The Get Out Triplicity

von Marcus Krug

 

I

 

My earliest memory. In the beginning, there was silence. I had just been flushed out of my intrauterine panic room, and my still gummy eyes were trying to adjust to the rather intense light. Where I had been until only a couple of minutes ago, there was no light. And I had no intention to get out, at all. But now that strange person was holding me by my shrivelled-up feet. Upside down. I could tell, even with all the light and the state my eyes were in, that the woman wanted to raise me higher, but there was the cord. So, she cut the cord and lifted me up a little bit more. The loss of connection to my previous supply system and, of course, the slap on my behind made me scream at the top of my lungs. But I suppose that was the purpose of the whole thing all along, to see if my lungs were working properly.

II

 

“Please come out of there, my darling.” I say to my three-year-old daughter, still calm. She’s in there again. But she doesn’t want to listen.

“I’m as sweet as they are, daddy! You said so yourself!” she says, pouting now.

“Of course, you are! And you are even sweeter than they will ever be! That’s why you don’t need to go in there with them, my sweet little munchkin!” I try to reason with my little stubborn girl.

“See, you even call me by the same name!” she now screams in her high-pitched voice.

“No, I didn’t.” I defend myself, still trying very hard to remain a sensible and responsible parent, “And now, be a nice girl and come out of there!” She, however, pretends not to have heard any of this.

“Please, let’s finish this here real quick before mommy comes home. Because if you are in there, I can’t put them inside to bake them.” I say. But she instead goes into a huff, turns around and crawls deeper inside.

I’m on my last leg with my parenting skills, and I shout, “Get out!” As a last resort, I grab her by her little legs and try to pull. But she gets hold of something inside and her body is hanging in mid-air; inside her little hands cling to the rails for the baking tins while I hold onto her legs, outside. I, somehow, manage to peel her sticky little hands off the rails and pull her out.

Now the violently shaking bundle is sitting in an armchair, sobbing hysterically, just because I didn’t allow my sweet little munchkin to be in the oven with the sweet little muffins she helped to make.

III

 

To tell you the truth, you’re stuck. It’s nothing personal. It just happens to the best of people, sometimes. I mean, there can’t always be progress. Sometimes there is also regress. However, thinking of regress here is like only thinking in categories of black and white. Thinking only in a rather limiting duality. Good and evil. High and low. Up and down. And of course, progress and regress.

            You’re stuck. That means that there is neither progress nor regress. Or there rather shouldn’t be. Because otherwise you will force a tragedy to unfold around you, involving you. Just imagine watching a Shakespeare play in the theatre, you get an idea what tragedy means: Every possible solution is wrong. The dramatic hero doesn’t get to choose between good and evil, but whether to make this mistake or another one. In a catastrophe of this magnitude, every choice is wrong.

            What does that mean for you? It means that you must lie low for a bit, until the tide has turned. When your actions are unsatisfactory, gather information; when information is insufficient, sleep. That’s how you’ll get out.