The chilling breeze of an autumn night began to blow. Drizzles poured mildly over the eaves of the apartment building. I was close enough to still hear the wild and sporadic laughters of the kids from the playground. Yet after the distinct sound of the tires brushing against the newly wet ground, the laughters disappeared, as well as many other sounds that usually lingered amongst the air at this time of the day. I was sitting in the vacated room opposite to where I used to sleep, accompanied by no more than the black cat on the head of whom I liked to pet. It was quite cathartic, to briefly stay away from the computer, and just listen to what the world had to offer when it was unhindered by the electric swarms of noises and colors.
Three large cranes, all erected when my freshness of starting a new job was still alive, were towering against the faint orange grey of a distant dusk. Every morning I saw them; yet every morning I passed before them like the motorcade of an unknown official, condescending and slight. But I watched them more closely this evening. It was not that my eyes could tell their shapes with better integrity, nor that my understanding of the functionality of the cranes would improve, just that, I became, albeit very briefly, devout to the cranes that had been so marginal yet so integral to my identity. The basketball court where, for a not-so-short period of time, I played basketball daily, and the Momos dumpling restaurant, where I had wanted to visit and decided not to, and the Rewe supermarket, with its friendly hopeful homeless guy sitting at the front door, all lay metaphysically dormant, shrouded by the torpor and dread of the weather turning cold. Strangely I had been more careless and glad last winter. Perhaps, back then everything was more withdrawn and decided, and I more churlish and forgiving.
The crescendo of the blue sky began to command a blacker hue. Throughout this day, Berlin was utterly cloudy. During the night, the clouds would be less discernible, and so would the stars. I looked outwards without nostalgia nor hope. It was one of the looks I routinely posed when something had puzzled me, with my mouth half-open, as if whispering the silenced words. Indeed, it was puzzling, the monochromatic purity of the night, almost like a brutalist building without its eager edges and looming contours, only more simplistic, and more straightforward. I felt more puzzled as I looked up in the sky, the all-encompassing dome under which all but a few of my race had dwelled. Wars were ravaged, wonderful stories told, wine drunk from the glass, the songs sung at the fire, the distant pleasures I described lyrically, and the nearer ones I remembered but neglected. Yet the darkness of every night had eaten them all, leaving behind only the skeletons, bare and confined to the weariness of their afterlife.
Suddenly a small gust of wind nudged against my upper arm. I closed the window, severing the flimsy tie I had with the already invisible sky. Indoors, surrounded by the slow buzz of the heater, and the dizzying snide of the television one room and a corridor away, I wallowed in my bed with a smartphone to a gradual halt.
-
I woke up gracelessly, with a deep longing of going back to sleep. After three snoozes, I sluggishly braced my body upwards. Today could be my final trip to Bremen before spring next year, and I foresaw it as being rather placid and repetitive.
Another day started without my conscious knowing of it. Only in my weakened memory of what was yesterday and the day before did I infer that indeed I had slept, and that the planet had already completed yet another cycle of rotation. I was riding on the InterCity train from Hamburg to Bremen. The trees and bushes flew by the windows on both sides, and were pigeonholed into fleeting shades of green and gray. The wagon ran on a constant speed that was already beyond the comprehension of the human brain. And I was like a willingly startled cat, boxed up in the cabin to be sent to a familiar strange vet.
Bremen, an objectively neutral place, when coupled with the various things I had learned to associate with it for the past two years, turned decidedly dolorous. It was earthly and real, and therefore more relatable to the emotions felt during a true heartbreak, rather than those invented when reading a romance novel. I hadn't got a useful word to say about it. In Bremen I was more speechless than I was anywhere else.
I began to miss Berlin almost instantaneously. Like a lost child yearning for the fragrance of the homemade bread, which for him didn't exist, I yearned for the serenity of a salaried life, which for me, likewise didn't exist.
I was still quite familiar with Bremen's public transportation system, as well as different Starbucks locations without the aid of Google Maps, so I was able to order Caramel Macchiato this time. In the taste of it, there was simultaneously a sweetness reminiscent of the local cuisines of where I came from, and a loosely bitter touch of coffee that for me, pertained firmly to a western ideal that wasn't included in my original upbringing. On the chair with steel framework and a black woven cushion made from bamboo, I mentally curled up into a ball, protected from the incessant rumble that was Bremen.
I envisaged, with a level of earnestness likened to that of a man's tears, how marvelous, how staggering, how vastly cherishable must it be, if in the future I finally freed myself of the fears and uncertainties that were marauding me now. But I could never be too sure of it - my life was a book that had been merely initiated, but remained unplanned, and unplannable.
And thus, without gaining any new perspective into my existing pool of knowledge, I took a ceremonial sip from the empty coffee cup, rose up, and left.
-
The sky cleared as I left Bremen. I became calm and joyful.
