Am I really here?
I'm here, but I'm still writing about what happened days ago. It feels like I'll never catch up to the present with this damn blog. I don't like writing in this kind of past tense. All the funny little moments that make life full are missing.
Like the funny moment Vajra explained that "gesundheit" actually just means "health" in German. So the surgeon general is called the "gesundheit minister." Whenever we sneezed, Vajra would say, "Gezundheit! Ich bin der Gezundheit Minister."
But writing about the past is still better than not writing at all, so I'll keep catching up until one day, I somehow manage to find myself back in the now.
Joy and Vajra had rented out their old apartment on the 30th, so Boy and I helped them move boxes and clean shelves for a bit and then relocated to Chad's beautiful, sunny loft. Chad is an American friend of Joy's who has spent his life traveling between Indiana, Hawaii and Switzerland (amongst other places). He plays the guitar, writes his own music and has created one of the most gorgeous, interesting little gardens I've ever seen using the principles of permaculture.
I want to be like Chad within this lifetime. Might be bit of a lofty goal, but it's certainly worth aiming for.
Chad and his wife, Fanny, introduced us to their kitchen and their coffee machine (who I named Clifford) and told us to help ourselves to anything. They gave us keys to their home, lent us their bicycles and gave us endless tips on what to do in the area.
We had a quiet couple of days with Chad, Fanny and kids. We slept in, strolled through parks, perused the Denner wine selection and put Clifford through a rigorous exercise routine. Vajra and Joy had heaps of work to do with their new home and were both utterly exhausted, so Boy and I used those days to nap by the Zurichsee, talk with Chad about permaculture and his dream to have a home in the country, and soak in the comforting feeling of "home".
Chad, Fanny and kids have a home. Crayon drawings and collage art on the walls, stuffed animals, a piano and a very lived in kitchen. This isn't to imply that people without kids can't have homes... but sometimes, just sometimes, people with kids put a special kind of investment into a place.
And investment is what really makes a home.
After our two days in a home, we relocated once again to Tian's place, a forty minute walk from Chad's. As the tram cost two francs sixty per person and we didn't want to pay a whopping five francs twenty for such a short journey (but neither did we wish to carry our backpacks the whole way), Boy simply took both backpacks with him on the tram and I walked the forty minutes, feeling victorious in cheating this expensive country out of our two francs sixty.
Tian Harlan is another of Joy's dear friends, and is the inventor of a good many things, one of them being the Chromachron watch.
You have no way of knowing what the exact time is. Just that it looks like it's maybe a little later than half past green.
This is how Boy operates. On color time. I think I know quite a few people who operate on color time...
Tian is hilarious. Ring the doorbell and you're immediately greeted with a flapping of the top story shutters, Tian's long white hair fluttering about, and a cheerful, "WOO-HOO!!!!!" that drifts down to you, not like an autumn leaf in a fall breeze, but like an acorn.
"WOO-HOO!!!!!!" yelled Tian when we arrived at his flat on Thursday last.
"HALLO, TIAN!" we shouted up.
"WOO-HOO!!!!!" he returned. Then buzzed us on in.
We struggled up the five flights of stairs with our heavy bags, my knee aching and reminding me that I did only just have surgery a few months ago and should probably cool it on the stairs avec heavy bags.
I wonder when the time will come that I can forget this injury. When it doesn't constantly remind me, "HEY! You're broken! You can't run up stairs and you can't go up trails with lots of loose rocks and riding bikes uphill hurts like hell!"
Vajra met us the next day for an adventure. He first drove us to the countryside near Schaffhausen, and shared with us the story of his time living there with Joy. How all the frogs would come listen when he played the guitar, how sweltering the area became in the summer, the flash flood that carried the fish from his pond and dropped them in a nearby field, and how this bench was his and Joy's happy space.
After a failed attempt to pick up a package at the post office (shipping items to a foreign country is not without its perils. So many perils), Vajra drove us to Rhine Falls, the largest plain waterfall in Europe.
The waterfall was awe-inspiring. Jaw-dropping. Eardrum bursting.
Eduard Morike wrote this poem about Rhine Falls:
- Halte dein Herz, o Wanderer, fest in gewaltigen Händen!
- (Hold your heart, oh traveller, tightly in mighty hands!)
- Mir entstürzte vor Lust zitternd das meinige fast.
- (Mine nearly collapsed, shivering with pleasure)
- Rastlos donnernde Massen auf donnernde Massen geworfen,
- (Restlessly thundering masses thrown upon thundering masses)
- Ohr und Auge, wohin retten sie sich im Tumult?
- (Ear and eye, whither can they save themselves in such an uproar?)
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| People seem to use hair ties if they don't have locks. |
Vajra treated us to coffee and fries at a restaurant in Schloss Laufen, and then drove us to see yet another castle (Schloss).
Munot Fortress in Schaffhausen. Built in the 16th century to protect trade along the Rhine River.
Vajra drove us back to Tian's later that evening --
"WOO-HOO!"
-- and told us he and Joy would meet with us the next day. To explore the oldest forest in Switzerland.
That. Is more than up my alley. It's so good to be connecting with nature again. And with people like Joy, Vajra, Chad and Fanny. Can this be my life for always?
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