Rotkohl

I am looking at it, I am smelling it, I am tasting it, I could reach out & touch it.
It is available to every one of my senses, and yet I cannot name it. I have no word for it.

There are things in this world that I have many names for - like the Eskimo's have many words for snow, or perhaps the French for love...
but I sit incapacitated by the phenomenon right in front of me, unable to label it - unable to connect with someone who is farmiliar with it.

Is there a greater distance to try and cover? Thousands of miles (kilometers?) will ultimately separate us, but this feels just as much a barrier.
I am close enough to touch this person, but I am imprisoned from even that by my inability to find a word for some vegetable on his plate.

Suddenly, I fully regret every reticence I ever had to trying new foods, from the time I was eight years old until now.
I regret not learning this language at every opportunity I ever had to do so.
I regret the rebellion of mankind at Babel that ever segregated us so.

Because all I want in this moment is for the barriers to be gone.
All I want is to be able to know what to call the thing that is transpiring in front of me,
as it pertains to the vegetable, and otherwise.

Maybe if there was a name for it, then there might be a clear path towards it.
Instead, I stand in the land of things undefined - things unspoken for a lack of words.

How long would I have to study, how proficient would I have to be,
to be able to properly know and understand and confidently move in the realm in which I now find myself?

Even if you gave me the name, my sense of being disoriented would not fade
for I am sure of only one thing now - that I've never known anything like this before.

And yet, I have to ask, what am I striving for?
What will it serve me to know a clear path when in 10 hours I will be racing home faster than a human mind can comprehend?
What is gained from such perception when the heart will only break for having had it?

Cole Slaw.

There it is - a link to something farmiliar... a guidepost in this distant wood.
And now I know. I know all I need to know. About the vegetable anyway.

The rest remains - compelling, intoxicating, a veritable need - just as distant, just as reserved, just as untouchable...
or am I only protected?

For as accessible as Red Cabbage might be 24 hours from now, how will I ever find Waldmeister - let alone THIS?