Hooked on Wetzlar

by Alexandra-Iulia Corcode (Romania)

Making a local connection Germany

Darkness. With my eyes closed, I am listening to the maddening of chatter that belongs to this place; its sound of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow is breaking the funeral silence. A soft touching makes me open my eyes, with eagerness, facing a clump of dazzling light mixed up with cold thrills. Freezed. The structure of Leica museum was simple and repetitive; the three dimensions of space together with a fourth that of movement in time. Outside, the shopkeepers looked like professors, the homeless men like jazz musicians. There was never a city more rationally ordered. Drop by drop was coursing down on my quivering hands which were holding tight the old camera, trying to walk step for step behind a freckled ginger boy. Dressed with a pure blouse, a pair of brown shorts with jack boots and a dark green beret which was hiding a pair of sincerely and emotioned eyes, noticed my inquisitiveness and began to run. Time to time he was challenging me with a grin among the narrow brick passages, passing by flower booths with his eye-catching look and by tourists who were stopping to laugh despite of the gloomy and drizzle weather. I started to slow down my gait and I went around the corner, with the photographer’s regret who lost an once in a lifetime shot. I began to observe details on the cramped streets: a young man surrounded by pigeons repairing the roof, an old woman peeling her beloved pink flowers from a high window and vivid coloured ancient numbered doors which incited me so that I began to search the one with my favourite number. There is something obscenely joyful behind every door, either that or somebody crying with their head in their hands. A lazy rhythm looms in the dreamy air and the atmosphere pulsates with bygone duels, past-life romance, comrades requesting comrades to aid them in some way. You can not see it, but you know it is here. This puzzled seeking leaded me way above the river which break up the connection between the old town and the new one, the early part hides inside it the cathedral of St. Mary that scarcely I have discovered. The cathedral of St. Mary was commenced in the 12th century as a Romanesque building. It was the continuous whisper which guided my attention to a little boy who held very tight his mother’s leg. It was the red-headed little child, pointing at me saying “Das ist sie!”-“It’s her!”; his young mother, a delicate tall being with a black polka dot dress, a red lipstick and silk gloves was looking at me with fear, almost smirking. Does she thinks me a thief? I let my mind register those two human beings, a picture frame that was revealing my idea of true beauty and tenderness, then I flicked out of sight. It has become that time of the evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street The city took my mind and shortened my way with its chaos. As I watched and the sun began to set, the clouds became saturated with wild luminous colors; purple, yellow, grey and red, boiling in the distance. All that was good in me thrilled in my heart at that moment, all that I hoped for in the profound, obscure meaning of my existence. Here was the endlessly mute placidity of nature, indifferent to the great city; here was the night beneath these streets, around these streets, waiting for the city to die, to cover it with her timeless dark once more. The night was always there, a patient white animal, waiting for men to die, for civilizations to flicker and pass into the darkness. At that moment, all my five senses were exhausted. It was just me and the best images the world has ever seen which were hiding inside the glass building behind me. I could not have more. A minute later I was inside and despite of the crowd, I took a deep breath and I closed my eyes.