Riding

What did she learn today?

She discovered the little chapel in the woods.

She learned the name of a yellow butterfly—lemon yellow; such lemony paleness, it reminded her of one of those delicate pastries from the bakery she could never bring herself to pierce with a little spoon or a little fork, let alone bite into it. She learned she could love sunsets even while driving right next to the highway. Had she been driving with her father on the highway itself, not found herself on the country road that ran parallel to the deafening concrete, one fast car after the other, rushing by and by, she would not have made this discovery: her plain heart, growing simpler and simpler with each moment, so it seems.

At first, she didn’t even acknowledge the noise, the blaring hollow sound. So absolutely was she smitten by the fiery-red, pink sun settling between the woods in front of her eyes; so at ease with her father driving—for her, the safest place on earth. Whenever she is in the car with him, she knows he’ll get her home—always, no matter what. Even when the car once had a problem while making their way through another country, the brakes no longer worked, the fluid dripping, he got them home safely. Any other man from her life would have waited for the car to have gotten repaired by the mechanic shop close to where the car began to show first signs of failure; a matter of two or three days, at the very least! Not her father. Her father said he could drive without making much use of the brakes so the fluid wouldn’t leak excessively, and she trusted him.

Not once did she question his capability to get them back home in one piece.

After the mechanic announced the news to them about the breaks and her father said he would try to reach their hometown regardless, all she felt in that moment was relief and gratitude. How lucky she was to have such a father.

A father who was an actual father, her father.

In the car, she always becomes a daughter; a feeling she deeply savors since not anywhere else does she get to experience this particular sensation. In general, the man has never been much around. Not when she was still a child. Nor now, a grown woman. Her parents never got divorced. He just always worked a lot. Often he had to work—especially when the woman was still a little girl, and the father a younger, much younger man. He had to write urgent emails and make calculations. He had to work. 

But not always.

Today, when he doesn’t have to meet some pressing deadline, he still spends most of his time in his room, in front of his laptop, checking the weather and googling other information that seems eminent but in reality is not—

The sun is shining and shining.

Or the sky is gradually darkening, in which case one simply puts on a  raincoat and waterproof boots.

That’s how the woman would do it.

That’s how the woman encounters every incoming day when she goes out for a walk in order to get some fresh air and activate some of her legs’ muscles.

His hands. Without really looking at them, always she considers for a  fleeting moment her father’s hands on the steering wheel while in the car together. His hands which strike her as the most beautiful hands, although the fingernails are a little too long for her personal taste as a woman. Right after having taking in her father’s beautiful hands—green, thick veins branching through darker skin—she contemplates how gross it’d be to be touched by such long nails. Her father’s nails are not terribly long, not like that of a guitar player. But they are long enough that makes her assume a man with such long nails would touch her gently—would touch her nervously. Because the man (in her father’s case) is good-hearted. Therefore he would try hard not to hurt her. And so the woman would feel repulsed, nauseated, for she has always preferred to be touched by men with confidence. Even if she would not like to be touched by the man—the man, for instance, from the job interview at the hotel bar the other day—she would prefer he firmly grabs her.  If the man from the job interview, for instance, would have firmly placed his hand on top of hers, she would not have felt as sickly as she did at the very outset and meanwhile and after the man’s rather small hand had suddenly—all of a sudden—placed itself on top of hers and wavered there loosely for an infinite-seeming amount of time. Because the man’s hand was anxious—the woman felt his hand’s nervous vibrations on her hand’s thin layer of skin, his trembling nervousness shooting flashes of lightning through her entire nervous system—immediately, she felt sick. Her heart and all of her intestines dropped to the ground. Dropping and dropping. The dropping sensation would not stop. As if her insides were a luscious patient waterfall—forever and ever she felt her guts slowly cascading onto the ground, spilling all over the quiet hotel bar’s purple carpet.

Had the man grabbed her by force, she would have felt his forceful hand. Its pressure, perhaps. A pressure that perhaps might have hurt a little. Might have hurt a lot. Yet then she would have only experienced the physical pain, not this slow slow commotion that was patiently devouring her from the inside out. 

It’s why from all the men that have uninvitedly touched her, she has always resented most those men who did so half-daringly. Those who in the end let her die on her own. She considers it cowardly, turning her into an accomplice like that. The soft, delicate touch, pretending the attraction is mutual. The soft violation, so soft and so faint, anybody with a sense of tact would finally decide not to create a scene. After all, one can never be perfectly sure with an ambiguous and rather innocuous gesture like that what the man had initially intended to achieve. Had intended to signal. Perhaps the man at the job interview had merely laid his hand upon the hand of the woman because he simply considered her special and kind. Since she had applied for the job position on the internet, it was obvious the woman needed money, and so by putting his hand on top of hers, the man merely attempted to show he’d vouch to take her under his wing. Throughout their conversation, he was almost childlike in his enthusiasm. The wide grin. Shiny, glistening eyes. So enthusiastic about what he had invented in his garage, at moments she assumed he must just not have the best social skills—especially when it comes to women, “the opposite sex.” 

The woman’s father’s hands have a strong natural grip, however. Despite the lengthy nails.

While in the car—not today, earlier, during another trip—she learned this about her father. Genuinely she was surprised when it happened the first time, around two or three years ago: Driving along the road, the two of them talking about the weather, all of a sudden the father had pushed the brakes, his right arm darting out to keep the woman from lurching forward. After recovering from the initial shock, adrenaline still rushing through her entire being, her heart pulsating in her throat and wrists, she was moved by her father’s instinct to protect her. Right in the midst of facing death, instinctively he had thought of keeping her safe. His arm and hand: a solid barricade of parental devotion. It absolutely amazed her.

When she learned that the father had pressed the brakes not because he tried to avoid an accident—perhaps there was an animal crossing the street, a deer or a fox or a porcupine, one which had escaped the woman’s attention for at that very moment she was mostly focused on the sky, wondering if it were going to rain—but because he wanted to avoid getting a ticket from the speed control a few meters ahead, she grew disappointed for a while.

For a few moments, she silently resented her father for trying to save money  however possible. In her mind, she called him cheap and wished for a father who had more money in the bank; thus would have not cared so much about getting a ticket so as to put the two of them in jeopardy. Pushing the brakes this abruptly, he could have easily caused an accident with the other cars closely trailing behind them.

For a while, she resented him for his lack of money, which she was used to doing. Her mother had always been adamant in front of the children about wanting things she did not have, even though she has had plenty of things other people usually dream of— 

A house with an ample living room that has a fireplace; surrounded by a private garden.

The woman herself had also gotten used to nursing a certain kind of  identity—one that she did not choose like a favorite object when inside a store. Step by step, it simply began to build. One layer on top of another. The girls at school, their bags and their clothes. If she would have stayed at her old school, would not have been enrolled by her parents into another school, she might not have started to care so much about money, about appearances. Before their impermanent move from the small town to the big city, she did not spend much time thinking about objects—about their outwardly meaning. Before their move, she actually preferred to be picked up from school by their parents’ least flashy car. The black one. Certainly not the small silver one whose fine, elegant sound could be detected from around the corner.

When they began to properly live in the big city, the woman (then a child, nearly a teenager) begged her mother to not be picked up in the black car. Any car, but not the black one.

She begged her mother. Day after day, month after month; year after year, until she eventually turned sixteen and was given for her birthday her own car. A perfect car, baby blue, with a convertible top, which she rarely took off because already then at sixteen she began to be concerned about wrinkles and sunspots.

In recent years, ever since moving out of the big city, living now in a city that still is considered somewhat large but is considered less important, far far less so— never does the smaller city appear in any movies—this preoccupation with her looks—her youth, her skinny body, her pristine skin—and the right kinds of objects gradually has begun to wear off. At times startling the woman.

At times, pretending to frighten her.

The first time she acknowledged she was perfectly content inside a plain vacation rental—how her heart had skipped at the sight of the coffeemaker and the coffee grounds, and the couple of bottles of water inside the immaculately clean refrigerator—a wave of dread washed over her. A wave of dread, somehow daunted by the fact that her soul could be so perfectly content inside this plain apartment that most of her friends and acquaintances would have considered sheer terrible because of its tacky furnishings. Of course the woman would have preferred to stay at another place, one that featured a nicer decor, was decorated with pieces of furniture that echoed the tropical country’s traditional feel. And was certainly closer to the ocean. Yet she could only afford this kind of apartment; a kind of studio  whose window on one side faced a concrete wall of another building, and on the other side granted a narrow rectangular view to the street—floor level. At night, when she lay naked in bed, she could see the naked legs and the naked feet in sandals of men and women passing by. It didn’t bother her, though, the  unspectacular vista: the deafening sound of the cicadas from the dry, small park across the street was too lovely.

The cicadas and the three, nearly four, full days of uninterrupted privacy inside her immaculately clean solitary dome felt so precious, the garland of fake ivy dangling above the sofa bed and kitchen table did not eclipse her overall joyous mood.

No.

There was just that temporary dread at the near beginning of her stay when she remembered some of her friends from the big, important city.

The temporary dread unfolded like a slow sadness. A sudden slow sadness, as if she had suddenly realized she was ugly. Plain, that is.

After years and years of remotely assuming she was beautiful.

Not beautiful like a movie star, but beautiful enough that would cause her to occasionally break out in a wide ebullient smile when dressed in a particularly stylish, becoming outfit. Jeans and a tight top that would accentuate her gaunt limbs—distract from her rather odd-looking face: her thin thin lips. 

Yes, it is curious the way this woman readily succumbs to reality when alone versus when she finds herself in the company of other people.

Alone, sometimes not even a whisper.

Falling to the ground while hiking up a mountain, she did not make a sound. Not a sound. Just the birds calling and the trees swaying and swaying as her cheek caressed the wet earth. She would have complained a little about the wound, had she been there with someone. Her knee gushing blood. At the very least, she would have gasped for air once or twice, so as to express that the wound was not just a scrape. Alone, she noted somewhat indifferently soon after having gotten up from the ground and continued walking, it would be futile to complain.

In connection with people, whether they are right there with her in the same space, or merely drifting through her mind, it’s then when she tends to turn fragile, sometimes whiny.

When she has usually felt worthless—undignified.

When in the past she has become appalled her parents did not book this time the five-star hotel on top of the hill but instead decided to spend the yearly skiing holiday with family at the pensione located in the valley, in the outskirts of the village. Appalled—at times openly outraged. Outraged! Oh, how she used to hiss at her father when noticing he had been shopping again at the discount supermarket—several of the store brand’s distinct neon green plastic bottles of water standing around in the kitchen. Don’t you have some dignity, she’d exclaim while conducting a domestic chore in a brusque fashion, unnatural to her otherwise gentle human disposition. How she hated these bottles, their repulsive bright green color, purposefully stripping moneyless people even further of their honor by  selling them water in the most atrocious container. That’s what she thought.  Neon-green—branding people like pigs; pigs, her favorite animal.

To this day, she still hates these bottles; no longer, though, do they unsettle her to the core.

Earlier today, this afternoon, Sunday, she actually brought along one of  these bottles for the car ride with her father. The two of them riding through the plain countryside that occasionally was flecked with wind turbines and solar panels and transmission towers—details that blemished the brilliant yellow landscape of rapeseed fields; disturbed the view of the far-away mountains, some of which were still covered in snow.

The tall neon-green plastic bottle clutched in between her thighs.

She did not mind. 

The bottle; the dissonant landscape. The noisy highway.

While riding through the countryside next to the highway, no longer did the grown woman curse her parents for not having built thirty years ago a house in a more serene—graceful—environment. One that merely would be surrounded by  cows, and the sound of a quiet river, or the sound of crickets. It wouldn’t matter what sound, as long as it would manifest the pure sound of nature—a  tractor raking the fields would also hold up in her utopian childhood home.

These days, however, she does not mind the house nearby the ever-busying highway—so loud now, so busy, one never ever hears now on Sundays the crickets in summer.

No longer does she mind. 

This Sunday she did not mind the highway as they were driving in her  father’s small red old car on the country road, diving straight into the bleeding sunset. Nor did she really seem to mind anymore her father racing like a madman whenever a car was in front of him. His angry look, his feet frantically working the gas pedal. She did not even mind the idea of death.

If they would die, they would die together. What sometimes she has subconsciously wished for since she no longer finds it possible to consider suicide an option once her parents are dead. Against her intention she has started to trust in the concept of reincarnation. It just happened. Gradually she has begun to feel certain of coming here again and again and again. It unfurls like a knowing, deep and lengthy and kind of warm—the woman can’t really explain it.

Vaguely, yet definitely, she dreads now the consequence of committing suicide. She has not read any books about the subject on rebirth—studied the beliefs of other people. She just has a feeling that eventually, in another life—maybe not the next one, but one of the lives that shall closely follow—she’ll need to face the repercussions. And they would be terrible. Always a little worse than the initial teaching she—any human—tried to escape.

There is no way around learning what we are made to learn: that is what the woman now appears to know.

Mostly, she’s grateful to have unexpectedly cultivated this strange little faith inside. Sometimes it resonates like a real gift. It lifts the pressure to fill this very lifetime with everything she longs for—some desires more genuine, natural to her, than others.

When she feels a little bored on the weekend, the faint idle wish—for instance—to create a family of her own. 

Or, to be moderately wealthy, so she could reside in a small house with  yellow walls in the deep deep country. 

Now, whenever any kind of longing arises for things she does not have,  sooner rather than later she assumes a solemn air of responsibility, tells herself her way of existing is simply the way she has been destined to exist. 

Lately, the woman thinks her greatest task in this life is learning to love  without getting attached.

Especially since leaving the big city, she has lost so many things. So many things. Objects and hopes, all kinds of expectations. Still, she finds herself in the middle of losing and losing, a little bewildered now and then, for at first it certainly is a strange existence floating around like that—no longer fastened to a particular outcome. She doesn’t feel lost, there is a steady weight to her being, despite the floating. A weight that actually feels heavier, sturdier, in contrast to the not-long-ago past, when she still lived in the big city and was convinced that loving things necessarily meant to depend on them. So devoted and obsessed she was with places when still living in the big city—not just men but certain restaurants and certain neighborhoods and certain brands for clothing—whenever a moment came when she was demanded to somehow exist differently (the pensione, for example), she would suffer tremendously.

She would suffer and suffer, until surrounded once again by the things that obviously echoed her so-called self.

Nowadays she feels like a balloon whose great, long ribbon is tied to earth. Lightly and sometimes more violently she bounces from place to place, dips her nose into all kinds of localities, for all along within her former, rather confided way of existing, she has been a curious creature; her curiosity never seems to end! 

Once encountering death, loss, any kind, the task lies within remaining open to life.

To not succumb to despair.

All too often has she seen it on TV and in real life the way people start to throw away their existence, numb their sorrows with all kinds of excesses.

This is her task.

To shed one attachment after the other, yet not grow bitter. The opposite. To open and open all the more further and further. The greater the loss, the more she is required to love its essence outside her own. Let in the darkness and the smell of flowers. All of it, at the same time. Her father who sits beside her.

Life struck her as absurdly cruel when she sat beside her father in the red old car and suddenly remembered that one day he will die before her. If all goes according to the law of nature. Briefly, the woman took a long look at her father whose handsome, graceful demeanor had been once again restored to its entirety after having passed yet again another car while honking and honking—the torso of his body quivering, tiny hesitant fluctuations, for deep down his soul knows it’s ridiculous to drive around like that.

His royal soul: always a little out of reach, nearly so complete it belongs to no one. Sometimes this realization makes her sad. Knowing that if she were to die today, her father would get out of bed the following morning and make breakfast. He would be devastated, of course. Would miss their walks and their conversations. Would perhaps one day think of this late afternoon car ride through the countryside. But he would not stay in bed like her mother would. Her mother who would lie there, underneath the duvet, for days and days. Weeks, perhaps. Maybe months.

Her father would get up, shower, and then head downstairs into the kitchen; first turn on the coffee machine and then proceed with cutting two oranges in half and squeeze their juice into an ample glass. Then he would retrieve the bread from the terracotta box from the cupboard’s drawer and with the cutting machine he would produce two thin slices from the loaf of bread and just continue with life. He has done so before. Twice. Kissed a dead, cold child on the forehead and moved on.

A gesture that more and more strikes the woman of this story as brave and noble—mustering the courage to not turn one’s back on death.

To actually embrace it.

This is now my task, the woman gathered while briefly turning her head once more toward her beautiful father, his beautiful olive-toned face that in moments like these, moments of such stark human reality, promises to break her heart in half. Any moment now it would break. Any moment.

Yet it does not.

Her heart hurts, it bleeds, but it keeps on pounding steadily and somewhat calmly as she thinks about father and daughter one day no longer existing as such. One day she would need to continue to traverse this earth without these occasional car rides.

Father and daughter. In the end of the day two different souls. Two entirely separate entities. A thought that threatened to turn everything dark and sort of worthless. The same thought, the same and only reason why the woman sometimes does not like to have accidentally begun to harbor this nebulous faith in reincarnation; the other day watched herself not wanting to speak with her sister about it any further, for she wanted to stay close to her sister as much as possible. For the two of them to secretly believe that even when dead, somewhere up there in the clouds, they will still exist as sisters—for her sister’s essence to still embody the same brown long hair. 

With her father, there is no pretending.

Maybe this is why her soul, for this lifetime, has chosen to have this particular kind of a father. One that despite having lost multiple children and companies and houses and cars and hair and muscle mass, still drives the red little car he built up from scratch many decades ago like he has lost nothing. On his face, his gaze, not an ounce of disappointment. Nothing that indicates defeat. His eyes are warm. Warm, deep green like the rainforest. Not ever cold, shallow, like those of her mother when in the middle of holding on.

Her father is an old old soul, she has figured for some time now. Loss is nothing new to him.

He does not carry it around like a badge. Proud or at least quietly pleased to have survived; like some of those celebrities who write memoirs about their addiction problems and broken marriages.

The woman assumes she must be a younger soul, still somewhat new to this game of losing, thereby finds herself especially these days so bewildered by it all. 

These days that losing has become a little easier, and yet all the more strikes her as so utterly strange.

Life is just so strange, she has been saying to herself over and over again this whole summer as she began to unconsciously make amends with the novel realization that she would no longer mind ending up in her parents’ town—living in an old house with brown bathroom tiles and brown carpet.

These days, in the midst of all these changes, she has no idea what the universe wants from her, except that she is meant to learn loving life albeit the constant dying, albeit the constant changing.

Why else would the woman have felt compelled to eventually look back ahead at the sunset and feel herself trying to muster the courage to keep loving the countryside ride with her father which right there and then was starting to come to an end more than ever.

Why else would she be lying in bed with all these thoughts and feelings at this very moment, wide awake in the middle of the night, meanwhile others… 

No doubt: this must be her destiny—



Lara Konrad is a writer, currently based in Munich, Germany. In 2020, a second (revised: evolved) edition of her poetry collection Mother, We All Have Been Lonely and Lovely Places (Gato Negro Ediciones) was published. Her first novel appears in summer, 2025. At the present, she’s working on a book about the middle, while continuously writing for an array of literary, artistic, as well as cultural outlets.