Today after singing class I meandered around my hood for a bit, doing some grocery shopping, having coffee and a delicious piece of rasberry-mascarpone-cake at one of the coffe places that spring up around here like mushrooms as of lately. On my way back home I passed by the church and I figured it was a good time to drop by and give a few words of thanks. And so I did.
Neukölln’s Genezareth church is modern, plain and rather unspectacular. When I do go to church, I still go there because it is close to home. Also, I quite like the community; it is a very colorful and weird mixture that in a group of maybe 30 people attending a service may include anything between young semi-alternative hipsters and disabled homeless people.
So I am there lighting two candles for people who have moved me within the last week and saying a little prayer for them. And then I’m sitting down to think about all that has been happening inside my mind since I came back from Gdansk last Friday. I think about my Places of Desire and about Eastern Europe and how much I am drawn Eastward. I don’t even notice that tears are running down my cheak until a sob is breaking free from my throat. It is ridiculous how I am physically feeling a void inside of me now that I am back in Berlin. Did I mention that finding a new Place of Desire is like falling in love? Well, having to leave it is like being lovesick. I can’t comprehend how three days should have made such a difference, but they have, and I am sitting here feeling like life hasn’t taken me out of Gdansk, but that Gdansk has been ripped out of me. But then again that is not right. Gdansk is a part of me now and it is ever so present. Maybe it would be more fitting to say that the parts of me that have taken on Gdansk fully and completely are stretching out their arms to be reunited with their urban manifestation.
The funny thing about this is that while I am crying, I am not sad. I am nothing but grateful.