streets

The smell of barley and malt that covers the street catapults me back to my previous domicile in Leipzig when I lived almost next door with a brewery. It is as if I was riding my bike on that bumpy road of the alley that was leading towards my house, my house that was rose and the last one in the street. It seems I chose the last houses of roads. In the last three places I lived at, it was like that at least. Now I live in the last house of Bismarckstraße, previously it was the last house of Johannisallee and once before that it was Zollernstraße. Three different cities, three different houses, three different me's? I'd like to believe it was always me who lived at the end of those streets, walked them, rode them several times a day for different reasons, but the truth is that I am caught in a weird dialectic trap that makes me believe nothing distinguishes one from the other existence. If I had to chose a distinctive feature, one word for each street I would say Zollernstraße was "cherry tree", Johannisallee "cobblestone" and Bismarckstraße "church clock", but if I had to chose one word for all three I would say "abyss" (with all the meanings it has).
I am trying to make my peace with all of them, with Zollernstraße I think I have already made my peace long time back. I see myself as a child there, I look back at it almost tenderly. I had not been aware that I was so free in my thoughts as I have not been it again. The afternoons were so prolonged, the mornings so unimportant, the evenings so heavy with meaning and emotion. Time was something that I felt in its extension, I can say I went with it and it gave me the space to create. On sheets of paper, unconditioned and uncensored. Johannisallee made me aware that for planting trees with awareness loneliness must not be used in its destructive version and yet I was unable to stop walking in circles. I got lost in the "view from my window" that did not reach the other side of the little garden below my balcony. Now, in Bismarckstraße time has to show. Maybe it is not a coincidence that the church clock is half way the street in which I live.