Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 08:49:33 PDT
From: nathaniel finley
Subject: is this really summer?

It is a lovely 17 degrees celsius here, maybe even 15, and raining like a typhoon. It all started last Friday evening, when I decided to head up to Heiligenberg for the weekend for some quiet reading and meditation. I had no idea that the ghosts of christmas past, present, future, and all the times in between were going to be meeting there for a rally in which the absolute devastation of the citizens of Heidelberg was going to be planned.

So there I was, alone in the ruins of the old monastery, just up the hill from the Nazi ampitheater called the Thingstete, when a thick, utterly suspicious, and menacingly etherial fog crept up the mountain. Even after it had totally engulfed me, and even after the most undefinable sounds began to call out to me from the fog, I refused to be afraid. They were like footsteps, but they were walking on the fog and not on the ground. A few birds were talking to each other, and a steady rhythm of a clock, like a ticking, was faintly perceptable all around me. Mind you, there is nothing on the top of that mountain but two ruins and one cafe, which is closed. but then the wind picked up, and started walking along the tops of the trees as if God himself \ herself was coming to visit me, and I decided that I needed to do something pretty quick before all of this madness drove me running and screaming down the mountain. So I started practicing a few of the Kung-fu `springy-leg' movements that I learned before I left the states, and that seemed to only make the nature around me more ephemeral (maybe that's the wrong word, but I haven't got a dictionary on me). Suddenly I heard the sound of cheering, a large gathering was taking place somewhere nearby, with drums and somebody speaking and an audience screaming like it was a rock concert. I listened a little, and realized that it was coming from the Thingstete.

what is going on? I asked myself, and I very apprehensively began to walk down the mountain to the theater. the fog was too thick to see, but the sense of overpowering fear and evil was building up so strongly inside me that by the time I had reached the clearing overlooking the ampitheater I knew already what was going on: there was no human being on the mountain except for me, but the echoes of the Nazi past were calling from that damn theater loudly enough on that night to make me feel the presence of those spirits. There has been a tremendous amount of spiritual energy put into that place by kids with drums, trying to drive out the memory of hate rallies and violence, but those echoes will remain, I think, for a very, very long time. I ran screaming into the theater, get the hell out of here!!, but the echoes came back and lasted all through the night. I went back up to Heiligenberg a little disappointed at myself for losing control like that, but what else could I do, it made me so mad that these ghosts were not only ruining my night, but where invading one of the most magical and beautiful places I have visited, and I couldn't do anything about it. I mean, I don't understand so much of these types of things, so I could only wait around for them to leave.

now, for those of you who are wondering what kind of drug I was on that night let me assure you, and this is actually the most exciting and at the same time unsettling part, I was absolutely sober. But if any of you have ever tripped on LSD or mushrooms before, and understand the meaning of the term trailers, then listen to this: I waved a cigarette before my eyes and had, no joke at all, one and a half foot long trailers of light following it. Furthermore, I began to visually hallucinate, and it wasn't completely due to the fog (although I'll give the fog partial credit).

Memories of Blair Witch Project came back to me, but I was prepared for it. I found a very cold, but warm, cover and sat patiently waiting for all of this madness to subside. Well, that was over a week ago, and it hasn't died down. I came down from that mountain the next morning, after a very sleepless and prayerful night, but I found more questions than I did answers, and don't know what to make of the experience. It's all rather like a dream, but a thick cloud has been hanging over Heiligenberg (which, if I haven't told you before, means Holy Mountain) since then, and summer has disappeared. It is cold and rainy and my poor girlfriend is so depressed that if we didn't enjoy each other's company so much I'm sure she would have already locked herself in her cellar with her paints and her viola (a stringed instrument that is a little bigger than a violin). Me, I'm reading Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, my first novel to read in German. I want to go back up to that mountain, though, but honestly, I'm petrified of it right now. Maybe it would be best to go up while the atmosphere is still lingering there, but I've got no real comfort about Nazi ghosts, even if they are only in my head, and think I will wait for a bright, sunshiny day and a starry night.

Amid all of this insanity I am managing to get my school work done, learn more and more German, and visit Frankfurt am Main. Also, I hope to have a few photo's for Ed by the end of next week, and I'll try to scan them and send them out via e-mail (but since I can't promise the success of that operation, look for them in the post as well). I've a trip planned for a week on the Dutch sea with a visit into Amsterdam (still among my favorite European cities, the Venice of the North) in two weeks, and then a week of intense research and writing. After that, a buddy and I are heading into Berlin for a week, and then it will be time to return to sunny old Gainesville. I hope we can still dance in that town, if they haven't taken that right away from us by now.

So, until clearer weather and sunnier days find me singing a new song, I'm staying here where:

`raindrops keep falling on my head,'
`and just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed,`
`nothing seems to fit'
`those raindrops keep falling on my head, they keep falling...'

much love,

Nathaniel