Diese Kurzgeschichte ist entstanden, als ich (eigentlich) einen Antrag auf Kulturförderung für ein Kompositions-Projekt stellen wollte, das sich mit den sogenannten „Ewigkeitskosten“ des Steinkohlebergbaus im Ruhrgebiet auseinandersetzt. Zeitgleich hatte ich mich grade mit Vogelgesängen für die Arbeit zu honeycreeper beschäftigt. Nachdem ich diese kleine Skizze geschrieben hatte, fiel mir auf, dass die beiden Themen für mich einen biographischen Zusammenhang haben.

i think about pigeons all the time, oder Geflügelschau
short story
 
Pigeons, pigeons, i am inspired by pigeons, what else can i say, i think about them all the time, i have been my entire life, they were always there, sitting on our roof when my father came home from night shift and wanted to sleep and he kept screaming ´these bloody pigeons´and they still sit on my roof now and i hear them, and i feel they are my friends, they are so cute and also naughty, and people hate them because they shit everywhere, but honestly, it´s not their fault, because their shit only looks like that because they are sick, if they had proper food and a good place to live, their shit would look completely different, it´s our own fault, because we domesticated pigeons before we left them to fend for their own, we put them in cages, bred them to stay close to humans, bred them so they would come back to us, bred them to live with us, to reproduce excessively, live in the cages and huts we build for them, we bred them so they would look fancy, look pretty and some of us invented pigeon competitions, where the prettiest pigeon won. My grandparents used to have a pub in a small city, that city only existed in the way it existed, because there were a lot of coal mines, and people moved there to work in these coal mines. basically the city was founded because of coal and half of the city and all the houses were build and owned by the coal mining industry. and on the weekends people came to the pub and there was a big backroom, where they used to host all sorts of festivities, including chicken- and pigeon-, sometimes rabbit competitions. It was a common hobby for men at that time and they used to bring their best and prettiest pigeon, each in a small cage, to be judged by a small jury of men. i loved running through the isles of cages and look at all the pigeons and also pick a favorite. since then a lot changed, the coal mines closed one by one in the early 2000s, the men who loved the pigeons got old and then died, my grandparents closed the pub, my father lost his job at the coal mine at 50something and was home for a while, which irritated my mother, my sister and me. now my father is close to 70 and whenever i talk to him, he keeps reminding me of my heritage, that my father, my grandfather, and my grand-grandfather used to work in the coal mine. I am glad my father stopped working there early, because the men before him all died quite young because of the effect the work in the mines had on their bodies.
and now here i am, i think about pigeons every day, maybe they mean so much to me because they remind me of the way i grew up. my family and i do not understand each other most of the time, we do not have much in common, we rarely talk and i cringe while i am writing this, because i feel there is so much pathos, but maybe the pigeons mean so much to me because they feel like they are my neighbors who keep an eye on me since i was a child, nice neighbors who wherever i move, show up and keep me company.

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