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Vanishing Carpet Hangers
Carpet beaters disappeared from rear yards when fitted carpets and vacuum cleaners were introduced – during the period that Persian carpets had been damaged in the war, during an era when funds were low to acquire fresh carpets, and when the men who used to haul rolled-up carpets to the street for beating had been killed in the war.

The local business where I used to take my pantyhose to get them repaired when they had a run – a place called “Snag Repair” – closed down once the border opened and Western companies started marketing cheap tights in the east.

The spout guards that decorated the spouts of big percolators that once stood on family tables at German family reunions – those drip catchers disappeared once the offspring raised in the postwar period pushed back against their forebears and ceased organizing family reunions, choosing instead to travel to Italy and bring back espresso machines from there.

Objects vanish once they lose their sustenance, as though they possess an appetite demanding to be met.

Items fade away when they are deprived their reason for being, like they, too, have a hunger demanding to be met. And although the cause for their vanishing is very remote from the objects in question – as distant, for instance, as the wrongdoings of the Nazi military are from the nation’s brew, typically under-brewed, served in specialized containers it often leaked until it was held in check by the spout guard, a little roll of sponge on an elastic band featuring a doll perched atop the lid of the pot, a small object that guarded table coverings in Germany from brew marks through the early seventies – even then, regardless of the distance the item might be from the tradition, the new technology, or the revolution that results in its demise, that loss creates a bond that could not be tighter. For example, the artist from Berlin Heinrich Zille once said that it was possible to murder someone via housing just as easily as with an axe.

So the tiny roll of foam rubber and its elastic bridle are thrown away, implying that currently Germans are prosperous enough to holiday in Italy once more and to carry home Italian brewers in their luggage upon coming back. In the same way that all items, however basic, embodies all the knowledge of its era, just as everything you can’t touch can be found in a ball of repair thread, for example: likewise, whenever a thing disappears from everyday life, far more is lost than the object alone – the thought process that accompanies it has disappeared, and the way of feeling, the sense of what fits and what’s not, what is within your means and what’s beyond your means. We lack mending yarn any more! Honestly, why? Individuals ought not to mend their hosiery, they should buy new ones!

Own Disappearances

Whenever I go on a journey, I forget no fewer than one neckwear or headwear, sometimes including some shades or a watch. I’ve furthermore forgotten various objects when moving house: some trim from an old rustic wardrobe, a few blinds, and on one occasion I additionally forgot the writer’s tool I relied on for my first works. Although the accommodations I left were modest, and the apartments I moved out of were undoubtedly bare, the things were still missing afterward; somehow, in some place, they had faded in the undefined space between departure and arrival, it was so common that I started anticipating it while preparing my luggage or my crates, like it was a forfeit, a price I had to pay for the alteration in my situation, and from that perspective, regardless of the chaos, it was still appropriate. Yet, in the course of my regular existence, the quantity of items surrounding me failed to reduce, but in fact multiplied, the piles grew higher, the files more substantial, I might picture that a fire would break out and I would stow my notebooks, missives, and memory albums beneath my arm and escape of the residence, but luckily there was no blaze.

An Outsider’s View

A short while back, a Russian woman came to visit me. She moved to Germany one year back accompanied by four kids. How nice to have a piano! she remarks as she steps inside my flat. Books, how lovely! A few steps further on, she gestures toward a few of my son’s drawings affixed to the surface and says: Lovely! She continues: How nice to possess such things. At first, I am confused by her intention; considering she has four children herself. Oh, she answers and beams, you can’t take it all with you. Sure, sure, I respond. Then, she continues, with a smile, we made a big bonfire, everyone gathered around, after that we handled sheet by sheet in our hands, we reviewed each item and recalled the creator of each, how old he or she was, we appreciated it collectively for a final moment, and then we set it all aflame. It was a lovely bonfire, we were chanting. I don’t say anything now. It’s impossible to carry everything, she echoes and remarks cheerfully: We exited with four offspring and two sizable cases. That constituted everything.

Daily Demands

“How often in grey hours, O magnificent art, / When daily living captures me in {its circle wild|