The Engine

Wake-up feel: 6.

03:53 — rain drops on the roof. The birds were already at it.

Got up. Exercises. Out by 04:45 along the winding road — Bodden to the left, reed fields still dark, rapeseed fields to the right. The sun somewhere behind the clouds. Low gray sky. Every shade of gray you can name. A little spot of pink, the sun making itself known. No shadows.

The birds did not care about the sky. From the reeds, from the hedges, from somewhere above the fields — singing.

At the bend where the road begins to wind, I stopped. The scent of rapeseed — sweet, heavy. The Bodden still. I was watching it when the noise came. A stomp. Close. I looked behind me: nothing. A woosh — I turned to the side: nothing. I stood and listened.

Then the bark.

Not once or twice. Many times, coming from the reed fields directly in front of me. The rehbuck, announcing himself, insisting. I never saw him. Just the sound — again and again — until it stopped.

Respect. I walked on.

At the turning point: a lone deer in the field, eating. She looked up at me. Returned to eating.

Respect. I turned for Gut Nisdorf.

I came back and sat with my coffee. The Bodden was quiet. No engine this morning — Vatertag. The fisherman is on shore.

Yesterday I heard it for the first time. Not the first time it crossed the water. After forty-eight mornings — the first time I actually heard it.

Today a call is scheduled — with people building something in a country far from here. A place where they said I am needed. Soil work, community work, the kind of regeneration that happens when a place has been broken open and people decide to build anyway.

I don't know yet what will come of it. The terrain of that conversation is still forming.

The engine is still out there.

But something is moving. The direction — not yet named. The word — still rising.

Ascension Day. Vatertag. Sun in Taurus. New moon in two days. Last day of Phase 7.

"I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee."
— Job 42:5

Day 49 — Phase 7 — Word — Bladder — Onyx — Book of Job
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
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