The Illogic of Kassel

38

I once heard it said that real life is not what we lead but what we invent in our minds. If this were true, it was somewhat agonizing that just a moment ago, I had locked up my imagination in the Dschingis Khan. Able to fly wherever I wanted, I’d stayed in a corner of that pitiful Chinese restaurant talking to the mustachioed Serra. Why such masochism? Was it that Serra’s vulgarity was the very same coarseness Catalonia had sunk into in recent decades, and, not getting out of there in so many years, I’d become accustomed to the stench? Did I not remember that (as Autre would say) in any situation, come what may, even if it was marvelous, the right thing to do was always to take off, to travel to other spheres? Did I just want to invent an insipid life for myself, with no horizon other than a mustache painted over the navel of the Catalan fatherland?