The city felt quieter and more contained when I returned to Vienna from Arizona’s vast, sunlit spaces. It seemed as if life had folded itself inward again. And then, almost immediately, a small, unnoticed corner of my world stirred. A dove laid two eggs in a plant-pot on my balcony.
It happened right after my arrival. It seemed like the rhythm of coming back and re-entering this place had created a space. This space allowed new life to begin.
I had thought the hatching would come on the day of going to Reichenau. We were in the process of renting a weekend house there. But life chose its own timing.
Two days later, in the night of March 23, the eggs hatched.
This date carries its own gravity. Far away in Peru, a shaman is buried, his presence returning to the earth of the jungle where he once guided me and others through unseen realms. And at the same time, here in Vienna, I am called into a different kind of passage: an important court meeting.
My neighbor is suing me over an awning to the outside wall of the house. The awning has been there for at least 50 years. It quietly endured, unnoticed, until now. What had long belonged to the background has stepped into the foreground, asking to be seen, examined, judged.
These events do not touch each other, and yet they converge.
Birth, death, and conflict unfold within the same narrow window of time. The dove does not know of courts. The court does not know of the jungle. The jungle does not know of this small nest outside my window.
And yet, all three meet within me.
A return, and something begins.
A decision, and something takes form.
A death, and something is released.
A challenge, and something in me is called to stand upright.
Outside my window, two small lives open to the world.
Inside, I feel the subtle alignment of endings and beginnings, as if life, in its quiet way, is reminding me: nothing stands alone, even when nothing is visibly connected.
