In the Valley of Missing Stories

Stories are more than entertainment, they keep us alive. What if they are missing?

The image, “Mountain ridge seen through wide valley” by Horia Varlan, was licensed by the CC BY 2.0.

This text was presented at the poetry slam in Hamm in January 2014. This is a recording in German, an English translation can be found below:

Words drift like swirling mist through the scene, whispering attributes and descriptions of what once was. Out of the thicket of pronouns and punctuation breaks a wild comparison, soon lost in the maze of subordinate clauses. Yet we push forward, pressing on into a wasteland — a desert of thought and senses. Our voice fails us, we see it before us like in the poems, we are in the valley of missing stories.

Incomparable moments reflect in smooth, polished stones, each one defying description. No words can say, carry, boast, or betray what is seen or was seen here. A richness of experience, and yet the words wither — and even the simple question of what was or what will be cannot be answered by the wanderer; it dries up on his tongue, and the nourishing water of narrative fails to flow.

For sustenance, we take stories from elsewhere and ration them out, sparsely used, sparingly shared. The tale of the restaurant where we ate too much until the laughter hurt must carry us through the next stretch, giving us just enough moisture to survive the drought of storylessness.

Deeper and deeper we tread through the valley, surrounded only by thorny memories and jagged flashes of recollection, until in the midst of all this sorrow we see a place — green with woods, full of rocks and cliffs, with water and animals. An oasis in the middle of the desert, toward which we stagger, fevered like the dying man who longs for medicine. With our last strength we reach the soothing words of the shimmering pond, whose wonders heal us.

Motionless and exhausted we lie at the bend of the shore until the full moon shines upon us and the starlight sparkles, and with it the final breath of words falls silent, preserving the calm of night and letting thoughts tumble through the tangles of sleep until morning.

At dawn we quench our thirst for human warmth from the spring that murmurs willingly and gives us laughter. We surrender to the moment as if it were eternal, as if the streams of glistening metaphors had breathed eternity into us. But we know we must leave, back through the wasteland, and we hope our story supplies are enough — that the last drop won’t evaporate before the bond between us dries out and dies of thirst. Carefully and cautiously we moisten it, always mindful not to waste too many words and to let every sound count.

But silence catches up with us, and so we journey on, trapped in our wordlessness, hoping that beyond all language it is the bond between people that moves us forward—and we hold on, anxious and hoping to feel the other. Until at the end of the valley we feel the other’s hand in our own. And our tongue gives the companion the name: “Friend.”