It's so easy to stumble into a cafe on every corner in this place. I have done just that most days with journal in hand becoming a regular at the Kaffee KATHE named for famed neighborhood sculptor, Kathe Kollwitz. She lived on this street during the old days and ways. Her works represented the common folk who were poor both in means and in spirit. A huge self-portrait bronze sculpture overlooks the ping pong tables in the Kollwitzplatz park where children gather day and evening with their families who as most people in the neighborhood seem to be of upper middle class. Kathe would not recognize the place. It's easy to forget the troubles of the world when life is good.
Artists and writers are often the ones to draw us back to the issues that weigh on the shoulders of so many. We each have a share in that burden given the givens of our times: poverty/wealth disparity, climate crisis, political strife, to name but a few. It's easy to look the other way while downing a cappuccino on a lovely summer day (the past month has been spring-like). Kathe must have known this typical summertime weather even while she worked diligently to drive home a point for those who worked to merely survive. Tons of bronze vis a vis the lightness of being on today's breezy Kollwitzstrasse is a perfect metaphor for our times.
Looking the other way is an ancient story. The Greek myth tells of Atlas looking the other way while Zeus loaded the world onto his shoulders. From that moment Atlas had no choice, he was forever to bear the burden, literally, of carrying the world on his shoulders. When there is no escape, no exit ramp, looking the other way is not an option. We all know this instinctively, but, it's easy to look the other way, nevertheless.
When I decided to write this blog from Berlin to look at my place in the world from another place in the world, I didn't have any idea what might come of it. The weekly missives have given me a brief reflection before returning home. Now that I have completely emerged from my COVID cocoon, I know I cannot go back into its coziness. It took a lot to come out of the quiet safetiness I had found there during those three years. I had been reticent about embarking on a first international trip after so many months at home. It was a "now or never" moment. No regrets now as I say bye to Berlin.
It's easy to look away towards home. It's not so easy to look away from the people in the neighborhood whose lives I have intersected with daily. I see the women here working in their self-owned shops, like the two millennials who told me in perfect English that during COVID they made new choices to take their talents into the community as a seamstress and leather designer of the most beautiful bags this side of Italy! And, the unforgettable Lisa below, who added an extra apple strudel to my market bag as a gift when we said good-bye and took a photo standing outside her stall in a thunderstorm. Then, the cafe women who smiled at me with a friendly "Guten Tag" never seeming to mind how long I sat writing this blog. They are all part of the story that belongs to Berlin. Each of these women, around my daughter's age, carries a weight that Kathe would speak to if she were here today: It's not easy to be a woman in the world whether in Berlin or the US. It never has been easy.
My mother worked as a "mill girl" in harsh factory conditions at the weaving loom fifteen hours a day when she was a teen. Her mother, my name sake, Marie Laure, bore fifteen children, one of them on a train trip while emigrating from her homeland of Quebec. My 1960's life opened opportunities that neither had, yet, as I approach seventy years, I am witnessing those hard won rights fought over three generations disappearing for my granddaughters in their early twenties. It is not easy to look the other way when it comes close to home.
Returning home means more to me than changing location. I have changed, too. I am no longer the activist I once was, partly because there is too much violence in a country where guns outnumber people! But, as Kathe Kollwitz and many others knew, there is another way: "The pen is mightier than the sword". I'll not put down my blog pen when I return, and I expect to be a voice that speaks for those who feel weighed down by the world. This blog will have to go beyond the comfort of my website to speak truth to power. I'll take that risk. I hope that as a reader, you will add your comments to the blogs that will be shared in a larger community. It's easy not to, but please do.
Auf Weidersehen, for now.
Comentários