Being away in Germany for much of June and July has got me thinking about the relationship of past, present and future. It keeps coming up as a theme, each time confirming to me that they are not separate, not relegated to positions behind or in front of us as we live that one moment we can call ‘now.’ (My TEDx talk referred to this too)

Just a couple of examples of what I mean.

At a lakeside party in Nuremberg where elegantly dressed guests sipped bubbly from slender glasses and a massive, pink rubber flamingo glided an elderly couple and their granddaughter across the water, everybody appeared unaware of, or simply used to the historical monster that lay across the water. 

Today it is the biggest preserved National Socialist monument. Ninety years ago it was the unfinished, semi-circular Congress Hall of the Nuremberg Rally Grounds, part of the 11 square kilometre grounds, mostly designed by Albert Speer, that hosted six Nazi party rallies between 1933 and 1938. 

I hadn’t known I would be dancing with my dear friend from Cologne just 500 meters from the Zeppelin Field where I had stood in 2016 on the very rostrum from which Hitler himself had delivered his ‘hypnotic sermons of hate… to rapt audiences in the hundreds and thousands…’ But the visceral memory of the sickening terror I had felt then returned instantly. In spite of the site now being strewn with parked lorries, ‘Never had I been able to visualise the scale of the Nazi movement in all its ugly, popular power with such devastating clarity.’ (In My Grandfather’s Shadow, pp.359-360) 

Yet here I was, one minute laughing, the next engaged in debate with people who have been deeply involved in the complexities of what to do with this hideous phantom of the Third Reich. Artist studios seems to be the current preferred proposal, bringing creativity, transformation and a more constructive future into what was one of the centres of past destruction.

A second example happened on a packed train heading to the mountains of South Tyrol. Settled happily by the window, a young woman entered the compartment with an enormous suitcase, a cloth bag and a delighted smile at having found a space for her and them. As she arranged herself, I watched the dawning of a stricken panic as she began frantically searching under the seats for something. Her rucksack, as I soon learnt, with everything in it: passport, money, phone, ticket…

As the train pulled out of the station, she pushed her way down the carriage only to return a short while later empty handed and distraught. Once again, the past became instantly present as I felt a visceral memory from 1987 when my bag was stolen on a train in India. It too had everything in it, including all my Kodak films and diaries. I remembered the sense of suddenly not existing, of life stuttering to a halt as the bureaucratic fuel needed to move our lives forward was gone. Suddenly I had nothing, and no way of getting anything or anywhere, least of all home. 

With her beautiful smile now strained, the young traveller got off at the next station in order to return to the only place she might still find her bag. I gave her 30 Euros and told her things would work out somehow. They always do. She returned the same anxious gratitude I too had offered the kind stranger who gave me some money in India. But for the next stage of my journey, that episode from my past was fully present, just as I trusted her present would swiftly pass and resume its course into the future. 

Living in the space between the launch of In My Grandfather’s Shadow last July and the impending publication of Im Schatten Meines Großvaters coming up in September, the present, devoid of a busy schedule and deadlines, has rarely felt as potent and expanded in its not-knowingness. My original 10-day trip packed with travel and planned visits both to German friends and book-related people, evolved through a series of spontaneous decisions and the generous offer of a first cousin’s apartment, first leading me to South Tyrol and then into a week of moment-to-moment unfolding. My days’ questions revolved around whether to hike up that mountain, swim in the big or smaller lake, e-bike to the nearest village, read or taste a different local Weißburgunder/Pino Bianco…

It’s typical happy holiday stuff for some. But there were times when I literally stepped out of the hot sunlight and into the cool past. Italy does that effortlessly through its barely signposted, little Romanesque churches adorned with glorious early 13th century frescoes. The continuity and shared spatiality of past, present and future tangible to those who are open to feel it.

Deliberately avoiding all news and social media and without a task to accomplish, I experienced a strong sense of how the past constantly accompanies and informs us – albeit often subconsciously – as we are drawn by an unknowable future through our present moment. And I have to say, right now, mine is a present that I am really enjoying.

Wishing you a very happy summer wherever you are… and whatever the weather!