Looking East

Day 66 — May 31, 2026 — morning, 9:14. Frankfurt (Oder). A bench in a small park, in the shade of a tree.

The city where my life in this country began. Almost thirty-one years now, and the first of them were here. I came back to it this morning.

Yesterday I sat in the center of this city with my son and my "daughter" — known since she was four — ice cream in our hands, small talk in our mouths. The ordinary kind, which is the only kind that builds anything. After, we parted ways with my son, and I drove her home and showed her the base camp — the garden, the place I may live for a while. We left each other with a hug, no tears this time. She seemed already to know where she can find me. Not a written address. The other kind: here, this is where I am.

Today, some time alone before the rest of the day.

This city holds my decisions. The good ones and the ones that cost. You don't get to keep only the gentle half of a life.

Before I sat down to write, I walked the few metres to the Oder. The river runs its own way, north to the Baltic Sea. I was not following the water. I was looking across it — past the near grass, over the current, to the landscape on the far side. Eastward. East is the direction of the way forward. When I first came to this country, I landed in the west, on the far border. I went east thirty-one years ago. Now I am at the eastern edge of it, looking further east still. I stood and listened — the birds, the frogs in the reeds, the wind in the grass. The elderberry is in flower along the path. I put my face into it. That smell is medicine; the tree carried it long before I came to take it. Here, the old people called it their medicine chest — flower for the fever, berry for the long winter — and kept a guardian in it, the Elder Mother, whom you asked before you cut. It still gives the same medicine; it only grows wild on the verge now, planted by no one, given to whoever stops to take it.

In a few hours I go to the station for my daughter. The way forward is made of the people who have been close to me all these years — their needs inside it, not beside it. That is not a line you draw alone on a map. You hear it, and then you carry it to them.

So I am listening. To the past, which is finished and still speaks. To yesterday — ice cream, small talk, a hug at a garden gate. To the lands across the river, eastward. The decision is not made here. Here, it only ripens.

I am listening.

"Seven places were on the table. Now three. What I am naming is what I need from wherever I land. Not only mine. The needs of the people who have been close to me all these years belong in this too."

Day 66 — Phase 9 — Hearing — Pericardium — Amethyst — Psalm 46 / Gospel of John
Gut Nisdorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baltic Coast
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