The Bird in the Tree

Wake-up feel: 5. Up at 5:45.

Exercises done. Then out.

The northwest wind was unceasing from the start. Not gusting. Just cold and steady, pushing against the whole walk. No crows this morning. No swans. No red kite. Only birds singing from inside the reed fields, invisible.

Flower day until 18h — then Leaf.

The Bodden was uneasy. Not rolling waves — many small waves going in no particular direction, the surface broken everywhere at once by a wind that did not let it rest. People have read this water from this shore for five thousand years. They knew what an uneasy surface meant.

I thought about the man at the bottom of the lake.

At the turning point I stopped.

In the tree at the shore — the lone tree I have passed every morning for twenty-eight days — a large dark bird was perched. I could not tell if it was a heron or a cormorant. Long beak. Dark. Big. It turned its head and looked at me. Did not lift. Just looked, the way something looks when it has been there longer than you have. Then it turned back toward the water.

I said goodbye and walked back.

The Aufstellung begins this evening. The wild man at the bottom of the lagoon is carrying one question in.

The bird was already in the tree.

Day 28 — Phase 4 — Balance — Spleen / Pancreas — Turquoise — Sun Tzu
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
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