I'm suffering from a severe bout of writer's block, or perhaps worse: thinker's block. I don't know if it's U2 on the brain or what, but I have plenty of projects I need to be working on, and nothing is coming out. See, the problem is that I have since birth wanted to be a writer of fiction. I'm nearly there- about 30-40 pages short of a novel. The biggest issue is that I can't fill in the middle. One of the main characters, I have come to realize, is me and not some fiction, and writing stopped once I came to that realization.
I opened up some old travel journals to try to get to know myself. Oh, it is great fun to relive those moments trekking through Europe without a care in the world, as free as a person can ever be in life! I was reading about the time I traveled from Prague to Krakow on an overnight train, getting absolutely no sleep because a group of Japanese tourists got drunk in the next cabin and were extremely obnoxious all night, and because I have problems sleeping on all modes of transportation.
I ended up taking a nap in a park in Krakow along the river because our hotel rooms weren't ready at 7am. When I woke, I walked the river's edge as the sun scintillated across the calm of the water's flow. I just wanted to see what was around the bend, but the bend kept bending as I kept walking. I was about to turn back when, what's this? I had to explore a picture of serenity that passed before my eyes. As I was looking through a large grassy yard at a church, I noticed a bunch of men in white robes who were running and came to the conclusion that I was standing at a seminary and these guys were late to class. Further down, I saw the corpse of an old church, no doubt the victim of a murderous Soviet regime. I tried to go up to the church, but large fences kept me out. I left the yard and walked through a residential area and was saddened by the obvious economic problems of a crumpled nation. I felt at the time as if something had called me to this area for a reason, though I never found out what that reason was.The next day I went to Auschwitz, and the irony of the beautiful blue day was not lost on me. That was six years ago, but it feels like a lifetime.
Bill wanted to take a guided tour. Guided tours are disgusting at a place such as this; I'm glad we didn't take one. At the entrance to the camp were the infamous words "Arbeit Macht Frei." Bill chose to clear the phlegm from his throat about this point, leaving a large puddle of mucus on the ground. Long live America. Disgusting... The horrors woke up within me upon seeing the same sight that was the last sight from outside the camp's barbed wire that most Auschwitz Jews ever saw. The experience was frightening as I searched for an emotion within the same ballpark that could imitate what those brought here felt as they awaited their dooms. It proved to be impossible for me as life's ironic sunshine tanned my skin and birds provided sweet music, perhaps as a part of a calming peace that seemed to hang over the green pastures of the cemetery for the living. The picturesque mountains and the breezy trees took my sense of historical reality time and time again, but I only had to step into a bunk room in solitude to remind myself that the tales I had heard so many times had actually happened. The most telling and fascinating remnant of the ordeal was a painting on the ceiling by an unknown artist. "Koenigsgraben" was its title. It will forever remain in my mind as strong and vibrant as it did the first time I saw it. The most important lesson I received from the visit was the realization that the more I know, the less I understand. Perhaps it's not meant to be understood. But the sheer existence of such an idea is enough to make me wish I hadn't the capacity to contemplate it.I was so much smarter then than now.
Perspective- it gets lost sometimes in the pettiness of quotidian existence. The last night on Earth- perhaps we all should live like it is.
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