In otherwords, strawberries and… well… avocado. That last one is pretty obvious for us English speakers out there. I ran into a little farmers market in Altona today on my bicycle venture out and that is what i bought! The strawberrries are grown in a little town about a half hour north of here and while they are yummy and they are strawberries…they are not quite as good or quite as sweet as Louisiana Ponchatoula strawberries. I guess I am a bit of an erdbeere snob.
I am also incorporating a few German words today because it is time I stop pretending that everyone around me isn’t speaking German… and while yes quite a bit of them speak English, mostly… they speak German. The idea of learning the whole German language is a bit daunting, but a few words one day at a time I can handle. Erdbeere.
Today I feel some strangely flowering, wind-blowing sense of hope about something of which I can’t quite put my finger on. Like the wind is blowing through me a beautiful little secret all my own. And while I am riding through town feeling a little separate and on my own much of the time, this feeling, this sense knows my name and it… well it connects me. The truth is it actually does something like feed my soul… how is that?
Yesterday I had coffee… well, tea to be more precise, with a new friend from the buddhist SGI group. I can’t remember the name of the tea he fed me, but the transation was something like ” to give courage”. He said it is a very ” special tea”. Sure, I’ll take some of that! We sat on his tiny balcony on something like the 6th floor. I tried to pretend I wasn’t afraid of heights as we casually gathered, talked and drank… willing no thoughts of falling off the edge holding my tea of courage to dive into my mind. We had a nice time talking and with him I felt that same feeling… that connection that flows between us, that connects us somehow… like somewhere we are all traveleres waiting to meet each other, perhaps for a day, a week, a year… a moment. That sense of recognition.
The lifestyle in Altona is very refreshing. It is somewhat of a small town, a community withing Hamburg. It has it’s own little scene going on including an old warehouse renovated into an independent movie theatre, coffee shops and cafes lining the streets, and people who seem pretty open, some fairly chic filling the streets on foot and bicycle throughout the day. The weather is so nice that you don’t need central air conditioning and so far a hot day is one where I don’t need to wear a jacket.
Alas, even in the midst of all this flowing and tea and feeding my soul in this city of chicness I have to admit I am a little… lonely. Lonely not sure for what or for who… not clear that a solution of another tea, another walk would resolve. So for now, in this moment … I am on my own. I am sitting in the flat on the 4th floor with the windows open listening to the children playing and the pigeons cooing. Breathing in… breathing out and open to what is to come… well, mostly open… a little afraid… what’s next… what is it?… we will see…
Gypsy Woman 
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