Être Fou - Être Libre

In France, in the town Sierck Les Bains, close to the German and Luxembourgish border, there hang a lot of signs which should bring the people to an art exposition. They were made out of metal, varnished black and polished, that you could see yourself inside of them. They were so beautiful

The signs said Être Fou and Être Libre on a crowdy street, always cars were coming along. They hang two men high on telephone and electricity poles. Too high. But one man wanted them. And he was crazy and free enough - how the signs wanted. Let us join him in the last moments of this night.

“On the one side of the street there was an old people’s home. And in this old people’s home they had a treadmill on the first floor, directly behind a huge window. And on this treadmill, one rainy Saturday eve, there was an old man trying to run away from the age, while in his back, on the other side of the street, I stood on a metal fence belonging to a private house, waggling with pincers on the first of two metal belts which fixed the last of the two exposition-signs

It just became dark and late. The distances between the cars going along the road were becoming longer and longer. When I heard one coming, I jumped down, and walked a bit, looked after my hard bleeding wound on my right forefinger, which didn’t hurt cause of my adrenalin, but which colored everything red. Before climbing the fence again, I had a look to the old man on the treadmill. But he still ran silent for my ears with his back to the outside world in his lightened room.

The first metal belt broke. The sign bent. A car came, I jumped down. The second belt was more stubborn. But by my will-power I broke it as well. Immediately I hold the sign with my left uninjured hand that it would not lose his beauty by a crash and would not smash noisy at one of the cars parking under it, close to the door in front of the little private house, where the guest were enjoying a tasty red wine at the same time. Maybe. Just few meters away separated from me by the house facade.

I left the fence and crossed the street to my car I had parked under the running old man. He didn't saw how I stow it away, the second sign, over the first in my trunk. How I started the engine and drove away. Slowly And he didn't saw the fireworks in the black sky coming from a public party on the nearby river while I crossed the border. But I did.