December 24, 2013

Christmas Musing 2013: The Stones Speak

It was well past midnight when Gehrtrood, our local contact, settled Marilyn and me into a small white bed together on the 5th floor of a Viennese pensione that she’d found for us... at last.


But the sound of a horse-drawn milk truck on the gray cobblestones woke us just before 4 am the next morning.  
Without a word to one another, we both leapt from the sheets to run to the window, peering over the flower boxes at the amazing early dawning light, the colors and bits of European life coming awake on the street below. It was the seventies, my first European city, and I felt like I'd stepped back through centuries as an invisible guest. 
On Sundays during the Viennese Summer Music Festival, the residents dressed up in antique, ornately beaded gowns with trains, and 19th Century tailored suits…and top hats. They walked through the parks arm in arm; parasols and slow saunterings. Seurat come alive!
Rats skittered along the edges of the cobblestone streets, adding to my disorientation of time and place. 

At the Bier Garten, I got to dress up as well, and dance! Aaaah. "Ich spreche kein Deutsch," but there were enough who spoke English, including a tall, soft blond 20-something. Hmmm.

Still, after all these years, it is the sounds of these Austrian experiences that stay most clear. I do remember the impression of the clothing and his face vaguely, but I can clearly hear how the air carried the horse's steps on the cobblestones, how laughter reflected off the hard stone of the streets and buildings, and the swish of beaded fabrics sounded in the grass. Even the sploosh of a rat diving into a park fountain. After growing up in a wooden framed suburban house, these new sounds of stone linger decades later.


We traveled to Greece next. It was too old for me to feel transported to another century as I had in Vienna. I wandered the Parthenon and for the first time discovered that timeworn was really sensual to touch. My hands responded to the wear my eyes sometimes could not see, and the subtle uneven textures felt as if they had a life of their own. Unlike my 20-year-old Levitt home, these steps carried something of those who had come before. And I came to understand back then, on some level, that when people inhabit places with great materials, something of their lives penetrates, becomes resident. Their stories stay. 



I would love to wander and see other places, and when my eyes tired, I know that my ears would take it all in as well… and remember.

 And I would hope that I would add to the stones in return, a little.