Finding and Losing

The story goes that I do find an apartment…a peaceful and beautiful large room with sunny windows. Right by the willow trees bending over the river bank. So close I wonder if I can jump from my balcony into the still water. But also very conveniently next to a train station. My housemate has two dogs and lived in LA for three years. She smokes, but I don’t think this will be a problem.
So that’s all good, but then a terrible thing happened. On the appointed day she helped move a not quite ready me into the new place, chocolates on the pillow awaiting. We carried all my stuff at once between the two of us, bags, violin, heavy suitcase. An hour into unpacking and being in the apartment, I realized my jacket…wasn’t…anywhere. It must have fallen out of my bag while we were walking on the short (and dark) stretch of street from the car to the door. Panic.
It was nowhere on the street, just gone. Gone. I searched longer and asked in all the nearby cafés and bars, but to no avail.
I am devastated: my camera, my beautiful camera, was in the pocket (ironically the safest softest place, I thought).
And, so were my old keys.
I had kept the keys because I wanted to go back that night and make sure everything was super clean, and because I wanted to give them up to alex personally or leave a nice note at least. I went the next day to explain what happened to him and he was…really angry. He railed, and raged. Insultingly so. Absurdly so and.. it's just not an episode I care to dwell on. (things are alright now)
So I found a place and...lost my camera.
After an eternity spent at the police station waiting to make a report that I already knew wouldn’t bring anything, and exhausted from the emotions of the last two days (moving out was confusing enough itself) I was ready to crawl back into the shell.
So I did. Or back Bärenort I went—where I had been planning to go anyway because Ulrika had organized an exhibit themed Sun Moon Stars. I met up with Andreas, a family friend, and we spent the four hour drive mostly silent through the night, with the occasional babble from Mathilda, his two year old in the backseat, who fell asleep just before we arrived, mesmerized, midnight, to so many candlelit windows.