My name is Jenny, I’m not running away, just going for a walk

A memory from Fechenheim.

I remember a horse. A white, quiet creature with the gait of an old soul, walking through the streets of Frankfurt-Fechenheim day after day - not led, not driven, not supervised. Just there.

Jenny.

An Arabian horse, at some point someone hung a sign around her neck:
“My name is Jenny, I’m not running away, just going for a walk. Thank you.”
As if that were the whole truth. But perhaps it was.
Because Jenny truly did not run away. Neither from herself nor from the world. She walked - with a calm gaze, with a quiet step, through the same city where people dodge each other, rush, flee. But Jenny had arrived. Always had.

Her owner, Werner Weischedel, could no longer ride, and so Jenny took over the walk. She remembered the way, the way we remember our childhood - familiar street corners, the sound of footsteps on wet asphalt. It wasn’t resistance, it wasn’t protest, it was a ritual.

A silent dance with the day.

The people of Fechenheim greeted her like an old friend. Children held out their hands with carrots in them, some just held their breath. Police officers nodded to her. Trees cast their shadows over her as if on something sacred. It was as if Jenny opened a space where everything felt a little lighter for a moment. She didn’t simply walk through the streets. She passed through a world in which trust was still possible.

Sometimes I wonder whether she didn’t see more than we do. She, the horse.Without hurry. Without goal. Without fear.
In a world where control is confused with freedom, Jenny refused to be held - and didn’t need to be.

In March 2022, she stopped going out. Cancer, they say.
Maybe. I still see her sometimes. Not with my eyes. But with memory, as quiet as her steps. And when I’m in a rush, when I lose myself, I hear her again:

“My name is Jenny, I’m not running away, just going for a walk.”

Maybe we should all do that again sometime.

Rainer