Slept in.  Outside my old window door (again no screen–maybe they are not afraid of what they might let in?) a rusting roof slants –in the distance a steeple.  Feels and smells like fall but with promise.

Last night Lindsey said Auschwitz is about perspective.  Man’s frightening propensity to look the other way: not me, not me, not me.  I read somewhere that people in Auschwitz never opened their windows.

I hesitate. I am tired.  I don’t want to go out.  I didn’t have much in common with her.  She talks too much.  We disagree on politics.  I am afraid to tell her we disagree.  I’m tired.  I don’t know her well.  I am tired.

Sometimes it is best not to listen to voices.  We cross Father Bernatek Footbridge where metal statues dance–trapeze artists, captured, flying forever free.  Leap.

Back from a night out with Lindsay from Prague.  Happenstance brings us together again. We have an apple liqueur of some sorts in a Polish B and B. We discuss change and life and men and independence and fathers and discovering who you are, who you want to be.  We walk the city taking pictures of bridges and windows.

We are riding against the wind, pedaling hard and fast, trying to get somewhere before the storm breaks the sky open.  But I don’t care and neither does he, Jacek, my guide.  At various places he brakes suddenly without warning –each time behind him I’m surprised.  Talking fast giving me a bit of Polish history –most of which is lost in the transition between his language and mine.  I am fascinated with him, his manner, the speed in which he talks.  He takes off the same way he stops –abruptly–Come on! he shouts and in a second he is far ahead as I push up my kickstand and follow his fluorescent shirt.  On this tour it is only me.  I imagine him with 30 others, darting across the road, narrowly missing a tram.  Someone inevitably left behind.  Or worse.

Later, I am the only one left behind on an outdoor patio in the square, sipping wine.  I hear spattering of tourists, eavesdrop on conversations.  The wind blows harsh and cold. At the cafe over where an electric flame keeps the tables warm, more tourists gather.  Horse and carriage circle the square and I am reminded of New York City and Central Park where the carriages gather waiting for a fare.  I try to find the museum Jacek mentioned, but I’m lost.  Tomorrow I will make my way back again.

What do I want to take from this:  All of it.

Annie Dillard’s mother saying each night (or I imagine it is each night, in any season; I want it to be so):

“Do you hear them?  Do you hear the bells, the little bells, on Santa’s sleigh?”

“And we could hear them coming, very faint and far away, the bells on the flying sleigh.”

–pg. 37-38, An American Childhood

Maybe the bells are always there –the little girl in the plaza in Stare Miaso, Old Town, Krakow.  Everywhere people snapping pictures.  I try to be unobtrusive as I snap pictures of small children mesmerized by the pigeons that gather all around.

I wonder what this place was like in the dead of winter, gray as dust.  1942.  Where was the magic then?

 

The foods are different:  I try them all: heavy meats for breakfast, cottage cheese, radishes, cucumbers; things I associate with another time of day.  I think of Japan, a small village outside of Tokyo where the women wore kimonos on the street and I was an oddity with my obvious different ways.  The rice and the rice patties rolled in dried seaweed for breakfast.  I remember grumbling all the way, tired from working day after single day, not grateful, not curious–just let’s do this and get this job done, let it be finished.  Still the Japanese appeased me saying, Ganbatte! ne? Do your best, while I begrudgingly let them transform me moving this way and that, becoming what they wanted me to be: Kawaii, ne?  Always adding the question –or so it seemed to me.  They nodded approvingly on the other side of the bright lights while I stared out the window, thinking of something.  One thing triggers another.

Here, with a plate full of meat and cheese, I stare out the window, the garden beyond unseen from the street, hidden by a high and thick concrete wall.  The name of the place fitting: The Secret Garden.  Right now I am this city.  Each place feels different and new; in each place I feel different and new.

 

Waiting at the train station it Katowice, Poland.  A woman sits next to me with close-cropped hair.  I am hesitant to say excuse me in English, feel guilty for not knowing the words.  She speaks in broken English, living in Vienna, from Israel.  Family roots here, in Poland.  She says, I saw you this morning in Vienna.  You asked me directions then –don’t you remember, and sadly I don’t.  Sometimes I wonder how I can figure out where I am going if I don’t remember where I’ve been.  How can I make my way back again.

Krakow? I ask stupidly, pointing to the platform.  “I hope so,” is her simple answer.  We talk on the train.  Her life, not so dissimilar to mine.  I mention divorce, grown children moving far away.  Single life.  Judgment: what is your worth if you are not partnered, two by two.  Is this an American judgment?  She says, no, she feels the same.  Trying to make our way.  We exchange e-mails.  Promise to stay in touch.  We part with a hug –she has a friend meeting her; we look around: Do you see anyone?

I leave to make my way –to the taxi stand where two American boys wait, lugging their lives on their backs.  We share a taxi and the one boy says: We just came from Auschwitz.  It was awesome! It seems an odd thing to say.  I say nothing.  We move forward.

Waiting for my life to begin.

“It happens slowly; but little by little you realize that this is the slowness of irresistible change.”

–Harry Mathews, 20 Lines a Day

Is change movement or standing still?  Hours pass if you let them.

There is something comforting about being on a train, the wait for the train to move, the sound of the whistle blowing.  At least you know you are in the right place, that momentarily this is where you belong.   It blows and blows again, and we’re gone.  Speakers announce something –in German or Polish, garbled English that I can’t understand.  The names sound different, look different than they sound.  When the conductor comes to check my ticket, I relax.  I belong right here in this compartment, in this seat.

Another place left behind.  Is the goal the end point or in the middle?  The journey itself offers something, even if the words are foreign on the tongue.

After the bike tour, Getfriend offers us in a prepared-to-go glass, a shot of apricot liqueur to take with us.  The apricot inside a burnt orange, cushion-like, floating in something.  He tells us to suck on the apricot and off we go; the ride is done.  My hotel reminds me of The Shining, long corridors with heavy white doors on either side, big gold keys on heavy chains announcing the hotel’s name.  It is bulky for me to carry.  Back in my room, I down the liqueur in one shot and suck on the spongy fruit.  That night I hear the gilded key locks click click as people come and go making their way to the bathroom down the hall.  The double windowed French doors maw open to the palazzo below.  In the adjacent window, flowers bloom.  I lean out, peering into their lives: laundry hanging, a haphazard curtain, a warm orange glow emanates as the light outside darkens.  A woman passes through rooms and disappears.  And then: there she is again.

Prague or Vienna, it doesn’t matter; in both I am insulated, set apart.

On the train I close my eyes.  Behind my lids I see pictures of bridges.

To travel by plane is less certain, more risky.   Faster.  Less reflective.  In planes, I don’t want to feel movement.  I want to travel by trains alone, but I can’t.  Later I will fly or not go, stay put.

On the train a man and a woman sleep, the sun beats down through the window.  I want to describe the couple in detail, like a picture but it blurs and I don’t want to stare.  I am silent, waiting.  A baby cries in the next car, comforting somehow.  Chuck Berry’s words play in my head although I am not listening to anything; still I can’t get rid of the lyrics no matter.  Well, oh well, I feel so good today.  I just touched down on an international runway. . . .and on.  It is a sign of something.

The prodigal son (or daughter) returning.  Do we all ultimately make our way back: here I am.  In Vienna, Savita references the hotel as home, as do I.  I want to go home after the long day, sun beating down, wind flying, the Danube on my left as I zoom past on the bike.  I want to go home where my clothes –dirty or clean–are stacked on the shelf in the room or strewn across the hotel room floor haphazard.  In Berlin, in my square box of a room, I let the clothes languish in the suitcase.

I am reminded of long ago, on an island somewhere for a job, the clients picking me the unlikely model for whatever it was they wanted to shoot.  Then, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound” playing in my head, missing Sam.  That is all I could see, not the white white beaches where women ran free, breasts sagging with the weight of them or no weight at all.   Babies, age, life.  It didn’t matter.  Still, I can’t help but compare –then and now–on the beach of the Danube river where we stop to put our feet in the water.  Their bodies to mine.  I see surfaces, not what might be.

I have four trains for one journey so I must watch the signs.  My path is circuitous.  My penchant is to arrive early, fearing what might be.  I want to know where I am going, find a direct route to take me from here to there.

Yesterday after the long bike ride in the hills on the train back to Vienna, English Linda chatters about the pitfalls of Trump.  I say: let it be.  Savita from India echoes my thought.  He’s who he is and that is that, she says, definitive.  She chatters to Getfriend, our guide.  He listens, head leaning against the window glass of the train, blurred green behind.

We stop.  Outside the window the platform sign declares: Vychod.  I could be anywhere.  Or nowhere at all.

 

Early morning in Krakow.  The day is starting, light and sun.  Birds outside the open window.  I miss the screens, the separation between us and them.