Have you ever sat on the ground outside? Not on the grass in a park but on a paving stone or kerb? It’s very hard and sometimes rather chilly. Everything around you grows quite tall. You’re the height of a child and sometimes, it feels to me, just as vulnerable.
It’s not the done thing, of course, unless it’s a hot summer day and you’re a cool young person. The waged don’t flirt with the footpaths, their clothing is too nice.
Or it just doesn’t occur to them. It seldom occurs to me.
Summer’s well and truly gone, the gusts from its dramatic door-slam lingering round the trees. But hark! Is that laughter in the air? Out on the wasteland I see small children watch in awe as kites their parents hold bank and flutter in the breeze. There are little squawks of glee when a puff makes the plastic flutter over the frame. Tiny gloved hands reach for the kite lines.
Farther in the distance, the Monument to the Battle of Nations (Völkerschlachtdenkmal) looms. It catches the sun as it seeps from the clouds. “Nearby lie the souls of 100,000 men in quiet repose,” it says, though it’s drowned out by, “Mama, I want a turn.”
With the sudden change in temperature comes the hard-to-resist urge to hibernate. The nights are drawing in, the days are often gloomy. I warm myself by light of a glowing laptop.
Friday, The Mathematician and I go out to a jazz concert at Horns Erben: Shuteen Erdenebaatar & Nils Kugelmann are debuting their new album Under the Same Stars. I came across the gig by chance earlier in the week and was impressed by the demo tracks they posted online. But come Friday evening, wow: dark, cold, and wet. I’ve an almost overwhelming urge to stay indoors and carry on working. I’m well aware, however, that such feelings are signposts saying shift your arse, so I do.
The concert is amazing. A kite moment for us both.
Several days later, I go for a long walk around the south of the city to gather eggs and Pokémon. (The latter’s a new joy — the vibrant colours and cute art are a balm for newsreel nightmares. The former are yummy.) I walk the path in front of the high-rise on Semmelweisstraße, past the crude metal piping used to hang washing, past two benches set beneath trees. There’s a thick green sleeping bag on one of them. It has the shape of a body. A few personal belongings are scattered on the ground nearby.
I’m reminded of the person (sometimes people) I see outside of Netto on Berhand-Göring. Not begging, just sitting and greeting passers-by, a few of whom stop to chat. A little farther north of the shop is Albrech-Dürer Platz. They found a homeless man there a few winters back, dead on a bench beneath the linden.
I arrive at Nürnbergerstraße. I don’t walk this road often as it’s loud and busy, but there’s a comic shop near the top and I “Gotta catch ‘em all!” (I don’t gotta, actually. One or two Pokémon are fine. Kawaii!). There are many more high-rises in this neighbourhood, and a few adjacent to this road are built in the old Soviet style, with the ground floor given over to shops. I hear music playing as I pass and see a group of homeless men and women gathered together in the small communal area between the kerb and the multi-storey concrete. One walks to a bike nearby and checks a bag brimming with empties.
I catch a glimpse of a beautiful red brick building down Seeburgstraße and make a mental note to come back. I do, via the magic of Apple’s Look Around, and discover it’s the former home of Heinrich von Herzogenberg, an Austrian composer who took up residence here and founded the Leipzig Bach Club in 1875(*). Still gonna go back and see it for reals.
One pack of Pokémon later (and a nice conversation with a customer about the merits of double sleeving), I head west through the Lenné Park (aka Schiller Park). I feel instantly at ease. Even though the traffic still roars down the multi-laned Roßplatz, the green is calming. I see a crow tending the grass by the Koch monument(**). I watch a student walk past the Gellert memorial, engrossed in her phone. (But who pays attention to poets and philosophers nowadays?) I see a homeless man resting against the trunk of a tree. I see the tarpaulin-tented bench is still there (I mentioned it in this post). On the bench next door, a man talks on his phone in Chinese. Across from them sits a man with a thousand-yard stare.
I head south past the St. Trinitatis Catholic parish church, something of a Marmite building designed by Schulz & Schulz and built from regional red Rochlitz porphyry. Across the road from there, in Wilhelm-Leuschner Platz, is where I saw a Slavic man sleeping rough.
I go buy my eggs.
Six kilometres of city, more or less. The joy of the young looking up, the weight of the past looking down, the lives of the lost underfoot.
—
(*) With a few others: Franz von Holstein, Philipp Spitta, and Alfred Volkland.
(**) Carl Wilhelm Otto Koch (a mayor), not the father of microbiology(***)
(***) Along with Louis Pasteur
