The Perfect Design

Good Morning Herr Goethe!





This is not a trip for museum hopping! This is a journey across magic cobblestone patterns. An invitation to linger on roadside benches. A chance to count the colors of umbrellas, to ponder the faces, the likes, the gestures of other travelers, to listen to guides and story tellers and nightingales. This trip offers signs - written, spoken, painted, pounded into the earth - and without the pressure of pre-planned activities I let the moment tell me what to do.




Take this bench, for instance. I leaned against it. It was wet, unfriendly, not ready to be in use. Rain puddled in front of it. And when I looked up I saw an unexpected site, your garden house. A tiny spot far away. And when I continued my walk through the Ilm Park this morning, I came across many more benches, each placed strategically for observation.



I saw tree trunks that had formed into strange forms many years ago, and I saw the rise of the Ilm that had happened over night. I was aware of the dangers that might lie ahead. Fire engines sounded their alarms across town, bridges and roadways were closed, the rain continued.















But I walked on and succeeded to find the Roman House (Römerhaus), visited inside, and saw, from, I think it was the blue room, your house again.

Later, after my energy had waned, (I had walked several miles in the rain) I sat on a bench at the Marketplace in town for a while, eating a Thüringer bratwurst, observing others doing the same. Have you ever noticed how serious people are when they eat. I guess one can not smile while taking a bite or chewing.









The day before I had sat on the same bench watching umbrellas go by.












Sometimes, in recent days, I have had the feeling that I am painting my own world with colors that don't belong to me. I am not quite sure what I am looking for and so I get greedy and take it all, just in case I have need for it later. I photograph walls that have been decorated with poetry or anger or sadness. I want them to shout their secrets at me.













And then I look at myself, in the mirror, in a window, and wonder how it feels to be that person who lives, for a short time, in a magic place. A place she will, most likely, never see again. I smile at her and promise that I will gather all her memories and sculpt them into a perfect design.

Adaptations of the Mind

Good morning Herr Goethe!

The writer has a distinct advantage over the traveler who only seeks comfort in his journeys. The writer allows herself to observe minor complications with a touch of humor. Take this morning's shower for instance. (I know, Herr Goethe, showers, their advantages and failures did not preoccupy your mind, but I also know that you were no stranger to unforeseen adventures and adaptations of the mind.)

This morning's shower started, as usual, with the (by me) selected water temperature. I already knew that I would have to work swiftly, since the stream might change in volume as well as temperature at any time. I rinsed my scalp, but not fast enough. I was holding the open shampoo container in my hand when the flow changed from warm to icy cold. I dropped the little shampoo bottle. It threatened to empty itself into the drain. Quickly I opened the shower door, reached for a couple of underthings and dropped them on the slick shower floor, since it is very difficult to keep one's footage without safety bumps or a bathmat; neither seem to be in use any longer. I stepped on my improvised mat, bent my body - carefully, slowly - in the direction of the drain. Just then my back responded to yet another change in water temperature and my head almost hit the tiled wall of my tiny enclosure. Here I have to add that chemo therapy seems to have impacted my balance and I sometimes stumble, even when the path is direct and unobstructed. But my body listens to my commands - at least most of the time - and I retrieved the bottle, shampooed my head, washed the rest of me without problem, though not without a few more temperature changes. When I was finished I managed to extract myself from my little torture cell without stumbling , a cautious attempt at freestyle maneuvering of body and limbs, since there is no safety bar to hold on to, nor is there any other reliable construct. I felt refreshed, clean, unhurt, and ready for the day. These sentences began to form in my mind without the benefit of my first morning cup of coffee, but not before I retrieved the underthings, wrung excess water out of them, placed them into a towel, rolled them up, and stomped on the roll with my bare feet. Voila! Clean laundry to hang over the shower frame.

After getting fully dressed I took the obligatory morning shot of the roof tops nearby, wrote this little essay, made and ate breakfast, tidied the apartment, recorded, briefly, an exchange between two nearby birds, and finally ..... well ....... off I go.......

Location:Weimar

I Return

Good Morning Herr Goethe!

It has been three years since I last addressed you from Weimar. I don't know what this time accounts for in eternity. One moment? Too long to have stayed friends? I would hope that eternity does not engage calendars and clocks and we are forever connected by the mere words of my acknowledged interest in your life and times.

In earth-time it has been a busy interval for me. I lived through illness, death in the family, new artistic ambitions, other travels, and an endless array of minor interests. Though I have not spoken to you, I have, nevertheless, felt your presence in my life frequently. I have devoted a great many hours to getting to know your female friends. Women like Lili Schönemann who was your first love, Charlotte Kestner, who became Lotte in "Werther", Fridericke Brion whom you met in Sessenheim in 1770, the young woman you adored when you were eighty years old, and, of course, Charlotte von Stein, your most noted companion, and your wife, Christiane Vulpius. In all I met twelve women. I am sure there are others, but I would have to spend a lot more time to find them.

Christiane seems the most fitting. The woman who forgave your escapades. Who made your garden a paradise and your meals fit for a king. Who bore you five children, entertained your guests, didn't succumb to gossip and always was ready to listen to your poems. You picked well.

Herr Goethe, I am in your Weimar again. While, during my last visit, I stuck a white rose into the snow in front of your garden house in deep winter, this time, in late spring, I would like to bring you something different, but what? I think I will leave this up to chance as I do with most everything on this journey into the past. Yes, it is a journey into the past - a rather minimal past for me, since I was here only once before. And yet, my memories have formed certain images, based on my limited knowledge of the town. I am here to deepen and color these images.

Floods and icy winds have made it nearly impossible during these first days after my return to observe the locale, to compare the landscape of then and now; most of the time I was preoccupied with securing a certain level of comfort. I hunted for a cap to cover my shivering head. Fought the deterioration of my umbrella. Reinforced the vulnerable cloth of my shopping bag with a plastic liner. Dried my inappropriate summer foot gear - those wonderful walking shoes I recently bought - atop a built in room heater that barely functions. And, as if all these mundane daytime concerns weren't enough, I was awakened several times during the last two nights by my own sneezing and coughing.

But - Herr Goethe - this morning I heard a bird sing. The puddle of water on the flat roof in front of my window was still. The bright light of the sun now blinds me from its easterly seat on a pale grey-blue sky. I am going to explore the town as it recuperates. As the benches dry. As outdoor cafés reclaim their territories. As the barricades lift. As May 29th progresses and my feet take me on a leisurely journey across familiar and unfamiliar cobble-stoned streets.

G.

(P.S. I will go into my river cruise experience a bit later. Right now I am off into the great and mostly dry outdoors.)

Busy Last Week

Lieber Herr Goethe,

My brain was in command mode all week long. "Type www.bahn.de into the URL box. Fill in the blanks - from, to, when, who etc. Pick ideal time. Enter return date and time. Decide on normal price or non refundable (much cheaper). Select, add credit card information, submit payment. Print ticket for train trip from Frankfurt to Weimar. Copy email from Deutsche Bundesbahn and paste into Pages. Label. Convert to PDF. Export to iBooks. Move to Poppies in May."

Poppies in May! Most of the documents for my upcoming trip are stored in this category. City information for Lyon, Marseilles, and Avignon. The 44-page program for the river cruise through the South of France. Hotel and apartment reservations. The bill from Phoenix Reisen. Some photos and maps copied from the Internet. My iPad holds it all together. But this is just one cog in the giant wheel of preparations. There are many others. I have bought a GPS application that is supposed to help me navigate through cities and towns in Germany. It will, I hope, prevent me from getting lost on the 28 kilometer Goetheweg. And find a restaurant nearby when I get hungry.

To refresh my high school French I acquired a wacky program, appropriately named Mindsnacks. It acts more like a gaming center than a tutorial. Word birds, sliders, and swells offer timed puzzles, quizzes, and spelling bees, bombarding me with the most basic of Conversations in French.

I spent an afternoon puzzling over Skype texting. After I allowed myself a ten dollar credit I was able to send text messages from my iPad to friends' cell phones. When nobody answered I sent myself a message, marking it iPad to cell. I did get the message, but what I texted back to the number Skype had assigned, disappeared along the way. When checking into a Skype forum I learned that one can text but not receive text back. But the credit will help in phoning land lines. Skype to Skype is, of course, free.

I can't remember how long I studied the map of Terminals 1 and 2 in Frankfurt, but I am happy with my newfound understanding of the connection between the Hilton Garden Inn and the Charterbus area in front of Hall B at Terminal 1. Since I am arriving in Frankfurt a day prior to the Cruise Departure I will spend a night at this airport hotel.

The bus to Chalon sur Saône leaves at 8am on May 23. From then on I will leave the planning and worrying to Phoenix and Company. They are in charge of the cruise for the next ten days and I am confident that all is well organized. But once they bring me back to Frankfurt I am on my own again. Which means another airport hotel stay since I won't arrive until six or seven in the evening on Thursday, May 23. The train to Weimar would arrive too late at its destination to allow me to take possession of my apartment.

On Friday, May 24, around one, I will arrive in Weimar, will take a bus to Goetheplatz, and walk to 16 Heinrich Heine Strasse, and, most likely, receive the key to my apartment from a sales person in Herr Thieme's Jeans Boutique. I have secured this place, online, from the owner, early in the year, because I wanted to make sure that I would wake up to the same rooftops as before. Since I spent three weeks in Weimar before, in the depth of winter, I hope for lovely spring weather this time. I imagine standing by the window in the morning, watching sunshine add a sparkle to the dew drops on the roof across the way.

Yesterday, besides repacking my suitcase one more time, I made reservations for the shuttle bus to the airport. There were also calls to bank and credit card companies to advise them of my foreign travel plans. I placed a hold on all mail. Prepared a travel brochure/schedule, as promised, for family members and a few friends. Deep-watered bushes and flowers, tightened defenses against the neighborhood skunk and raccoons.

Today I made sure airline tickets and other documents were printed in duplicate and that passport and money would not be left behind.

Tomorrow, before I leave, I will conduct a final tour through the house, turning off computers and printers, unplugging appliances, shutting windows.

And then I will be on my way to Europe, one more time. To walk under the same sky as Vincent van Gogh in the South of France. To photograph poppies. To speak my native tongue in Germany. To sit on the bench near your house and imagine a long conversation with you and your wife Christiane.

Until then.
G.

Poppies

Lieber Herr Goethe,

Before I come to visit you again I would like to acquaint you with the thoughts that precede this journey. I will, before I travel to Weimar, take a river cruise on the Saône and Rhône. Red poppies should be in full bloom as I stop to explore Avignon and Arles, the Camargue, Marseilles, the Ardèche region, and Lyon. Just as I realized my need for the touch and taste and feel of snow in 2010, I understand that, right now, red poppies are important in my life. So, here is a short memoir about them.

Poppies
You'd think an imaginary shrink would be invisible. The head doctor is supposed to stay in my head. Not my Dr. Steinfeld. He pops in and out of my life in a variety of disguises.
"You look like Carl Gustav Jung today," I say to him.
"Is that good or bad," he wants to know.
"Neither. It's just that, last time you were here, you had higher cheek bones and more hair."
"Well, your head was bald and your right boob was in a sling. I believe you had issues coping with breast cancer?
He is sitting in my chair, at the kitchen table, touching, one by one, books, binders, folders, crafting supplies, note paper, iPad, drawing and writing utensils, the stump of a candle, with the tip of his left index finger.
"I am amazed at the variety of projects I see."
"Those are just the active ones. I have a few more on back burners. Will you help me sort things out?"
He doesn't answer right away; it makes me think that I am whining. Maybe I should be able to handle things on my own. Or, maybe, if I feed him, he'll come around. I open a cupboard door, then I look into the fruit and veggie laden refrigerator, shaking my head in frustration because I can't find any sweets. He starts to tap-dance his fingers on the table. Taram taram taram tatam. Taram taram taram tatam .......
"Item number one: you don't have to feed the old man cookies every time I come to see you."
The motion of shutting the refrigerator door seems dream-like. I am performing a part in a child's play in which my mother makes me eat everything on my plate, because not doing so would be a waste, depriving Chinese children on the other side of the earth. And, not feeding a visitor is a major sin. With great satisfaction I disobey my mother.
Taram taram taram tatam, taram taram taram tatam.....silence.... and then: "Time is a child at play, gambling; a child's is the kingship."
"Explain yourself. Please."
"It is a fragment attributed to Heraclitus. Something Jung inscribed on the stone cube he had placed by the lakeshore at Bollingen tower. He was 75 at the time. And he was, from childhood on, very much a believer in ceremonial acts. They brought him peace."
My mind, slipping into the role of the accused in a courtroom drama about unfulfilled promises, strings together dots in unsolicited selfdefense. Dots that represent a number of unrelated events and circumstances in my recent life, like maneuvering without much enthusiasm through strength training and aerobics class, my reaction to the finality of a friend's medical diagnosis, the pressure of financial decisions, an impatient surge of images during meditation, sleepless hours because of a family member's nightmare, the unread book from the library, pages upon pages of paperwork to be filled out for a doctor's appointment. My marionette awaiting direction; the new puppet begging for a voice. Harsh remarks made by a friend. Careless words by another, delivered to my inbox by mistake. The cookies missing from my afternoon routine.
Herr Steinfeld interrupts: "What image were you trying to evoke when you meditated?"
"Poppies. A field of red poppies. Their heads swaying in the breeze."
"I see. The field behind your grandmother's house. You were five then, right? Happily braiding daisy chains, climbing trees, licking rock salt?"
"Today, the wind blew so hard, it uprooted some of the poppies. They flew through the air, dusting me with soil. I tried to edit the film in my head, slow it down, but, instead, I became angry with the instructor. She forced me to make decisions. Even during this important down-time. "Think of a place you love," she said. "Indoors or outside. Maybe a fine hotel. A warm vacation spot. A cool mountain retreat. A favorite chair in your backyard."
I wanted her to take responsibility. I wanted her to say something like, "think of the most beautiful spot in your childhood."
Dr. Steinfeld gets up. He closes the Weight Loss Challenge binder and the food log. Stacks the library copy of Living Your Best with Early Stage Alzheimer's on top of Dear Life by Alice Monro. Pushes aside sewing utensils, notebook, magnifier, candle, the glitter-sprinkled potted evergreen left-over from Christmas. He takes a pen and writes Red Poppies on a piece of note paper. Briefly he holds up a postcard depicting Herr Goethe and, surrounding him, the twelve most important women in his life. He looks at me and grins. "You can come back to your hero and his dalliances later. For now I want you to concentrate on your well-being."
In a slow-motion sweep of observation I notice that Dr. Steinfeld opens the refrigerator, reaches for a non-fat yogurt, pulls a small spoon from the drawer, and sits down again. A while later I focus on the bottom of the dessert cup. Steinfeld has drawn a criss-cross pattern into the remains of his yogurt. I want to ask him why, but he escapes into the image of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on the postcard.
After I push aside the snack I pull the short piece of vanilla-scented candle toward me and light it. Now my hands rest, palms up, on the kitchen table. Dancing, swirling, wind-ruffled poppies gather around me. I hum, releasing sounds of patterned grace into the afternoon. Shivering red petals respond to my promise of renewal. Broken stems rise tall. I open my notebook and replant the poppies into the fertile ground of my early childhood memories.