Spinning Away*
The orange tree resists, as do the cherry one and the jacarandá. Poor lemon tree seems dead to me, but not according to the gardener. We still have apples, pears and peaches, I’ve picked the last cucumber and the first grapes from the garden today: The chickens, also known as Kikis, were eager to eat them grapes, they stole part of my take for the day. The usual cucumbers and the occasional tomatoes are almost gone; pomegranates and quinces are on their way, and the olives need to be harvested. None of this was mentioned earlier when I called my good friend K. in desperation. Then I washed rugs and carpets with blue soap in the water tank. There was a British old music playlist by a contemporary radio station playing until the clothing was left to dry on the line and I sat down on the door steps of the study to put on boots and go out step on the dirt.
I would have visited Berlin for the past weeks, there have been great instances as if reminiscing so. I can’t seem to translate the craving for being suddenly intimate with someplace gone. The endless margins and pathways, bikeways, subways, stations, platforms and piers, the idea of the city itself, still there leaving traces of promise, passion and failure, a loud, brilliant movement and the vagueness of it all in the distance already.
K. might be coming back soon to visit and hike around, though.
Lara Li, whom I named so when she was around eight years old, is now sixteen, turning my foster daughter for three months. She arrives next Saturday, also from Berlin. There’s a foreign new school year starting Monday morning for her.
It has been quite some time rooting here for another life almost on my own. He had told me to wait just a little bit longer and see what has become of it. Many times already, but that’s because he gets lost away in the sea and I got stuck watering and nurturing on an island.
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