Today in one of my habitual afternoons on my narrow front porch, I notice that spring has come back. The trees in front of the apartment building have amassed enough greenish sprouts that the green has become visible. I wear fewer layers of clothes at once and have already learned to appreciate the sun less than I did in winter. But this spring differs somewhat from the last, mainly because I have stayed home from the middle of March, when the weather was still chillier, and have not accomplished many things of note since then. I do not find the return of spring this year particularly relatable. The routines I have every week are all carried out from the same wooden desk next to my bed - working, learning German, and doing German homework. The memories I have with people are all from winter when the hours were still dark early and when I wore a jacket on top of whatever underneath. These usual or sweet moments have already receded, some more fully than others, but nothing new has replenished them. I am left to dwell in them, to look at them and to try to feel them like trying to gauge the impression of the sun from the balcony of a cloudy day. The birds chirping in the woods, the occasional eager cyclists riding along the road, and the added likeness of spring in the air hence feel a tad out of place with many missing parts that are nowhere to be found.
I look up to the sky. It is so bright that the shapes of the white clouds coming from the west cannot be seen exactly. From in between these clouds strong oblique lights cascade through and blast onto the concrete floor in front of my chair. I can feel a burning sensation through my pajamas but I cannot feel its warmth. Many times I have sat here and thought of many things, even though when seen retrospectively most of them are in vain or no matter. My sitting here, alone under the afternoon sun, with the entirety of my rented apartment behind, calms me in a way that I only quite rarely feel. Here, the white concrete floor is the stage, the wind blowing through the crevice on the door is the orchestra, the spring trees and the rumbling cars on Wolfratshauser Straße are the audience, and I, the conductor, unfold life's symphony into all of its unchoreographed movements.
This afternoon will be insignificant, and the day that wraps around it will be reduced to what I have written on this page. My concrete existence as of now, will turn into a shadowy silhouette, from which I neither hear nor see. This moment, when all the warmth from the sun, the green from the trees, the noises from the traffic and the fluffy pajama bottom covering my legs feel so tangible and concrete, will be frozen and gradually chipped away. And I am always marred by an inability to seize anything from it. Summer is impending and I cannot do anything about it. The months roll forward and so do I. My sitting on this chair static is but an illusion. Time has grabbed me like an ocean freighter carrying its goods - moving slowly but surely with a set origin and a set destination.
The street below my front porch all of a sudden has ramped down. There seems to be a respite from the flow of cars that I can even hear the slow grinding-to-a-halt of the S-Bahn that is at least 1 kilometer away. Aside from this there are only reigning silence and a torching sun. I lift my right leg so that it rests on the edge my chair and wrap my hands around it to, no matter what, keep a semblance of warmth from this afternoon in me.
