Now, two years later, in December 2006, I again begin my stay in Berlin with a visit to the Kulturkaufhaus. This time I only walk down Friedrichstraße from my hotel apartment close to the Berlin Museum of Natural History. The Museumsinsel is just around the corner. During my 2002 Berlin visit when - after a major life's decision - I fled La Boulaye to embark on learning how to write, to document and communicate the ongoing research of riding, I came in on the subway from an apartment hotel in Wedding and walked to Friedrichstraße on one foot (the other broken in a spurt of energy, while feeding horses in a moon-less Norman night), without ever discovering the Kulturkaufhaus, the Museumsinsel or Cafe Einstein.
Again there are sweaters on sale kitty-corner to the Kulturkaufhaus. I re-aquaint myself with historians Gehrke and Schmoekel and read the brain researcher's Gerhard Roth newest findings. With interest I note their developments. Again I look for music to take home. My hair is whiter still and after this year's change of style now cut to chin-length. I have discovered the comfort of cashmere. In the dtv-atlas Philosophie I make a profound discovery, which reconfirms my 1Humanity research and I am reminded of a further matter to apply myself to, Substitution. A Universal Law.
During the past two years I forgot all about Berlin. Where does this tendency to forget come from. This habit to simply cut portions of experience from my memory. I add a clue from my personal history.
And the thought of one I love still sparks my heart.
Strawberries for Breakfast
Purchase
I did not understand why he pulled the car over to the left, so close to a left turn of the road we travelled on? "It must be dangerous", I thought, "to leave this spot, not being able to see the oncoming traffic".
The reason for this sudden decision? An opportunity to purchase stawberries, freshly picked in the field beyond.
He enjoyed to make contact with the young woman, standing there, behind a small sales table, under a white umbrella on the parking lot. Slightly irritated, she searched for my eyes. Finding them, she relaxed, reacting to my reassuring smile.
We left with two bins, a kilo each, of the two types of strawberries she offered.
His muscular car quickly took us back on our way.
Rooms
We were on our way, coming from the airport, over on the other side, going to his home: a small apartment in the top floor of a three-storey house in midst of far-sloping vineyards. Here he lives, only during work weeks and only when not travelling. The house, a private hotel with restaurant in the adjasent building, is typical of this landscape he loves. In this area his secretary of old lives, with her husband and their two daughters.
The small one-bedroom-apartment, with its slanting walls, provides a wide view over the upper valley and the country beyond. A Cuisine Americaine (French term for a one-line, small kitchen unit. This one, incidently, the exact same model I had purchased, second-hand, after our return from America, some seventeen years earlier), placed directly across the apartment’s entrance door, is the first thing I notice when entering. And in the refrigerator of this Cuisine Americaine the strawberries we purchased on the way are placed.
This touch-down home is his base and the center of his operations. From here he manages his U.S. real estate; and a few Berlin pieces (‘…currently the best tool to minimize taxes in Germany’); the investment firm he established not long ago and still shares; and a non-profit foundation, owning Chinese art and bestowing fellowships on scholars of Chinese art (the latter a commitment, inherited from well-to-do friends, now deceesed. This foundation, incidently, appears to be one of the many developing hot spots for growing Chinese cultural interests in the Northern hemishere). From this location he attends to his personal, family and public interests and commitments.
This, his place, is located in the midst of a hunt, which, he slightly resigned relates, officials of the local community have bestowed on him for another nine year term.
Behind each successful man stands a wise woman. This wife, his junior and physically less stable, lives, a few hours by car or railroad, away in a town over on the other side. Together they spend weekends, often in the mountains, to share moments of their so very different lives. They are without child.
My room for the duration of a two-and-a half-day visit is located on the floor below; here a glas door opens to a narrow balcony; the window pointing in the other direction, toward the foot of a vineyard located directly behind it.
On arrival, invited to take a shower and rest up, I nap for a while and, at the agreed time, go upstairs to assume our talks.
Background
There was no obvious reason to renew our contact after 25 years of silence during the long, cold winter of 2005; except, maybe that, through unsuspected circumstances I had, just previously, experienced a long due release. The resulting freedom made me curious. “Why not test this freedom, now that it is here”, I thought, “and find out, if it is real and here to stay”.
This was one of the two reasons for an e-mail I sent to his address, in the month of January 2005. The other: my persistent longing for closeness (a longing that, I was certain, we share) and the realisation that it would not be good to let this man go, without, at least, an attempt at friendship.
Experience proves that friendship, to last, requires joint interests. 25 years ago I turned down his offer - no, I had no interest in collecting stamps. Now it was my turn to detect and come up with a mutual interest. Our conversation (via e-mail) resumed, no hint of a break, with the role Reagan, president of the United States, played in the fall of communism; an interest which he, in recent month, had followed in his readings.
Our first and only mutual financial transaction, this time, was the payment of a parking ticket. He had, due to his excitement over my arrival, forgotten to devalidate the parking ticket for his car when leaving the airport. Only noticing this fact when approaching the parking lot exit, he pulled up the car and, carefully counting out three coins, handed them to me. He added a small bill (in case the coins should not suffice) and the parking ticket and asked me to go and pay. Age eighty (he) and fifty-five (me), we conducted this mutual transaction earnestly (and without a hint of unease) like a father and a child or, better, like the older brother (which he was to his younger brothers) and a younger sister (which I did not want to be to my older sister).
I went, devalidated the ticket and, returning to the airport parking lot, handed him, without further mentioning, the small bill: a move (and the way it happened) that mattered.
It did take these twenty-five years, for me, to realize what matters to the soul. I now am the age, that he was, when we last met. In other words, when we met last, he was fifty-five and I was all of thirty.
Set-up
There were two additional reasons to renew our contact.
My curiosity to know a person who decided to stand up to life, prepared to fulfill its demands, not avoid them. Would not our fellowship further what I so foolishly have neglected: well directed, systematic, goal oriented approaches in life?
My wish to speak to someone his stature about a newly published project (www.renew-anew.org); to get his opinion, his feed-back and input. It should soon become apparent that my (probably only) successful approach might have been, to ask for his support of this project. Yet I, at age fifty-five, still was foolish enough to hope that he might, spontaniously, (not necessarily support but) embrace and share it.
My premise: there exists no good reason to separate the concerns of church and state, economy and philosophy, private and public life. As it stands, all are subject to one rule. All are but different aspects of one truth (or fact, or reality), having man at its very center (here I remember Pilate’s question, ‘What is truth’).
Surely approaching life from this premise must feel strange to one who daily (and well at that) deals with details of the existing thought structure profit before all else; who moves well in the upper world, that is, for the most part, organised in narrow fields of interests. So what made me think that he might be able, or interested, to embrace the concept of one God, who, motivated by love, is saviour and highest authority?
Rested and prepared I went up one flight to his apartment and, standing on the narrow landing, knocked on the apartment door. No response. I pushed down the handle in an attempt to open the door. It was locked. Walking over to the other side, leaning on the landing’s rail, looking out of the window at the adjastent building; I waited.
After unaccounted moments turning back towards the door, it was unlocked and half opened. Entering, I saw him, after a nap, getting ready for the evening. He noticed me, having expected my arrival; came over, kissed and welcomed me and, standing near me, looked intently into my face. There I stood, allowing him to look at me, intently, and - it was okay. Apparently my freedom was here to stay.
Only now, as I write this text (several weeks later) an unknown regret takes hold of me. The realisation, a correlations may exist of this long-standing fear of men (equaled only by what one may, also, call a human condition: attraction between the sexes) and faults in my social attitudes and behaviour. I see myself, now normal; and the idea, of a happy, healthy normality all of a sudden suggests itself.
Talks
Our e-mail contact, in preparation for this visit, was, in part, to identify suitable subjects for a possible cooperation. There are, today, a vast number of subjects to be considered for renewal. So vast that the volumn alone suggests a look at basic underlying issues. Taken this fact and the nature of long-distance correspondances, it was only the beginning of a discussion that, via e-mail, finally lacked conclusion, and it was decided, that, to talk, one would need to meet.
It so happened that, during my visit, which was well planned in advance, the French nation voted against the European constitution; an event considered by some a mile stone for what, ultimately, could only be a complete failure in the attempt to unite Europe, to others an unavoidable step of adjustment within the union. I could not help (visiting this remote but powerful financial center at just this time) but observe the international money market’s reactions to this vote.
As I overheard arrangements for the adjustments to investments made to produce income I read, in his investment firm’s broshure (provided for clients) the statement, ‘wealth is reserved for those, who know and keep to the laws of capital’, and ‘important things in life one should, either, personally lay hands on, or, pass on into hands that are experienced and competent enough, to implement decisions, as if they were one’s own’.
Sitting there, in the only armchair free to seat guests (the others taken by well organized stacks of files, notes, books and magazines), I began to think. Capital, what exactly is this; what rules it? Who uses it; to do what? Why is it distributed so unevenly around the globe; could it possibly be used more effectively? If yes, how? This is, of course, not the first time I think about these questions. I fell upon them during my studies in the history of economy in Bonn, during those years of transit from theology/Amerika to horses/Europe; and I again found them dealt with in a small book, the first when looking for titles to buy and read in preparation for our talks, entitled Small is Beautiful by E.F.Schumacher.
And the sentence, ‘…implement decisions as if they were one’s own’, strikes me as peculiar. What, if my decision were, to invest my money in the abolishment of cars in inner cities? To create zones of sanctity where presently small, environmentally questionable, four-wheeled private livingspaces burden public spaces clearly not designed for them. Would this investment firm be willing and able to invest my funds, profitably, in such a case?
Does not this sentence speak of a preconceived decision, an unspoken agreement of the wealthy, to invest in a set system; a system that, incidently, has created the world as it is today; and, are there not things to be said about this world (such as, for instance, the fact that three forths of today’s world population does not profit leave alone eat properly?
As I sit and wait, I read, in one of the leading weekly economic journals, an article by Jan Davis, chief executive of McKinsey & Co., about the contract of society and the corporate world. His suggestions for a greater sensitivity between those in power over man-as-producer to the corporate needs of men-as-consumer (to use Schumacher’s fitting definition) sound good. They do not sound so good, coming from the head of this company.
These now, are the things I came to speak about.
Dinner Tuesday
We passed the door, went down the stairs, left the building and walked over to his car in the parking lot; and went off to dinner, the first after twenty-five years, two quarters of a century worth of experiences to share.
Soon the pattern of our communication evolved. He spoke,
I listenen. This freedom from inquiry (both ways) provided me with the priviledge to hear him share his thoughts and emotions liberally. It made me proud to be worthy of such straight-forwardness and of the amount of detail he shared. Regularly pauses occurred, times for me to respond. Occasionally my voice was too quiet, for him, to pick up the meaning of my words. Sometimes my thoughts were too far reaching. But, oh, was he quick to pick up missing elements, jump and fill the gap.
The very first subject that, after the customary small talk (which we also, for the start-up of our conversation, respected) was an occurance that in recent years had occupied, and, frankly, embarressed my immediate family. My oldest brother (two years younger than I and the oldest of four brothers) had, by legal decree, insisted on a proof of familial relations, suspecting, based on similarities in shape and look, and on a mysterious, special relationship of my mother to my host, to be their son.
Blood tests of my older sister and younger brothers had delivered proof that this brother was, indeed, the son of our father, as my mother had all along insisted. I also had received a request to participate in this proof of family relations and had been asked to supply a legally certified blood test within a given period. My move to France had delayed matters. The court, no longer willing to wait, decided that, on account of five blood tests (that of my elder sister and my four younger brothers), the matter was clear. The case was closed, making my blood test superfluous.
I did not come the long way from home for all of two-and-a-half days, leaving behind my work with the horses (which always can only loose from breaks in the schedule) to discuss this matter. And yet, I was glad the subject was on the table. In fact, I was proud of him for loosing no time to put it on the table.
As we were sitting there, in the evening sun, sipping our mineral water (a boost of Gicht had befallen him the evening before my arrival, calling for abstinance from alcohol), awaiting the setting of his special table in the far corner of a prominent restaurant, we moved slowly and somewhat timidly towards this, unpleasant for us both, unasked for subject, which, none-the-less, was at hand.
And before it would get out of hand, I took a leap (how to catch a free-flying bird without a net?) and presented him with an idea that years ago, while still living in America and involved with the American born-again movement, had presented itself to me. ‘I believe’, I said to him, ‘that my parent’s marriage was burdened with a spirit of adultery’.
The idea instantly took hold of him. I repeated the term spirit of adultery in our mutual German language, but I needed not have done so. He had understood. What, exactly, moved his mind at the moment of this comprehension remaines shrouded.
In place of further discussion of this unloved subject, he turned his attention towards my day-to-day life, its parameters and concerns. Slowly creating an image in his mind, of me, this woman (having, after all, come in as if from the cold. A fact, which, incidently, he did not acknowledge once), sitting, in the slowly setting sun, there before him.
His inquiries (which I perceived as an expression of his care) were endearing to my heart. ‘And so, what do you do, when your husband, who normally prepares meals for your lunch time, is away, traveling?’ was one of his questions. My answer, ‘Well, I go out for lunch’. ‘But the cost’, his objection.’ ‘I don’t care’, my response.
It was one of those exchanges that, even if conducted with the utmost respect typical of contact start-up, none-the-less, readily lent visibility to two distinctly different perceptions of life; differences not fully accounted for by our individual ages, sexes and personalties. It was the difference of one, called on to be systematic, responsible and dependable (he) and one, saved by grace (me). One being in the world, the other trying to stay free of it.
What he seemed to view as neglect of my duties (to be a wife, the head of my household, and thrifty at such), I saw as a blessing of the Lord, a special personal freedom, created just for me.
Asking this particular question, I was not sure if he sensed or knew of my fundamental fear of being deserted, which developed, suddenly and without warning, upon reentering my parent’s house after their break-up: no one was there! This reoccuring fear being the reason to avoid empty houses, especially at meal times.
His inquiries touched on my sister, my brothers, my mother, whom he had not seen for years, and, only recently, in an attempt to visit, had not been able to find. He inquired when I had last seen her. My explaination of our (my mother’s and my) relationship startled him. Only with my statement, ‘She wants to fight, …but, …I don’t fight’, did he pick up my point. And startling me, in return, he replied, ‘…I, myself, have such desire for harmony’.
He spoke about my father, his cousine, whom he knew from childhood, and the ungrateful task, years ago, after my parent’s divorce, to collect (representing my mother’s interests) the legally decreed monthly payments my father was to make in support of (no, not my mother, his ex-wife, but my brothers, his sons), but did not make. It was the first time I heared of this arrangement, being, at this time, like my sister, already married and off my parent’s payroll.
Here, now, I saw another part of him: the executor of difficult, unpleasant chores. A role, he apparently has times and again played, not only in my immediate family, but in a whole host of situations, when called upon to establish peace and maintain justice.
As the sun was setting we slowly moved inside. It was a quiet corner, away from the main dining hall. The service turned out to be clumsy and restless, not at all what one migth expect of a well managed, high class restaurant (which, after all, hosted the meeting of German chancellor Helmut Kohl welcoming …….Jelzin, Russian prime minister, during one of the state visits so pertinent to the establishment of communications after the end of the cold war and the fall of communism) .
Our meal in this restaurant appeared to be somewhat of a family affair, which, it in fact was. I should encounter similar situation during ensuing meal times. In each of the places we went to eat, he was known (in some or another fashion), always equally respected, always enjoying his role. I interpret this reoccuring circumstance as an expression of his deep personal interest in people. He wants to know men, how they live and (completely natural for him) how they run their life’s business’; this being the private root of his extented interest in the world of finance at large.
Return Thursday
My two-and-a-half-day visit passed without talks ever resuming. He spoke, I listened. Occasionally he inquired of my opinion. Usually my point of view was too far out to correlate with his thinking. I got to know this thinking, the actions and emotions of a man, successful, concerned, caring, of basic Christian belief, altogther loving and lovable: my uncle and friend. Deeply moved I went on my return flight and, at the other end, was picked up by my husband who took me home.
Sitting in the airplane, passing again the stations of my visit, soon one statement made this morning, reentered mind. This statement had puzzled me and, even after thinking about it now, I did not understand.
This morning (the last morning of my visit), coming to pick him up in his apartment for yet another elaborate, sumptious breakfast and more talk in the adjasent restaurant, he surprised me with the last of the strawberries we had purchased on the day of my arrival. And while we sat there, I in the only armchair of his apartment free to seat guests, he on his office chair, a bowl of strawberries between us, each of us a fork in hand to pick them up, he said, “…if only your mother could see us now, (in German)…der Täter an den Ort der Tat zurückgekehrt (the delinquent returned to the place of delinquancy).
According to an to this point unrecognized habit, I, in an instant, decided not to dwell on this statement, not hear it, so to speak, and deal with it later. We had a good time at breakfast; he took me back to the airport in his big car; our final minutes were filled with the mutual pleasure of each other’s company.
When finally we said good-by he grabbed my neck, his left hand squeezing my shoulder-length white hair in a sudden burst of temperament. Leaving, I saw him standing there, waving good-by; every bit himself; no impression of his eighty years at all; but of a man. And I responded, cheerfully, gleefully, being myself; a woman.
In the airport back home, between arrival, greeting my husband and walking to the car, I made a quick decision to run to the airport restroom before returning home. And, strangely, upon entering, an explaination dawned on me; an idea what his unusual statement may possibly be all about; things he said about my mother and the early time of their acquantance reentered my mind; my sister and I were little girls then.
I will not elaborate on my suspicion (time has passed and there is no accuser), but record, that this thought, this possible explaination, did confirm my new found freedom. Whatever happened, long ago, before my ability to remember, marked my mind, my soul, my body and emotions. My new work, entailing contact with men of many ages, types and minds, which begun not long after this revelation, only now became an option.
Working together
Our communication soon broke down and I did not hear of him, until, during Christmas season of that same year, there was a message on my answer phone. I responded by e-mail, no answer, but a week later the phone rang again. It was good to hear his voice.
Immediately we took up our rythm. He spoke, I listened, answering the occasional question. In the evening a brief e-mail: his promise to respond to my request as time permits. My request: his assistance in a new research project.
The Evolution of Paths, Population and Equitation: A Relational History.
This research is a project of the Association of Interdisciplinary Studies, which inquires into the common roots of one humantiy and as such is a functions of modern Christianity.
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