Cortrinkau's Blog

etymology and surprise meanings

I had a realization just now, and I don't know if it's true, but even it's just a folk etymology I want to choose to believe it. The word "erinnern," auf Deutsch, means 'to remember.' But it has a prefix er-, meaning something you do thoroughly, and then what's left is innern. Innern, like innen, inside. Innern would be to keep something inside.

I like that. Our memories are part of us, and they stay part of us. To remember something, etwas zu erinnern, means to hold it inside of you figuratively. In the most special and deepest place where it can reside, in a person's heart.

I'm studying right now (well, not studying – writing this) in the Lesesaal, a reading room on campus. The sun went down and the sky is gradually getting darker. On the other tab of my split screen is Wassily Kandinsky's The Blue Rider, for my art history final, and I'm looking at his brushstrokes, gold and blue mixing at the bottom of the canvas and somehow looking so natural and vivid at the same time, and wishing I could do that. Someone is playing "Wake me up when it's all over" by Avicii, which inspired this. Wake me up when I'm back in Bavaria. All this time, I was finding myself, and I didn't know I was lost. Didn't know I was lost.

The life I truly belong to is that of a painter in Bavaria. That is what my soul wants.

I didn't know I was lost.

der-blaue-reiter

(p.s. -- don't the clouds look like sheep?)