This is something I rarely do, sit in the park and write. It’s such a rare day however, that I’ve made an exception. Today is what we would call in New York a “Top 10 day” – cloudless soft blue sky, bright sun, almost imperceptible cooling breeze and birdsong, lots of it, from every corner of the auditory frame.
It’s one of the those days you’d like to bottle: suck up a bit of it and store it under your bed for that inevitable morning when the sound of rain is the first thing you hear and you search hopelessly in the darkness for the blanket that slipped off the bed last night during a dream of walking nude through an ice-cold pond. For that day when you wake up with that cold place on your neck, so stiff that you finally rise and rub it warm, certain that beneath it the tissues have already set in building some virus that will sack you for a few days. That’s what I was always told anyways – that cold air blowing on your skin while you sleep slows down the flow of blood just enough to let the nasties in. I still sleep with the window open, nasties notwithstanding. I’d rather die from a cool breeze than be smothered in the husky dampness of an over-warm room.
I’ve found a patch of sun here. I waited while the white-haired woman in yoga garb ate her dark bread and tofu sandwich then left this bench to me. The park I’m sitting in right now is filled with old trees that just bloomed in the last week or so, so the shadows they cast are wide. If I were to stay here through the day, I’d have to slide over to the adjoining bench at about 2 pm to catch the better angle. The late-afternoon angle. But right now, I’m on the late morning bench, facing the apartment building I’ve lived in for the last two years here in the heart of Cologne.
Days like this are rare in Cologne – that’s another reason I decided to come outside and enjoy it. For most of the year, the sky is grey and our sun hardly ever puts on a display like the one we’re enjoying today. I lived in LA for a time and almost began to take it for granted – that constant sunshine in the daytime followed by the cool, crisp nights. Here, we don’t have that luxury and I expect that all over town the parks are filled and filling still throughout the day and into the evening (if the weather holds) with pale Germans craning their faces toward the light.
In an hour or less, the school children will be coming home. And the park will begin to fill with them. I don’t have much more time to myself. Already a young lady has taken her position on the bench next to mine, rolling up the legs of her jeans and sipping a large blue mug of something. She sits quietly, staring at the tulips in the flowerbed behind her. I was a little concerned when she first sat down. She had her cell phone to her ear and I imagined having to listen to an interminable one-sided conversation, always spoken in a voice loud enough to travel halfway down the block. But (thank you great spirit) the other party didn’t answer and so we sit not six feet apart in relative silence. The only noise being the click of my fingers on the keyboard of my laptop and the gentle bumping roll of car tires on the cobblestone street just beyond the tulip border.
I’ve decided to write a book. Actually, I’ve been writing it for five years now but never called it a book, just wrote and wrote and wrote – essays mostly, short pieces about life with my two, then three, then four and now five-year-old son. I’m writing this book for an audience of one: he’s the reader I hope will pick this thing up when it’s finished and take something of value from it. If anyone else reads it, then so much the better.
Oh crap – she finally found someone to talk to on the telephone. Is she that bored with this beautiful day that she has to pick up that stupid thing and stab the perfect sound space with her idle chatter? Her face (she is now sprawled out on the bench) is very close to me. I could just about lean over and grab the phone from her hand. I understand enough German to know that this conversation is about nothing – just “blah, blah, blah what are you doing? Nothing? Me too, blah, blah, blah.” This is why I don’t come out more often into the park to write, because it doesn’t really work. The park is as much hers as mine. I can’t really complain about it (even though I do). She has got just as much right as I do to be here.
She’s heating up – I can smell her perfume as it comes to a simmer on her face, now fully flattened out to the sun. Too bad it doesn’t smell better. At least that would be some consolation. Instead, it’s smells like soap with a hint of antiseptic, a dash of artificial floral whatsit and finished off with a splash of drug-store deodorant. The latter may not necessarily be an element of her perfume but it has become a fragrant asset of her total body scent which wafts my way.
I light up a cigarette. There she goes, she’s sitting up now. My smell is far nastier than hers, maybe enough to get her to move altogether. Isn’t that terrible of me? Lighting my nasty punk of a fag in the service of a bit of silence? But it worked. There she goes and I’ve got the place all to myself again. At least for another ten minutes or so until the next sun worshipper drops by. Ah, the joys of a sunny day in the city.
Read R. W. Dooley's full blog at: www.germandiary.blogspot.com
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Expatica blogger R.W. Dooley reflects on the effort it takes to enjoy the park in silence.
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