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Every Story Tells A Picture: Martin’s Sausage (from Recollections of Early Childhood)

The text is a fictionalised account, in 39 tercets, of an incident in the life of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Young Martin ponders the nature of pictures, and the possible truths they might give rise to. In the process he involves his friend, Fred. Through a series of encounters with drawings over two days, Martin moves through various understandings of what a picture might be.


Part 1: Only a Picture

Martin was a clever boy 
He liked pretty pictures 
And one day he had a strange idea

What if a picture wasn’t pretty?
Did that mean it was bad?
Martin thought and thought

What do pictures do?
They don’t talk
They don’t walk

They don’t make my dinner
But sometimes they look like my dinner
And when they look like my dinner I think about my dinner

And when I think about my dinner I forget about pictures and feel hungry
I see sausages and sauerkraut and apple strudel
A picture must be very clever, thought Martin

Then he thought some more
A picture doesn’t have a brain 
But Martin made pictures, and Martin had a brain

Then brains make pictures?
But a picture can be of a brain
That’s interesting, Martin thought

So, Martin got out his crayons and made a picture of his favourite dinner
He showed it to his best friend, Fred
Fred said it was so good that he wanted to eat it 

Please don’t eat my picture, Martin shouted
Why not, said Fred?
Because its part of me 

Fred was confused
How can it be part of you, he said
Because it was my brain that made you want to eat it

Oh, that’s why!
Ok Martin, I won’t eat your picture
Can I have some real food instead?

Martin felt happy
But then he felt sad
His picture wasn’t real

And what if it wasn’t him either?
Don’t be sad, said Fred
It’s only a picture


Part 2: Nearly Real and Really Real

That night, Martin woke suddenly
My picture wasn’t pretty
My picture wasn’t me

But my picture WAS real
I made it myself
I showed it to my best friend, Fred

The next day, he made another picture
Again, he showed it to Fred
Does this look like a sausage, he asked?

No, said Fred
It’s a funny shape
It looks like a…

Stop, said Martin
Do you want to eat it?
No I don’t

Why?
It doesn’t look real
It doesn’t look like a sausage

What does it look like?
Well, it looks a bit like a sausage, I suppose
But it’s too big and too bendy

Martin sighed and smiled
If Fred didn’t want to eat his picture of a sausage
Then it was safe

Safe to be a picture
Of a Sausage
And never be eaten

Then Martin felt sad again
For his little picture
Was alone in the world

What would become of it?
Would it be happy?
Why couldn’t it be like other pictures?

Because it wasn’t really real, Martin thought
Which was worse than nearly real
At least Fred wanted to eat yesterday’s picture

How bad, thought Martin, could he make his picture before it became real?
So he set to work
To make the realest picture in the world


Part 3. Something and Not Nothing

Fred, come quick
One last drawing, pleeeeease!
This time he showed Fred a messy smudge on a piece of paper

Where is the sausage, asked Fred?
Not telling, said Martin
So, what is it, asked Martin?

It’s a rubbed out sausage, said Fred
How did you know, asked Martin?
Because I think I can still see it

So, Martin thought, what it is
Is like what it was
But different

I’m hungry said Fred!
This made Martin smile
He had rubbed out his sausage and it didn’t matter

It was a rubbed out sausage?
And it was still real 
And it was his

Martin’s invisible sausage made 
Fred feel hungry
And Martin felt happy

Martin didn’t need his picture
To be real
To make Fred hungry

He thought…
But he needed Fred hungry
To make his picture real

And to be really real
The picture must not 
Be nearly real

It must be sort of real
Near enough to
To be real enough as

And to be just that
Was to be something
Something and not nothing

Enough like something
To be unlike something else
Pictures were very clever indeed


 Tom Palin, 2017


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