I am in Geneva for a committee meeting with colleagues I have been working with for many years. I have not especially liked Geneva before, but now I gain new appreciation for its cosmopolitan character, walkable size and familiarity, its wealth, orderliness and beauty, the newly spruced railway station, the statues, fountains and well tended flower beds in the park down by the lakeside, the promenade chilled from the water with its distinctive smell, the doormen in livery at the better appointed hotels, and the impressive grounds of the international organizations on the way to WHO headquarters. This is also the first time I have been here in July, and the weather is glorious, sunny and cloudless, with Mont Blanc unusually visible on the horizon. Our meetings go well, congenial and harmonious, and in the evenings we walk back to the hotel, and then meet again to eat and drink at sidewalk restaurants.
One of our colleagues is from Zimbabwe, and she tells us about the impossible situation there now, with inflation million fold from one week to another, no food to be bought in the shops, and the random brutality of the police and military. I wonder what we mean when we say ‘never again’.
I take the train back to Goettingen, an eight hour ride with a change at Basel, but preferable to flying via Zurich to Hannover. At Basel, the sky thickens with dense cloud, and all of a sudden it is dark as night, and the cloud bursts with lightning and thunder, torrents of rain pouring down in sheets of water. Some time past Freiburg the storm lifts and as the sun sets on the horizon its rays illuminate the trails of Friday evening air traffic, planes criss-crossing the sky and their vapor spreading into images that look like the tracks of sleds across a vast expanse of snow.
There is a twinge of sadness on this my next-to-last train ride (just one more, to catch the plane home from Frankfurt next week, which doesn’t really count), of a period nearing its close. There is nostalgia for the many journeys, passing the time so comfortably, reading, writing, listening to dharma talks, looking out of the window, seeing the change in people and places, moving between riches of experience. True, there were challenges of solitude and isolation, discomfort and discontent, but on the whole I am filled with a wealth of emotional and intellectual stimuli. I am tired from the late nights of socializing, rising early for long intense hours of discussion around meeting tables, and find myself measuring how many hours to go until I step off onto the platform, but on the other hand, I am loath for the ride to end. Yet, as is the nature of all things, time passes bringing ever closer the end that is the beginning of what is to come.
