Sunday 17th May 2015, 2:30pm
Getaway #3: Roland Roos
Roland Roos chose this Sunday’s getaway destination. *)
– Roland is very good with building things. He’s also very good with organizing materials for little or no money at all. These days, Roland is busy renovating the house where he grew up, located in Hitzkirch. He can go on for hours about the challenge of choosing the right tiles for the bathroom, referring to examples he’s seen and found particular. Their colour. The pattern they form. One time Roland told me: “You know, when I’m invited to do something, the last thing I would ever do is use a space for an exhibition.” This got me thinking. Maybe this is as true for me as it is for him, but I never realized the edge of it. –
[Report]
Looking for sense, making smoke
It’s not so easy to find your way straight up. Straight to the top. There are houses and trees and you never see the top clearly. One always imagines a mountain top looking like the Matterhorn on a postcard, but the closer you get, the less it looks like that. There’s no pointy spike.
Anyhow.
It took a while to make our way up to something like the top of Züriberg. It was more like a side slope, but we had a good view on the Käferberg. When we got there a busy running aroung started: Collecting sticks and branches, vanishing into the Unterholz, running down the footpath and returning with arms full of tall green grass.
The purpose of it all: Making smoke signs. While we were on Züriberg, the second half of the group did the same on Käferberg, opposed to us, almost mirroring our actions. Both groups had gotten the same equipment, consisting of a blanket, a box of matches and a handwritten note with morse codes. – — – -– –– – –– – –– — would rise from one mountain top, –– — — –– ––- – -– –– — –– from the other. We would do “Outside”, the others would do “Sundays”. Signs made to vanish. In theory they would be visible from the whole city. Roland likes things that consume themselves, like a snake eating at its tail. Short circuiting concepts and actions. Undoing by doing.
If it had worked out the way theory proposed it there would be two pictures by now: two smoky clouds floating over two mountain tops. Some of us worked really hard to produce a lot of smoke. The rest kept their eyes covered with a hand, searching for any sign of smoke on the other side. And suddenly there it was. A huge smoke cloud, rising and expanding like a mushroom. Gigantic. At this point we had already put out the fire. We made our way back down highly impressed by the skills to produce this gigantic monosign.
Re-united as one smoky group on Röschibachplatz it turned out it had not been their smoke.
One long smoke sign stands for “T”, according to a boyscouts’ website. They suggest to use the words “Tod” to remember this. It looks like this: –––
*) Mirjam Bayerdörfer invited Roland Roos for this third Outside Sunday.