Jena

“Jena before us in the lovely valley” thus my mother on a postcard from a walking holiday on the banks of the Saale, she was spending a week at the spa of Kosen; long forgotten now, the ancestor no more, her script a subject for graphology, years of becoming, years of illusion, only those words I’ll never forget. It wasn’t a great picture, no class, there was not enough blossom to justify lovely, poor paper, no pulp-free mass, also the hills weren’t green with vineyards, but she was from back-country hovels, so the valleys probably did strike her as lovely, she didn’t need laid paper or four-color print, she supposed others would see what she had seen. It was something said at a venture, an exaltation had prompted it, the landscape had moved her, so she asked the waiter for a postcard, and yet—