Good morning to the dawn, and hello to the light of day. Thank you for welcoming us into another waking moment where we can consider how we might use our time to wander into the most amazing lives we’ll ever know.
And here comes the sun to shine on Café Dillenburg where we are fetching our daily bread and entertaining the idea that we could bring some of their Brötchen home with us, and I’m not only talking about this home away from home at Haus Engelhardt. With our morning meal bagged up, we raced back to Blauwiesenweg, where the butter and all variety of jams will join a pot of coffee for the greatest breakfast ever experienced. Unless you know the real pleasures of echtes Deutsches Brot, you cannot relate to my endorsement of this fascination and luxury to be had when munching on fresh Brötchen with homemade jams.
No time to spare as we have things to do and people to see. The vacation within the vacation continues, while the vacation from vacation(s) will have to wait until Saturday night after we land and all of Sunday before Caroline steps back into work and I get busy trying to knock out a bunch of blog posts. Having only about 36 hours of recuperation sounds dire and likely difficult considering our age, but that’ll be nothing a lot of coffee can’t conquer.
Who schedules these itineraries? It’s already 9:45 as we near the corner where Lebenshaus sits across from the Main River; our first date of the day is expecting us any minute.
Guten Morgen, Frau Engelhardt. Hello, Mr. Wise. With the formalities out of the way and Jutta finished with her breakfast, we offer the briefest of visits as we are meeting someone at the Hauptbahnhof in less than an hour, but we’ll be back later.
Yo dude, how’s God?
Check the background; God is everywhere.
I wonder, too, about how many times I’ve shared a photo from right here at Römer, but today, I’m trying something new; later, I’ll share another photo of Römerberg but from a different angle.
While this might look like a decoration in the floor of something or other, it’s actually a 1000-year-old rod of gold that was buried by a Valkyrie and is said to provide eternal life to all those who lick it to taste the flavor of Valhalla that it connects to. I swear.
Seems I might have misread this sign in the past. A dozen years ago, Caroline and I were visiting the Montreal Basilica, and I thought this sign (displayed without the Psst message) was a signal to parents that it was okay for children to pick their noses, but seeing the sign like this changes the meaning significantly. I thought about correcting that old post, but I’ve decided to leave it as proof that for once in my 60 years, I’m owning one of my mistakes.
It was just a year ago that this mystery woman on the left (I already know the one on the right) was this elusive figure from the Cologne, Germany, area the world had never seen. Today, I’m unmasking her: she is Claudia, the Brünnhilde of fiber arts, kumihimo, and tablet weaving, to be exact. Last year, Caroline traveled north to see her in person for the first time; today, Claudia traveled south so these two could meet again. How they have anything to discuss is beyond me as they chat on a near-daily basis, making the most of the time between Caroline going to sleep and Claudia’s waking to punctuate some rare time Claudia seems to find between performing her super-human; I think Nietzsche called it “Ubermenschian,” feats of fiber knowledge distillery that could only have emerged from mythology.
I think jealousy is in order here because consider this: Caroline loves me and makes me socks. Claudia has knitted a pair of socks for Caroline that she’s modeling right here, and while blurred, I think it’s obvious that Claudia is looking lovingly at this “wedding banded sock” pattern that I think the women were hoping I wouldn’t notice.
After allowing Claudia to buy us lunch because who doesn’t need a free meal after what we just spent in Scandinavia, I stormed off in a jealous huff of rage to drown my sorrows.
At first, I considered throwing myself on the subway tracks, but this poster looking for leads of a corpse found in the Spandau forest back in 1988 kind of depressed me. Those haunting, hollow eyes made me realize that death wasn’t an option for me. But ice cream was.
The race against time unwinding is on with only 48 hours left before we step out of Europe to return home to the U.S. I’d opened a small window of two hours where I’d attempt to plumb some inspiration to write, but the limitation feels harrowing as my inclination is to shove the intensity of the previous month onto the page in as many words that I can wring out of my hand. I didn’t anticipate that the location I’d chosen to find my wit would be as busy as I found it, but it was a beautiful late summer day at the most popular ice cream shop in Frankfurt. I should have moved to a coffee shop, but minutes are precious when the clock cannot be paused.
Life is like this bowl of ice cream, refreshing and sweet, but it’s melting and will go away. I have a choice not to finish every drop and allow the remainder to be carried off, but who would allow a second or a drop to not be savored?
For 34 years, I’ve been returning to this corner at Wielandstrasse and Eckenheimer Landstrasse in Frankfurt’s north end. I lived nearby for six years and took everything other than my relationship with Caroline for granted as it was all just normal life of no special importance. Only in retrospect have I gained the perspective that the years of our 20s contribute greatly to our romantic notions and nostalgia for the world we were exploring as it lingers into the years. We were defining and shaping the people who would enter the next decade excited or bored, satisfied or angry, challenged or defeated.
I see a couple of elderly ladies well into their 80s at an adjacent table while seemingly mirror images from their past; two young ladies about 21 years old are seated at the table on their other side. The young women have no idea yet that their future selves are already forming inside them and that what is so intensely important to them on this day will lose all importance before they know it. The rapid advancement and intrusion of technology and an ever-present media have torn the fabric between generations into irreparable shreds where the groups are nearly alien to each other. There is no regard for the elderly, who are bulldozed into giving up their bearings and made to feel incompetent, while youth have no time for studied reflection or even self-study before having to respond to the next wave of electronic stimulation.
When do we arrive at the place where we start to gather the knowledge that will best serve us? Are we collectively fooled into believing that the essentials are found in clothes, hair products, a favorite sports franchise, the band we currently love, or the subject blowing up on viral media? To be a composite of media contrivances is a cruel joke on the masses who feast upon anything other than the bitter questions of what it might mean to exist.
There’s no suggestion that any particular area of study is going to deliver a hint of enlightenment or happiness. Likewise, only the idiot would fall for what’s being fed to society. For the sake of transparency, I, too, have played the idiot, and to an extent and on occasion still do. But, I also have some inkling that I must struggle in the word soup of my mind and ask myself: is this good enough? Have I been wasting my precious attention?
The line at the ice cream shop snaked around the corner as a kind of proof that we gravitate towards the sweet, and rarely do we lineup for the bitter. Bitterness introduces a grimace and the consternation that we have to contextualize our experience to find the value; it is not readily apparent. Time for me to go for a walk.
Starting from Nordend, I walked until I reached the Alte Nikolaikirche (Old St. Nicholas Church) on Römerberg. I dipped inside to take a respite from the bustle of the busiest square in the city. There are four of us in the church, which is peculiar when one considers how frequently it’s photographed. Then again, who on a sunny Thursday afternoon is interested in communing with their soul? The house of God is cold and nearly empty, and I suppose rightfully so when cake & coffee or a beer under a warming sun invites indulgence. I wonder if Jesus stands in a corner wondering where his faithful are.
Turning from the Lord, whom I do not know, to my mother-in-law, whom I’m quite familiar with, I leave the church for the short walk to Lebenshaus but not before delivering that second promised photo from a different angle of Römerberg.
We must try our best to capture the increasingly rare moments of the few that still exist, with those who have had impactful impressions upon who we’ve become. The math of what remains with a person of 88 years of age under their hat is one of numbers growing smaller. While my mother-in-law had nothing to do with my upbringing or early life impressions, she did have those impacts on the woman with whom I fell head over heels in love, her daughter Caroline. Not only that though, Jutta spent many a vacation with us in the United States, and in every departing, I had to contend with how I saw myself and how I interacted with Caroline’s mother. Her initial visits tended to be marred by my lack of sympathy and understanding of aging people. I struggled with the intransigence of someone habituated to a routine incompatible with my own. Reconciling my belligerence helped me grow and understand where the roots of those poisons were planted and what fed them; if I’m lucky, lessons were pressed right into my heart, and today, I’m a better person for my time shared with this lady.
Shoot, earlier, I went on some made-up tirade about some tryst or something between Caroline and Claudia; yeah, well, I was joking, but I did go have a Spaghetti Eis because every time is a good time for a treat from Eis Christina. Sadly, upon our return to Phoenix, we learned that after 50 years in business, Eis Christina is calling it quits, at least at this location, as they left a hint they could open elsewhere in the future, but that remains uncertain.
What is certain is that Caroline still loves me and will still make socks for me and that she loves her mother. Rarely does a Sunday pass while we are in the States that these two don’t talk on the phone for at least a couple of hours, and while we are in Germany, we try to take every opportunity to say hi, take her out for a sweet, sit with her next to the river, have a coffee, and simply share time with her.
So much beauty, potential for happiness, and great moments can be found in a day, though this seems amplified by the fact that we are traveling and only in places momentarily. Stopping to think about it, isn’t that what we have at home, too? What is it about routine that throws a pall over the day? Could it be that while engaged in habit, we forget to look up and see what our reality is? Well, I think it’s that and something else, which is the attitude of those around us. If the outlook of those around us carries an intellectual pallor that is gloomy and full of dark storms, we risk getting pulled into their maelstrom. We can walk across the bridge with someone we love and with whom we enjoy smiling and delight at the opportunity to be taking in life, but we can also fail to see any hope due to depression and gravity that pulls those exposed to negativity and despair into the void.
I think of my own days walking through this city, unable to see the brilliance of the day, when everything was cast in shades of gray due to my dejection of not only feeling like an outsider in this foreign land but also because I felt like an outsider of the human race. That version of me, which wasn’t a daily thing but frequent enough that scars remain, is a person I’m happy to have left behind. Hardly a day goes by where I don’t wonder why society cultivates this type of harm against those who are vulnerable and what it is in the human character that desires to hurt those already in pain. While I’m an atheist, I still care for those who are poor, not only financially but poor of confidence and societal acceptance due to some perceived flaws that allow those of privilege to cast aspersions.
I’m not one considering an entry to the idea of heaven, but to too many of those who claim faith, how do you reconcile your blatant ignorance of the book that holds many lessons that are wholesome and good with the harm you inflict on the poor, hurt, and depressed people that are likely suffering due to your lack of concern to repair a society that rewards harm and aggression against those who cannot defend against your systems? Isn’t it your bible where the quote, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, comes from?
Please don’t take this last quote that a rich man is only the person with a lot of money; it pertains to all of us who have a rich life even if we are not financially in the greatest of places. What do we give to others? What do we take away or deny? Are we only rowing forward for our own sake? I supposed I’m okay with that reality, but then let’s put the pretense of some Christian ideology behind us. Let’s do away with the lies and admit that we are selfish, petulant little assholes enjoying the greed bag of stuff we can claw away from others. You, who give back through sharing knowledge, care, art, music, medicine, teaching, and protecting others, are the best part of Team Humanity that society cultivates on the margin.
Today feels like a lesson in how to slice time into a hundred pieces. We started with breakfast at Haus Engelhardt, dipped in on Jutta, met up with a distant friend, ate ice cream, wrote, returned to Jutta, thought some more, and wrote, finishing the day with dinner in honor of our friends Olaf and Sylvia and their (by now young adult) children Johnny and Lucy. While this was possibly in recognition of Olaf’s upcoming birthday, I think it was more about friends getting together on one of the rare opportunities we are in proximity to each other’s orbit.
On our way, we stumbled past Dal Bianco Pizza on Darmstädter Landstrasse, which appears to be the long-lost place that I thought had the greatest garlic bread ever back when I lived in Sachsenhausen for some months around 1991, but that’s another story. I’m leaving this note here with the hopes that on a subsequent visit to Germany, we’ll remember that I left his breadcrumb. Closing out the night, Olaf introduced me to a couple of things he’s currently listening to; at the top of the list for me is the psychedelic band Wooden Shjips; he also encouraged me a listen to Little Simz, born to Nigerian parents in London, England. I find her real name, Simbiatu “Simbi” Abisola Abiola Ajikawo, far more interesting than Little Simz.
