An Unexpected Gift, An Unexpected Adventure

Today I missed the sun for the first time in a while. A greying Vienna was letting me go, nodding me onward as I boarded my train and prepared myself mentally for the journey south and another chunk of time without this place that has captured my heart. The mists were heavy today, though. Palpable. The city seemed to strain under the weight, and even the dancing Viennese were uncharacteristically out of step. Tree branches and distant eaves wept a mixture of condensation and melting snow, roof avalanches bombarded less fortunate pedestrians than myself, and the denser air provided no release for tailpipe smoke and cigarette exhaust. It was not a pretty morning in Vienna.

So when I left I did not look back for long. I found something bright and colourful, a beautiful image to hold on to, and I let that be enough as I shuffled off to find my train. The cold was invasive, the wet air oppressive. Vienna was kicking me out. She needn’t have done. I was on my way just the same. But she was telling me that I had spent enough time there for now, that I should embrace my southbound travels. And so I sat on my train, finally warm, and let myself depart from the grey, wishing for blue skies and a bright, yellow sun. This was not to be, but Vienna had a surprise for me yet.

Safe inside my capsule of glass and steel, Vienna sent me hurtling from the drab and the drear and into a world of fairy tales. No sooner had we left the outskirts of that city fair than we were plunged into a tunnel of falling snow. Engulfed in the white bands that streaked past, I began to perceive the most curious sensation: one of buoyancy, one of lift. With careful hands, the winter winds took us aloft. Chugging wheels, grinding at the air below, found no purchase and quickly contented themselves to enjoy the respite, however brief it might be.

And brief it was, for no more than a quarter hour passed before we touched down again, the wind releasing us after a last embrace, and the lines of snow slowing to hyphens, then to commas, then to periods. The sight before us now was quite different than the tortured city we had left behind. I could find no trace of human civilization among the hills and trees‒no houses dotted the landscape, no roads cut through the forest, no electric poles poked their sharp noses at the sky. All was calm, cast in a silvery hue that lingered impossibly between blue and white, nothing moving but the falling snow. And were it not for those delicate bundles that floated to the ground, I would have thought that all of it‒the frost-gilded trees, the blanketed fields, the bushes laden with sparkling crystals, the frozen waves of the hills, the snow-blurred faces of the mountains beyond‒was an elaborate tapestry stretched out alongside us.

But even as I watched, the beads of white began to slow again until they hung suspended against the rest, a winter portrait holding at perfection, offering us despondent travelers a glimpse at a reality beyond our grasp, a song composed for the eyes and for the soul. We were moving past very quickly, and yet the image was steady and there was nothing to interrupt the stillness of the moment. There was no track below us, there were no wheels toiling, there was no engine blaring and soon there was nothing at all. The tube around me lost its definition, then its shape, then its entire structure, melting into lines that faded into the picture around me where the snow refused its descent.

The cold and the wind stood aside as I angled my body and dove into the trees, careful not to disturb them or topple their weighty crowns. I simply flew. I did not search, I did not long. I had found a place I had not even sought, and the place seemed to know that I would only observe. The deer did not kick up and run, no snow dwarves dove for cover, a spritely hare was content to remain at ease and watch me pass. And I flew on.

I flew until the woods retreated. I flew until I spied a bridge, a lone intruder from a world that I had left behind. But the bridge did not inspire fear. It did not cause me to turn away and wander further. To my surprise it spurred me on, though it grew no closer, and soon the lines formed around me once more, resolving themselves into sturdy planes and surfaces until I was again inside the train, watching the snow streak past like shooting stars. A rumble below told me that we had rejoined our track, though the world outside was yet transformed, encased in silent, lingering white.

The roads have returned and with them the houses and the electric poles. Cellular phone conversations abound, and I clack away on my little machine, but my eyes are drawn outside over and over to witness the visitor that entered our world from that place beyond. Though we may have left it behind, the other realm bestowed a kindness upon us, a gift of white magic to remind us of what we had seen, so that we would know that it was real and never forget. So I smile back toward the north, toward Vienna and her shrouds, and I am thankful for her gift as well. She spirited me away through this winter picture and into another land, if only for a little while.

And for the first time, returning from a distant realm did not hurt so badly. Perhaps it is because this time I understand what I was meant to see. It was the world of a moment, a world frozen in time that waited for me, held itself fast for me, so that I could see it and believe. How fitting, then, that it should be Vienna that guided me there, for she knows that a parting is not forever. She reminds me, in the wise words of Richard Bach, that ‘…a farewell is necessary before you can meet again…’

So it is with this winter world, and so it may be with others. Until I find the key that unlocks those spaces, I will continue to search. Until I can find my way back to the places of my dreams, my soul will always wander. Today, however, I found some peace in saying goodbye that, with luck, will last until my return.

Letting Go the Sun

Beyond the mountains a fire is dying.  The remnants of a light that illuminated our world and is nothing more now than cooling embers, glowing red and casting their devilish, crimson shadows against snowy peaks and smoking chimneys.  I look around for signs of panic but find none.  The faces of my fellow men and women are taken up in laughter or shrouded in silent contemplation.  None of them scan the horizon or seem frightened at the coming darkness.  Their yellow goddess lies beaten, bleeding, gasping for breath and clinging to the throne of day, but soon her light too will fade, eclipsed by the black cold of night.  Her reign of hours nearly complete, the passing of the scepter is nonetheless unremarkable.  All of them, my Earth-bound kin, they all know that she will rise again tomorrow, none the dimmer for her time beyond our world.  But will she be the same?  Will her appearance match the soul within, or will that golden orb embody the spirit of another?  What happens to our goddess when she dies?  Whose life is breathed into her anew at the coming of dawn?

But these questions are as juvenile as the phrase we use to describe her fate.  Why should I, an educated man, use such a philistine description as ‘sunset’ to imply what I know to be nothing of the sort?  Am I not aware that the sun is not setting, but that the Earth itself is spinning at over one thousand miles per hour to drive our vision of the sun ever westward?  Why then should I countenance such an out-dated notion, a sun set, by admitting it into my vocabulary, letting it take up residence there and spew out with its own issuance the kind of backward thinking that reins in logic and reason and human progress?

Yes, an educated man I am.  I am that.  I am a man who is quite capable of viewing the world and its clockwork of inhabitants with the kind of cold detachment that puts the sun goddess forever in her grave, never again to rise, not even in the eyes of those who once believed.  I am a lover of science.  I celebrate discovery and push my own boundaries in a quest for knowledge and enlightenment.  I question the wisdom of convention for its own sake, and I believe that a revolution of the mind is born with every child that takes its first breath.  I am a champion of all pursuits of intellectual inquiry, and I am convinced that an unbridled search is essential to finding the answers that we seek.  I am a citizen of the world, and I tear down the walls my ancestors built, with fear as their stones and lies as their mortar, in hopes that when we see one another clearly we will embrace and rejoice.  This is the man that I am.  The man that knows that the sun does not set, that the goddess does not die because she never lived.

But for all of my logic and all of my reason, that man that I am is not alone.  He is not alone because there is another man.  One of many other men.  These other men are also who I am.  And this one other man in particular, this other man is a dreamer.  He watches the sun set with a catch in his heart, and he asks the moon, who knows her best, if her soul returns as well as her body, or if it is swallowed by the void of night.  And when his only reply is that handsome, winking face, he consoles himself with this and stumbles home, eternally hopeful.  He falls asleep and enters new worlds.  He has no doubt that he travels to them, lives in them, dies in them.  And although he fears the dying, although it hurts him and leaves an erasable mark, he does not fear the dreaming, for to forgo the dreaming would be a far crueler death.  He wakes exhausted, not even rested from his rest, but he would not trade his nights spent toiling, dueling, flying and laughing.  And he opens the door onto a bright world, one that only he sees, and he smiles, for to live as he does is to love to live.

This man, this man who I am, is not at odds with the other, although they do at times quarrel.  They know that they need one another, that they are parts of a whole, a whole that includes still others besides themselves.  They know this.  I know this.  I know that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius and freezes again at zero.  I even know that this is a more sensible way to approach it.  I know that hearts are not cut into pretty, symmetrical shapes before they are placed into our bodies, and I know that dust contains dead skin, feces and tiny little bugs.  But I still believe in fairy tales.  I still believe in love and Hollywood romance.  I still believe in magic and spaces between spaces.  I still believe in destiny, though I believe wholeheartedly that we are the authors.  I still believe in free will, though I believe that there is a plan at work.  I still believe in dreams come true, in secret wishes made on the knee, in an enduring hope that binds us and pushes us forward.  I still believe in God.  I still believe in humanity.  I still believe that sunsets are beautiful.

Living Winter

I realize that I am far from the first person to say this, but there is something so magical about walking in the falling snow.  No, there is nothing novel about this sentiment, and yet I still feel that it bears repeating.  The magic of it is simply overwhelming, and I have no choice but to point it out, just as so many have done before me.  Winter compels me, and who am I to resist?

There is something about the cold and the grey that speaks to me.  It fills a need in me that often goes unexpressed, but in winter’s absence, in those California months when the snow refuses to come and the mercury hovers in the fifties, it cries out and begs me to go.  To wander north or away from the ocean towns, to scale mountains if need be, all in hopes of feeling that chill, that bite of frosty wind that quickens the blood and sharpens the senses.  To smell the smoke of houses ablaze with warmth, fending off the cold that would creep inside and steal their comfort and even their lives.  Yes, to witness this dance between life and death.

It is this dance that I find inspiring, this passionate embrace spawned by the changing of the years that sets fire against ice.  Two unlikely partners, swaying to the music of the wind as it clambers through creaking, naked branches to carry its sweet tune far and wide.  The fire and the ice, they cannot coexist.  The flame that melts those winter diamonds is extinguished by that very act, and thus both must know death.  And yet, the fire rages on, throws its life force into the air around it and pushes back the cold, even as it spreads too far and must occasionally retreat.  Two steps forward, one step back.  The dance continues.

I have often wondered why it is that I love the bleak winter sky.  The summer sun upon my face, days spent in the ocean or walking the beach, these have my heart as well.  Spring, with her rebirth and symphony of waking creatures and delicate aromas is certainly no stranger to my musings, and autumn, dear autumn, nothing can compare to your crisp and glorious afternoons, your painted skylines of fiery trees, your electric whisper of things to come.  But winter holds a mysterious power over me, transforming the world from a brimming menagerie into a stark and desolate place where death seems to come for all.  It is in this underworld, when the blanket of cold is drawn around us, that life seems all the more precious, that one must search the widowed landscape for signs that there is yet a living world, that though struggling, it has not abandoned hope.  This, too, is a dance.  The push and pull of it is necessary for survival, for if the living stop dancing, put up their feet and call it a night, that fire will die and so will they.  And so the dance continues.

An icy sheath imprisons the canal in front of my apartment building, but a closer look reveals that it is still teeming with fish, swimming on, living on, struggling and surviving.  And peering over from both banks are snow dolloped branches, looking for all the world like cotton plants that dreamt themselves big, ignoring all that they had heard and stretching out into trees bursting with daubs of white.  Thus these trees, though barren, are clothed, wrapped in blankets of their own, shrouded in wintery delight.

Quiet cascades erupt from these cotton bolls, glistening shimmers that decorate the heads and shoulders of passersby.  Winter is playful now.  Soon the trees will have shed their coats, but the sky will be dull for a bit longer.  No buds will emerge on branch or twig for a good while yet, and death will remain at our door.  But this is a time of healing for me, as it is for much of the world.  Life, too, needs rest, needs death.  Browns and greys and whites must have their day, just as moods must occasionally darken.  My spirit is bright.  My spirit is happy.  I feel the call of Life strongly, and I laugh with it.  Without winter and its inescapable reminder of death, however, I grow restless in Life.  I need the grey.  I need the chill.  I need the world to sleep.

But even here there is living reward, for it is the season of the evergreen, a time when steely blue can cut through a dreary winterscape and be intense and electric just for drawing a contrast with the world around it.  What colours emerge are brighter, enhanced, and they remind us that it is not over.  The dance continues after all.

And it is this dance that I love.  It is this struggle that reminds me that I am alive.  I face the cold that I might earn my warmth.  I face death that I might earn my life.  In my walks these days I revel in the snow, in the bare birch trees against a stark winter sky, in moments shared with beautiful people, in a world that sleeps, but wonderfully.

The wind picks up, and I pull my jacket closer and appreciate my father who gave it to me, who has fought his own winter battles and managed to thrive.  I am thankful for the sweater underneath, which I received from my mother, whose own struggles with death have made her life the brighter.  I think of all that has been done for me, all that has been shared, everything that has made my life what it is so that I can be in awe of the simple joy of falling snow.  Much have I been given, greatly have I been blessed, so that I might be prepared when winter came and able to welcome it with a smile when it did.

One Night in Carinthia

Rolling over to discover the trash can that you only half remember bringing to bed with you could be a sign that trying to keep up with zee Germans for Fasching (Carnival) was a poor idea.  But upon further reflection, you realize that you didn’t need that trash can after all, so you win!  Until you get the text message from said Germans asking if you’d be up for beers later.  Friends, they are just better at it than you are.  There is no sense in judging yourself because there is really no comparison between you and them.  But what’s that?  You replied ‘yes’ to this text message about going for beers?  Of course you did.

This is going to be a pretty dang disjointed post because I myself am feeling pretty dang disjointed at the moment.  Yesterday was Fasching here in Austria, and well, I suppose it was that everywhere else as well.  Call it what you like, it often ends up leading to excessive alcohol consumption.  Not being a heavy drinker, I thought I would have a few beers with friends and pack it in early, say 2ish.  But this was not to be.

I met a friend for dinner, and by the time we were finished I was already three beers in.  An hour or so later, when we met back up to go to the Mozart Club (that’s right, the Mozart Club, and on Tuesday nights, that’s the place to be here in Klagenfurt), we decided that a bit of pre-partying was in order and split a bottle of wine.  No big deal.  We hit the club and met up with the rest of my friends shortly after midnight, and from there I have only a vague recollection of what happened.  So the following will be a fun, piecemeal account of my evening.

Somewhere in the haze of my memory I spy Mario, as in THE Mario, of Nintendo fame.  He was accompanied by a pirate, and Mario himself was wearing an eye patch of his own.  Pirate Mario.  It’s Fasching, right?  So costumes.  No big surprise.  So of course I spoke with my childhood hero and discovered that Pirate Mario and his more pirate-y companion were Italian.  No shit.  Listening to an Italian say, ‘It’s a-me, Mario!’ while dressed the part is pretty damn funny.  So I laughed.  I laughed a lot.  And then we went back and forth with ‘Eh!’ in our best Italian accents.  Theirs were better.  They were Italians.  And then I threw a word salad of random Italian greetings and phrases that impressed them into buying me a drink.  Oh yes, that 10 week Italian course I took in ’97 finally paid off.

‘What will you drink?’ they asked.  ‘Whiskey!’ I shouted.  I don’t recall if this shout was a holdover from the spirited back and forth of Italian words for things like ‘butter’ and ‘glass’, or if it was just because it was really loud in there.  But I shouted.  ‘Whiskey?  No!  Tequila!’ they cried.  And tequila it was.  We drank and they drifted away.  Goodbye Pirate Mario.  Goodbye Pirate Pirate.

Elsewhere in the mist I see Kevin, the bartender.  Kevin is German, like basically everyone else I’ve met here.  You would think it would be difficult not to meet Austrians in Austria, but this is not the case.  So I see Kevin.  He is disappointed in me.  He had told his girlfriend that John Lennon was coming tonight, but I arrived with my hair cut short and without my glasses.  I couldn’t even pull off early 60’s John Lennon.  Maybe 50’s John Lennon, who knows how he wore his hair back then?  So Kevin was sad, but not for long.  I believe his girlfriend forgave him.

Kevin then turned to a girl dressed as a witch and explained that I was an American who spoke German.  I suppose that’s strange enough to be worth mentioning, but I happen to know a lot of Americans who speak German.  In any event, this girl turned to me and said I spoke it very well (I really don’t think I’d said anything more than ‘hello’ at this point), probably better than people in Austria speak German.  She and Kevin laughed.  I laughed.  I said, ‘Down here it’s like a different language entirely!’  She and Kevin laughed.  I laughed.  ‘So you’re German too, then?’ I asked her.  ‘No,’ she replied.  ‘I’m Austrian.’  Well, shit.  She and Kevin laughed.  I laughed.  The witch soon vanished, but not without a smile to show that she was not insulted.  So hey, I met an Austrian last night.

At some point I spoke Spanish to Kevin’s girlfriend.  She happens to be Spanish, so this isn’t as random as it might seem at first.  But my Spanish was random, if slightly better than spewing the Italian word for ‘cheese’ at Pirate Mario and his mate.  Kevin’s girlfriend, who has a name, a name she told me, which I found pretty at the time, but now cannot recall…Kevin’s girlfriend was holding a knife for cutting lemons.  I had literally just watched her cut lemons, but then that event faded and I wondered why she had a knife.  So I asked her how to say ‘knife’ in Spanish.  We hadn’t been talking, and her back was to me.  I just needed to know how to say it.  And she told me.  At least twice.  Then I repeated it thoughtfully.  I still have no idea how to say ‘knife’ in Spanish.  ‘It is a surprise to me,’ I blurted in awkward Spanish, ‘that there is a knife in a bar.’  But that’s not what I said.  I got to the place where ‘knife’ should go, and the word had already left me.  So, friends, I did what any other self-respecting gringo would do.  I just said ‘knife-o’.  And then I got to the end and said ‘bar-o’ for good measure.  She politely explained that the knife-o was for the lemons.  ‘THE LEMONS!!!’ I exclaimed, for some reason using a French ‘the’.  ‘OF COURSE, THE LEMONS!!!’  I withdrew and danced.  I think.  I know I danced a lot.  I think one of the times was just then.  I also fell a number of times.  The floor was quite slippery.

Most of the rest is just a blur of shots.  There were endless Captain Colas (which is rum and Coke, for the uninitiated), and a lot more tequila.  I think I paid for a couple.  Every time I was asked what we should drink, I shouted, ‘WHISKEY!’, and every time I was told no.  I had no whiskey fans in my company last night.  So it was mostly rum and tequila.  And there were also several vodka-lemon juice shots, at least I think that’s what they were.  I think those might have been the tastiest things I had.  Kevin just kept lining them up for everyone, and we certainly obliged him.

There were many more Germans who came and went, and there was a Turkish man from Izmir with whom I also shared a drink.  He was happy that I had heard of Izmir, but then I took his cane and tried to dance with it.  I promptly fell, and he, just as promptly, took back his cane.  Oh, Izmir guy.  No hard feelings, I hope.

And somewhere around 5 in the morning I found myself on my way home.  I was wearing a borrowed jacket because I had left mine in my apartment since the club is so close.  My friends were worried I’d freeze to death, so I got a loaner.  Nice people, they.  Still, I was just as surprised to find the random jacket in my room this morning (ahem, afternoon) as I was to wake up next to a, thankfully empty, trash can.  The headache was no surprise, though.

So, it has been fun reflecting with you.  I trust that all of you had a fine evening yourselves, at least I hope so.  If not, then perhaps Pirate Mario put a grin on your face the way he did mine.

Being There

Sleepless musings of a wandering heart…

 

They were going to a ball, but I did not know it. I had come from a ball, but they did not know it. St. Stephan’s Square was filled with a train of whistle-blowing, sign-wielding ball-goers, but to me they looked like nothing more than demonstrators. I did not know that they were going to protest the ball, and as I ambled into their gentle current, they did not know that I was not. My drunken legs unrested for more than a day, my merger with that crowd was less an act of will and more a factor of gravity, pulling my weak and stumbling self (a stubborn self that had insisted on wandering further) deep into the ranks of the Antifascistas. As I had streamed alongside them moments before, awash in the might of the oncoming deluge, I had noticed the signs. ‘Nazis Out of Parliament!’ read most of them, and I nodded, for who could disagree?

And the way they were going seemed to be mine after all, so I angled my rudder, turned my little ship, and met their course. Then slowly, diagonally, I was pulled in, became a part of the river that wound its way through the square, cutting a wide path through banks of cobblestone. And I walked, and I stumbled, and I smiled, and I wondered. I looked at the signs, at the faces of their carriers. I heard the voices shouting and those murmuring confidentially. They broke over me in waves, raining torrents of consonants and vowels upon my weary brain. The words crashed over me, dripping their tickling echoes as they went. They drove through me, electric, pulsating, and continued on, like specters through a wall, leaving their ache within me though the words themselves did not remain. ‘Erde’ crumbled into dust as soon as it hit. ‘Gelegenheit’ vanished before being recognized. ‘Wolken’ dissipated beyond my grasp.

I stumbled on, the cadence of my sways quiet remnants of half-remembered dance steps, the loop of a Viennese waltz still running uncontested in my thoughts and chasing toe with heel. I danced to a dead-man’s tune on feet barely fit to belong to the living. My smile was a remnant of events set into motion nearly 24 hours earlier, as I had journeyed toward a night of time travel and magic that would keep me ever-stepping into the current moment, now the current of the crowd, the crowd on its way to a ball, but not to dance. But these were things that I did not know.

The dragon chain leapt forward and spat its flames of polemic and vitriol, blew its smoke and reared its head, and I, a scale on its back, a link in that armor, was indistinguishable from the rest. Those that stood to the side would count me among them, would imagine my voice carrying with the rest when the time came to make them heard once and for all. We were being filmed and photographed by passersby, assessed and profiled by the rank and file of Vienna’s finest, secured behind their badges and their billy clubs.

sometimes. it seems like. the edges are slipping. the image too focused. the objects too clear.
sometimes. i think that. horizons are bending. and blending the boundaries. of yonder and here.

I swayed, and with my legs went my body and even my conscious mind, and somehow, when my feet next came to rest, though it was only for a moment, I returned to myself and I knew where I was. I was an infiltrator, I was an imposter, and I alone knew it. The outsiders would not see me as one of their own, for I walked with the dragon, I flowed with the river. They could not have known that I understood nothing of the cause for which I inadvertently marched. And my perceived compatriots were none the wiser, eyes and minds focused on the might of mass that they were busy assembling. The police gloomed on my countenance as much as on those of the rest, and they waited for the moment when intervention would be necessary, fearing it, desiring it, or both. But I alone knew that I was not who they thought me to be. I was merely a traveler, trading the slow/quick steps of the tango for the rhythm of a makeshift drum beat somewhere in the distance ahead.

And I wondered at this fact, at this notion that all believed me to be known. For a moment I was ashamed and felt like a true imposter, one who would walk with these demonstrators, these dear creatures of activism, in hopes of being perceived as equally great and deserving of pride. How could I accept the praise in the eyes of those looking on, and how could I reject the scorn on the faces of some others? The reverence and the revulsion, they were not mine to own, not even the curiosity of children who had turned to look, a parent’s finger still clutched in one tiny hand.

And I despised my treachery, meant to leave and join a stream of my own, but a feeling had awoken within me, a memory of some lost emotion perceived only out of the corner of my heart, a knowledge that I was not who I appeared to be, that I had never been. The crowd that covered me, concealed my true nature, it was no different than any other guise worn before, although so many were donned without my knowledge or will. And the purpose of my rambling path itself grew clearer. That stroll beyond all reason, when body and mind beg for rest, but spirit wanders heedless of their wants or their needs. It is searching. It has always been searching. For Meaning, for Truth, for Life. For none of these things, perhaps. For a feeling only, for a moment itself, for a glimpse of true beauty, for that trembling glance that falls unexpectedly upon the pure and terrifying face of God, the piercing of recognition that catches the heart, that would pull it from my chest and send me tumbling into the end of all, though not in fear, no longer, but in bliss. It is the end of an aching, a longing silenced. The unwitting search over, to collapse from ecstasy, to die having touched the Universe and known, for that one brave instant, that every dream taken by surprise in waking, every glimpse and glimmer of something other, every cloud-whispered notion that filled my soul with the profound certainty that the hint of the beyond is truly just a hint, the harbinger of some greater force and destiny…and yet in that all-suspending blink, where death seems small price to pay for such life, to be restored, to fall back behind the veil and find the ground still solid and the sky still full of air-that is the blessed tragedy, for I live on and search again, not hopeless and not in vain, but secure in the knowledge that I have been there and have seen it, that I have died a thousand times, if only for a moment, and I have lived a thousand years in each slowed heartbeat.

What was the crowd around me then but a reminder? A catalyst that set my mind reeling? I emerged from the roaring waters confidently and happily, a faceless one after all, but only to those around me, for if one can lose oneself in a crowd, then surely one can find oneself there as well. And so I wandered on, the streets of Vienna sturdy underneath my sleeping feet, and the city held me up and told me where to go. It showed me beauty and darkness, grime and lights, and although I must say goodbye to this dear friend once again, I know that it will only be for a time, and that my search will bring me back here, and to many more wondrous places, to relive and reimagine and reawaken.

The Return

I have often found that a good deed, when done in pursuit of a reward, rings hollow in the end no matter how well we may be compensated.  There is nothing wrong with accepting praise, fame or wealth for a job well done, and there is certainly nothing wrong with applying oneself to achieve those things we find to be important measures of our accomplishments.  I am a big believer that happiness is much more important than money, and when a sense of satisfaction can fill an empty stomach I’ll be the first to admit it, but the fact remains that for now we do have to have more than just our positive attitudes at the end of the day.

What I’m talking about here, though, is the approach we take to doing something that we know we should do, regardless of any gain for ourselves.  It involves helping those in need, putting others ahead of ourselves when the situation calls for it, keeping promises even when they are inconvenient.  In these cases I truly believe that kindness is its own reward, and when we approach such moments with ambition or selfish desires, we can truly diminish the act itself and the intense effect that it could have had on us if we had concentrated solely on what needed to be done.  And yet, when we perform these acts with a selfless heart and an open spirit and are somehow unexpectedly compensated for our trouble, how much the sweeter is that reward!

This is what I found when I set out to fulfill some promises of my own, to do some good deeds that had weighed on me and called out my name and would not let me rest until I took action.  My thoughts were on the souls that I had left behind, the escape that I had made not two weeks previous from a place so fearful and lonely in its whitewashed arrogance and thinly veiled deceit that letting my mind travel back there was akin to willfully imprisoning myself in the dark memories which that place had inspired.  And yet, I did have promises to keep after all.

My return to IKEA was a frightful one.  To set foot in the halls that had visited upon me such terror and malaise seemed foolish, an invitation to the hauntings that, though diminished, continued to plague me.  To return would be to renew their strength, to make real those visions that kept me awake and give flesh to the horrors that my mind alone had been left to face.  But fear in the heart is crippling, and the inability to face that fear is spelled ‘defeat’.  Moreover, who is to say that the spirits of those prefabricated prisoners would not transform themselves into demons, razing the remnants of my sanity and casting me into a chamber of darkness from which even I could not escape?

But even were it not so (and though they are tortured, the gentle hearts of that place let me know that it could not be), a promise is a promise.  And so I filled a water bottle, packed my lighter and stowed my knife, casting a last look at the objects in my apartment and making a promise to them as well, a promise of return that I very much hoped to keep.

There was little I could do for those left behind, far less than I would have liked, but I spent the better part of an hour retracing my steps and revisiting the helpless children of human excess whom I had encountered before.  I poured water from my bottle into glasses that had never known it, drinking it then from those vessels that had been refused the caress of lips as much as they had been denied their own true purpose.  I saw the liquid invigorate them as it sang down into their empty bellies and felt their hearts swell as I sipped it back.

They took and they gave, it was all they had ever wanted to do, and even though there were only a few that I could share this with, I was startled and pleased by what I saw around me.  Far from the jealous stares that one might expect from the nearby empty glassware, I saw the shine of joy that could only come from a gracious heart, a look of love that said that they too had felt something that day, if only through some esoteric collective consciousness that I do not myself understand.

Moving on from this secular baptism, I turned my attention to the candles that stood humbly tall awaiting a flame that might never come.  What they knew, however, and what was yet hidden from me, was a secret shame that would shock and bewilder me.  As I approached a trio of slender white fellows, majestically filling a silvery candelabra, I soon discovered that they were not whole, that something vital had been taken from them.  These candles, along with all the rest, I was to learn, had had their wicks trimmed down to the wax.  Not even the stub of a wick-that-was remained to be seen in them, and yet they looked me straight in the eye, unblinking and proud.  They were still candles, even if they would never glow with fiery light.  I beheld these wickless wretches and felt my heart grow angry.  Naturally I understood that this emasculation was meant to prevent just the sort of thing I had in mind for them, and yet I could not help but wonder at the cost.  These fine creatures, reduced to mere statues, had been denied their right to shine.

Sickened and saddened I drew my knife, apologizing to the brave figures as I cut into their yielding frames to expose the wick underneath.  One by one I shaved away their virgin wax, wax that was meant to burn, to melt, to drip, to sing its own lover’s song, wax that crumbled and fell to the floor below.  That first spark of the flame, that first touch of fire that would sear and delight, they had been robbed of this experience, both wax and wick, and yet the candles that bore them did not falter, did not weep, did not hang their heads in shame.  They accepted the flame gratefully and burned the brighter for it.  No finer tribute could I imagine, no braver salute than to stand there and watch them carry that flame, disregarding the prospect that at any moment one of the guards would rattle the cage and demand to know what I was doing.  I let them burn, I told them that I was sorry, and when I could wait no longer I softly and respectfully blew them out.

Smoke rose gently in solemn thanks, and I nodded and turned away from that place.  The gesture had humbled me.  What had I done?  I had had so little to give, and in the end even that had been a short-lived contribution to only a few of many lonesome souls.  I shuffled off, but even as I mumbled the question of whether it had made any difference, I slowly began to feel a warmth within my own soul.  It began as a drop of water, as a spark of fire, but soon it had filled me up and floated the grief and discontent right out of my heart.

The smiles of countless items that lived a life as ‘displays only’ swam all around me and lifted my heavy spirits, reminding me that a simple act is yet an act.  I could feel their gratitude, and again this humbled me, but it was also an inspiring reaction.  The thousands of gentle creatures who I thought had gained nothing that evening reminded me of what I had observed in the empty glasses: you can touch without contact and you can move with only a gesture.

But my story is not yet finished.  Even as I thought that there was nothing more that that place could do to surprise me and convince me that I had indeed fulfilled my promise and done at least some good, I was in for a bit more.  I had made my way down toward the exit, through the bowels of that dread place where the items for sale lay tossed about and picked through, and I stopped to consult a list.  I needed some things after all, and I moved through the isles picking up two bowls and a small pan for heating milk.  This was all I had to buy, and yet a teapot had caught my eye even as I had journeyed down into this lower realm.  It had winked at me, waved its little €10 price tag and perked up its filter to say that it was just the kind of teapot I had wanted.  It was right, and I added it to my things.

It was not until I had left the store, which closed soon after I had made my selections, that I considered the cost of my purchases.  Something was not adding up, and so I retrieved my receipt from the bag and went through it.  And yes, you’ve probably already guessed it: that little teapot was nowhere to be found on it.  Somehow it had avoided detection, slipped passed the barcode reader unscanned and made its way into my bag.  I laughed as the bus pulled up, boarding with a smile that inspired the driver to flash one of his own.  Some might suppose that it had been simple human error, or even a malfunction of the scanner, but I knew the truth.  My new friends at IKEA had decided to give back in a more concrete way than I could have ever imagined, and now whenever I brew myself a pot of tea (which is often), I think of them and smile and send warm thoughts their way.  After all, it’s the least I can do.

 

This post is a follow up to a previous one, Fearful Symmetry, in which I describe promises made after a visit to IKEA.

The Other 9/11

We tend to remember the tragedies more than the celebrations.  That’s not a new, earth-shattering revelation, it’s just true.  For example, many Americans could probably tell you when World War II started, even down to the day, but when was V-E Day, marking the end of the war in Europe?  And when on Earth was V-J Day, the end of the war in the Pacific?  And when we do remember our celebrations, it is often only partially. We all know that July 4^th, 1776, is the day that the Declaration of Independence was signed, but when did the Revolutionary War end, when that independence was finally secured and legitimated?

There are many examples of this kind of selective memory, and I’m not saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing.  When things are going well, we look back and see the bad things stick out.  When things are going poorly, we seem incapable of remembering anything but the good that was there.  It’s probably got something to do with our brains and chemicals and psychology, things I don’t fully understand, I’ll admit.  I mean, think about the last bad break up you had and how the good times seemed so good in retrospect, all of the bad simply fading away.  So if anything, the fact that we focus a bit on the negative is probably an indication that we feel pretty good about ourselves.  Maybe that’s a bunch of hooey, but then again I’m not a shrink.

But today I wanted to point out one of the good things in the past that we often overlook, a cause for celebration that has faded into obscurity for many of us, and that’s a date when the world as we knew it changed forever.  I’m talking about 9/11.

We remember September 11, 2001 and the tragedy that occurred that day.  It was horrible and scary, and it’s something that should be remembered so that we may learn from it.  But there is another 9/11, one that happened almost twelve years previous, that was a celebration, and that’s a 9/11 that we too often forget about.

On November 9^th, 1989 (written in most of Europe as 9.11.1989), a crushing blow was dealt to the authoritarian regimes of Central and Eastern Europe.  On that day it was announced that the people of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) were free to visit the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).  The wall that had divided East and West Berlin, a symbol of authoritarianism wrapped all around West Berlin and containing that ‘threat’ of decadent democracy, had become a meaningless pile of brick and mortar.  Much of the physical wall would remain for some time, but it had been declared impotent by its very makers.  Rejoicing Germans climbed it and sat on the top, champagne flowed all over the world (well, I imagine there were some exceptions), and for a day we were all jelly doughnuts, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy.

That happened.  23 years ago today, that happened.  From 1961 to 1989 that wall had divided Germany, even as it surrounded only one city.  Families caught on either side of the wall did not see each other for years until visitation rights were granted to West Berliners and West Germans in general, allowing for family gatherings in the East but never in the West.  And over the course of that nearly 40 years, over 100 people died trying to get from East to West Berlin.  They wanted a better life, or at least a life where they felt they had options, and they were willing to risk everything to have it.

This post is not about communism versus capitalism and the Cold War fought between them, however.  It’s not even about the historical figures we associate with that time who took steps to ease us out of that Cold War.  Instead it’s about those people on the ground, the ones who fought to secure a different world for themselves and ultimately won.  Sure, Reagan gave his ‘Tear Down That Wall!’ speech, and that was impressive, but that’s not what made the wall come down.  What brought the Berlin Wall down, what sparked this monumental change in the landscape of Germany and Central and Eastern Europe, was the dedication of the individual people who lived there.  It was their refusal to go along with the program, to be silent, to roll over, to give up.

They marched, they wrote, they spoke, and all of this in the face of a system that had declared these basic acts to be illegal.  That is what brought the Berlin Wall down, and when the powers that be felt that wind of change blowing (yes, that is a semi-intentional Scorpions reference), they had no choice but to either embrace that change or make war on their own people.  Thankfully, they opted for the former.  But even this was not enough.  The people had had it.  They were through with the old way, and no half steps toward freedom would placate them any longer.  Within a year, communism had been torn down along with the wall, and a year after that even the Soviet Union would crumble under the weight of people’s demands for real change.

So today, on this the 23^rd anniversary of a very different 9/11, I would like to encourage everyone to think about the events of 1989, a year of struggle and difficulty, for change never comes without them, but ultimately a year of celebration.  The next time someone tells you that you can’t make a difference, that nothing changes, that things are hopeless, give them a 9/11 bitch slap by reminding them of the power that people have.  Just three days ago the most powerful man in the world was ready to step down from his post if people said so, and an incredibly rich guy with gobs of power of his own and support from the movers and shakers of America politely and respectfully withdrew from the field of political battle…because people said so.

You may think that your voice won’t be heard, but that’s all the more reason to be loud.  No matter what your political views, I imagine you can agree with me that we need a country that listens to its people.  So take some time each day to think about how you want your country, our country, to look.  Take some time to really examine your views, read news from multiple sources, don’t believe everything you hear because Obama said it, and don’t believe everything you hear because Mitt Romney said it.  Don’t trust CNN, MSNBC, FOXNEWS, The Huffington Post or anybody else with being the ultimate knowledge keepers.  Challenge yourself, and once you’ve done that, challenge your friends to do the same.  Before long, your voice will be louder and you’ll be challenging the entire nation.  And if you don’t think that’s powerful, then you never will be able to make yourself heard.