I sit in front of the window watching the shifting winds coming, pulling the branches and cutting the leaves as they go from one end to the other. It is October in the northern island of Germany; it’s when the seasons hand over the spirit of life, like in a race of relay, from one which has completed its journey to another which must now start. It’s a time of changes, and the shifting winds let you know. They never stop.

The winds shift. From cold to cool, strong to weak, from one direction to another; then it became warm, and finally it has remained cool. They make you joyous in the sun, but they weaken you in the dark. And I know it’s autumn in Europe, which means winter is not far away. And the end of another year will again come. 

In this German autumn, in shifting winds and with loaded hearts we clear out what will not be needed anymore, including clothes, shoes, handbags, small papers on the bedside table and inside the wardrobe, hats of the fifties and sixties, long and short scarves, pillows and bedsheets, old cosmetics, perfumes and combs and tooth brushes, old magazines and books…

And we put our clothes and things in the spaces that belonged to the older generation last year, and many years before. I pause. I open the window and let the wind in. I shiver. And I wonder how the younger generation will clear out our things when we no longer come here.

As the wind is strolling by, we are handed over the mystery of life and move on. This year in the German autumn, October, 2014.