Cobblestones array like the grain of an old tree. The wrinkles catch my wobbling tires, and it doesn't seem to matter how many times I true them. Perhaps it is the wear of age, or maybe it is the inevitable fate of a slim-line tire on the ragged road of a cobbled valley town.
It is spring, again, and life teems from buds, to birdsong, to bugs stumbling out of god-knows-where. It is incredible how much more daydreaming one can find in a few extra hours of daylight. There is really no doubt of my heritage in this land of identity: I am a New Englander, and I exude the seasons like a sugar maple.
And lately home moors my thoughts, even visits me nightly in the dreamscape. In my childhood backyard the snow melts from grass to lemonade and ice-pops, and then to leaves in the same way that the clock turns an hour. The sun might rise over the alps and hang on the horizon and the sun might wrangle you home under a burgundy set sky, but in between is mid-morning, noon, and after.
And you know, sometimes it is not exactly the more that we desire, but just a change of hands, even if the cards are good. We are all fit for our own fates, even if we hate to admit it. I came to Germany for so many reasons, but that was then.
What are the flavors of this bland quiche and passionless coffee? Is it just the taste of habit? I seem to remember scouring the Charles for Boston's best coffee and scone, but that was entirely another life, another love left on another shore. If life is a river, then why is it only when we look back that we can see the shape of the twist and turns? Here, coffee is coffee, it is mercilessly brewed from a smart machine and it is the worst of German Engineering. I think the Bavarians have had too long to figure out their desires.
Well, in the petaled folds of a new spring, I once again find my own desire. In the soft glow of another pleasant Bavarian morning, the coffee is stale, and my tires are true (sort of).
