A longing to wander tears my heart

near karmeliterplatz; 2nd district

in front of the akademie, schillerplatz; 1st district

3rd district; near kardinal nagl platz

on the way back from the Gloriette, it was already dark. just stood still by the trees along the road. stood still and thanked the trees for their beauty. stood still and i watched and listened and smelled. shut my eyes and i could see. i cried to the beauty -to the presence- of the trees that day. a winter night i cried to the beauty of the trees. the trunks. the branches. the roots. leaves. slight movements in tune with the wind. i was seeing the trees these trees for the first time in my life. fascinating. fascinating. absolutely fascinating. imagined the fluid exchange between the earth and the veins of the tree. imagined the trees breathing. i thanked them for the air. for the freshness in the air. i cried to the stillness of the trees. to the silent witnesses of history.

(this was after our conversation with franziska at yak&yeti. she suggested that i go to the zoo and to the gloriette. i did so. )

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Hietzing is the 13th municipal District of Vienna (German: 13. Bezirk, Hietzing). It is located west of the central districts, west ofMeidling.^[2] Hietzing is a heavily populated urban area with many residential buildings, but also contains large areas of the Vienna Woods, along with Schönbrunn Palace.^[1][2]

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"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

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When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. (... ) Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness."
— Hermann Hesse