Switzerland [1]

[Oh my.]

1. What can be articulated

As I sit by my window, flipping through my notebooks and letting the gentle rain-cooled breeze soothe my red-tinged arms and shoulders, I'm uncertain where to begin. Although it was barely a week ago that I left, it feels as though I have been gone for months. The continent has worked its way under my skin quickly and completely, and it itches - I feel tired and tender, as if my flesh were trying to shed one reality and embark on another. It's a learning curve, too: every time I make the journey across the Channel I'm drawn a little further into the understanding that, despite the fact that Britain is only a few miles away from France, it is really far more like the USA - Europe-proper is a whole other world. There are different games and dances to navigate [metaphorically, thankfully, though potentially the literal danger lurks out there too], different sets of rules and, of course, different languages, even - especially? - when both parties are speaking English. Jumbled communication fosters surprising tolerance and patience - we slow down, we repeat, we rephrase and we listen much more carefully. As we are likely only marginally understood in any case, we are less afraid of seeming foolish.

Zurich feels like most older European cities - that is, as if it were populated mostly by benevolent ghosts of some kind. In the late evening, the winding streets are quiet and solemn, very still and leafy, as if they were waiting for something. We walked on and on down one such for an age, surrounded by beautifully-crafted architecture and well-kept greenery, utterly silent save for a single admonishing hush from a balcony high above us, aimed at our unEuropean exuberance of exploration. Even in daylight there is an unreal quality to the place, as if people who make so little fuss about their existence must only have one foot in it at most - calmly competant, calmly amused, efficient and good-natured by turns. There must be genetics for this kind of thing.


2. What can only be felt

The smell of the tiny tea-shop perched on the edge of the river, hundreds upon hundreds of tins and boxes and the smell like mother nature making spiced honey and wine; the unbelievable clearness of the water, spreading out from under the bridges and humming gently and tunefully, the backing score to these incredible people's lives; the incomprehensible vastness of the Alps at first sight, tall beyond reality - too big to exist, they can only have been painted on to the sky by some creative god; the taste of iced coffee and chocolate, nestled away from the sun under a simple striped canopy, listening to the low laughter and foreign conversation of friends, lovers, waiters moving deftly between the tables, and

I think if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. I think I could find in some little wine-shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him...

There is so much more. I get lose just remembering.


3. The curious dream I had of you

"
Zurich Dream

We found your name in purple ink
the day we stole God's bedroom key,
and left him watching thunderstorms,
his feet up on the mantelpiece.
He'd written, "don't forget to pray
for this one, keep her in your mind"
and doodled with his fountain pen
beside the name he'd underlined.
We read through pages laced with awe
and journal entries filled with doubt:
we saw the angry scribblings
of helpless God, his written shouts
of old and tired disbelief
obscured by pages written and torn,
the spiky, childlike handwriting
all blurred by tracks his tears had worn.

We didn't hear the still, small voice
that echoed on the radio,
announcing tracks at 3am
while we were being bulletproof:
amidst the thunder of our dreams
we stood together back-to-back,
a pair of islands edges with reefs
and joined by a bridge of rock -
a danger in the going back,
a danger in the stepping out -
we sit alone on different shores
and wake alone to self-same doubts.
Remember when we fell asleep?
The radio was playing hope,
and warming rain had washed the sky.
But it was colder when we woke.

The night is old, but far away
the Alps are shining, cool and green:
our moonlit dreamscape rolls away
to greet the dawn, and in the east
and pale and white-haired morning star
is lighting up the Zurich streets.
We sit together on the bridge
across the Rhine and share a drink:
"remember that it's just a dream"
you say, and as I reach to take your hand
I feel the soft Swiss sun against my cheek,
and wish that you were waiting here
to greet me as I wake.
"



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