drive that car?
Filch reads the letter:
"Riddle:
You are one person, but I know somebody
who was like you, but doesn't look like you,
and I am his mother.
You are the same but not my son
and not his brother.
And there is a third person,
who is like you and like my son
but I don't know him.
Good luck to you both
until 30.09.2007."
He leaves to have a coffee at the Gasolin, where he meets the family he saw at the Spiekerhof and they buy him a coffee.
The son explains the subject of his Ph.D. on Islamic Studies: he is researching a Tunisian man who lives in London and who’s developing an approach to make democracy viable in Islamic countries while accounting for the position of non-Islamic minorities. Filch is fascinated: how to treat a minority which must live within a community which holds, in many cases, opposing values and principles? How to treat a man who is somehow thrown into a community whose values and principles are alien to him?
On his way to meet the art collector, he once again visits Rosemarie Trockel’s work, just to freshen up his memory and prepare the conversation. The 'plant' can last up to a thousand years: it needs some trimming from time to time, but it is almost as eternal as art is supposed to be. He explains this to a man who standing next to him, and who retorts: "I know. I bought it!"
Oh Filch, you made a fool of yourself.
He introduces himself as Herr Andreae-Jäckering, and he's about to go home on a bus, along with some 20 American art tourists … would Filch care to come along? Filch accepts gladly, patting the 20 Euro bill in his pocket.
He gets to meet all the Americans and the beautiful host, the daughter of the architect Joachim Schürman, author of the even more beautiful house. Filch chats with Lynn, who’s American and who teaches literature, and he tells her the story of his short life, about how he was born, so to speak, on June 16.
"Bloomsday!" she cries out.
The events narrated in the novel "Ulysses" all take place on the same day in 1904 in Dublin. The day is a secular holiday in Ireland. The name comes from the novel’s protagonist, Leopold Bloom, and June 16 was the date of Joyce's first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle.
Lynn tells Filch that Odysseus’s journey home to Ithaca, to Penelope and Telemachus is the same as Leopold Bloom’s journey home to his wife, Molly. Bloom and Molly don’t have a son (Rudy, their son, has died). Stephen is the Telemachus character, but after a bit of cocoa he leaves Bloom alone, who goes up to the bedroom and finds Molly about to doze off to sleep …
Filch was born with Ulysses and will die with James Dean. What a glorious destiny. But when he is no longer there, will he be, finally, at home?
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