Walking and hiking have been lifelong passions. I delight in seeing what there is along my way and what might be around the bend, or down that narrow street. Sometimes the briefest encounter or experience appears to signify something other. As I have practiced seeing, I can now sustain the meditation for longer periods, even a day. What may be one of life's delights from nature or nurture, it is now often intentional, almost a way of being and, let it be said, becoming.
A tract
I met a guy on the trail I was crossing. I asked him what was down the way he had come.
"Oh," he said. "There's a little stream."
He asked me where I came from. I told him I had left the trail down in the meadow near where the cars were parked. I was headed up to the ridge. No comment as he kept his pace.
As he disappeared from view, I asked him not to tell anyone that I didn't always follow the trails. He cautioned me to be careful.
I continued straight up through the woods to the ridge. After a while, I saw daylight at the crest. A bit winded, my heart reminding me it had once before rebelled, I skirted around and reached the ridge via a gentler incline.
Another view rewarded me as I emerged from the woods.
Look, look again
Back then in the central Rockies, south of Leadville, I think. Either before or during the time I was considering further formal studies of some sort. On the trail in and out of the wilderness, at what could not be the same but we would say roughly was the same point, I stopped and looked up at an outcropping with a tall evergreen to the right of it, low lying scrub to the other side continuing down the slope for a short ways. I was not looking for something, merely looking. If I took five paces ahead or backwards, the object of my gaze changed, and changed again with one pace, and again with the slightest change in the angle of my head.
Reality really is such an elusive thing.
I often stop now and pick a point or feature some distance away. Whether on a trail or because of some urban scene, any really. The exercise confirms we know nothing and everything and no one or no two can have it exactly same.
Still, in medias res
A bus stops across the street.
From my bench, I become more attentive to the human landscape. It is as diverse as it is. Comparisons are meaningless. And I am the landscape. That I am as a different as everybody else believes they are is the only truth. And thus in one way the same. Some stand out, others pass me by without my registering more than that. It's a differentiated landscape. Attending to this not that is perhaps cellular and nothing else.
A restaurant named Joe's. By the bus stop. Seems ordinary enough. Enough to go unnoticed and go out of business. The building sits and sits. It was there when I was a child. What it does must have some resilient genes. They split and split. I guess Joe's is the same but in some way not.
from February 2, Wednesday, '06
Aying
I found myself in front of Lienard's brewery restaurant, where we had eaten the evening before. I looked around in the cold and decided my stop was a bit further on, down the street and the first left, about a hundred yards. I considered a detour around the Bavarian church to the stop, but I wasn't sure of the exact time of the bus. So I proceeded directly to the stop. I passed by the little grocery store on my left and saw that the seasonal bulk-trash pickup was probably today--a dated light fixture was in the pile with the dusty bulbs still in it. Something to go over a wooden Bavarian kitchen table or dining nook, I guessed. I got to the stop and checked and rechecked the schedule. The bus was due there just before nine. It was just after eight. I had time, so I decided to walk to the next stop, according to the schedule one minute away by bus. It was at the Gasthof zur Post, Peiss. I walked down the right side of the street and my leg brushed a bit of someone else's pile of throwaways. I then crossed to the left side. There were pastures coming up I knew, and the right side was not appealing. As I walked I passed by fences and driveways. There were recyclables now in evidence. I saw one pile of bottles, mostly wine and sekt. I thought this household drinks quite a bit. But then I thought so did I, if you were to count the bottles I tossed in the recycling bin. After I had passed the last dwelling on the right, I found the pastures, and there were horses or ponies in the distance. I remembered them from two days before. I had seen them from the bus, standing all in a group facing one way. I had wondered why. About half way along the fields, I turned around and walked backwards a few steps, taking in the skyline of Aying, thinking I may never be here again. I did that twice and thought finally that the skyline from this vantage point was unremarkable. The small horses were in the field at the back, standing around. Three were horsing around, perhaps a kind of who-is-in-charge-around-here kind of game, with a few nips that did not seem to take or hurt. They settled into the cold. Next to the sidewalk two of them stood silently, facing where I had come from. They didn't notice me, but I noticed one. His penis was hanging out. I thought this might be cold for him, and discerned that he must have been airing it out, to get rid of bugs or sterilize it somehow. He and it didn't move. I got to the main road and turned left into Peiss.
Peiss
The first building I noticed on my left was Gasthof zur Post. It was an Italian restaurant. I had hoped it or something would be open so I could get out of the cold. I wasn't wearing my long johns today, the first day in about a week. I thought corduroy trousers would be enough. They were, but it was cold and my leather coat was getting colder. Good for wind but when it gets cold, it comes through. I saw the bus stop on the right hand side of the road, on the sidewalk which was banked by ice and dirty snow from the road. I crossed the street and checked and rechecked the schedule. Yep, I was one minute beyond the last stop, but that was about an eight minute walk. I considered going to the next stop, but that might have been beyond the town limit of Peiss and on the road to the next village. Too uncertain, I thought. So this would be my boarding point. I walked up and down the sidewalk for a few minutes, to keep warm and to scout for some place to shelter from the cold. The stop was in the shade. On the other side of the street, in weak sunshine, was a very large pile of trash. A driver from a truck on my side of the road had apparently exited, and wanted to inspect the throwaway piles. He was across the street with some kind of electronic device in his hand. He polked around and moved to the next pile, returned to the first, put back what he had found and crossed the street and got into his truck. A farmer, perhaps, then came from behind the Gasthof and deposited small pieces of finished wood onto the pile and disappeared from whence he came. A window opened on the second floor of the Gasthof and a woman threw out a large box carefully which landed open-side up below. She disappeared. She reappeared several times and dropped bedding into the box below. She then came out the side door, and with a little difficulty carried the box somewhere. I stopped watching and thought the church behind me might be open. Shelter again. I looked for a light inside, but saw what I thought was ice on the inside of the glass. I didn't venture the entry path to the side door. I thought it unlikely was open. I checked the time, probably, and decided to walk. Walked past the church and past some light industry to where the road forked, about two hundred yards. I started up the road to my left, but it looked like it ended within sight. I considered it for a minute, turned around and followed the main road down toward some railroad tracks. I saw a man get out of his car, parked on the right. He walked toward me and entered the driveway to a house being built. He was in work clothing. I continued down the road towards the railroad tracks. As I approached, the barrier came down announcing an approaching train. I stopped as if a car--I did not approach the gate but waited and looked around. A car or two approached from the other side, the road there being a long stretch through a snow covered field with woods in the background some distance away. It was very quiet. I looked left, to a wood building, smallish, which appeared like a station. And then right. There was a building on the track with a platform stuck onto it. That must be the station, but it looked more like a home. The train, actually an S-bahn, came and stopped at the platform. I noted the end stop Kreuzstrasse. I knew this train and realized this was one stop beyond Aying, my usual disembarkation point, on its way to the end of the line, my second usual disembarkation point. It silently started on its way and there were sparks between the overhead electrical wires and the carriage on the train which took the electricity and turned it into locomotion. The crackle and snap of these blue sparks continued and captured my view as the train passed me and disappeared down the way to its next station. The gate lifted and I turned toward the station and walked past the house and platform. It had a shelter on the other side of the house. I continued walking back to the main road, a circle from the bus stop I planned to board my bus from. Rounding the corner with the stop in view, I noted in the cold shade, all iced up, a sports car. I didn't recognize it from a distance. As I approached I was able to see, a Smart roadster. Nice looking. I wanted one then and there, but it looked so cold. I continued to the bus stop and tried to figure out where exactly the bus would stop. Before the sign in a cleared place in the road, or after it where there was a crosswalk? I decided to stand right next to the sign to make sure the driver knew I was a would-be passenger. He would stop and I would quickly move to where he wanted me to board. I paced up and down a bit, as before, and when out of position, the bus approached. I retreated to my station at the sign. He used a cleared spot before the sign. I quickly boarded and paid. He said something to me, and I had to admit my German was a bit bad. He acknowledged my plight and I handed all my change at his urging. My fingers were frozen and I could not easily separate what was needed from what I had. He took the needed amount, the machine issued a ticket, which he handed to me, and I took a seat. I was the only one on the bus. Once seated, he started on his way again. We left Peiss and I sort of lost myself in the fact that I was so cold but hadn't really realized it. We left the main road to make a stop in Aschbach a very little settlement I was familiar with.
Aschbach
Inge had lived here, oh, perhaps twenty years ago and I had visited her. That was when she told me that when coming in late and she was asleep, I should make noise and she would know I was home. Coming in quietly made her fear the worst somehow. The stop approached. There was a building under reconstruction on my side of the bus. On the boarding door side, a man was there with a walker. He was quite helpless looking, and I wondered how he would board the bus with that thing, or would he? Would he possibly leave it there on the street? There was no one about to pack it up or set it aside. A car approached him from the rear, but the woman driver just sat in the car waiting for the bus to stop and let the passenger on. She was apparently on her way somewhere else. The bus stopped; the man very slowly boarded with a forearm-support cane or crutch. And the walker was left outside on the street. The man slowly paid. His bus pass had apparently expired. He then took a seat, ever so slowly. The bus continued on its way back to the main road. At the intersection we took a right and soon were on our way down the hill into Feldkirchen. My stop was coming. And not knowing if there would be more passengers to pick up, or there was an obligatory stop, I pressed the button signaling I wanted to get off. The feeble man did the same. And after the bus had stopped, we met at the exit door. I got out first and waited to see if I could help. He slowly stepped off the bus, and as he did so, he took my hand or arm, that fog again [memory lapse], and stepped onto the ice on the sidewalk. He said something and I looked at him. He had a disheveled look. He wore a grey coat, open at the front. And his hair needed combing. I said good bye and went on my way past the optical shop and around the corner on the road to Westerham, my destination, about 1.5 kilometers away.
Feldkirchen
I walked straight down the street, a main street of Feldkirchen. I looked into the distance and knew that a turn in the road took me along the main road connecting the two villages. The prospect of walking that again, as I had two days before, did not interest me. Traffic and not very interesting. I remembered a limited access road parallel to the main road but bordered on both sides by fields and a school and soccer fields. I didn't quite remember where it started. So I kept going straight into a neighborhood where I knew a couple. I hoped they wouldn't see me. Too much explaining to do if they did. Where I had been. Why hadn't I visited for so long. And so forth. I kept going straight even though promising streets went off left and right. At the apparent end of the road, it took a little jog to the left and straightened out into that restricted road that went between the fields. A small sign said Westerham, 1 km. My morning hot chocolate had turned into a urinary emergency. I walked just so far that I could not be seen from either village nor the school yard which was filled with children. There, just beside the devotional stop, I took care of that business and then continued walking. I met a jogger, about my age, coming my way, and I noted pretty good for an old guy. He passed me and I walked on. Then I turned around to see Feldkirchen, much as I had for Aying. The jogger was not too far from me and he was walking. I approached Westerham via a short residential street. There were very nice expensive houses I had seen before. I knew where I was.
Westerham
I passed between the two apothecaries on either side of the short street that intersected with one of main roads through the village. How did they each stay in business all these years?
The opening
At the time, it was unclear to me why this day interested me so much, and why it was and is so vivid. A personal narrative, but without compelling content for an audience? To tell a story, but what was the story?
And today, as I put part of that day here, I know why. The reason is embedded in this piece, this place, today. And it had its reason for being then, and a different one now. A sense of home. This never dies. Something also about love and a prism and how circular logic just seems to be enough and all that can ever be required. To return home, to the center and the accustomed ways of doing and being: There is fulfillment and all is well with the one in a treasured corner of private spaces no one else can see just the ways you do.
This piece as a whole should also be self evident. Words are but refractions of lights from within, forever partial knowledge--sparks really--in the articulate world of named things. Watch for them, catch them, they are gone.
