It’s easy, I thought, the people in the circus can do it too. The handstand thing went reasonably well, but then the waving thing was over. Then I really collapsed on the floor. I won’t tell you what happened, but my right hand is now covered in a white cast. That means he was white. My doll friends have now painted a lot of drawings and sayings on the plaster hand so that it is very colorful and they also find it funny.
Gap between desire and reality
But I’m not really enthusiastic about it and put on my grimmest face. But our grandma doesn’t like that at all. “Seppy, you brought this on yourself,” she says, “and be happy, because it can be cured, everything will be fine again in a few weeks. It would be different if you had mental pain, which cannot be healed so easily. Quite often, this pain comes when something doesn’t go as you had hoped. Soul pain is like a bridge between what is and what we desire. And no one can help you heal, you have to figure that out yourself. The only thing that would be healing is to talk about it with someone who is honest with you.”
So thank you for listening to me, I feel much better now. And I’d rather leave the handstand thing alone in the future.
Christa Koinig is the artistic director of the Linz Puppet Theater
