For ever and for ever when I move

Two chapters of travel thus far: the first, a meditation on slowness, allowing the body to break out of the pattern of stress built on stress, reassuring the self that it is okay to not be working. After the time of harvest comes the time of plenty, to eat and use the food which has been saved. The practical counterpart to making money is spending money. Be smart, buy only what you need, avoid all luxuries except those which are simple: fresh grapefruit on occasion for breakfast, local jam for the bread, whole milk over skim. Don’t eat meat and don’t buy alcohol. Take bread from the baker and not from the grocer. Allow your mind and your body to relax. Release the stress which has so long accumulated in the back of your neck, pinching tight in your shoulders, aching across your lower back. Let your legs grow strong with the steps you take. Your writing is flitting with panic, white fear which flushes through your skull and makes you blind:

Let it go.

The pages turn and days pass by, still carrying too much, but there is progress. Approaching the calm.

Enter the second chapter, passing through the houses of friends. After the development of self comes the time for relationships. Beginning in Aachen, where conversation carries us through the days; focused on the words we speak, we tour through the city. The next day I walk our same route, alone, and realize with a laugh that nothing is familiar. Focused on ideas, I saw only the cobblestones beneath our feet. Breakfasts stretch out long, lazy, comfortable, moving from coffee to tea, sharing so many words. Feeling home in the company which I traveled so far to meet. Easter Sunday approaches and passes, I move through Germany in the companionship of a new friend, to stay in the houses of old. Travel now switches its focus to deepening and expanding existing relationships. Feeling the glaciers in my chest shift and moan, melting slowly, making space. Not yet understanding the significance of this. No longer spending money except in transit; now cooking meals together in the comfort of so many kitchens, falling into a routine, learning again how to spend time on drawing. The mind is still slightly spasmodic, but the spasms decrease in intensity and number.

Moving toward bicycles in Freiburg, where the air is warm; the mind welcomes the warmth with such gladness. My soul rejoices as the tiny buds break forth on the branches, tiny grey fingers which grasp at the air and explode into color, twisting into brilliant green leaf. The streets are filled with people, sitting on their doorsteps, filling the parks; the cafés open their walls and spill their tables onto the sidewalks and suddenly there are so many people. Public space once again becomes shared, life no longer limited to existing solely in the warmth of the private sphere. Conversation fills the streets, bodies walking for the warmth of the sun and the clean goodness of the air; the city bursts with life, shared gladness at winter’s passing. Time becomes gentle and easy. I move further south in a leap, to Perpignan, to Bordeaux. The second chapter draws to a close and demands decisive direction for beginning the third.

Soon I will move back from the company of others into the company of self. From what is familiar to what is unknown.  Always moving forward, embracing opportunity as it comes. Do not shy back in fear. Not sure where it will carry me, I wait to turn the page.

“This is my first time in Germany!” I excitedly told the driver of my carpool, a hitched ride from Amsterdam to Köln. We met in the cold air outside Hotel Ibis, the car an eclectic mix of persons all looking for cheap transport into Germany.

“And you’re going to.. Aachen?” he asked, in slow disbelief, making the soft guttural scratch of the German ‘ch’-sound. “Yup! Going to Aachen.” I smiled, without granting clarification, my own pronunciation so much more flat and lifeless. English: the neutral divide between lilting, dancing French and softly guttural German. Words pronounced by clicking the tongue definitively against the teeth, in the forefront of the mouth, largely ignoring the back of the throat, keeping our vowels chained beneath the tight restraint of our consonants.

It’s been a unique tour de Deutschland thus far, as I have planned my route via towns where my scattered collection of German friends reside. Aachen, Köln, Marburg, Darmstadt. Still to come: Mannheim, Stuttgart, Freiburg. I make a sharp cut across the western side of Germany, from the northern Netherlands border to the southern Swiss border. From Freiburg, I will take a bus into southern France and move just north of the Pyrénées, across the southern French landscape into Bordeaux.

It’s an incredible relief to be out of hostels and to stop paying exorbitant prices for B&B’s, which, due to weather and circumstance, were the only available options in Iceland and Scotland. In Amsterdam, the hostel was full of stone-cold potheads, dragging out their days in clouds of smoke in the dank basement entrance of the hostel. Three days of walking through the frozen city, watching snowflakes shimmer in the air, the sun a cold reminder of how far away summer actually is: It was enough. Make a beeline into Germany. Warm up the days with friends and couches and free cups of tea, forming a new resolution with self. Fill out job applications and purchase watercolor pencils. Begin to sketch again. Move south, until the short, dying bursts of cold and snow have disappeared into the folds of the warm bosom of a later spring. May, not March. Leave March behind in its own cold dregs and move south, for god’s sake. Leave this awful, bone-chilling cold behind–the long evenings twisting restlessly beneath too-thin sheets, the frozen toes, the heavy bulk of blankets and sweaters and socks, the unrelenting frustration at the sting, the bite, the chill–and move south.

To beaches, to sunshine, to shorts. From beer to wine, from heavy to light, from this collection of snapshots with friends to form the deliberate montage of self. Moving toward a purpose. Searching.

And all the while, with one clear direction in the back of my mind:

Move. South.