STOCKING UP..

My farewell eve in Germany, the slick-en, the cool-en und da hip-en.
 Much like home with too many syllables.
Maybe because I have been with English speakers I did not feel the foreignness of this place.
Instead, rest, fellowship, work, ease.

Full day workshop today at the European Space Agency.
They actually have their own theatre group when they're not redirecting sattellites.
Now wait, maybe that is a real difference between us,
don't think JPL has such an organization

The work went well
gauging response, offering help, coalescing the many into one
doing enough and too much
going deep and not deep enough
giving information and not enough to satisfy
but coming full circle.

And needing a respite before the real adventure begins
I hit Priceline to find a 5 Star hotel  and here I am
Kempinski Hotel Gravenbruch. Chocolates on the pillow,
slippers, robes, eine newspaper, madam. Is zer anysing I can get you, Madam?
Cheese plate and mint tea, bitte,
on the darkening winter porch.
Triple cream, brie, feta, red grapes, green
Tea hot and sweet..
and I know a red cab would have been better but
those days are gone..
i had the triple cream for him instead..

Reading Deena Metzger
about faith and spirit and signs and wonders
listening to the soft prattle of the sh's and auben's
the clipped hipness of the German kids speaking English
oh so cool.
and wondering at the magic of sitting so comfortably in this skin
so elegantly cared for
and being called
like Richard Dreyfuss and all those others in my favorite movie
Rencontres de les Troisieme Type.... when I aaw it for the fifth time in France
many years ago
Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind..
and absolutely understanding that vacuum that draws one to the next indicated thing.

and for me, tomorrow
India and Chennai and rain and mud I hear
and who knows what else.

God's house...

Snoozy train ride to Koln
thinking of Keith Jarrett and the way he made that music there
the soundtrack of my life for many years
and I emerged from the Bahnhof and I could feel the whoosh
the lift of the place, drawn from the ground to the eyes of God.. whoa..
and wasn't that the idea, after all?

Koln Cathedral so very very beautiful. Breathless before God.
I guess that was the idea as they packed the barefoot grubs who came to stare at the windows and
see if they were good enough for God back in the day.
Extraordinary to see the passion and detail of every curlicue and grid.
And then the fact that the entire city of Koln was destroyed in WW2
save the Cathedral.
There are photos of the "rubbl-ized", flattened strasse and
nothing but this cathedral standing.

As jaded a cathedral viewer as I might be, I was drawn and quartered inside.
Broken apart and leaky. Overcome with the beauty and the ghosts ..
Lit candles.  To clear the air and  better watch the flicker.

Chartres.... and the Brit who made his home in the village so he could tell tourists about every single picture in the famous windows,
Chichester and the music
Siena with Sofie as a babe practicing how to walk on cobble stone
 Florence with bored international students just dying to go back to Ohio
 Los Angeles every Christmas Eve after the Music Center
 Westminster Abbey reciting Shakespeare with my fat  pal
 Santiago de Campostella with the churro and cocoa shop across the way
.I lit the candle and it's all there. Including T.
Wow.
Too bad the institutions that built these spots are all so corrupt.
No matter, the architecture has its own lift and dignity..
the mission church near Paso, the Santa Fe adobes with Christ in technicolor,
the magic sand, botanica items,  reliquaries,
the little charms of legs and arms and broken parts,
the prayer cards,
everybody looking for something other to hold and call god..
to give IT a name, a house. a face,  a palpabilty outside of ourselves.

Hell, there are folk called Registered Exhorters ( and you know who you are)
to spread the word!
Put it there in front of us, outside us, draw a picture, call it God, that should take care of it....
If it's outside, who needs to BE it...


yeah. well.. am learning about that.
 

Beethoven lived here once..

..they say.  Born right near a grand statue of the man.

What came first? the chicken or...

In the platz where I sat for the afternoon of swooping pigeons and

a view of the Muenster Cathedral

a zippy little oompah band played polka music

which morphed to Joe Venuti

which morphed to la real Jazz Hot!.. hot cha, fraulein!

Then, they shook their heads in disgust 

as I seemed to be the only tourist in the crowd and 

they could see I was not relinquishing my front row cafe seat

and the just warm fresh cafe kuchen

to come by with a euro or six.

Today's tea was fresh pfefferminze  and

speaking of wurst-- and the worst wurst at that--
i couldn't stop myself from peeking into the Bonn Macdonald's
after an after noon of strenuous  write, sit, drink tea, read, write , sit...... 

oh, and a venture into the damen pulli sektor for a look see...
and then more read, write, sit, drink tea......

but MacDonald's haben ein "Nurnberger" especial..
1 euro und 99 cents.. drei skinny breakfast sausage on a squishy roll mit mustard unt kraut...
ja ja
mit Pepto bismol on da zide......
ah great cuisines of the world....
 

First workshop done tonight. A lovely gathering of students, teachers.. 

Irish, American, Guadalupe-an, Italian, a Brit, a fellow from New Delhi

all clustered round a la the Writers Bloc.. Internationalstyle.

We talked about writing, I channeled Deena Metzger

and  was pleased to use less words this time and more 

quiet  energy to gather and guide them to their own adventures.

I so enjoy the ability to give this gift.

most grateful. 

and i am proud that I charged money and made it.

Invite back in May!  Sofie may be in Greece in the spring

but you didn't hear it from me, and if so, I hope to meet her at the end of the session there and perhaps visit again for more in depth work.

Yes, say the God's.

All this and I got paid.

It is the model that I was building with T.
I think he would finally be happy with the travel choices I have made, especially the perks.

Never forget the German Chocolate kuchen.
 

i have been so fortunate to be so beautifully escorted thru this experience so far

Tomorrow Koln Cathedral, Koln Macdonald's
Frankfurt evening..
more to come...

wherever you go ..

..there you are.

The globe is almost irrelevant.
What with luxury jets that whisk you smoothly, HBO and local gourmet food in tow.
One enters a flying box and exits at the other end .
Poof.. there is passport control and then
in another country remarkably like home. Germany at least.

Staying in a village  (read suburb) equidistant between Bonn and Coln, there are PT Cruisers parked across the street, Desperate Housewives on the television and computer games on the teenaged boys X Box.  Just the local cuisine reminds me that I am not on 42nd Street. Good bread and  many many many too many potatoe dishes and cream suppes. There is Gerolsteiner wasser on the table, and I mentioned how it reminded me of home. I buy cases from Trader Joe's. My hostess told me it comes from a spring down the street. That was nice. It ticked off a memory of staying down the street from the Clos du Bois winery in Healdsburg. Easy, connected.


I have taken the time to do little and less these first two days in Germany. It was  a perfect drizzle of a day. Golden yellow maples against the gray sky, a drive in her Toyota station wagon to the Technical College where she teaches and a luxurious morning of watching students in the cafeteria horse and play and flirt and preen as they would in any such cafeteria in any such college anywhere in the First world.

Tomorrow I spend time in Bonn.. a beautiful city, former capital of Germany. A brief drive thru today reminded me of the French quarter in Beijing. Carefully planted shade trees, well pruned, in front of small tasteful mansions that used to house the embassies before the Wall came down twenty years ago.

Rest, welcome, compare and contrast. What a pleasure to feel at home in the global village.

Surprising since I sought the exotic on my earlier travels. Looked for echoes of the Nazi horrors, felt my Jewishness pulsing from every milimeter of measured body parts. Was so maive as to reenter a following Mercedes whose driver kept patting my breast and grinning when I mumbled: Ich sprechen kine Deutch,,, bitte. Bitte.

There is a difference now...
I know that welcome is all.
I know that I prefer people to geography.
And work to wandering.

So far so good.

germany... or is it the mall?

frankfurt airport. i turned the corner and ran into a  SUBWAY.
and then the MacDonald's was giving away fries for some reason
and everyone looks like us except for the wire rimmed glasses but then
i just bought a pair of those before i came.

the flight was fabulous. business class. wanda sykes on HBO
a terrific dinner, a sweet sleep in the reclining chairs
and poof i'm an international traveler.
wandered the wrong way out the door and no one even checked my luggage
so much for customs control in Germany
and we wonder how the cells get thru customs with drugs and guns?

trained to Siegburg and drank mint tea for two hours waiting for my friend
and working on the computer
ladies with permanents sitting next to towers of cream cakes
and laughing Koreans next to steins of beer
and then more mint tea and lunch in the same spot
and a drive thru the countryside and 14th century castles
now being used as Disney World wannabe spots..

and more tales of a long term marriage dissolving
it seems many many things are just the same.
internationalization has hit every aspect of ourselves
the leaves are bright golden bright
and red maple honey

or is that... red maple, honey.... ?

and her skinny sons and
my drooping eyelids.


one time i was here I was 17 years old.
i had a boyfriend named Scotty with true blue eyes
who played the basson.
we necked on the bus and met Frieda Faulstich
and then i was 19 and hitchhiking in Mercedes
with greedy old men with tinted glasses
who patted my breasts and said with glee.."America..."

the more things change the more things stay the same.

OFF ON AN ADVENTURE

 Today I head off for a month to Germany, India and Italy. Teaching thinking shopping and eating...
Here is a quote i found last night... hope you'll follow the journey.

Quotations from Dina Metzger's book, ENTERING THE GHOST RIVER:
...I climbed into a bower of vines where I could be alone. It seemed to me that I heard a voice speaking to me and as she spoke I found my boy being shaped to the age and tone of the voice. I was bent over as if I was an old hag, It occurred to me that I was hearing the voice of Hekate. the crone coming thru me.
"you will never have another lover,"the krone said it was as if the combined suffering of all the lonely women i knew, myself included, opened before me and enveloped me.
"you will never write another book", she continued.....
"you will live your life in constant and unremitting pain without hope of relief"..
...a long silence"
"now choose"
a long time passed. A lifetime in 20 minutes. like many others i knew i had in the past reached moments when i could not go on. i had thought of suicide. i had thought of going to bed and never getting up. i had said it was too difficult......i took the hags curse seriously... others had suffered worse. i knew that i was not immune. i did not think that i should be privleged, but how could i bear it?
i heard my own words before i knew what i would say.
"i want to live. whatever it is i want life. the whole ballgame. whatever it is. i am here."

and then she laughed. that laugh you imagine the hag laughs. it is chilling and exuberant. it dissolves bones. there is nothing left after such a laugh.

and i laughed with her.