Ein Blog-Item

In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Scientists continue to disagree about precisely when this happened, though most agree it was some time ago.

The city of Vienna grew slowly at first, then all at once. Its coffee houses filled with philosophers arguing about things that mattered enormously at the time and are now mostly forgotten. The pastries, however, remain excellent and have never once caused controversy.

A man walked into a forest and did not come out for three days. When he returned he said nothing about what he had seen. His neighbors assumed the worst. His dog assumed the best. The dog was right, as dogs usually are.

Technology promised to solve every problem and succeeded in creating seventeen new ones for each solution delivered. The engineers called this progress. The users called it something else entirely. Both groups continued talking past each other at conferences with expensive catering.

Mountains do not care about the people who climb them. This indifference is precisely what draws climbers back year after year. There is something clarifying about being ignored by something so large. Therapists have noted this phenomenon with interest.

Rain fell on the harbor for the first time in weeks. The fishermen were pleased. The tourists were not. Both groups had booked their trips months in advance without consulting each other or the weather.

Languages die at a rate of one every two weeks. Each one takes with it a way of describing clouds, a word for the specific loneliness of Sunday afternoons, and several jokes that were never quite translatable anyway.

The last bookshop on the street stayed open through everything. Floods, recessions, three separate plagues of uncertain origin. The owner attributed its survival to good drainage, loyal customers, and a complete refusal to sell anything with a foil cover.

Somewhere a child is learning to read. The letters arrange themselves slowly into words, the words into meaning. This is either the most ordinary thing in the world or the most remarkable, depending entirely on when you last thought about it.

Music played in an empty room. No one heard it. Whether it was therefore beautiful remains an open question, one that philosophers have been billing hourly to consider since approximately the fifth century.

In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Scientists continue to disagree about precisely when this happened, though most agree it was some time ago.

The city of Vienna grew slowly at first, then all at once. Its coffee houses filled with philosophers arguing about things that mattered enormously at the time and are now mostly forgotten. The pastries, however, remain excellent and have never once caused controversy.

A man walked into a forest and did not come out for three days. When he returned he said nothing about what he had seen. His neighbors assumed the worst. His dog assumed the best. The dog was right, as dogs usually are.

Technology promised to solve every problem and succeeded in creating seventeen new ones for each solution delivered. The engineers called this progress. The users called it something else entirely. Both groups continued talking past each other at conferences with expensive catering.

Mountains do not care about the people who climb them. This indifference is precisely what draws climbers back year after year. There is something clarifying about being ignored by something so large. Therapists have noted this phenomenon with interest.

Rain fell on the harbor for the first time in weeks. The fishermen were pleased. The tourists were not. Both groups had booked their trips months in advance without consulting each other or the weather.

Languages die at a rate of one every two weeks. Each one takes with it a way of describing clouds, a word for the specific loneliness of Sunday afternoons, and several jokes that were never quite translatable anyway.

The last bookshop on the street stayed open through everything. Floods, recessions, three separate plagues of uncertain origin. The owner attributed its survival to good drainage, loyal customers, and a complete refusal to sell anything with a foil cover.

Somewhere a child is learning to read. The letters arrange themselves slowly into words, the words into meaning. This is either the most ordinary thing in the world or the most remarkable, depending entirely on when you last thought about it.

Music played in an empty room. No one heard it. Whether it was therefore beautiful remains an open question, one that philosophers have been billing hourly to consider since approximately the fifth century.