The wunderkammer of present times, the treasury of the Internet, the cornucopia for all people - in short: Youtube, has become one of my favorite sources of knowledge and entertainment. Sometimes I have the feeling that I would be able to find anything my heart desires if I can only choose the right words for searching.
Like tonight where I spend a considerable amount of time looking for stuff from Aarhus, my home town, in the sixties.
Then I stumbled over these two short videos from the time where there were trams moving noisily up and down the streets.
Man, these pictures really brought me back. I could hear the whining and squeaking from the wheels and the sound from the bell - all from my memory.
The trams in Aarhus ended their days in 1971 when I was eleven, and today we're building new ones which are not in use yet. New and faster ones with low noise and smarter ways and looks.
I love the old ones, though. Because they are part of the past and because they symbolize an era.
Watch the videos, if you so wish - you can enjoy the trams, the old car models, the not so heavy traffic, the fashion of the sixties' clothes and the general view on a city that looks much like today, yet totally different.
I was attracted to this image of the city, mirrored in a glass building with opened windows mirroring another part of reality. Like there are holes to be penetrated in the imaged reality - and another (real) reality lying within?
For reasons known to nobody, I have nights when my body won't rest. I am not anxious. I am not upset. I am not in pain.
And I am not tired.
Screw it! I am not going to waste my time being irritated over not being sleepy when everyone else - normal and sensible people - are fast asleep. If I'm not tired and the rest of the world is sleeping - that's their problem.
Out of bed. Coffee. Downtown.
Behold my new hobby - walking and photographing in the night. And being downtown I soon realize that everybody else ain't sleeping. There are people like myself walking purposelessly around in the night.
Don't they have a job? Or maybe they are night walkers just like me? I am not alone!
I walked for a couple of hours and understood that I have become a member of a brotherhood. The brotherhood of nightwalkers. Meeting a brother in a quiet street demands a nod. We're so relatively few that we start behaving like people in a village - we nod to each other whenever we meet. We have something in common. We're the outcasts. The people nobody but ourselves know about. We keep away from the traffic and the lights - we go our own ways down almost empty streets and alleys. We don't make a fuss about ourselves - we just nod at each other whenever we meet.
I know it will take a while before I shall join the club again. But I am actually looking forward to it. Insomnia isn't that much of a burden - it's more like an invitation. An invitation to meet the silent crowd in the night.
One more thing from Aarhus, my hometown. There's more to it than just golf courses in harbors, you know.
The annual John Cleese Festival has just been held. Of course the Championship of Silly Walks was inevitable. Something tells me that there are people in my town who've got more than enough time on their hands. These are actually adults - and the only women are spectators.
I wonder why?
I honestly think that these folks should get a haircut and find themselves a steady job. Things are taking a wrong turn in society. Grown up men really should think about earning money and wear a suit and a tie instead of this nonsense. And the women are doing nothing but encouraging them.
Shame on us. Waste of time. I must have been together with the wrong crowd. I actually laughed.
I need to better myself. I've just applied for membership in silly-lovers anonymous.
Me: "Hi, my name is Allan - and I am a silly-lover."
I am a middle aged man. I am 48 years old - and as far as I remember, some of the 48 years have been extremely long.
Sometimes, in the middle of the every day humdrum, it feels just like I have seen everything. The same oatmeal, the same bicycle commute, the same traffic jams, the same kind of job, the same fricking newspaper with a new sensation every day just the same as yesterday's sensation. The same standing in a line in the supermarket, the same damned rain when you get out of the supermarket, the same wife and the same dinner, the same phone calls and talking to the same people, the same TV-news, the same weblog, a brand new film but with the same old actors, the same walk along the same four streets before bedtime and the same, strange dreams at night.
But then again - sometimes, just sometimes, new things happen.
Today somebody had lost his golf course in the harbor of Aarhus.
My jaw dropped to the ground. This was a new variation, and it took me all the time to I got home before I found out what I had seen.
It's a competition. For 5€ you can buy three golf balls and try to make a hole in one from a tee placed on the nearby pier.
If you can make a hole in one - and I know that's not easy - you've just won a brand new car. If there's a meaning behind all this, the car in question ought to be a VW Golf, right?
Overlooking the good, old harbor I know so well and seeing this sight was just like finding myself placed in a surrealistic painting. On a damned, ordinary Thursday, too.
