stargazing

Here we are on the last day of 2023, and it’s been a mediocre year for this blog. I never finished my posts about Berlin; my short trips to France and Spain didn’t even get drafts; and there haven’t even been many field trips to report on since. And as much as I’d like to say that this lack of posting is the result of conservation-of-writing and I’ve been terribly productive on CERTAIN OTHER WRITING PROJECTS…that’s not true either. It’s been that sort of year. 

So one evening on the France trip that didn’t get a post, I decided against trying to be social at dinnertime and instead went on a walk to see the grave of Jules Verne. Not that I particularly like Jules Verne, but a certain friend does, and the grave looked cool in the pictures on Google Maps and neither of us would have the chance to visit it again any time soon. I wasn’t brave enough to take the bus so I walked: the fresh air would do me good anyway, I figured. The streets were empty, and it was dusk by the time I reached the cemetery wall. The grave was on the far side of the cemetery from the corner I encountered first and I didn’t relish the thought of walking through what appeared to be a dark grove of trees to get there, so I decided to walk around the outside border instead. This turned out to be a narrow path through the woods anyway, with the high cemetery wall on one side and what looked like abandoned homeless settlements on the other, so I tried to my best walk with purpose and look like I knew where I was going, but when I came out the other end I was inside the fence of some kind of waste processing facility and there was no obvious way to get into the cemetery and it was getting even darker. So I decided to abandon the project.

Which is all a long setup to say that as I was making my way back towards the city center, trying to muster the necessary courage to walk into a restaurant and get dinner, I passed some university buildings and got this sudden strong sense of two timelines coming within grasping distance of each other – like in some other version of my life whatever pathology or circumstance kept me safely away from the front of a classroom had gone the other way and I was, at this very moment, gathering my papers to head home from a day at my sabbatical job in France, secure in my career at some mid-level research institution, happy to exchange whatever knowledge and wisdom I possessed for regular interaction with youthful energy. I could *feel* it, for a minute – what it would be like to wear something other than jeans on a regular basis, to point to a whiteboard and answer questions with authority, to be a card-carrying member of society instead of…whatever you’d call leaving my family in Switzerland to take the train to France and then walk to a cemetery to avoid having an awkward dinner in German. 

I wish I could say I knew what I was doing here.

Which is why I’m ending this year with part of a nativity scene that resonated with me. It’s the three wise men, but they are not the usual goal-oriented types, gifts in hand, on the move towards Bethlehem: they’re just hanging out in the desert. They’ve stopped for the evening, at least. One is pointing up at the sky as if he’s seen the star but so far he’s the only one. His companion is feeding a baby camel, and the third magus is on his back apparently contemplating the vastness of the universe. 

If there's a lesson for me in this year maybe it's this one, tired but true: if you don't know where you're going, at least slow down and enjoy the journey.

Wishing you and yours all the best for 2024.

Love,

Susannah

From the nativity scene in the Kulturkloster Altdorf