31 Jan 25

I did not feel it pressing down on me, or lifting me from my bed in the middle of the night, that mad desire to capture the moment of being here. It happened in the past, for more than ten years now, and always when I first arrived in Germany. That combination of jet lag and adrenaline, waking in this foreign but familiar place, my second home. Mom always wanted me to call it my house, not “her house,” our house, but it felt so distinctly hers. It felt so distinctly John’s actually, and he was gone 17 years now. So waking here in the middle of the night was like waking to the past, all the paintings and sculptures and guitars John had picked and placed himself. It felt like living in a museum. All that was saved, preserved and protected.

After a few days the adrenaline wears off; after a week you slot into the zone. Most travelers just start acclimating and then it’s time to go. I had less than a week here still, and savored my scant plans. It drew everything out. Mom apologized, she said you must be so bored, but I loved languishing in her living room with all the books and weird antiques they’d collected in France and Germany. A massive, medieval bellows the size of a bath tub they used like a coffee table: it had a metal battle ax balanced in the middle, a large silver horse sculpture too. Or some antique string puppet from India nested in the X of the exposed fachwerk beams bisecting the room into upper and lower parts. The African fertility figures of course, taking each other from behind. Here was the mind of its maker, John Pearse, and the house nested him in its cracks and crevices. If you allowed for that it could leave you feeling haunted or possessed perhaps—or content in his company, to honor the dead.

Now it was just 0700 and already the light was coming on behind the ridge where I walked each morning. Winter never stood a chance with spring. The birds were egging it on more every day, even some cherry blossom blooms on a tree I passed yesterday. I would remember this time well. And had a lot more before it was through.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, Nostalgia, spirituality, travel