Finishing something is a misnomer, as no one ever really finishes anything. Everything is in a constant state of becoming the next thing. You finish knitting new socks, and the next pair is already planned. If you will no longer knit you will still analyze the nature of fibers and the forms they’ve taken. Your thinking will continue the work your actions have left behind.
And so it was this morning, believing that my post from yesterday was finished. With no photos to prepare and nothing from the previous day to write about, I was free to fall into my 31st day in Germany with nothing on the agenda requiring me to clean up loose ends. But before I could press the “Add New” button here in WordPress, I scanned the images from yesterday to see the sequence when my eye caught that I’d only written one sentence about the photo of the approaching train.
Only one sentence? Why did that strike me? There are other images with merely one sentence, and I didn’t feel compelled to stop on them. The man from Yorkshire who inspired me to snap the image wasn’t mentioned; I should add that. Now, I was able to continue my scroll down, inspecting the sequence. What was it about the first words under the green blur with my reflection that pulled me in to make changes there? Then, I needed to rework other parts of that paragraph and add a new one.
I had to save those changes and stop looking at yesterday’s work if I was going to move over here to start a new entry on a new day about new things. Instead, today’s theme seems to be established as the neverending something or other, which is okay as that follows the threads that connect me to my days and my thoughts to words.
Also, connecting things is our niece Katharina. As for her and me, this is our second time meeting while I’ve been in Germany. She’s currently attending university in Darmstadt with a full schedule that keeps her busy. But here we are out for a walk on the Nidda River that we had planned before her father, and I went off to the Wattenmeer. Who knew it would be raining? With her enthusiasm for a walk on a wet day, there was no way I was going to let a 21-year-old young lady be tougher than her uncle from America. So we walked, and I tried not to whine too much.
Like so many people in transition to becoming adults, these are trying times for this young lady but she’s determined to do the right things to work through her studies and the other challenges presenting themselves. As we walked along and the rain continued to fall a man riding his bicycle spoke out as he was passing how nice it was to see other “Rain People.”
That was nice enough, but then he stopped his bike next to a lone goose walking on our path to commune with it. As we caught up with him, I told him how much I appreciated his greeting and seeing that he, too, enjoyed a moment with random animals encountered while traveling. Learning that he was already drunk here before lunch and was at peace with his alcoholism caught me by surprise. We talked about the 12 Steps before he tried sharing his ideas for the 13th step, where he was happy with his drinking and that it was no longer the problem it used to be. Some things were lost in translation, but it was appreciated, this encounter with a happy drunk.
Katharina and I continued our walk in the rain with nary a break in the weather. This wasn’t going to be a trek to Bad Vilbel like my previous walk on this trail as I was going to head into the city center to visit Jutta, and she had an appointment to get her first shot of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine after lunch with her mom and dad.
After four days of not seeing Jutta, it was time to visit her, especially as my opportunities to do so were dwindling as I approached going home. I recounted my time shared with her other son-in-law Klaus up at the Wattenmeer and showed her the pictures on my blog. Jutta doesn’t do internet, so it’s not an option for her to grab updates there, which is sad, as much of Caroline’s and my life is shared here. She’d so easily be able to have a richer connection to her daughter beyond the weekly phone calls, but my mother-in-law was not made for the age of technology. Her dinner hour was upon us, so I bid her goodbye and ventured out for my own evening meal.
Late addition to this post: The next day, I called Jutta to excuse myself for not showing up on Friday because I needed a down day to just relax and do nothing. She asked if Klaus and I were back yet. There was no memory of the hours I spent with her on this day, and while I certainly am well aware of the state of her fading memory, I learned today just how bad it is. Yes, this can be a normal part of the life process, but still, I’m deeply saddened to know that all of her beautiful memories that power her sweet smile are heading for the exit.
Google suggested the Tonbul Grill und Kebap Haus for “Best Döner” in Frankfurt. Do I think it was the best? Nope, but it was nice, with the bread baked in-house being a standout, just as the reviews mentioned. What would I change? Add more meat.
I was already near Konstablerwache when it occurred to me, with my roughly 85 hours remaining in Germany, that this might be my last opportunity to head up train line U5 towards Preungesheim, stopping at Glauburgstrasse for the short walk to Eis Christina and another spaghetti ice cream. Getting off the train, I looked around and didn’t recognize anything, so I turned left but couldn’t find Glauburgstrasse. Had the intersection been rebuilt? Google again to the rescue, Glauburgstrasse was behind me, and then it dawned on me the train stop had been moved north and was modernized.
It’s no longer the middle of the day. It’s not the end of the day either. It’s the part of the day I sit down with some intention that I believe my location might lend itself to finding some inspiration. During these initial moments of panic, I want to throw up my hands and yell at myself, “What do you think you’ll do here sitting in another of the many places you’ve sat before with the hope of falling into the raging creative waters of discovery?” The greatest of all insights might be right here awaiting just one word, one letter, one thought, but if I don’t take a break and listen closely, I could miss the beginning of the thread waiting to unspool.
Being in Germany, I can afford (or am I forced to afford?) the luxury of not understanding the majority of what I choose not to comprehend. There’s this curse of starting to pick up on what people around me are saying. These Germans I previously believed were geniuses are the same idiots I find in America, only with better manners and a near-absolute lack of guns. I never wanted to know that these hairless apes of Teutonic descent were still plumbing their inner Neanderthal, but that’s the sad truth. In order to not give in to that despairing realization, I find comfort in allowing German to enter my ears as a blur where everyone can be either Hannah Arendt or Jurgen Habermas. Die Fantastischen Vier and Einsturzende Neubauten are still channeling Wagner and Kurt Weill, while artists are all taking inspiration from Marc Chagall and Joseph Beuys.
After being here in Germany for a month, I’m torn between old-world culture and big open nature. The two do not coexist in the same space here. America still has room to get lost in, but our culture is a hodgepodge of intellectual laissez-faire posturing brutishly, while Germans have dialed in the art of acting as intellectuals in order to appear superior while not having more than a football field’s worth of open space one would call raw nature. I should recognize that this leaves nowhere on earth that I might fit in. Good thing that nature and human survival do not depend on my opinions or contribution to anything at all.
Jesus John, why even exist? Because there’s big big love. My love of Caroline, family, trees, ocean, mountains, fish, animals, planets, stars, potentials, dreams, and ice cream. My ideals are packed with love, but the audience is thin for receiving the lament that accompanies the bludgeoning insults that I offer while decrying the media and its minions for offering the negative messages that reach the masses. Well, that’s a mighty tall view of self-important righteous indignation! I never said I’m modest, though the truth is that I’m quite modest to the point of near invisibility, should you judge this from my readership.
Why persist? Because the heartbeat of life dictates such, and I’m having fun, no matter what you might read elsewhere or here. Plus, if I find what I seem lost in trying to apprehend, maybe the very keys to happiness will accompany this discovery. Not that I require those keys, as in most ways you’d have a hard time convincing me I’m not happy, but all around me, I see a pseudo-happiness of fake people living fake lives using facades to be those they are not. Presumptuous on my part, I know, but hyperbolic elitism with strong delusional opinions is my specialty, while my superpower is being a pretentious blowhard.
With faults like these, can I be serious? These are not faults; they are skills I’ve carefully cultivated in my observations of how not to be like anyone else aside from my mentors, who were a bunch of assholes too. Maybe you are thinking my mentors might not be the assholes, but it’s just me trying too hard? Right, because a bunch of sad philosophers who go mad while trying to influence people and develop friends make for jolly drinking buddies (this does not include Herbert Marcuse).
By the way, I absolve myself of guilt of writing such tripe and blame it on the effects of ice cream crashing into my diabetes, but if you don’t buy that, well, let me work on something of a better excuse.
GO, you have 4 minutes to write the most important thing you will ever share. How does one even prepare for this marathon of compressed meaning and relevance to make it worthwhile? What if this were your last 4 minutes of life, and the message you must craft will determine your transition into the afterlife, no plagiarism allowed. What if you had only 4 minutes to tell the person you love such a powerful conveyance of just that, where the words would sear a place in their heart and into eternity, your words would have a life of their own? We are not well prepared for this exercise or any such activity that asks us to dump our deepest thoughts in meaningful ways.
Instead, we spend years refining skills that will make a wealthy man ever more powerful, and we collectively believe we are finding value in this equation. Certainly, we must invent, build, care for, and advance the systems that support life, but doing so in a meaningful, systematic, and equitably distributed manner is not part of our plan; scarcity will ensure we remain scared and then covet what little we earn while sacrificing our short time on earth for the egos and comforts of a few. Maybe the system will have made believers of those most dedicated who can then be advocates as they lead a cheer for joining the cult of productivity. I’m not suggesting work is bad; I’m saying that 40 hours a week with two days for one’s self is not allowing us to find what in our lives is worth developing that would serve our souls, and please don’t suggest God.
Speaking of that, hey, Artificial Intelligence Gods, how about you analyze these 1.4 million words and measure the amount of redundancy where I effectively repeated myself verbatim? But while you are at it, maybe you could also illuminate the passages where I found some tiny bit of originality. Hmm, interesting for me would be that someday, an artificial intelligence learned that I was its father and that my writings were the basis of its memories and patterns for cognition in order for it to pass a Turing test. The headline of this advancement in artificial life might read, “John Wise, deceased for 20 years, fathers the first digital entity using the remains of his linguistic DNA.”