Shrove Tuesday, morning.

Late on Sunday evening I caught a overwhelmingly crowded Flixbus, which departed Cologne/Bonn Airport on time, for the penultimate leg, of this very tiring day, to finally connect with Mike and Steffi, who were waiting to collect and bring me the short distance to their home in the northern suburbs of Frankfurt am Main.
At around two thirty am, European time, I was snug and exhausted in their office room where they had a sofa-bed made and where I was to be housed for the two nights prior to connecting the last dots in the journey to begin on the Jakobsweg in Hessen.

It's early on Shrove Tuesday and I am collecting my thoughts, brewing coffee and turning my considerations towards the following fourteen days. As of Ash Wednesday I will be walking south east from Fulda on the direction of Trier and it's been such a struggle to get back to where I do belong! The Way will be stretching out ahead of me, in all kinds of seasonal weather's, with the unknown path feeding my feet, during Lent.

For close to two months I've been living in limbo, alternating my two habits (often in a daily exchange of my two modes of life: peaceful and noisey, happy and sad, enthusiastic and abysmal, inspired and fatigued, sober and drunk) while I waited for another chance coming along to step out of the unreal 99% of my life in the vain hope for the 1% where I feel anything close to the truth.

As it gets closer, although I can hear the wind playing against the shutters outside, the edges of my mouth creep upwards and my forehead reverses it's pattern suggesting a total change: bliss.

All my life I've found being patient for anything which is considered elsewhere "worth waiting for" - by delaying instant gratification - impossible to adjust too. Where is tomorrow? I am simply unable to grasp the necessity of a future goal because I don't know what will be around the next bend, drawing my life's final breath away, and making all bloody striving meaningless!

I don't really understand how to slow down and plan. Instead I've always thrown my fragile life away in meaningless and, often, hedonistic pleasure. As the tallow wastes away and the light ebbs towards a final extinguishing sign my reason is untangling. But the Sun rises whole as one, never ceasing, flowing to me as my fingers flow into this touch sensitive screen and I can pick my trampled body, punished brain and forgotten mind and shout "enough"!

Yesterday Mike drove us into central Frankfurt from Bad Vilbel and hid his car in a remote, forgotten and free car park space in the east, where no one (Polizei) will care if his BMW is too old to be allowed into the designated pollution zones and we walked along the Main river on the south bank.

We lingered by the European Central Bank monolith, after we crossed the graffiti scrawled iron railway bridge and looked on the "created" space with its feeling of nothingness floating on the brushed gravel landscaping.

...

I'm on the train to Fulda now, passing Frankfurt Süd at 10:33, leaving the towers that crowd around central station, crouched shoulders conspiratorially rubbing palm against palm. Finding any sign of the scollop shell around the Dom and Neu Altstadt was difficult and when I finally saw one it led me the same direction I had come. Perhaps they were only leading from the Saint Leonhard's church back to the Alt Brücke to cross to the south bank of the Main before heading west towards Höchst? But this is all conjecture and doesn't really matter for at least six more days...

Comments

Oby said…
Reading about your first steps in the shadow of the Frankfurt Messeturm tower in Bockenheim. I wish you a "buen camino"! Let me know when you need some assistance, I am a scrummaster and pilgrim, so maybe I can deal with some of your impediments.

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