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