How to be a Lighthouse

By Martin Auer

26 hilarious stories with a philosophical twist:
How to Be a Lighthouse - The World’s Most Famous Man - The Convent of Illumination - Questions You Had Better Not Ask - An Introduction to Magic and others.
The stories were written for Martin Auer's monthly column on creative thinking in India's "Parenting" magazine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Auer
• Release date: Feb 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458064554

Martin Auer

Scroll down for English bio Martin Auer wurde 1951 in Wien geboren. Er hat die Universität besucht und dort ein Jahr lang das Studium von Germanistik und Geschichte und dann ein weiteres Jahr das Dolmetsch-Studium geschwänzt. Stattdessen hat er Theater gespielt. War sieben Jahre lang Schauspieler, Dramaturg und Musiker am „Theater im Künstlerhaus“. Hat dann eine Band gegründet. Ist als Liedermacher aufgetreten. Hat Gitarreunterricht gegeben. Die Weltrevolution vorbereitet (gratis). Als Texter für Werbung und Public Relations Übertriebenes, Unwahres und Einseitiges verbreitet (für Geld). Für Zeitungen gearbeitet. Sich zum Zauberkünstler ausgebildet. Ist bei Betriebsfesten und Kindergeburtstagen aufgetreten. Hat irgendwann einmal auch ein Kinderbuch geschrieben. Das 1986 veröffentlicht wurde. Seither betrachtet er sich als Schriftsteller und hat aus diesem Grund noch über vierzig weitere Bücher geschrieben, davon ca. zwei Drittel für Kinder. Auch einige Preise eingeheimst, z.B. den Kinderbuchpreis des Kultusministers von Nordrhein-Westfalen 1990, den Österreichischen Kinder- und Jugendbuchpreis 1994, 1998 und 2000, den Förderpreis des österreichischen Bundesministeriums für Verkehr (das damals auch für Wissenschaft und Kunst zuständig war) 1996 und den Jugendbuchpreis der Stadt Wien 1997 und 2002. Er wurde nominiert für den Deutschen Jugendliteraturpreis 1997, und für den internationalen Hans-Christian Andersen-Preis 1997. 2005 wurde ihm für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich der Berufstitel Professor verliehen, was er ehrend, aber auch irgendwie lustig findet. Martin Auer ist Vater einer erwachsenen Tochter, Großvater von zwei etwas jüngeren Enkeln und Vater einer kleinen Tochter. Er lebt in Wien und hat keine Katzen. Martin Auer (pronounce as in “happy hour”)was born in 1951 in Vienna, Austria. He attended university but never really studied anything there. He was an actor, a musician, a singer-songwriter, a teacher, a journalist, a stage magician, a copy-writer for public relations agencies. His first book was published in 1986, and since then he has been a free lance writer. By now he has published over 40 books, among them childrens books which have won various awards and have been translated into several different languages.

Book preview

Martin Auer

How to Be a Lighthouse

Copyright 2011 Martin Auer

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Contents

How to Be a Lighthouse

The World’s Most Famous Man

Advertising

The Convent of Illumination

A Little Bit of Logic

Mr. Jaiswal and his Daughter Zelda

Questions You Had Better Not Ask

The Kitty

More of Mr. Jaiswal and his Daughter Zelda

An Introduction to Magic

An Introduction to Magic Part II

Eating disorder

Hard times

A Fair Deal

The King Who Loved the Truth

The Miser's Dream

Three Stories About Logical Thinking

The Planet of Oz

The Two Brothers Who Needed Help

The Unlucky Hunchback

How to Talk to a Tyrant

The Word of God

The Bird of Knowledge

All Alone with the Thoughts in his Head

Six Billion Billiard Balls

The Poem

About the Author

How to Be a Lighthouse

I remember now, in an earlier life I was a lighthouse. You probably won't know that, but souls do pass on to buildings and machines as well. For instance, if you lead a sinful, wasteful life, you might come back as a car. Or a dishwasher. This only happens to people. A frog never comes back as a lawn mower. It wouldn't know how to be one. But there are many people who know perfectly well how to be a lawn mower. So take care of your karma.

Anyway, when I woke up to consciousness and the world saw my light I was real proud. I flashed out my message over the sea: Two short, one long, pause, three short. And again after two minutes: Two short, one long, pause, three short. And again. And again. This really kept me happy for days. Months even. Two short, one long, pause, three short. That was my message to the world. And a good message it was. It saved lives. It helped thousands of seamen to make a living. Support their families. It kept world trade going. Two short, one long, pause, three short. Cool rhythm, too! Two short, one long, pause, three short! It really was something!

After a while I began to wonder if there wasn't a deeper meaning to it also. I watched the sea. Didn't the waves roll in from the sea in just that rhythm? First two small ones, then a big one, then a short calm, then three small ones again? Most of the time they seemed to follow that rhythm. Of course you had to know when to start the count. Sometimes I got it wrong. But that was due to a momentary lack of concentration on my part. The waves were all right, they kept to the pattern. I was quite sure of that.

And the wind. The wind did it too. The sequence of light breezes, stronger gusts and calms in between followed the same pattern. Of course, not everybody could differentiate correctly between breeze and gust. You had to get the feel for it. But once you knew when to expect a breeze and when a gust, it became rather easy to tell which was which.

And then there were the seagulls. The way they sat in a row on the rocks below me was not random at all. If you looked closely, you could notice that the spaces between them followed the same pattern again.

All this was no accident. There was meaning in it. Two short, one long, pause, three short. It was a law of nature. Two short, one long, pause, three short. Yes, I had found a fundamental law of nature, no mistake.

But had I really found it? Had it been the same, before I had come, before I began flashing out my signal? How could the waves have known which sequence they should follow rolling in from the sea, without my flashing out the rhythm for them? How could the wind have known how to blow, the seagulls how to seat themselves on the rock? Wasn't nature as a whole following my rhythm, like an orchestra follows the conductor? Hadn't I, in fact, given the law to nature?

A grand thought, yes. Proud. Or was I being too conceited? But facts are facts, aren't they?

Even the stars arranged themselves in the night sky after the same fashion. You could draw imaginary lines through the them, and find the pattern along those lines. Sometimes it were the different sizes of them which formed the pattern, sometimes the spaces between them, sometimes their brightness. But the pattern could be found all over the sky if you only looked for it. So this in fact was the secret formula of the world: Two short, one long, pause, three short. It was everywhere. The grass at my foot was too far away for me to determine the relative lengths of single blades, but I was sure they would follow the pattern.

There was only one thing that annoyed me. On very clear nights I could see a small star very low above the horizon. It was a blinking star. And it blinked three short, pause, three short, pause, three short... It never varied. It didn't keep to the rhythm. It upset everything. The whole harmony of nature was disrupted by this little star.

Two short, one long, pause, three short! I flashed at it angrily.

Three short, pause, three short, pause... it flashed back.

TWO SHORT, ONE LONG, PAUSE, THREE SHORT!

Yes, sure, three short, pause, three short, pause...

TWO SHORT, ONE LONG, PAUSE, THREE SHORT!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, what's biting you? Three short, pause, three short, pause...

YOU'RE BREAKING UP THE RHYTHM!

What rhythm?

TWO SHORT, ONE LONG, PAUSE, THREE SHORT!

Yeah, cool rhythm. Three short, pause, three short, pause...

SO WHY CAN'T YOU FOLLOW THE PATTERN LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE DOES? TWO SHORT, ONE LONG, PAUSE, THREE SHORT!

Because I have to do three short, pause, three short, pause... I can't do anything else.

BUT YOU SHOULD FOLLOW MY PATTERN!

Why?

"BECAUSE I AM THE LIGHTHOUSE!"

My god, what a laugh they had. The sea and the wind, the rocks and the seagulls, every single blade of grass beneath me, they were all howling with laughter. And the other lighthouse of course, ha ha ha, pause, ha ha ha, pause the whole night.

As you can imagine, I had a hard time learning about the size of the globe and the length of all the coastlines; about navigation and trigonometry; about sea maps and sailors handbooks and the reason why every lighthouse has its own individual signal which distinguishes it from the others. And about needing at least two points of reference to determine ones position. That recognizing a single lighthouse doesn't really tell you where you are.

I couldn't believe any of this at first. There was no meaning in it. It wasn't real. Only after a while