How was I so dumb? Why did I believe I needed a central authority to bestow credentials on me before I could do something I wanted to do? What I wanted was to write, but I knew my English skills were severely handicapped because my primary schools told me so. How could I write if I wasn’t adequately prepared for the mastery of my native language?
I read, read, and read some more. I was fully addicted to reading throughout my youth. When I arrived in Germany as a young adult, I was as close to Bohemia as I could get back in the mid-1980s, considering it was still behind the Iron Curtain. I dug deeper into literature, took on philosophy, added some sociology, and continued into the gutter with William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski, Baudelaire, and any other misfits I could unearth. I had a bit of a routine where, as time allowed, I’d head to a train station to pick up breakfast and the International Herald Tribune. Seated outside, I’d watch the parade of characters passing by and read what was going on around the world.
What I didn’t do was write. I wish I’d known then what I know now: that to write, all one has to do is write. No special permission is required. While I didn’t seek out approval for photography or the consumption of alternative arts, those weren’t subjects that were sanctioned by the state by granting basic competency to participate effectively. Fortunately, I only learned later that photography was a skill where others decided your skills and afforded you opportunities.
It took me years to finally give myself the exercise that would bring me around to writing, and it was related to my curiosity about photography. By the way, my interest in photography began somewhere in the late 1960s when my paternal grandfather gave me a Kodak Brownie camera. Armed with that primitive camera, I felt like a giant, just like my heroic grandfather, who used a 35mm Minolta with an array of lenses. I thought my grandpa was a pro because not only did he have a professional camera, he shot slide film that forced him to show us his photos with a projector on a silver screen.
So the way this ties together is that after many years away from taking photos, I wanted to deeply re-engage with the craft, but just taking photos didn’t seem to be enough anymore. In 2004, I was five years into taking thousands of digital images that simply sat on a hard drive not seen very often, let alone being shared. I’d witnessed the first photo blogs emerging, but as those were proliferating, I already felt they were growing stale as I quickly gained the impression that everyone had a photo-of-the-day website. I realized then that I could try accomplishing that thing I wanted to be passionate about writing. And I would accomplish this by posting a photo and forcing myself to write something about it. That’s just what I did every day for the first year.
Here we are: 14 years after I started blogging, 35 years after I sat in Frankfurt collecting my thoughts, and 51 years after I took my first photo. I’m about to bring it all together with an upcoming trip that will take me to Berlin, Erfurt, and Bayreuth in Germany, where I’ll sit down for some uninterrupted writing while also capturing the situation photographically. I’ll have two weeks of this before Caroline joins me in Frankfurt, where between there and Karlsruhe, I’ll have a few more opportunities for some contemplative writing. Our week in the region will likely pass quickly before we embark on the last leg of our European vacation. What those details are will have to wait.
Most of my travel writings have detailed the adventures of Caroline and me. Even when I’m writing a narrative that she doesn’t appear in, she is still ever-present as when we are together; I believe we see the world differently, and that, in turn, influences how I convey things. While on this trip across Germany, though she won’t be with me physically, I know I won’t be able to avoid her influence because she is somehow always with me anyway.
It is my intention to wander through places exploring the moment to find things that will only be understood by taking the time to selfishly observe nature while my mind participates in extracting things not previously seen or thought of. What words might find my hand while my body sits quietly in the cathedral where Martin Luther was ordained? Walking over the streets, Richard Wagner strode 140 years ago; maybe I’ll stumble upon the inspiration that lends something or other to my perspective. A side trip to Mühlhausen will take me to the church where J.S. Bach performed his Ratswechsel cantata Gott ist Mein König. A year later, he wrote Aus der Tiefe rufe ich after the town and church burned to the ground. Somewhere along the way, I’ll be in Weimar to visit the Nietzsche Archive set in the home where he passed away.
German music, philosophy, art, history, and even the love of my life were found in the country that has had a deep impact on my being. With these upcoming two weeks of wandering through these areas of Deutschland, I hope to find a deeper understanding of just why this land and the creative minds it produced have resonated as profoundly as they have.
This visit to Germany is, in some way, my recapturing of a lost moment I neglected to seize back in the mid-1980s. Back then I had all the freedom in the world to chronicle my adventure as a bohemian hedonist who all of a sudden had the latitude to explore in all directions, but I failed to grasp my opportunity. While today, my hedonism has withered and the crazy experimentation of youth has been satisfied, my curiosity to write through the filter of maturity gathered over the ensuing 30+ years is burning to express itself. Lucky me to have a friend and partner in life who affords me the luxury to satisfy my whims and dreams.
