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I catch myself staring, with a certain morbid fascination, at stories made or altered by AI. They pop up everywhere — Facebook, Instagram, YouTube — multiplying like mushrooms after rain.
An alpha male runs into his ex by chance. At the airport. In a luxury hotel. At a charity gala. Or at his own company, where she's just started work — mopping floors, according to him. The settings rotate like the actors' hair color. He announces, full of himself: "You can work as our maid." His current mistress leans in with a smile that can't hide her satisfaction, rips a diamond necklace off the ex's neck, and declares that she's got some nerve wearing a fake copy of what our super alpha gave his wife just last month. As a final touch, she slaps her hard across the face.
Something in me rebels — why doesn't anyone say anything? Why doesn't anyone stand up for her? Nobody asks what actually happened. Everyone instantly believes she's a criminal, a gold digger, a fraud. The humiliated heroine bears it patiently, maybe holding her bruised cheek. More slaps follow, kicks to the stomach, public humiliation — sometimes they even cut her, and blood pools on the ground in red puddles. A crowd gathers, adding comments like "what's trash like her doing here." From somewhere a little boy comes running, arms raised toward the woman lying helpless in a pool of blood, crying "Mommy, Mommy!" The mistress scoops the child into her arms and whispers with psychotic calm: "That's not your mommy. I'll find you the real one."
And then comes the big reveal: the woman on the ground is actually the wife of an even richer, even more powerful mafia boss — the most powerful of them all — who makes her tormentors pay. The über-alpha-mafioso doesn't even blink as he shoots one of them through the hand and kills the trillion-dollar deal they'd just been about to close. And lo and behold, he pulls his humiliated wife into his arms and stands up for her. Finally. A wave of righteous relief shoots through me, out of nowhere. My blood pressure drops.
The end. Credits. Subscribe.
Short clips sliced out of the context of a series you can subscribe to. I stare at it with a mix of outrage, amusement, and disgust. The heroines are some hybrid of Barbie, Marilyn Monroe, a forest fairy, and a younger Kim Kardashian.
At first I laugh at it. Then I realize I'm watching it almost every day.
I've been pulled into a world that missed the MeToo movement entirely, where suffragettes are turning in their graves, a world faintly echoing the caste system out of Huxley's Brave New World. Men with sharp features, perfect jawlines, and glowing eyes — the so-called alphas. Women with flawless skin and movie-star beauty. They're almost indistinguishable from real actors. Almost. Except that, with minor variations, they look exactly the same in every single story. Indistinguishable. And I think to myself: this can't be real, this is like going back from a vape to actual cigarettes.
And it doesn't stop at mafia bosses. The mafia boss turns into a werewolf. The werewolf into a dragon prince. The dragon prince into a billionaire. And, incidentally, the whole thing is crawling with gorgeous pregnant women who don't give birth to babies but lay dragon eggs. Ah, demoted to chicken status, I think to myself.
Same face. Same expression. Same plot. And yet millions of people watch it. In the comments I read their eager "next," "where can I watch the full story?"
Not because they're looking for great art. But because these stories work like potato chips. You know they're all basically the same, and yet you click the next one. And the next. And the next.
And then it hits me — AI didn't come up with this. Some human bastard did, one who knows exactly what works. AI just knows how to churn it out faster than you can say "diamond necklace."

Sometimes a solution is something that simply pushes problems aside, like a snowplow pushing snow.
For a while, I worked at a fertility clinic in Prague. As a coordinator for German patients.
My friend Dara had gotten me the job. She worked in the advertising department of a newspaper and had negotiated a few free ads for the clinic in exchange for one last IVF attempt. I was supposed to be the cherry on top: a cost-effective native speaker who would competently look after German patients.
The only problem was that I had no idea about artificial insemination.
The German department was run by Nurse Lenka Drachensteinová. She was, as her name suggested, a dragon. Tall, broad, white overalls. Short blonde hair, spiky as a hedgehog.
I found myself in a gynecologist's consultation room, also in white overalls. I interpreted what the doctor read out with a smile:
"Well, Mrs. Gerlach, IVF won't be necessary. You're pregnant."
The couple sat before us with bowed heads. Third clinic, fifth attempt, barely any viable eggs left. I had to repeat the sentence twice before I coaxed a tired smile from Mrs. Gerlach, forty-three. Then they were happy after all. Mr. Gerlach reached for his wife's hand. Quietly, deeply, vulnerably.
"Well, you didn't give me much work to do," said the doctor.
Under Drachensteinová's dragon eyes, I compiled information materials: hotels, restaurants, treatment options. I absorbed medical terminology like a sponge. But I had no training, and Drachensteinová rubbed that in my face at every opportunity.
Then things went quiet. The materials were done. But no German patients were coming.
One morning I was scrolling through the internet and landed on a German forum for couples trying to conceive. I don't know what devil possessed me.
Suddenly I was a mother. A wife. Successfully fertilized at our clinic. Thoroughly satisfied with the German patient care. One healthy child, a second on the way. I clicked "Publish."
I had found the solution.
The first German patients began to get in touch. Slowly at first, then more and more. And along with them grew my guilty conscience. The best I could come up with was to confess to Drachensteinová.
At the next meeting, she reported me immediately: "She's been posing as a patient."
Relief washed over me. I was ready to leave.
The director said without hesitation: "I did that once too. Otherwise we wouldn't have any German patients at all."
Drachensteinová nearly fainted. These are the moments when lifelong enmities are born.
"They're all completely mad," she said drily one day.
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said. Tomorrow you're taking patients on a tour of the clinic." She pointed to a large cabinet with a viewing window. "That's where inferior sperm samples are disposed of. You could help yourself, you know. You'll be forty soon."
Moments later a student nurse stormed the reception desk: "She's insane! This is a sterile environment, she can't bring her dog in here!"
And there she came — first the grey poodle, clumsy and curious, and right behind him Kate, my former agent. Before my time as a fertilization broker, I'd supplemented my income as an actress. Kate had kept me waiting for hours outside casting studios, considered stunts "manageable," and kept the lion's share of my fees.
Now she was here for egg retrieval. With a poodle. She pretended not to know me — except the dog, who landed resolutely in my lap.
"Isn't that something, Maxi," I said. "What a coincidence."
Later I fetched a fifth coffee for a young couple from Germany. The young man nervously knocked it back in one go, his girlfriend cried the whole time and wanted him to hold her hand. Since he was occupied, I held it instead.
At the end of the day I interpreted for an elderly doctor. She promised a couple a successful fertilization. The man had no motile sperm. The woman had only one ovary, severely compromised, plus advanced endometriosis.
In the middle of a sentence I started laughing. Uncontrollably. First silently, then with tears. The words detached themselves from their meaning. The promises hung freely in the air.
The doctor stared at me. The couple stared at me. Drachensteinová, who had appeared in the doorway, stared at me.
I laughed about the inferior sperm sample. About Kate and her poodle. About my fake forum posts. About the hope we were selling like used cars.
"I'm sorry," I choked out. "I can't..."
But I couldn't stop.
During the later clinic tour I mixed up the nurses' room and the operating theatre. No one corrected me. Stuttering with embarrassment, I talked my way into disaster: "And here we have the container for inferior sperm samples..."
The couple went pale. The director smiled mildly. She sent me out the door with a month's salary.
Drachensteinová had won.
As I packed my things, she said: "It was obvious. You never had what it takes."
I nodded. She was probably right.
Outside it was snowing. The snow settled over the city like a solution that pushes problems aside. Temporarily. Until spring.
I went home and deleted my forum account.
Life, I thought, resolves itself. You just have to wait.

The car had parked a hundred meters away. Again.

Or had she wanted it to? That was the new question Evgenie Immertanz asked herself every morning, ever since someone had placed a titanium disc behind her left temple. Sometimes she no longer knew whether a thought was hers or whether it had simply – arrived. Like a cat that appears on the sofa and nobody saw it come in.

"That doesn't count as an answer", she told the car.

"Alright, no spaces free", it muttered, in a pleasantly deep male voice.

Evgenie got in. The steering wheel moved on its own. Somewhere in her head – or was it in the chip? – the familiar unease stirred. She had agreed to the study because of the fold-out balcony and the retractable ceiling. Money in exchange for thoughts, a fair trade, she'd told herself.

She hadn't considered that fair is a very elastic word.

* * *

The apartment greeted her with a sigh.

Not the apartment, of course. The door. But by now the difference was hard to say.

What disturbed Evgenie most in those first weeks wasn't the sighing door. Nor the flea-market chair that told her about its previous owner in a tone that was unmistakably reproachful. Not even the cutlery drawer and its feelings about a carpenter in Thuringia.

It was the mango.

The mango was lying on the kitchen table, looking like a mango. Evgenie held the knife to it. And then –

I don't want to be eaten.

Evgenie put the knife down.

She sat for a while. Then said: "You're a fruit. Fruits get eaten. That's evolution."

The mango was silent. But the silence had a quality she didn't care for.

What she didn't dare ask herself: was the revulsion hers? Or was she simply receiving it, the way a radio receives a signal, and mistaking it for her own?

She ate yoghurt standing up, her back to the mango. Then she called Professor Ringstein.

* * *

Dr. Mary Ringstein had the smile of a woman who already knows what you're going to say before you open your mouth, and finds this pleasant.

"The mango", she said, and wrote something down.

"And the door. And the chair. And the lift just now."

"Extraordinarily interesting", said Ringstein.

"I would like to eat a mango again."

"Of course." Ringstein slid a grey box across the desk. NutriCube Premium. Synthetic protein cubes, no organic frequencies, no consciousness, no objections. Plus a VR headset for the flavour. TasteWorld, ninety-four twenty a month, basic package.

Evgenie placed a cube on her tongue and selected: mango, Alphonso, tropical.

The virtual mango unfolded. Sweet-sour, complex, very good. Filling. With chewing reflexes and everything.

The grey cube between her teeth was soft and neutral as silence.

She took off the headset and looked at the real mango.

"I'll admit", she said, "that wasn't bad."

The mango's silence was satisfied.

Evgenie noted that she could now read the silence of a mango. She wasn't sure whether this counted as progress.

* * *

Three weeks later Ringstein told her the chip signal couldn't be dampened. Removing it would mean repaying eighteen months of study fees. The balcony was already installed.

"There is, however", said Ringstein, in a tone Evgenie now recognised with a faint shudder, "another possibility."

SkinNew. A nano-skin. Thirty years younger, fully reversible in theory.

"And the teeth don't match either", said Evgenie.

"For that I might have something."

"And if there are side effects?"

"Then that would be extraordinarily interesting."

Evgenie looked at the silver box. She thought she wanted to say no. But did she really want that – or was she merely receiving that thought too, like a faint signal from far away?

"Send me the contract", she said.

Ringstein smiled. The cat, thought Evgenie, is still smiling, even after everything else has disappeared.

* * *

On the fourteenth day she called Ringstein.

"This is not my face."

"It is your face. Thirty years earlier."

She looked like her own daughter. She didn't have a daughter.

The hair still didn't match – grey, unchanged. An aesthetic problem, said Ringstein. What a word, thought Evgenie. Aesthetic. As though it were a matter of taste, whose face one wears.

Next came the teeth. TeethYouth. A pill. Three months in between.

"And the existing dental material?"

Ringstein cleared her throat. The first time.

"It detaches", she said. "Gradually." Irreversibly.

Evgenie swallowed the pill on a Tuesday morning. She briefly wondered whether the decision had been hers, or whether Ringstein had thought it for her and she had simply picked it up, like everything else.

The first tooth came loose. Then another.

The protein cube was useful for the first time.

* * *

His name was Konstantin Berger. Fifty-nine, tall, an obviously expensive coat. He was standing ahead of her in the queue at the bakery and turned around because she'd caught his coat with her shopping bag.

He looked at her. Too long.

He found her grey hair strangely beautiful. He invited her for coffee. She said no. He asked why. She said she wasn't hungry. He laughed.

She liked that laugh.

Or was she receiving it?

She pushed the question aside and had coffee with him. He mentioned, in passing, that he'd never understood why men his age were drawn to women his age. Said it charmingly. He genuinely believed he had a very young woman on the hook. Evgenie sat there, sixty years old, and smiled back.

"How old are you?", he asked.

"Old enough", she said.

Whether that answer had been hers or the chip's – it was the right one.

* * *

The teeth grew back. For three months he wrote every day. Thinking of you. I don't understand why this matters so much to me.

Evgenie read his messages and felt warmth spreading through her chest.

Her chest. Presumably.

She replied briefly and rarely. Not because she wanted to – she wanted to write more – but because sixty years had taught her that men who got too much too quickly stopped looking. Though she wondered: was that experience, or was it a frequency she was picking up from whoever had owned the chair before her?

Once the doorbell rang. She didn't open it.

That was her decision. She was sure of it.

Mostly.

* * *

At the reunion he stood up too quickly. She had the new teeth, which Ringstein had described as clinically perfect.

"You look different."

"New teeth."

He laughed and took her hand. "I want you to always smile at me like that."

She didn't put the headset on. The espresso was bitter and real and she needed that, she needed something unambiguous, because her heart was hammering and she was blushing like a teenager.

"How old are you really?", he asked. Differently this time. Without the game.

Evgenie smiled at him. With the new teeth.

He decided it didn't matter.

"Fair enough", he said. "Then not."

In that moment she loved him. Or the chip loved him. Or she was receiving love from the walls of the café, from all the people who had ever sat here and looked at someone in exactly this way.

It felt the same. That was perhaps the most reassuring thing. And also the most unsettling.

* * *

He didn't like the chip.

"This woman is using you."

"Ringstein does research."

"Same thing."

He kissed her fingertips. The teeth, the skin, all fine. But the chip was affecting her perception. She didn't know what Ringstein was planning next.

"I'm afraid to eat fruit", said Evgenie. "Because it doesn't want to be eaten."

He shook his head slowly. "The thing has to go. Otherwise I'll never know if you love me or if you're just picking up a signal."

Evgenie was quiet.

That was exactly the question.

Exactly.

With Konstantin, everything else was simple. He liked her. He was in love. They made love and she liked that, very much. Someone did, very much. Afterwards she was hungry. Real hunger, she hoped.

"I'm having the chip removed", she said.

* * *

Ringstein received the news with the cat's smile. Twenty minutes, factual, correct. A handshake at the end.

"You were the most interesting test subject I have ever had."

"I believe you", said Evgenie.

The procedure took an hour. Afterwards it was quiet inside her. No sighing door. No memories from the wood. No frequencies.

Just silence.

Which felt strange. Like a room someone has carried all the furniture out of.

* * *

She threw out the chair. The table, the chest of drawers, the wardrobe, the drawer with the carpenter from Thuringia. All stacked neatly on the pavement. Collection booked for Tuesday.

Konstantin helped carry without asking why. She liked that.

That was her feeling. She was sure of it now.

Mostly.

* * *

Two weeks later she cooked pasta. Tomato sauce, basil. And for dessert, a ripe sweet mango – and it said nothing and tasted good.

Konstantin sat at the new table and watched her.

"Smells good."

"It is good."

Outside, the city hummed its tempting song of adventure.

Evgenie ate and was full. Her thoughts were hers. Her body was hers. Her feelings too.

Presumably.

When I was 9 years old, we were supposed to draw what we wanted to become one day. If I remember correctly, this was a very popular topic in primary school. There was even a competition run by a large bank, and the art teacher had her favorites — and I was not among them.
A classmate, Christiane, drew Donald Duck so that he looked exactly like Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse exactly as Mickey is and always was. She could do it freehand. It was incredible. Her nurse was perfect in proportions and uniform, almost like a photograph. She was even holding a swaddled baby in her arms. Simply beautiful. The teacher was completely taken with it and praised the artwork lavishly.
I, on the other hand, took inspiration from Christiane. For one thing, I had no idea what I wanted to become, and for another, I had absolutely no grasp of proportions. I painted something that came very close to a caricature of a nurse. One eye of the poor woman — a black smudge with white inside — had run and looked as though it was about to slide right off her face. Her legs were respectable black stilts, and I believe she had only three fingers, above which hung an oval something that was presumably meant to be a baby. The baby had a black button nose and was smiling. Up in the corner I placed a beaming sun. No idea how it got into the hospital room. Frau Schumann praised nothing about it, and I was envious of Christiane, because I knew that next to her I was useless.
Frau Schumann packed all the artworks in front of us — each signed with our names — into an envelope, stamped it, and sent it off.
And then something happened that I had not expected, and that I only understood years later. The people at the bank liked my picture. I was selected for a vernissage of all the participating children from several towns. I couldn't believe it — and least of all could Frau Schumann. She handed me the invitation almost huffily and managed a thin smile: "Very nice."
I broke into a sweat. Perhaps they had confused my picture with Christiane's? But no — in the bank branch an entire wall was hung with children's drawings of their wished-for professions, and among them was my nurse with the watery eye. There it hung, the childish picture, bringing me no credit. I almost refused to show it to my mother.
Yes, my picture was childish, poetic. Unmistakably drawn by a child's hand. In the hospital room a bright sun was shining, and the mother lay on a folding bed made of three lines — and yet. Someone seems to have felt spoken to by the obvious naivety of the drawing. That someone awarded me a prize for being a child, as I realized ten years later.
Would he have given me that prize if he had seen me — a nine-year-old who looked like a fourteen-year-old, precocious you might say, a child-woman with a child's soul? Probably not. But this time I was lucky. You only had to submit drawings, not photographs of yourself.
Does one have to fit the worldview of the people judging you in order to succeed? I had borrowed the subject, I had childishly copied from my classmate, I didn't even know what I wanted to become — and she, who did know, who had the technical skill to win the competition, couldn't score a point, because she didn't fit the worldview of a juror who had a very particular idea of what a nine-year-old's painted picture ought to look like. Strange.
So it wasn't so important to be the best. What mattered was fitting into the worldview of the people who have the power to decide what the best is.
That's not something they teach you in school.
I was nursing a broken heart, I was 18 years old, and I was walking past the local primary school — and for no explicable reason I turned back and entered the corridors. It smelled somehow of stale air and chicken soup; the teachers' voices drifted through the classroom doors. The corridor walls were lined with a strip of colorful children's drawings, mostly in colored pencil. And there it was — the only one, the most childlike one, a self-portrait with family on two stately black stilted legs, a girl presumably, a smiling one, with one large eye and one small, runny one. It was so sweet. I was enchanted, I had to have this drawing — and I must confess to my shame that I became a thief. I took the picture, and it hung in my room for a long time. I hope I didn't break a child's heart. My own heart was consoled by the drawing, and I suddenly understood what the jurors had seen all those years ago in my childishly naive picture.

"Thabea is a girl from Eastern Europe who arrives in a German village and sees the world slightly differently than everyone else — including things others can't see at all. These are her stories."



Thabea had large blue eyes that always looked as though she was thinking about something completely different. Which was usually true.
She was new to the class. New to the school. New to Germany, if you wanted to be precise about it. Her family came from Eastern Europe, and sometimes, when her father sat by the window in the evening and said nothing, Thabea knew he was thinking about home. The other home, I mean. The one that was far away.
But this one is a kind of home now too, she had decided. Even if it still felt odd, like a new shoe you haven't broken in yet.
Hello, children — this is Thabea, our new classmate! said Mr. Schmitz on the first day. He was getting on in years and peered through thick glasses, as though he always had to examine the world carefully before letting it in. Thabea doesn't speak German very well yet, but she understands almost everything. Don't you, Thabea?
Thabea nodded. That was true. She understood almost everything. Sometimes even too much.
Mr. Schmitz led her to a table where two girls and a boy were already sitting, then produced his favourite thing: a dictation.
Thabea tried to follow every word. Dog. Zoo. Sky. She wrote as fast as she could.
When Mr. Schmitz collected the exercise books, he gave her an encouraging nod. Well, Thabea, let's see how your listening comprehension is coming along.
Mr. Schmitz saw fairly quickly.
Dog with a k, he thought aloud — well, he only thought it, but Thabea heard it all the same. Zoo with an S. Skey. Girrafe. And twenty-five more words that looked as though someone had rescued them from a different alphabet.
That was Thabea's secret, which she hadn't told anyone yet: sometimes she could hear what other people were thinking. Not always. Not when she wanted to. The thoughts just arrived, like a draught through a door that didn't close properly — and then suddenly someone else was inside her head.
She didn't particularly like it.
You do understand me, don't you? said Mr. Schmitz loudly and kindly, as he handed back her book.
Yes, said Thabea. And she thought: More than you know.
From that day on, Thabea didn't like German lessons. Mr. Schmitz gave a dictation nearly every lesson, because it filled up the time so nicely, and each time he found new mistakes in Thabea's book. Perhaps she needs extra support, she heard him think. And when the extra support didn't help: Perhaps she doesn't belong here.
He sent her to the school psychologist, who sat on the first floor and was very kind and showed her pictures.
Thabea pointed to one of them and said: Those are the Alps. My favourite book is Heidi. She was just as homesick as my papa.
The school psychologist wrote on a sheet of paper: above average intelligence.
Thabea thought that was rather nice, but Mr. Schmitz seemed to forget it the moment he looked into her eyes again. Dreamy, she heard him think. And: Empty.
Empty! thought Thabea. Empty! Hm.
One day, just as Mr. Schmitz had opened her book and begun to sigh, Thabea simply stood up.
She walked to his desk. She looked at him. And then she said, as calmly and firmly as she could:
I'm not stupid, Mr. Schmitz. Here's an apple for you.
She placed the apple — the one she'd had in her lunchbox that morning — on his desk. Then she turned and ran.
Mr. Schmitz stayed seated and stared at the apple. He said nothing at all. That was perhaps the cleverest thing he did that day.
Thabea ran straight into Religious Education, which was next on the timetable and which she loved most of all.
Mrs. Roller had red hair and a voice like a cosy campfire — warm and slightly crackling. Today all the children sat in a circle, and Mrs. Roller was reading from the Creation story, about how Eve had persuaded Adam to taste the apple.
Has everyone brought an apple? asked Mrs. Roller, holding hers up.
Everyone had an apple. Everyone except Thabea. She had just given hers to Mr. Schmitz so he would stop thinking she was stupid.
And now the apples were needed for a Tree of Knowledge that Mrs. Roller wanted to make with the children, and Thabea had none left.
She burst into tears.
Not loudly. Thabea wasn't the type for loud crying. But the tears simply ran, as though someone had forgotten to turn off the tap.
Thabea, come here a moment, said Mrs. Roller after the lesson, once the others had gone.
She sat down beside her on one of the small chairs — grown-ups always looked a little funny on small chairs, but with Mrs. Roller it didn't matter.
What's the matter? she asked.
Mr. Schmitz thinks I'm stupid.
Mrs. Roller had to smile, but only briefly. Then she said: And what do you think?
Thabea considered. I don't think I'm stupid. I think I learn differently.
Mrs. Roller nodded slowly, the way people nod when they hear something they already suspected. Then she asked: Which part of the Creation story do you like best?
Thabea hesitated for a moment. Then she read — quietly at first, then with growing confidence:
"And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened. And ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
Mrs. Roller was quiet for a moment. Then she said: Well, you can read beautifully. And if I dictate those exact three sentences to you now — with the punctuation?
Thabea went a little pale. But she nodded.
She wrote. And when Mrs. Roller looked at the exercise book, she could hardly believe her eyes.
Not a single mistake.
How is that possible? asked Mrs. Roller.
Thabea thought about it. Well, because I got to read the sentences first. Then I remembered what everything looked like. As if I take a photograph, in here. She tapped her temple.
Mrs. Roller said very quietly: Aha. Then she let it all run through her mind for a moment. Thabea could tell. And then she said: I think I need to have a word with Mr. Schmitz.
What is visual memory? asked Thabea cheerfully.
Mrs. Roller blinked. Did I say that out loud?
Thabea just smiled.

Thabea hatte große blaue Augen, die immer aussahen, als würde sie gerade an etwas ganz anderes denken. Das stimmte meistens auch.
Sie war neu in der Klasse. Neu in der Schule. Neu in Deutschland, wenn man es genau nahm. Ihre Familie kam aus Osteuropa, und manchmal, wenn ihr Papa abends am Fenster saß und nichts sagte, wusste Thabea, dass er an Zuhause dachte. An das andere Zuhause, meine ich. Das, das weit weg war.
Aber das hier ist jetzt auch eine Art Zuhause, hatte sie beschlossen. Auch wenn es sich noch komisch anfühlte, wie ein neuer Schuh, den man noch einlaufen muss.

Hallo Kinder — das ist Thabea, unsere neue Mitschülerin!, sagte Herr Schmitz am ersten Tag. Er war ein bisschen älter und schaute durch dicke Brillengläser, als ob er die Welt immer erst genau prüfen müsste, bevor er sie reinließ. Thabea spricht noch nicht so gut Deutsch, aber sie versteht fast alles. Nicht wahr, Thabea?
Thabea nickte. Das stimmte. Sie verstand fast alles. Manchmal sogar zu viel.
Herr Schmitz führte sie zu einem Tisch, an dem schon zwei Mädchen und ein Junge saßen, und dann holte er seinen Liebling hervor: ein Diktat.
Thabea versuchte, jedem Wort zu folgen. Hund. Zoo. Himmel. Sie schrieb so schnell sie konnte.

Als Herr Schmitz die Hefte einsammelte, nickte er ihr aufmunternd zu. So, Thabea, dann sehen wir mal, wie weit es mit dem Hörverstehen steht.
Herr Schmitz sah es ziemlich schnell.

Hund mit t, dachte er laut — naja, er dachte es eigentlich nur, aber Thabea hörte es trotzdem. Zoo mit S. Himell. Girave. Und noch fünfundzwanzig weitere Wörter, die aussahen, als hätte jemand sie aus einem anderen Alphabet herübergerettet.

Das war Thabeas Geheimnis, das sie noch niemandem verraten hatte: manchmal hörte sie, was andere dachten. Nicht immer. Nicht wenn sie wollte. Die Gedanken kamen einfach, wie Zugluft durch eine schlecht schließende Tür — und dann war plötzlich jemand anderes in ihrem Kopf.
Sie mochte es nicht besonders.

Verstehen tust du mich schon, oder?, sagte Herr Schmitz laut und freundlich, als er ihr das Heft zurückgab.

Ja, sagte Thabea. Und sie dachte: Mehr als du glaubst.

Von da an mochte Thabea die Deutschstunden nicht. Herr Schmitz schrieb fast jede Stunde ein Diktat, weil das so schön viel Zeit füllte, und jedes Mal fand er neue Fehler in Thabeas Heft. Vielleicht braucht sie einen Förderkurs, hörte sie ihn denken. Und als der Förderkurs nichts brachte: Vielleicht ist sie bei uns nicht richtig.

Er schickte sie zur Schulpsychologin, die im ersten Stock saß und sehr nett war und ihr Bilder zeigte.
Thabea zeigte auf eines davon und sagte: Das sind die Alpen. Mein Lieblingsbuch ist Heidi. Die hat genauso Heimweh wie mein Papa.

Die Schulpsychologin schrieb auf ein Blatt Papier: überdurchschnittlich intelligent.
Das fand Thabea eigentlich ganz schön, aber Herr Schmitz schien es zu vergessen, sobald er wieder in ihre Augen schaute. Verträumt, hörte sie ihn denken. Und: Leer.
Leer!, dachte Thabea. Leer!Hm.

Eines Tages, Herr Schmitz hatte gerade ihr Heft aufgeschlagen und angefangen zu seufzen, da stand Thabea einfach auf.
Sie ging zu seinem Pult. Sie schaute ihn an. Und dann sagte sie, so ruhig und bestimmt, wie sie konnte:
Ich bin nicht dumm, Herr Schmitz. Da hast du einen Apfel.

Sie legte den Apfel, den sie heute Morgen in ihrer Brotdose gehabt hatte, auf seinen Tisch. Und dann drehte sie sich um und rannte.
Herr Schmitz blieb sitzen und schaute auf den Apfel. Er sagte gar nichts. Das war vielleicht das Klügste, was er an diesem Tag tat.

Thabea rannte direkt in die Religionsstunde, die als nächstes dran war und die sie am allerliebsten hatte.

Frau Roller war rothaarig und hatte eine Stimme wie ein gemütliches Lagerfeuer — warm und ein bisschen knisternd. Heute saßen alle Kinder im Kreis, und Frau Roller las aus der Schöpfungsgeschichte vor, wie Eva den Adam überredet hatte, vom Apfel zu kosten.

Hat jeder einen Apfel dabei?, fragte Frau Roller und hielt ihren hoch.

Alle hatten einen Apfel. Alle außer Thabea. Den ihren hatte sie ja gerade Herrn Schmitz gegeben, damit er aufhörte zu denken, dass sie dumm war.
Und jetzt sollten die Äpfel für einen Baum der Erkenntnis gebraucht werden, den Frau Roller mit den Kindern basteln wollte, und Thabea hatte keinen mehr.

Sie brach in Tränen aus.
Nicht laut. Thabea war nicht der Typ für lautes Weinen. Aber die Tränen liefen einfach, als hätte jemand vergessen, den Hahn zuzudrehen.

Thabea, komm mal her, sagte Frau Roller nach der Stunde, als die anderen gegangen waren.
Sie setzte sich zu ihr auf einen der kleinen Stühle — erwachsene Menschen sahen auf kleinen Stühlen immer ein bisschen komisch aus, aber bei Frau Roller störte das nicht.

Was ist denn los?, fragte sie.

Herr Schmitz denkt, ich bin blöd.

Frau Roller musste kurz schmunzeln, aber nur kurz. Dann sagte sie: Und was denkst du?
Thabea überlegte. Ich glaube, ich bin nicht blöd. Ich glaube, ich lerne anders.
Frau Roller nickte langsam, so wie Menschen nicken, wenn sie etwas hören, das sie schon geahnt haben. Dann fragte sie: Welche Stelle aus der Schöpfungsgeschichte magst du am liebsten?

Thabea zögerte kurz. Dann las sie — erst leise, dann immer fester:
„Da sprach die Schlange zur Frau: Ihr werdet keineswegs des Todes sterben. Gott
weiß: an dem Tage, da ihr davon esst, werden eure Augen aufgetan. Ihr werdet sein wie
Gott und wissen, was gut und böse ist."

Frau Roller schwieg einen Moment. Dann sagte sie: Also lesen kannst du wunderbar. Und wenn ich dir jetzt genau diese drei Sätze diktiere mit Punkt und Komma?

Thabea wurde ein bisschen blass. Aber sie nickte.

Sie schrieb. Und als Frau Roller auf das Heft schaute, traute sie ihren Augen kaum.
Kein einziger Fehler.
Wie kommt das?, fragte Frau Roller.

Thabea dachte nach. Na weil ich die Sätze vorher lesen durfte. Da habe ich mir gemerkt, wie alles aussieht. Als ob ich ein Foto mache, hier drin. Sie tippte sich an die Stirn.

Frau Roller sagte sehr leise: Aha. Dann ließ sie sich kurz alles durch ihren Kopf gehen. Thabea sah es ihr an. Und dann sagte sie: Ich glaube, ich muss mal mit Herrn Schmitz reden.

Was ist ein visuelles Erinnerungsvermögen?, fragte Thabea fröhlich.

Frau Roller blinzelte. Habe ich das laut gesagt?
Thabea lächelte nur.

"Look," my new manager says with an indulgent smile, "I'm like a confessor. You can tell me anything."
I think for a moment.
"Eva dumped all the heavy work on me because my colleagues keep complaining about me," I blurt out.
"It seems to me you don't really get along with the team," he replies.
And I know perfectly well that he'll go straight to Eva to verify my claim. If my colleagues say it isn't true, then it won't be true. The confessor stays silent. The sin remains mine.
I've been keeping my distance from colleagues for years. I don't go to lunch with anyone, I don't talk about my private life, I avoid team drinks and events outside working hours. When I leave my desk – say, to go to the toilet – I won't touch my drink when I get back. I go and pour it down the sink.
I'm not paranoid. I'm just careful.
On the third day of my sick leave, the doorbell wakes me.
A woman from the social welfare office.
"Did my employer send you?" I ask, standing barefoot at the door in a flimsy nightgown.
She lies, of course. She says it was a random selection by the office computer. I have to show her my ID. She tries to push her way inside – holding her official clipboard in front of her like a shield. This is the first time I've been off sick this year. This whole performance is absurd.
I hand her my ID. I close the door. I make myself a coffee.
I'm back at work after sick leave.
I go to cheer up my colleagues at the neighbouring desks in the open office and announce, bloodthirstily: "AI is going to replace you all soon anyway."
In that moment, every robot feels more sympathetic to me than any living colleague.
They've made AI mandatory on our computers. Privacy has ceased to exist. The system has access to everything in Outlook, Excel and Teams. It logs every communication, every email, every website visited.
"Are you going to work over the bank holiday?" Eva asks.
"No," I say, innocently. "I don't have the expertise to cover for you."
The next day I have a training session arranged with Renata. Renata pushes a slice of melon on me. I take it out of politeness. I tell her I'll eat it in the kitchen.
I throw it in the bin.
After lunch, my manager storms into the open office and starts loudly criticising me over some minor mistake.
"And this is wrong too! We haven't used this in two years and you should have known that since last May!"
The shouting is loud. Deliberate. So everyone can hear.
Ah, it occurs to me. He's joined the collective destruction of my person.
I accidentally signed up for the quiz night.
"Are you really coming?" asks a pale young colleague. He looks almost frightened.
"Absolutely not," I snap. "It was a mistake."
The idea of spending even one minute of my private time outside working hours with my colleagues fills me with horror. The pale young colleague looks genuinely relieved.
My manager summons me and shows me photos on his phone with an accusatory look. He took them from the third floor. They show me making my way to the café to buy a chai latte during working hours.
I study the photo.
I notice that I really don't look good from above and behind. That all those years in corporate offices have just made me fatter, and I look like a frumpy old woman.
"And you're allowed to photograph me without my consent?" I ask sharply.
He quickly shoves his phone into his pocket. "It was nothing," he says with a smile.
"I've noticed you don't greet anyone in the morning when you come in. And you're late."
"It was only five minutes."
"Five minutes is the same as sixty minutes. Late is late."
I don't greet anyone so as not to draw unnecessary attention to myself – precisely because I come in late. I make this argument and watch the corners of his mouth twitch.
Eva, my previous manager, boasted to me last year: "I really don't mind at all that you come in late."
Fine, I thought at the time. I'll keep doing it then.
This manager is different. "If you keep coming in late, I'll start giving you formal warnings."
To show he's human after all, he later pushes a crumbly old chocolate bar on me. I take a piece out of politeness and pretend to put it in my mouth.
I go and throw it in the toilet shortly afterwards.
I'm looking forward to the training with Renata. I'll let her talk. After all – without her, I'd have to look all that information up myself.
I survive. My way.

There's a cleaning lady at my office who can turn the kitchen into a photograph from an interiors magazine. The wooden table gleams. The sink looks as though a mug has never stood in it. The whole space feels as if chaos physically cannot happen there.
And then we arrive. Knowledge workers. People who spend all day processing data and producing outputs visible only in the cloud. In the kitchen, we behave like golden retrievers at a food bowl.
One day I watched her wipe down the counter. No special product. Just a small blue microfiber cloth — the kind that comes in a pack of eight, six of which immediately vanish to an unknown location.
"I really admire you," I said, genuinely. "Getting something clean without leaving streaks is hard. What do you use?"
She held up the cloth. Blue. Completely unremarkable.
I had been expecting a professional secret. An industrial solution. At minimum, a second cloth.
Nothing.
This sent me back a few decades, to a summer job at a hotel.
I was seventeen, I needed money for driving lessons, and I approached the work with the determination of someone who very much wanted to be praised by their mother.
My philosophy at the time rested on solid foundations: good work must be visible.
Specifically, I believed the vacuum should leave tracks on the carpet. Those parallel lines, like a freshly mowed lawn. Evidence. A small visual message for anyone entering the room: effort happened here.
The older cleaners watched me with an expression I couldn't read at the time. I'd now describe it as quiet fascination with a teenager who had fundamentally misunderstood the assignment. They said nothing. They waited until I moved to the next room. Then they quietly redid mine.
Not because they were badly cleaned.
But because the carpet had tracks on it — the exact opposite of what was supposed to be there.
Someone eventually called a meeting. The outcome was brief:
They sent me to the basement.
The basement was long, white, and empty. My job was to sweep. There was nothing to sweep. Nobody came to check on the results.
I sat on the floor, leaned against the wall, and read Agatha Christie.
That summer I finished two novels, earned enough for my driving lessons, and correctly identified two murderers. I also swept a basement that did not need sweeping.
Of all these outcomes, the one about the murderers still warms me most.
I was not, at the time, conducting any deep reflection on the nature of competence and invisible work. That came later — as deep reflections tend to.
I wanted visible proof of performance. They wanted cleanliness without any trace of intervention.
And there was something entirely new in that: that truly good work isn't the work you can see. It's the work that leaves nothing extra behind. Just a good result.
In some fields, competence works exactly opposite to what I'd assumed.
Not "look what I did."
But rather "you won't even know I was here."
I told her this once. That what she does isn't "just cleaning" — it's performance in the purest sense of the word. Keeping a space pleasant, calm, ordered. Making it feel as though chaos never happened there.
And it happens several times a day. After us. We leave full sinks, smeared surfaces, coffee rings, small disorders that nobody notices because everyone takes them for granted.
And someone keeps quietly putting it all back.
No announcements. No visible proof. Just a result that only becomes visible once it's done.
The author spent one hotel summer in an empty basement with Agatha Christie and considers it, professionally, her most successful placement to date.

In the tech world, a working day can change in a single minute. One email, one system notification – and the job is gone, as thousands of Oracle Corporation employees discovered last week. For workers, it usually means just one thing: uncertainty.
On one side sit the billion-dollar fortunes of people like Larry Ellison. On the other, thousands of people who lose their jobs overnight. And artificial intelligence? It's no longer just a tool – it's a catalyst for change. AI replacing human labor isn't a distant future. It's happening right now.
This isn't just about office jobs. The trend touches customer support, technicians, engineers, managers – anyone who spends their day in front of a screen. Within ten to twenty years, it could affect almost every profession: taxi drivers, truck drivers, bus and train operators, pilots – anyone whose work an autonomous system can absorb.
The great advantage of automation is, of course, safety. Coordinated, self-driving transport can reduce accidents. The same goes for trains and aviation. Machines don't get tired, don't panic, and don't make mistakes from exhaustion. And that's precisely the paradox – technology that is objectively better makes human labor expendable.
In the future, healthcare could be dominated by AI and humanoid robots, with a small number of human specialists overseeing only critical procedures. But if purchasing power collapses, millions will depend on welfare and living standards will plummet sharply. That carries not just economic but security risks: discontented masses can turn to violence or attacks on critical infrastructure – servers and data centers would become targets. History reminds us that people in crisis reach for extremes – just as during the French Revolution, when hunger and frustration erupted into uprising.
As unemployment grows and living standards fall, the state may ultimately be forced to intervene. Regulation could take the form of quotas – just as some countries now require minimum female representation on boards or minority quotas in the US, the state could require corporations to retain a certain share of employees, even redundant ones. Such intervention would be a response to market pressure and social tension: technology alone increases efficiency, but without regulation it can destabilize society. Who would visit restaurants, barbers, or nail salons without money? Purchasing power isn't a detail, Mr. Ellison – it is the foundation the entire system stands on.
The same logic applies across all industries: new, creative jobs will emerge, but mostly for a limited group of people. Examples? An idea generator who comes up with concepts for AI to execute. A professional parent who tends to the human population. A curator of human experiences who gives people authentic moments. An AI ethics officer who ensures systems respect norms and rights.
And then there are the satirical, occasionally absurd professions: a humanizer who teaches AI to be awkward and empathetic. A flavor adder who sprinkles a little chaos and drama into life. A professional cynic who ironically narrates a world striving for perfection through machines alone.
And of course – we can't overlook the potent, beautiful AI men and women who not only look perfect but are tireless, charismatic, and capable of taking over almost every interaction, from marketing to romantic companionship. Imagine beautiful AI men tenderly caring for elderly women, devoted until the moment the lady passes away. The reverse – a grandfather with a beautiful AI companion by his side – goes without saying.
People are losing not just jobs, but dominance over how the world looks and works.
But wait – who exactly is buying all this?
Here's the question nobody in Silicon Valley seems to want to answer: if automation kills purchasing power, who is left to buy a Tesla? Who invests in Bitcoin when the rent is overdue? Elon Musk fires thousands, automates factories, and then expects a mass market to fund his next rocket. Donald Trump pumps his own crypto token while his voters lose their livelihoods to the very disruption he celebrates. The math doesn't work. You cannot strip people of income and then wonder why consumer demand collapses. The billionaire class is busy automating its customer base out of existence. That's not disruption – that's self-destruction with a PR budget.
Epilogue: Who Really Decides?
In the end, it is not machines that determine the fate of human society. AI is just a tool – more precise, faster, and more efficient than any human. But its impact depends on us.
It is human choices, values, and institutions that will decide whether new technologies strengthen society or tear it apart. If we remain passive, we get a world where most people have lost their jobs, their purchasing power, and their sense of purpose. But if we set rules, regulate, and keep the human factor in the equation, technology can be our ally rather than our enemy.
The paradox of AI is clear: the problem is not the technology itself, but the human world surrounding it. And that is precisely why each of us – individuals, society, and the state – bears responsibility for ensuring that the future is fair, meaningful, and human.

On my way home from work, I ran into Dana by chance in the streets of Prague. Our friendship had faded years ago and was now well past its expiration date. It surprised me that we crossed paths right outside her favorite hair salon — the place that always managed to ruin her hair. Dana stopped only briefly before heading into a small wine bar, even though she knew they sold wine from cartons kept under the counter. That's where I caught up with her.
Dana needed to unload everything that had been weighing on her, and I simply listened.
She told me about a famous writer who was supposed to become her lover. When the moment for an intimate encounter at his apartment finally came, he hid from her — actually locked himself in the bedroom. She refused to tell me his name.
She also talked about her son, who hadn't finished his school-leaving exams yet but was already living with his girlfriend at her place. Dana was anxiously policing the situation, making sure the girl wouldn't get pregnant, going so far as to buy her contraceptive patches.
Her husband — twenty-four years her junior — was boring, and apparently they hadn't had anything between them for five years. She had a thousand reasons to break her abstinence and drink properly, so alongside the wine she treated herself to an Aperol and a Cuba libre.
On the way home, giddy and loose, we stumbled into my ex-boyfriend and his friends outside a pub called The Blue Duck.
He was standing there after all these years like an apparition, leaning against the wall, half-hidden behind his friend Tonda. My heart leapt into my throat and my breathing quickened. Tonda talked us into staying for a beer.
"So how are we doing?" Tonda asked.
"Not much to report — I work in an office," I said.
Then Tonda, with a smile meant to come across as funny, pointed at my ex, Jarda: "He's on paternity leave with the kids. His wife's in the corporate world, travels all over Europe, makes a lot of money. Jarda, show them the photos — show them what beautiful kids you have."
I looked through photos of two little girls, roughly two and four years old. Those could have been mine, I thought — without a trace of sentimentality. Jarda let the phone pass around sheepishly.
Dana was waving the photos and her beer in the same hand, calling out: "Well, look at that — he does make pretty kids!"
"You know, he's been home with the children for years now, and his wife just left again for three months in South America without even asking him," Tonda whispered to me. "Jarda's really miserable about it."
The image of Jarda — a man who couldn't be bothered to rinse out his own glass — changing diapers made me fight back a spiteful smile. It passed quickly.
"You wouldn't want to help him with the girls, would you? Jarda could make you your own kid in return."
Jarda looked into my eyes with a guilty expression, but said nothing. I understood — this had probably been the theme of their whole evening out.
That ordinary moment turned into a sudden moment of clarity. The casually tossed-out suggestion — that I should raise his children simply so he'd have more time for himself — was meant in deadly earnest.
Why would I raise his children? We hadn't been together for five years. They weren't my children. I wasn't his girlfriend. We weren't even friends. And yet he clearly thought I owed him something, or that I was simply available — as if he were looking for a free, reliable nanny who had once done a decent job on him.
He didn't hesitate for a moment to betray his hard-working wife in front of me. He didn't hesitate to betray our past love, either — we had once loved each other. He didn't want to come back to me because he still loved me. On top of it all, he stood there and let Tonda say everything for him.
This was not something that belonged in my life. I understood that now.
"And what would your wife say about that?" I asked sharply.
He didn't answer.
It was a transactional offer, stripped of any feeling, and it mirrored his desperation over a situation he couldn't handle.
I turned around, draped the merry Dana over my shoulder, and walked straight home.
I didn't look back.

Envy is about comparison. Just change what you compare yourself to.
These days, everyone is chasing perfection. The perfect body, perfect relationships, the perfect career, and a life that looks great on social media. Over time, though, I developed my own philosophy. I call it reverse happiness.
It's actually quite simple. Instead of trying to keep up with everyone around me, I set the rules so that life feels a little more peaceful.
Take relationships, for example. I feel no need to find the perfect man that everyone will admire. Quite the opposite. The less perfect the partner, the greater the peace of mind. Nobody will envy him, nobody will compare my relationship to others — and in the whole arrangement, I get to be the glowing, desirable half of the couple. It works like a charm.
Proof: "Did you see the guy she's with — he looks like he lives under a bridge. She's basically supporting him, poor thing. She must have her hands full."
Exactly. The plan is working.
I take the same approach with friendships. Surround yourself with people who are significantly more successful or put-together, and sooner or later you start comparing. And comparison is the fastest road to dissatisfaction. That's why I enjoy the company of people who are just... normal. Sometimes a little less polished, sometimes a little less ambitious. Suddenly there's no need to compete. There's just peace.
The same goes for holidays. Some people go to a beach full of perfectly toned bodies and then spend the entire week agonizing over how they look. I prefer places where people care more about good food than perfect figures. I come home in a better mood, and without a shred of guilt, I sit down with a friend for a smoked sausage and a cold beer.
This approach occasionally shows up at work too. The easiest strategy is to be inconspicuous — minimal make-up, simple clothes, almost invisible. Come across as someone who doesn't have anything particularly special going on. Then, casually drop into conversation that you own a property your colleagues could only dream of. The contrast is almost philosophical.
And just to throw them off completely, I add: — all on credit.
That's the finishing blow. Now it spins around in their heads on its own.
"She lives lavishly, but she's in debt. Yeah, I'd never go down that road."
Once a year, on my birthday, I treat my colleagues to a little feast in the office kitchen. Thirty beautifully topped open sandwiches — egg, ham, smoked sausage. Plus two or three cakes: one with cream and liqueur, a colourful layered one, chocolate — and for something a little adventurous: matcha with white chocolate.
I feed them carefully, generously, and abundantly. And they adore me for it.
When they walk past my desk, they drool like Pavlov's dogs.
You have to know when to splash out and buy yourself a little goodwill.
For the rest of the year, however, I recommend bringing homemade food in a lunchbox — cooked at home, eaten modestly in the kitchen — and mentioning a gluten intolerance.
"Oh yes, it's not easy being gluten intolerant. You have to cook everything yourself, you can't eat from the canteen."
Maybe this is all absurd. Maybe it's just irony. But sometimes I feel like the simplest way to be content is to stop playing the game by everyone else's rules. Just flip it around a little.
And suddenly you find that life can be lived more peacefully, with more humour — and above all, without unnecessary envy.
And when the state of the world gets to me, I turn off the television and bury my head in the sand like an ostrich. It may not be brave. But the ostrich is a surprisingly contented animal.

My neighbor is a living storm. She’s forty-five, never returns anything she borrows – milk, an electric space heater, occasionally her own sense of calm – and she sits in my kitchen, smoking cigarettes and crying about how her husband Pepa has a mistress and how the whole world is against her. After school her kids come over and raid my fridge. I walk on tiptoes so they don’t know I’m home.

And then a voice calls from the balcony.

“Marlinka! Come here, I need to tell you something!”

There’s no point hiding. There never was.

This time she came with a book. Gregg Braden, The God Code. Braden is an American author who combines quantum physics, spirituality and Hebrew in a way that drives scientists to madness and everyone else to enlightenment. Between cigarette smoke and the noise of children laughing, she explains that human DNA carries God’s signature. Not metaphorically. Literally. The patterns in DNA can apparently be converted into numbers, the numbers into Hebrew letters, and from those letters emerges the name of God – YHWH. Yahweh. It’s written there. Inside each of us.

“You see? Every creator leaves their mark – a painter in their painting, a composer in their music… and God signed himself into life. Into your life. Into my life. Into František’s life,” and she kisses her ten-year-old on the head. “You’re unique, you know? I don’t give this much time to anyone else.”

I can’t help feeling a certain sense of honor, even as her little monsters are currently dismantling my fridge.

“And Pepa?” I ask carefully.

“Pepa is working overtime with that secretary. But I don’t need him to tell me I’m unique – I have it in black and white. God knows it,” she swears, exhaling a cloud of smoke toward the sky.

“Have you thought about switching to e-cigarettes?” I try. “So you don’t have to damage God’s creation.”

She looks at me with the expression of someone who doesn’t find this funny.

There are moments when it’s just the two of us, no kids, no Pepa, and she’s completely different. She quiets down. Smokes more slowly. Once she told me I’m the only one who listens to her without immediately correcting her. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or a diagnosis, but it stayed with me.

She’s not looking for God in DNA. She’s looking for proof that Pepa can’t erase her.

That evening the whole family migrates back to their place, because Pepa returned from a work trip to Moravia with smoked meat and homemade sausages. Before I can say anything, my neighbor shouts over her shoulder: “Wait, I’ll prove the theory, Braden has a formula for it!” – and disappears through the door.

From my kitchen window I peer down into the courtyard, where Pepa has set up a fire pit and a homemade smokehouse, and where in thirty-degree heat they’re now grilling sausages over a fairly large open fire in the middle of a Prague apartment block.

I watch to see if the building catches fire.

Anežka brings me a grilled sausage on a paper plate. I take it. “Anežka, tell your dad to make sure the fire is properly out when you’re done with dinner.” I hand her a bottle of good water. She runs off.

Am I really the only one here who cares?

Nobody anywhere. And most importantly – nobody ever says anything.

Then comes the day I return from our cottage.

I’d given my neighbor the keys to feed the cat. When I walk into the living room, I find the proof drawn across the entire wall. Blue and green chalk, in large letters:

Counted the atoms of DNA = A, T, C and G = YHWH Converted them into Hebrew letters. From this came the name of God: YHWH = YAHWEH

I’M GETTING A DIVORCE

I stand at the kitchen window watching Pepa in the courtyard attempting to burn a bedroom wardrobe whole.

Maybe there’s something to that DNA theory after all, I think to myself.

And I draw the curtains. The cat was well fed and perfectly content.

At least someone was.

How I (almost) slacked at work and survived – the benefits of conscious procrastination

Most people think that procrastination – putting off tasks until later – is laziness. I have learned, however, that sometimes it is a sophisticated survival strategy: finding ways not to overload yourself, not to burn out, and to preserve your energy, even when your boss suspects otherwise.

Every day I processed contracts at a corporation, each one with thousands of rows. Data had migrated badly, everything had to be reworked manually. It was responsible, demanding work – and monotonous to the point of absurdity.

I lived and survived the corporate world thanks to sophisticated procrastination. In my interpretation, it is not about putting off tasks until later, but about transforming a harsh reality into something bearable. The key is not to let anyone peek at your cards. Hiding behind thousands of rows and complications was my shield, proof of my irreplaceability.

When I needed to, I took meaningful breaks, put Lenny Kravitz on my headphones, surfed Facebook – basically keeping my energy up without “doing nothing.” Research suggests that during intense focus, roughly 6 hours of work per day is considered the upper limit of sustainable productivity. And I stuck to that number like a dog to a bone.

My “procrastination” – finding small moments to recharge – was a survival strategy, not laziness. Refreshed, I would return to my tinkering with contracts.

Then my boss suddenly decided I should process 15 simpler contracts a day, while the demanding ones would temporarily go to someone else. He promised me that a colleague would swap with me after 14 days.

A monotonous, mind-numbing routine focused purely on quantity began, draining every last bit of my energy. I came home from work exhausted, falling asleep practically on my feet. Housework became an unmanageable challenge. My only leisure activity became sleep.

The strategy of meaningful procrastination went up in flames. The entire carefully constructed survival system collapsed.

The whole situation reminded me of a scene from the film Modern Times, where Charlie Chaplin works in a factory tightening bolts on a conveyor belt that moves faster and faster. The Tramp begins performing the mechanical movements uncontrollably even off the belt – grabbing at the heads of passersby – because the pace has become absurdly fast, impossible to keep up with. Just like Chaplin, I too refused to be a machine repeating meaningless work without end.

After several weeks, I went to my boss and confronted him with his promise. He acted as if everything was fine and he had no idea what I was talking about. I stood my ground, we debated for a while, and then the situation spiralled out of control. There was a rather loud exchange of opinions – we started screaming at each other uncontrollably and the whole thing could be heard all the way into the open office.

When we calmed down, a tense silence fell. And then – out of nowhere – he started telling me a story from his childhood. Apparently, he once walked through a glass door at the doctor’s – he simply didn’t see it – knocked out all his teeth and now has a full set of dentures. He confirmed his words with a radiant, perfectly even smile of a man who has more plastic in his mouth than truth. He also suffered from unbearable headaches, he added.

Aha. So there we have the explanation for the amnesia.

A man who doesn’t see glass doors logically doesn’t see his own promises either. He clearly wanted to humanise himself – to show that he too is just a mortal. But I didn’t need sympathy. I needed him to remember what he had said.

The next day, my boss sent me as punishment to a procrastination training, where I was supposedly supposed to practise not putting off tasks. In his eyes I was a “procrastinator” – in reality I was just looking for ways to survive and not lose my mind.

And because I am hot-headed and because I sometimes don’t know when to stop, after the training I went to my American superior and told him firmly:

“I’m not procrastinating, I’m not doing this. I work.”

He couldn’t help himself and smirked, as if to say: Sure you don’t.

From that day on, those 15 contracts a day were handled by my colleague – apparently it didn’t bother him to do the same thing over and over, or at least he acted that way to score points.

He could have taken turns with me. But that would have required the boss to see the glass doors.

It was New Year's Eve, eight o'clock, and I thought I was rescuing a stranger.
Three minutes later, I had a swollen lip, foreign hands around my waist, and a man claiming his heart was skipping beats from stress.
"Why are you getting involved?!" the girl screamed. Her eyes were full of rage and fear simultaneously, as if two beings were fighting inside her. She was brawling with great vigor on the tram tracks with some guy. Fortunately, no trams were running at that moment. At first glance, the scene resembled a movie stunt.
"I'm trying to save you and you're hitting me!" I exclaim indignantly. I lunge at her. For a while I just watched, then I started screaming at the boy to stop hitting her, to leave her alone! I even start beating him with my crossbody bag, and at that moment the woman turns on me and slaps me across the face.
Then everything splattered into chaos—hands, dropped bags, the sound of a tram in the distance, as if the city had finally woken up and come for us.
Then I feel firm hands from behind. Someone is holding me. Not hurting me, just restraining my movement. I turn around and see him. Almost two meters tall, curly hair falling into his eyes, a smile that could disarm even the toughest thug.
"I have arrhythmia," he breathed out.
"What?" I slowly pick myself up from the ground. He hands me my crossbody bag.
"When I'm stressed... my heart acts up. I have arrhythmia, it runs in the family," he said quite seriously.
Before I could say anything, the girl broke free and ran away. And three guys—I don't know where they came from—started fighting with the original brawler.

Wenceslas Square

"Come," he said and led me toward Wenceslas Square. "We're strangers who've just met," he noted.
At the Red Cross booth, he made sure to have his blood pressure checked with great fanfare. I held his hand and tried to suppress a smile—he was beautiful, curly hair falling into his eyes, and yet now he looked so vulnerable. I completely forgot about my swollen lip and bruised face. His blood pressure was... absolutely perfect.
Wenceslas Square was packed—after all, it's New Year's Eve. Here and there a firecracker booms in the distance, as if someone were bidding farewell to the past year with gunfire.
"All right," I said. "Let's go to the river. That's why I'm here, after all. I want to bury the past year."
We buy a bottle of rum and cola and walk to the Vltava, where the city noise loses intensity and the wind from the water cools us. It's an unusually warm New Year's Eve—fifteen degrees, almost like spring. The sound of fireworks mixes with laughter around us, and suddenly everything feels surreal, as if Prague were just a backdrop and we actors in some strange play.
"My name is Anděla," I introduce myself.
"My mom is a bellydancer from Moravia, she named me Neptun." He throws his arms around my neck and desperately wants to kiss me. I can't help but burst out laughing. "Prove it! Prove you're Neptune, ruler of the waters, and you may escort me to the riverbank and we'll bury the old year!"
And indeed—his ID read Tim Neptune Small.
"I will continue to address you formally, Miss Anděla," he smiled with irresistible boyish charm.
"May I smell you?" I ask him with the craving of an addict.
He offers me his neck like a vampire's victim ready to be bitten. I bury my nose in the irresistibly warm, alive, masculinely rough-sweet scent of his being. Clinging to him, intoxicated, I cannot detach myself. With my nose buried in his essence, blindly—leaning on his shoulder—I follow him to the water of the Vltava. And I follow him with the trust of the intoxicated, without doubting the correct direction of my steps.
After a while he states dryly: "We're here, Miss Anděla."
The Vltava spreads before us with a black shine, its surface reflecting light that mirrors the restlessness of the metropolis and tourist boats. He gently kisses my bruised lip and whispers: "Miss Anděla has an owie."
From my backpack I pull out two paper boats inscribed with everything I want to leave behind. In the middle of each I've placed a tea candle. I hand him one.
He reads aloud: "Poverty, anger, arguments, illness... We release you, may you never return." We release everything bad that happened to us last year. The little boat floats above the water for a moment, the restless glow of the candle making it clear that its lifespan won't be long.

The Boat

Before us anchors a small motor tour boat with a canopy for fifteen people, offering an evening New Year's Eve cruise on the Vltava.
The captain spots us and offers to take us along past Smíchov. We accept.
Inside the boat sit—arranged orderly, like figures in a wax museum—about ten German retirees. Gray-haired, in gray clothing, with gray faces. They look as if they're sleeping. Before them sit coffee, cake, and one glass of champagne. No one moves. No one speaks. Only the boat quietly glides through the black water.
We sit in the back. Tim holds my hand. It feels as if we've entered another world—the boat is a portal, Charon the ferryman with a tourist license. I'm not sure if this is real, or if I've drunk too much rum.
We pass the shore. And then I see it.
On Střelecký Island, fires burn. Large, bright. Almost pagan. Around them dance Roma—colorful skirts swirl, gold teeth glitter. Above the fire turns a whole pig and chickens in wire baskets. Fat drips into the flames, hissing, fragrant.
An old woman with a red scarf turns directly toward us—toward me—and calls out:
"The coming year will bring you love! But also betrayal! Both at once! One person!"
Tim laughs. Suddenly—as if a switch had been flipped—the retirees come to life. They applaud, shout: "Herrlich! So authentisch! Ist das Schwein im Preis inbegriffen?"
Tim pulls me closer. "Do you like it?"
"I don't know," I whisper. "I don't know if this is real."
"Does it even matter?" he asks. And kisses me. And I feel that this—this moment, this boat, these gray German tourists who maybe aren't people, maybe are just illusions—is exactly what I wanted. The end of the old year. The beginning of something new. Something magical.

The Lighthouse

The boat turns and docks at the lighthouse by Mánes. The captain nods to us. We disembark.
Behind the lighthouse it's dark. Prague spreads below me like an illuminated carpet—the Castle, bridges, towers. Tim pulls me to him. He kisses my neck, my mouth, my shoulders. His hands slide down my body.
"Here?" I whisper.
"Before all of Prague," he confirms.
And then I no longer have the strength to think. His hands slip under my dress, I unbutton his pants. It's quick, desperate, full of desire and absurdity. Prague watches us. Maybe the German retirees too. Maybe the rusalkas. I don't care.
I feel his body, his breath, his hands. I feel the cold on my back and the warmth of his skin. It's raw and beautiful at once. Like everything tonight.
When we finish, Prague still shines.
We secretly and hurriedly climb over a fence to Žofín. We head toward the National Theatre.
"I'd like to stop playing games," I say quietly.
He stops. Looks at me. And I see something in his eyes—fear? Relief?
"Me too," he says.
We sit in a pub next to the National Theatre. Just a few drunk tourists and one waiter who looks like he's been sitting here since the war.
Tim orders beer. I order grog. My hands are still shaking.
"I have to tell you something," he begins. He looks nervous. "When we were... at the lighthouse... I pinched my balls. Pretty bad. It hurt."
I sit intoxicated by the experience over my grog. Intoxicated by Prague. Weathered by the cold wind of the Vltava and by love. "Why didn't you say anything? We've known each other for three years."
"You were almost there. I didn't want to interrupt you."
Mr. Neptune had an owie. I feel sorry for him and guiltily kiss his beautiful lips.
We both laugh. Outside, fireworks explode. The new year begins.

Es ist eigentlich unmöglich, über den eigenen Schatten zu springen – er geht mit einem mit, stetig, schnell, unerreicht. Ich wünschte manchmal, ich könnte ihn anhalten und drüber hüpfen. Mein Leben bestand immer aus Spielen, z.B. das Spiel: wenn ich das schaffe, dann schaffe ich alles.

Ich kann mit aller Ehrlichkeit sagen: ich hasse Stricken. Also, ich kann handarbeitliche Tätigkeiten wie Nähen, Stricken und Backen nicht ausstehen – alles, was diese genaue Präzision erfordert, das Ausmessen und Wiegen und hier exakt 10 Maschen und hier 20 Minuten aufgehen lassen. Ich bin ein Ungefähr-Mensch, der auch gerne zu spät kommt, weil er immer etwas Besseres zu tun hat, insbesondere wenn er es eilig hat. Wie jetzt: ich sollte in die Apotheke gehen, bevor es dunkel wird. Was nicht klappen wird, da ich schreibe und das geht jetzt so gut, weil ich eigentlich was anderes zu tun hätte.

Ich kann mich erinnern: ich war jung, 23, und wollte studieren. Ich hatte keine Ahnung, wie ich das anstellen sollte, also fing ich an, gemäß einer Anleitung aus der Modezeitschrift einen schwarzen Pullover zu stricken. Ich hatte keine Ahnung vom Stricken, aber ich sagte mir: wenn du es schaffst, diesen Pullover zu stricken, dann schaffst du es auf die Hochschule, dann schaffst du deinen Abschluss. Und ich hatte noch nicht mal meine Anmeldung abgegeben – aber ich bestärkte mich in meiner Absicht mit einer Herausforderung, in meinem Glauben, die mit der faktisch unerreichbaren künstlerischen Uni zu studieren rein gar nichts zu tun hatte.

Ich kaufte eine Unmenge schwarzer, billiger Wolle und machte mich ans Werk. Ich legte mich ins Zeug und strickte, was das Zeug hielt. Es war ein unmögliches Unterfangen – aber ich maß gemäß den Pullis, die ich schon im Schrank hatte. Das war zwar nicht genau, ich konnte ungefähr feststellen, wo ich in den Achseln Maschen wegnehmen musste, damit ich nicht ein gerades Viereck strickte.

Ich war so sehr fasziniert von meiner Aufgabe, den Pulli zu stricken, dass mich meine Beziehungsprobleme aufhörten zu quälen. Ich machte meinem Freund keine Vorwürfe mehr, dass er keine Zeit hatte, ich hatte auch nicht die Kraft, eifersüchtig zu sein. Ich war so sehr damit beschäftigt, Maschen zu zählen und voranzukommen mit dem Pulli, der mir all meine Schaffensträume mit seiner Fertigstellung ermöglichen sollte – ich hatte einfach keine Zeit für negative Taten oder Gedanken.

Die Beziehung zu meinem Freund verbesserte sich um 50%. Wir genossen die Zeit, die wir zusammen verbrachten, und er lobte mein Pulloverprojekt ausgiebig, da er irgendwie unterbewusst ahnte, dass es mit diesem schwarzen, unförmigen, fast fertigen Stück Pullover zusammenhing.

Nebenher suchte ich mir einen Professor, der mich auf die Aufnahmeprüfung für die Uni vorbereitete. Ich hatte nun überhaupt kein Geld und lebte vorwiegend von gekochten, gebratenen, fritierten und überbackenen Kartoffeln aller Art – und was, es war mir egal.

Abends zog ich mit meinem Freund durch verrauchte Altprager Kneipen, sah Bohumil Hrabal in der Pivnice U Tygra, ziemlich unter Einfluss, auf allen Vieren ins Taxi kriechen. Mein Freund meinte dazu nur: „Der weiß zu leben und der weiß, wo er seine Inspiration zum Schreiben her hat."

Also machten wir es Hrabal nach: saßen in verrauchten Kneipen, versteckt hinter riesigen Bierkrügen billigen, würzigen Prager Biers, hielten Händchen, küssten uns leidenschaftlich und beobachteten die Szenen, die sich vor unseren Augen abspielten.

Manchmal stritten wir und ich schmiss meinen silbernen Türkisring in den Aschenbecher am Tisch. Zwei Altprager Weise mit langen Bärten und großen Bierkrügen, Zigaretten im Mundwinkel, konstatierten sachlich, als ob ich nicht anwesend wäre:

„Sie ist schön, weiß aber nichts davon."

„Ja, sie ist wunderschön, hat aber keine Ahnung von sich."

Am nächsten Tag kam mein Freund vorbei, um mir den Ring wieder anzustecken und sagte, dass ihn die beiden überredet hätten, ihn aus dem Aschenbecher rauszufischen, weil er es sonst bereuen würde.

Und ich? Ich strickte voller Eifer, ich strickte wie eine Besessene, eine Hungrige, die gerade noch Geld für überbackenen Käse ( smažák) und bavorské pivo (Fernet u.Tonic)hatte, um dann opojená (berauscht) vom Leben und Prag mit meinem Freund Liebe zu machen – nicht zu denken, nur zu sein.

Aber da hatte ich die Aufnahmeprüfung schon geschafft. Ich war offiziell Studentin einer künstlerischen Hochschule in Prag. Ich hatte für meine Eltern eine Daseinsberechtigung geschaffen, mich weiter finanziell zu unterstützen.

Mein Pulli-Projekt war aus den Fugen geraten – ein schwarzes Monster, das mir bis zu den Knien hing und in aller Ehre in die Pivnice U Tygra getragen wurde, wo wir meine bestandene Aufnahmeprüfung mit feinem Prager Bier begossen.

Winter Without Heating

I hadn’t sorted out a contract with the power company. It sounded important in my head: contract with the power company. Like I was a corporation. In reality, I was a girl afraid to turn on the heating because she didn’t know if someone would send her a bill for a million.
By late November, I was bundled in blankets like an Egyptian mummy. I was bravely freezing above zero. It’s that kind of cold where you don’t know if you’re allowed to complain, or if you should just be grateful you’re alive.
I repeatedly baked bundt cakes with the oven door open to warm my hands. That was my life hack. My contribution to humanity. Someone invented electric heating, I invented bundt cake heating. The cakes were dry, but my hands were warm.
I didn’t experience winter outside, but at home. I learned to layer clothes like an onion. The worst part wasn’t the cold. The worst part was the feeling that this is just how life is. That it’s not temporary. That this is the adulthood I’d been waiting for

Loneliness

Loneliness didn’t arrive suddenly. It settled into ordinary days like an unpleasant roommate who doesn’t pay rent and eats your yogurt. I daydreamed with open eyes and imagined the stars could hear me.
One night, my upstairs neighbor rang my doorbell – a Spaniard. He’d forgotten his keys to the building entrance. He got me drunk on sangria, talked about life in Barcelona as if Barcelona was the solution to all problems, and fed me Merci chocolates.
Being with him was disappointing, but at least someone was there, admiring my young self. Let me feel exceptional for just one moment. He would examine me while intoxicated, saying “beautiful, beautiful,” and look at me like a hungry dachshund that had discovered a rabbit in the bushes.

Occasionally his family visited from Spain. He’d show off with them extra long outside my window, so I might see him. I don’t know if he did it on purpose. And honestly, I didn’t care.
I’d warm myself on the windowsill in the autumn sun, squinting into the rays, stretching like a sleepy cat – and now because of him I had to lazily get up and draw the curtains. It bothered me more that he could see me than that I could see him.

Slowly But Surely

Slowly but surely, I was running out of money. A friend came up with a brilliant idea: “Let’s go to a commercial casting.” She said it like she was suggesting getting ice cream. As if casting was a normal activity for an ordinary young woman, not a desperate attempt at survival.

Instant Soup Commercial – An Oscar for Slurping

In the commercial, a family sits at the table laughing over bowls of soup. In real life, a family wouldn’t laugh over instant soup. Maybe they’d cry. But here we’re all laughing together, in unison, like a cult.
We slurp loudly in rhythm.
Imagine it: professional slurping. To a beat. With intention. A young director from Denmark is flying around – of course from Denmark, because apparently everyone there is beautiful and happy and they have hygge and a functioning social system. He aims the camera at me – the mother. Then the light on the fat father and two children. Makeup artists glued thick eyebrows on us so viewers would understand we’re a family.
I slurp gratefully and loudly, almost inappropriately. As if slurping to a beat could save my life. Which maybe it can. This will pull me out of financial trouble. I’m already breathless from all this slurping, but we continue. Professional slurp. Slurp with soul.
I won the casting based on my ability to slurp as loudly as possible to a beat and to music. I even earned grateful Danish smiles from everyone involved.

Non-Functioning Building Management

I pay fees for the apartment. I don’t know exactly to whom or how much. The building belonged to a German who couldn’t be bothered to deal with it. He didn’t send bills, didn’t establish an HOA, just occasionally sent an SMS: “Alles gut?” No, Mr. Landlord, alles is not gut. But you’re already offline.
I write emails into the void. I call numbers that have ceased to exist. Helplessness takes the form of silence.
I’m afraid of debt, yet I stop paying – when I don’t know to whom and I’m not receiving bills.
Freedom turned into responsibility. Nobody told me that. Nobody said that freedom weighs. That you’ll carry it on your back like that linoleum from Bauhaus and people will wish you good luck with that funeral along the way.
I’m not paying bills, but I have the responsibility.
I guess I grew up.
Or at least I survived the entrance exams to adulthood. I passed the casting. I can slurp to a beat. I have thick glued-on eyebrows. And my secondhand winter jacket fits perfectly.
Beautiful, beautiful.

Walk Home with My Eyes Closed for as Long as Possible

You can't think about nonsense when your eyes are closed. You have to focus on your step, on balance, and on the fact that you could easily walk into a pole. I do this when heavy thoughts weigh on me. And to reassure the reader, I'll add that I do open my eyes again and usually think positively afterward.

My record for walking straight with my eyes closed is about twenty-five meters. Then I bumped into a gentleman. He was not at all amused.
Blow Out the Candle
Possibly the most symbolic act of the day. When I blow out the flame, I feel like the day is closing. The light disappears, chaos stays outside the door, and I can breathe for a moment.
Or I fall asleep with the candle burning and in the morning I'm thrilled that I survived the night and didn't set fire to the building or the neighbors. No, no that would be irresponsible and besides, I have the candle in a tall heat-resistant glass container :)

I've noticed a pattern in my life, if you want to know the truth. I start well. Really well. I'm surrounded by favor, love, prosperity, and success. And then comes the breaking point. A small click, a reversal, and everything collapses, literally from one day to the next.
It affects all areas of life, it really does.
Personal Relationships
A man was still courting me last week, whistling under my window, calling every day, kneeling at my door. The whole bit. And suddenly he has no interest. None whatsoever. "Being with you was like eating bread," he said. A dubious compliment, even though the prayer continues and give us this day our daily bread. That really offended me. And then he immediately went on a date with my best friend. My best friend, for Chrissake.
School
I was a straight-A student. Praised and all. And with the onset of puberty, such deafening stupidity overtook me that I barely scraped through to graduation, all while sporting an unmistakable rash that disappears and returns even in adulthood. Like the unpredictable tide of the sea. It comes and goes. It really does.
University
I was the promoted student, the favored one. I devoured my professor — I mean I really devoured her work. I was burrowed into my field like a mole in the earth. Until two professors started competing for my favor and became jealous of each other. The whole situation then collapsed into dust. Just like that. And when I didn't favor either one enough, they started badmouthing me and I barely finished university. I barely finished. Even though I had started my assistantship already in my first year — can you imagine?
I asked myself: How is it possible that in my fifth year I'm more incompetent than in my first? It doesn't make any sense. It really doesn't.
And everything is accompanied by the silence of classmates, fellow students, colleagues. They don't let me in, they won't tolerate me among them, as if I had OUTSIDER written on my forehead. In capitals. They really won't.
Sometimes I think there may be nothing mysterious about it at all. Maybe I just arrive too intense, and people like that at first. Then time passes, and what was once a surprise becomes something permanent. And that, for reasons I never quite understand, seems to bother them.
A Curse?
I live in modern Europe, for Chrissake. They don't do voodoo here, do they? Or don't they need to? Are we such powerful spiritual beings that we reject — perhaps subconsciously — a person whose energetic radiation we don't like? I'm asking you.
Where did I get this energy field that first attracts everyone and then repels them so vehemently? Is it hereditary? Is it trauma? Past lives and sins I know nothing about on a conscious level? I'd like to know, I really would.
Menu of Solutions
Would it be enough to pray and bathe in salt water? Meditate, do holotropic breathing and walk through past lives? Or bury my head like an ostrich in the sand and accept the situation? Extract what I can from the good beginning and then just survive? Have spirits exorcised, or get myself locked up in an asylum? I'm serious. :)
Or pretend that everything is fine, that I noticed nothing? That kills me most of all.
So what? Do you know this too? Or did it at least make you want to say something? I'm asking you.

German master hairdresser Emidio Gaudioso, together with entrepreneur Thomas Keitel, founded the HAIR HELP the Oceans initiative, which offers a surprising solution to water pollution – cut hair from hair salons.

Natural Filter Instead of Waste

Every day, tons of cut hair end up in trash bins at hair salons around the world. The HAIR HELP the Oceans project has given them new purpose. Human hair has a unique property – it can absorb enormous amounts of oils and other harmful substances without absorbing water itself. One kilogram of hair can absorb up to eight kilograms of oil.

The donated hair is made into special filter mats, so-called “hair carpets,” or long cylindrical filters. These ecological absorbents are then placed in lakes, rivers, harbors, or in front of industrial plants, where they effectively remove oil pollution caused by fuel leaks from boats, industrial accidents, or regular operation of motorized vessels.

From Idea to Global Movement

Gaudioso and Keitel launched the initiative in 2022 in Germany. In less than three years, hundreds of hair salons have joined the project, contributing to the protection of aquatic ecosystems instead of throwing hair into municipal waste. The project has also expanded its scope – testing the use of hair as a natural water reservoir for irrigation in agriculture.

For each partner salon, the initiative donates one euro per month to remove plastics from the oceans, thus combining two ecological goals at once.

Why Is Hair So Effective?

The structure of human hair contains scales and is naturally hydrophobic – it repels water, but attracts and binds oleophilic substances. This allows hair filters to work selectively: they capture pollutants but don’t get clogged with water. After saturation, contaminated hair can be safely disposed of or processed, and in some cases, oil can be extracted from the hair.

Challenge for Hair Salons Worldwide

The HAIR HELP the Oceans concept shows how apparent waste can gain new meaning through creative thinking and international cooperation. Countries with rich networks of rivers and ponds, including problematic sections polluted by industry or recreational traffic, could also benefit from this technology.

Involving hairdressers in ecological projects not only helps nature but also raises awareness of sustainability in an industry where daily operations generate significant amounts of waste. The initiative proves that even a small gesture – donating hair instead of throwing it away – can have a major impact on the cleanliness of our waters.

The HAIR HELP the Oceans project is an example of how an innovative approach can connect the service industry with environmental protection. Hopefully, we will soon see salons around the world adding their hair to the fight for cleaner rivers and lakes.

Project Contact Information

HAIR HELP the Oceans

• Founders: Emidio Gaudioso (master hairdresser), Thomas Keitel (business consultant)

• Founded: 2022, Germany

• Website and additional information can be found by searching “HAIR HELP the Oceans”