Tote Hose: When What You Say Meets What You Wear

It is said that knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom. That it’s the road map of a culture. To speak another language has been likened to possessing another soul. I try conjuring such heightened enlightenment, no doubt fought for by our ancestors, but it stealthily escapes me as we walk through the small medieval German town of Buttenheim. The cobblestones of the 16th century, born from an earlier Karl the Great decreed superhighway, tell the story of a bygone hustle of trafficking and trading,…

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PATHWAYS AND DOORWAYS

Absorbed into the trail, my footsteps join the collage of those who have walked before me, documenting my transient participation in deep time. My personage is enshrouded by a mystery of greatness. My thoughts centre around a vista of heroes, whose legend clings to trees, drips down rock faces, clacks on cobblestones, flows richly in rivers, and breaths in the valley-draping mist. Their stories shape direction, blaze trails and create pathways for precedent. Horizons scaped with valour, inspiration, discovery, innovation, perspicacity. They were the vanguards of…

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IN A COFFEE CUP

Moving up to the Drive Thru window, I order my regular soy cappuccino. “Would you like a Wallfahrt with that? Some Bohemia? A Warsaw Pact? Honey? Bread? Or perhaps Red or White Main Water?” With no knowledge of the ingredients, I consider the options. A pinch of Bohemia requires a crash course in Kingdoms, Reichs and Republics, of noblemen and Nazis. Are the Germans, Hungarians and Austrians in or out? Can the Sudeten and Egerland Germans stay or must they go? We’d have to draw some…

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