Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 00:09:12
-0700 (PDT)
From: nathaniel finley
Subject: two and a half weeks, part
one
These computers have eaten at least five of the messages that I have written over the last week, and I suspect it is that they cannot handle anything that is too lengthy. Therefore, I am going to try to divide my thoughts to you all into multiple parts from now on: as many as it takes to send you as complete of a report as is possible on what's going on over here.
What's going on over there?
I hear you ask. It sounds as
if war is breaking out.
Yes, my friends, a struggle of sorts, a
juggling of madness, a contest that pits self against self is occuring
every day all around me...but perhaps I shall have the opportunity to
tell you more of that at a later time...
For now, let me just stick to the facts: Heidelberg weather is the only weather that I have ever known that evolves throughout the course of one single day from pissy and cold in the morning, moving on into sunny and warm around midday, which is only a scheme of the gods to trick us lowly mortals into leaving our umbrellas at home at lunch time, wherewith the heavens open up in a torrent of chilly wind and northerly showers, only to clear out around dusk into the most sublime evenings. Of course, by the time the stars and planets reveal themselves to us we usually find that we are typically too put out with the sky to care about enjoying it.
Nevertheless, the tourists have begun to flock to this quiet, artistic city, and the straßen and gaßen (similar to avenues and streets in G-ville) are becoming inundated with street musicians, performers, painters, and vagabond beggars so much that one could easily give one's lunch money away in just a short five minute stroll down the Hauptstrasse. There is quite a movement of punks here, meaning anarchist do-nothings, with twice as many public alcoholics (interestingly enough I place these two groups together in one sentence--quite unplanned, but telling nevertheless). And there are also the students.
Always the students...
end part one
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 00:44:49
-0700 (PDT)
From: nathaniel finley
Subject: two and a half weeks, part
two
For those of you who care to continue:
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams.
Wandering by low sea breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams.
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever it seems.
For those of you who have seen the film adaptation of Roald Dahl's
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you know that
imagination is the necessary ingredient in making any sweet insanity
rational. That spark of enchantment that reveals undercurrents of life
that make some people appear to be crazy and others seem like
genius--these can be summed up, and said very well with a deep
Georgian accent, with the famous phrase What we have here is a
failure to communicate
.
In 1968 Heidelberg was a hotbed of student unrest and dissatisfaction. Today, these kids are about as sedate as the victims of Coma. I wouldn't say that they have no life in them, give them a few beers and you might even have a pleasant conversation; and I was by no means expecting anything different. Even US students are struggling to find the enemy within, to find the cause worth fighting for. It all seems impossible to many of my generation: there is too much information, nothing is black and white anymore, and communism is a failure (?). Does that mean capitalism is a success? Where, oh where, is the imagination that spawned The Lord of the Rings, that launched Woodstock, that birthed the German romantics and the so-called Wandervogel movement?
I have made a few friends here, been on a couple of dates with some really interesting women, saw a few German films in the cinema, and climbed twenty or thirty seperate trees around the city. The churches are great, one in particular has an especially welcoming spirituality, but I did not need to come here to learn what I already knew: imagination is personal, creativity is found in the heart, not in the street, and lust for life does not depend on anything other than the will to live.
That is why these punks here are so invigorating. I was walking down a small alley way last week, bordered by the bustle of early morning households waking up on either side of me, and I overtook a young man, my age, maybe slightly younger, bare-footed, with bells on his ankles, dressed in the costume of a court jester, playing a half-sized guitar (name?), and singing the most meloncholy Russian folk song that I think could have been written. As the sun began to chase the early morning dew from the cobble stones, I sat down under a tree and listened as he slowly made a round through the courtyard of an old municipal building. The trees were sleeping as he sang, the birds were all whispers, and his face, sunken from malnutrition and dirty from whatever bed he had made the night before, was filled with sublimity akin to something divine. He sang, over and over:
I have fallen from heaven, where my love now waits, I have fallen from heaven.
Who can help me find my way home again, For I am lost, and lonely, and cold?
end part two
Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 01:01:02
-0700 (PDT)
From: nathaniel finley
Subject: two and a half weeks,
conclusion
On the 28th of May, 2000, my journal entry begins with the following paragragh:
We appear to be living in a time, in the western parts of the world at least, in which many various and very often conflicting ideas and values can lay claim to legitimation. These norms, values, systems of thought--as many of them as I can imagine and emotionally attach myself to, are all voicing their claims inside of my head and in my heart: and now, since I have been here in Germany, they have become amplified to a proximity of insanity. However, in response to the effort to retain that sanity, I have found or created--an activity more akin to discovery, I should say, a new, underlying voice that I am now attempting to make dominant.
With this bit of reporting I will close out this somewhat
introspective contribution to the electronic journal to all of you who
are family, friends, and mentors. For any of you who are planning to
come to Heidelberg, and upon reaching the city, think about jumping
off of the bridge into the Neckar river--don't do it...it's really
tough to swim out of the raging undercurrents that are swelling in
that river (but not impossible).
Peace in the middle east...
Nathaniel
