Warning!
This is a book for the open-minded only!
If you feel that you already know all about the mysteries of our existence, your view of life is set and you would like to keep it this way, then this book is not meant for you. Don't bother reading...
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What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
- Plutarch
I was lying sprawled out on my bed, reading.
What else...
After my disastrous running experiment half a year earlier, I had long since returned to my first and foremost and considerably less daunting hobby: literature.
But who could blame me? Whenever I delved into the imaginary worlds of the various authors, everything around me simply disappeared, filling my life with excitement instead! From the moment I've been able to read, I've deeply enjoyed stepping into the different realities hidden in each book and losing myself to the wonders within their realms. With seven to eight books a week, I guess you could say that I might even have suffered from a mild case of reading addiction...
Fortunately for me, a true benefactor of mankind had - already before my time - invented the "Bücherbus". A service of the city of Salzburg, to give its citizens the opportunity to read books for free. In our area, a certain bus stop was reserved for that purpose every Monday from 14:00 – 16:00. During that period an old, decommissioned bus, which had been turned into a mobile library, would wait for prospective readers to come and chose from among its many books. All that was required was to sign up and have the titles of the books you intended to borrow noted in a little yellow booklet. Upon returning the books, preferably within a month, the librarian would put a note to that effect into the booklet and you were free to borrow some more.
Unfortunately for me, it only took me 2½ years from discovering this service to having finished reading all the books in the children's section and I was therefore forced to move on to the more adult kind of literature.
On that particular day, for instance, I was busy reading a book about my star sign, Aries. I sneezed occasionally, while absentmindedly stroking my black cat, Niggi. The content animal was stretched out on the bed, sleeping beside me. As I was allergic to cats in addition to my hay fever, this did nothing to help with my running nose and itching eyes, but I had got used to it over the years and did not mind the inconvenience too much. Not enough, anyway, to shoo away my beloved pet!
Reading about the qualities Aries are said to possess, was exciting for me: according to the book, I was supposed to be outgoing, extroverted, confident, full of passion, blessed with a quick temper and a sometimes unhealthy dose of impatience.
The idea of having all these character traits (even the bad ones) thrilled me, which was why I immediately decided that I did, in fact, house them. That they had always been a part of me.
Surprisingly, something within myself strongly disagreed:
You have to admit, the way you have acted so far does not quite meet the criteria for outgoing behaviour...! A kind of discouraging voice argued. Not talking much to people, keeping mostly to yourself and spending hours on end reading cannot really be classified as extroverted...
