The inner compass showing the way to gold

  On this steely skied, cool and grey German morning, fizzy rain, blustering wind, the summer transitioning into fall, our trail is being decoratively littered with fall colored leaves of many German tree style shapes, that are making their way to their last glory as part of a thick sea of stunning but short lived groundcover.  Too weak to withstand the shuddering of the branches from the wind, they are sailing onto the freshly plowed field framed by the forest and the small path meandering past a creek where we are standing, watching a yearly recurring spectacle in wonderment.

This technically is a shitty day, best spent in bed watching endless reruns of my feel good buddy Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.
Yet, we are out here in the grey, the wind and rain, just outside of a small German suburb, where we are visiting a friend of my mom, happy to witness the passage of time and the changing of the seasonal guards.
Most of the agricultural fields are now in transitional costume, wearing muddy brown, beautifully striped from recent plowing.  The trees are busy shedding their summer clothes and naked trunks and branches making a fashionable comeback.  Creeks are filling up and the air starts smelling of composting foliage.

While Munna has her nose glued to the ground, relentlessly meandering, zigzagging and smell-scanning the wet soil, looking for some yucky pile of something fabulously stinky to rub herself in, I am looking up at the sky, fascinated by the amazing amount of leaves dancing in the air on their long way down performing many horizontal and vertical detours, a dance conducted by the constantly direction-changing wind.
The temperatures have dropped and layers of clothing are getting added.  October is knocking and fall's relentless march onwards seems accelerated here in Germany.
Even with weeklong rain spells, California somehow never sheds its lightness and ease.  We always know that a sunny day is around the corner.  Here you know more rain is around the corner.  The stony heaviness of the buildings of the residential architecture seem to team up with the monochromatic skies, tinting everything into shades of grey and adding extra gravitational pull to the beings passing through.

Here you've got to look for your inner sunny side with fierce determination and go to a tanning booth on occasion to not assume the sullen expression displayed on so many faces. 

I am slowly arriving and that also means that the exhilarating whirlwind of farewell sentiment on one end and welcome exuberance on the other is giving way to bureaucratic errands, lots of questions internal and external, the noticing of the cold and wet weather and some home sickness (expected but to be lived through nonetheless), made more intense by my mom's best friend's comment upon seeing pictures of my Mill Valley home, my friends and Mount Tam:
" When I see those pictures, I doubt you'll be able to stand being here for very long".  Ouch! Even though my inner compass is steady, hearing this adds some ache to the longing I already have on my own.

When I was 11 or 12 my dad once wrote one of those trite but true proverbs into a little book I kept, as was custom those days, asking friends and family to immortalize a thought, a poem, anything on its pages and I am, for some reason, now frequently reminded of it.  Loosely translated it goes like this:

'Not all things shiny are made of gold. Remember this.'

This proverb from many years past, suddenly dropping like a falling leaf from the sky into my mind, formed my response to my mom's friend, while I know, very well, that my California home is gold to me, starting with my friends, the incomparable beauty of the land, Mount Tam and my little home on the hill.  So, I decided to rephrase the proverb for myself:  'Which one of the shiny things in your life are gold, is determined by what is truly important and needed at the given time in your life.'
Gold to me, in this moment, is the opportunity to receive assistance from the government of my birth country and the vicinity and love of my family to help me in my quest to heal my body.  
 The gold for me is in Germany right now, notwithstanding the color of the sky.

Missing you all...