E’o G-ace

Today the English version is the translated one again for a change. Read the original in German.

Love can flow toward you in every moment: through the image in a flower, in a grain of sand, in a wisp of cloud, in any one person you allow to delight you.

»My, standing there, crutches and all, and no-one getting up for him,« the voice of an elderly woman said to her neighbour in the row behind me. I looked up from my book: The Divine Dance — The Trinity and Your Transformation from Richard Rohr.

Right, there he was. A young man with a plastic case around his right leg, crutches and all. He must have just stepped in.

I’ve got my own broken bones I thought. True: I was still limping from the bone substance they had extracted from my hip, having been necessary to help my jaw bones grow back together after a rather epochal wisdom teeth surgery. I deserved this seat. Besides, if they were bursting with compassion for this dude, why were they still sitting there? Hypocrites. I picked up my book again.

The river is already flowing, and you are in it whether you are enjoying it or not.

So what is your flow right now? Are you sucking in or flowing out? Are you defending or opening up? Are you over-defensive, or can you be vulnerable before the next moment?

Yes yes, I got it. The passage was talking a little bit too straight for my taste. I slid a finger between the pages, closed the book and got up.

»Excuse me, do you want to sit down?«

»Oh! Thank you so much,« the young man gleamed, »but no thank you. I’m perfectly fine.«

Well, shit. Of course I didn’t want to sit back down now, that would have been too obvious. Certainly the two grannies behind me were already smugly aware that it had been their comment that had got me up, and I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. So I did what every sensible, intelligent human being does in a situation like this: I pretended. With determination in my gait I strode towards the front of the tram car, since it had obviously been my intention all the while to get off the next stop. Which I obviously didn’t — Pasing was still ten stops away. But if I went far enough I could escape the stares of the two harpies — I hoped — and finish my book.

A few meters short of the driver’s cabin I finally found another seat. Just as I approached, a young woman got up from her spot in a seating group of four, which was occupied by only one more passenger opposite her, so I was allowed to grab the window seat. Even as she stood up she looked like she had rather stay seated. No idea how I noticed that. Probably because — one — you usually don’t get up after you already managed to procure a seat if you’re not planning to get off (yes, irony), which she didn’t appear to plan. The tram had just stopped and she wasn’t showing any signs of exiting. Maybe it — two — was the subtle body language you learn to pick up on when you ride pubic transport often enough. Those slight movements, gestures, expressions that seemingly never change and are the same across all passengers. Hers seemed to indicate she hadn’t felt comfortable around her seating partner: The turn, just a little bit too fast, one performs when she had to encounter yet another of those people who just can’t act ›normal‹ like the rest of the city.

I sat down, throwing only the shortest glance (discretion!) at my opposite: Big, overweight, young, a disproportionally small head but otherwise unremarkable. In theory his face could have been that of any other standard human being. Two books lay on the floor in front of me, on the empty seat next two him his left hand was placed firmly on two unlabeled VHS tapes. It wasn’t necessarily common, but besides the anachronism (who uses VHS tapes these days anyway?) it wasn’t too weird. Then again, I was a man and I had just sat down. Being a woman the girl might have had all the reason to abandon her seat.

I took the finger out of my book and continued reading. The next chapter read: Loving all the wrong people. Stop it.

When the tram started moving again I noticed a high pitched whistle, rising gently, as if someone was emulating the sound of the accelerating electric motor of the streetcar. At first I couldn’t quite figure out where it came from, it sounded like a human voice, but indistinct, almost disembodied. Was that a child’s voice in the back? Before I could finish my triangulation my co-passenger suddenly shouted:

»E’ot! A’e … Pa!«

Okay. That was — something. Apparently he had trouble speaking. Not too weird. He had uttered the words only with great effort, especially the consonants seemed to vex him. Understanding what he was trying to say was impossible anyway. So he was a … well, what were you allowed to call these people nowadays? ›Retarded‹ had become an insult, ›mentally challenged‹ had always been a stupid expression, even before the majority realized it. Wasn’t there some new euphemism that would have turned into an insult ten years from now — the standard life cycle of all euphemisms.

(If people find something unpleasant, it doesn’t magically turn more pleasant by slapping a friendly name on it — just as brussel sprouts don’t taste better with cream. All that happens is that the word turns as unfriendly over time as the object it’s supposed to describe. A process that has cursed one too many good and decent words with a tragic fate in the dark catacombs of PC, languishing in the shadows, whispers in the hallways.)

But I couldn’t remember the term. ›Alternatively Talented‹? Who cares. At least I now knew why the girl had got up. This person was ›other‹, different, strange. And just like almost all of humanity she hadn’t been taught (really taught, not just schooled) to be comfortable around the ›other‹. So she was afraid. I didn’t blame her. But it was probably the reason they were lighting up refugee houses in my country.

As the train came to a stop, the young man had again managed to get my attention. I had just watched him kick one of the two tapes against his leg, using the other tape which he still held firm and now pulled towards the window, all the while doing hissing noises. Presently he grabbed the second tape with his free hand, lifted both of them up, brought them together again and lowered them slowly back down on the cushion, still hissing, where he held them, now restored to their initial constellation.

I was fascinated by this strange game, although I had no idea what it meant. How should I know what was going inside this guy’s head? The streetcar started back up again and so did the whistling. This time I had no trouble assigning it to the young man, who was evidently mimicking the engine noise.

»Uuuuuuiiiiiiii, uuuuuuuiiiiiii,« he hummed quietly, and right afterwards, louder:

»E’o! I-pi’a!«

Two hundred million years of conditioning my brain for pattern recognition had prepared me for this: I recognized a pattern. This young fellow wasn’t just spouting gibberish — it almost seemed as if he was trying to say something. But what? Through the loudspeaker came the recorded voice announcing our travel itinerary:

»Next stop: Willibaldplatz.«

Wait.

That sounded like…

The Tram stopped and the tapes repeated their dance. The young man didn’t change a single one of his movements form the previous iteration: Kick one tape to the left as if playing air hockey, pull one to the left, lift’em up, bring’em together, back to the ground. Don’t forget the hissing sounds, just like –

Pneumatic doors.

»Uuuuuuiiiiiiii, uuuuuuuiiiiiii!«

»E’tot! O-ei’at!«

»Next stop: Lohensteinstraße.«

I had read four pages without remembering a single word.

Incredible.

This man, who nature at first sight had almost criminally mistreated, had just proven to me that he had memorized the entire track of Munich tram line 19. And as I closely watched his video tape ballet the next time the car stopped, my second guess proved right too — it was precisely choreographed to the opening and closing of the car’s doors. This young guy with his thin mustache and black rain coat, he was playing streetcar — or to be specific, he was the streetcar: speaker voice, engine and door mechanics all in one. And he looked like he was having a lot of fun.

»Me’tot! Wa-at!«

Since I was riding this line for the first time I had never heard any of the stops before. So I started my own little guessing game: Decipher my buddy’s words before the friendly voice over lady tells me the answer.

»Next stop: Westbad.«

Man, not that easy! Better luck next time. While my unwitting partner concentrated on his door game, I used the breaks in between stops to go back to Richard Rohr.

Jesus messes everything up! What does he do? He consistently makes the outsider the heroes of his parables and the recipients of God’s multi-faceted grace. To not recognize and learn from this is culpable ignorance at this point.

Somehow I was a bit disturbed that Mr. Rohr seemed to be sitting right next to me and pointing at everything happening to me while I read him.

»E’o’pt! A-Kie!«

Ansie? Hansel? No, those were too short, especially with those vowels. Maybe he was wrong this time? Could my train stop prophet be fallible after all? Nagging doubt wanted to grab a hold of my soul. The speaker voice didn’t come in either. Langwied? Martiensried? (No, those places were somewhere else entirely.) Water ski?

»Next stop: Am Knie.«

Am Knie? At the knee? Who would have thunk there’s a place in this city that’s with a name like that? I wondered who’s knee that might have been. Maybe my co-passenger knew, maybe he would have gladly told me. Certainly I would have listened, even if I didn’t understand a single word.

The doors opened and closed — as did the tapes. I was ready for the next round. But suddenly my friendly travel companion, picked up the two books from the ground and started flipping through the brightly coloured pages of the first — not that he seemed to understand what he saw (but what did I know?). Then he stood up and started down the middle of the car; and stepped of the next stop. Which was …

»Offenbachstraße.«

Without him the game had become boring. Luckily I was only two more stops away from my own destination. So I finally stuck my nose back into my book, only to be tripped one last time by the uncanny Richard Rohr.

In fact, you can trust after awhile that almost everything is a kind of guidance — absolutely everything. I warn you, though, that when your calculating mind moves into place, you’ll hear yourself appraising these profound moments of judgment: »Oh, that’s just coincidence. That’s merely an accident. It just happened.« But if you stay on this path of allowing and trusting, the Spirit in you will allow you to confidently surrender: »There’s a reason for this. I’m living as the river flows, carried by the surprise of its unfolding.«

I am a man who knows when he is beaten. I put the book into my backpack, hobbled out of the tram and surrendered to the flow that had swept me away unannounced.

Thank you for reading. Written on March 27th, 2018.

I’m an independent writer, translator and editor. If you think I can help you with something, shoot me an email at chrisloveswords@gmail.com.