The other day, while walking through a park near my apartment in Berlin, it occurred to me that if I were to come back in a second life as another creature Iâd like to return as a red squirrel; and that Iâd like to be cast into a quiet corner of a large forest in Brandenburg. There, for the duration of my short life, I could spring from branch to branch trapped between a state of great joy and some unshakeable feeling of anxiety.
Iâm fascinated by the German word for squirrel: das Eichhörnchen. It contains the words die Eiche (the oak tree) and das Hörnchen (the small horned creature). Reconstituting these parts, then, das Eichhörnchen becomes a sort of small magic-realist being whose outline haunts what I usually picture when I think of a squirrel. It is as if I am looking at the idea of a squirrel from a new direction.