Between Thoughts

KAISERSLAUTERN GERMANY
Under the shadow of the church we sit at a cafe where the atmosphere looks good and there is a breeze in the air and the clouds rush by the moon in the night sky.
People are darting around outside and I think to myself that it's about to rain.
She is to my left, at the table, and says she only wants a drink, but instead orders food.
I'd be happy with just a drink. It'd be enough to sit and get a buzz and listen to her talk and probably tune out for the duration it takes to drink a drink. I order food, too, becuase I'd hate to get hungry watching her eat.
It's rude to watch people eat anyways, I think.
Our table is the only one that doesn't have our candle lit.
The light in the cafe is dark. I look outside the window.
The church by the cafe is in the middle of a three-way fork of the alleys in the old part of town. Kaiserslautern is quaint, I think. Sexy. Very European.
But at the same time easy and cheap and as I think that she says something.
I don't listen. I'm looking at the church and how it reaches into the black night sky. There are those soft yellow street lights dotting it's side, and a big tree next to it.
I hate the way trees look at night, when street lights are shinning on them. Dark green shimmering with orange. Looks disgusting.
My drink comes and I drink as she talks.
On the church wall a sign is hung that says "Thank God It's Sunday" in German.
I think to myself that it's Monday and I usually hate Mondays.
She asks if it's OK to smoke and I say yes because even if I had said no it would have made no difference because as she asked she was already smoking.
It's rude to make someone put out their cigarette, I tell myself. She blows a cloud out from her lips and it envelops us.
As I drink she keeps asking me questions about where I'm from and where I've been and what I like to do and if I like doing what I do. I answer her questions looking off to the side, not really looking at her face, as it would be polite to do, but starring off at the alley and starrig at the long shadows made by the church in the street lights and watching people as thet dart by.
The Church is jagged in the orange light. Is it late medieval architecture, I think?
People scamper back and forth in the alley. I notice that the ground is wet outside.
She talks more. I don't really field questions. When the food comes she makes room on her side of the table by moving her effects on my side and, becuase it is polite when you are with a lady, I move my things farther away from me.
She talks with her mouth full as she eats.
The rain gets stronger.
I remember that I hate driving at night in the rain in Germany and suddenly want to get up and leave.
I drink. I have bannana flavored beer. It doesn't taste exotic.
I look at the church. It looks sinister at night, in the rain, with the orange light. Late medieval and sinister.
It's really been a bad day, I think, and am happy for the drink. And as I sip I wonder how I could have screwed so many things up and as I think I sip and the sips last longer and I'm thinking about the church and how I wish it was Sunday, but that it's only Monday and there are people outside and they are in the rain and they are laughing.
She asks a dumb questions and pretends to be amused at my answer and I think that she really is a Kaiserslautern girl and I really like Kaiserslautern for what it is, but not those kind of girls.
How many days til the weekend? Maybe then things will change. I think about my day and it's been a bad day. I drink.
Rain starts falling harder.
I finish my food. I finish my drink. I'd have another, but my keys are jabbing my leg.
The cheap date ends when I say I have to get going.
She asks if I can walk her back to her car, because that would, of course, be polite of me.
I say yes.
I want to just leave her in one of the dark alley's where she belongs.
She picks up on it. She asks me more questions. Asks me if I like what I do.
I say yes.
I feel, I think, that I'm reading a novel as we get to her car.
The rain and the shadows and the bad girl and the guy and the night covering all of it.
This novel I'd throw away.
Six days til Sunday.
I wonder if God ever thought that.

Free Falling

Wondering how this all happened.
Wondering where it's all going.
No support.
Like a unit out-flanked on all sides, can only go into the fray.
Faaaaack. Honestly.
Almost zero support from everyone who says they support me. Like cheerleaders for the blue team all wearing the red team's colors.
To hell with naming names. They should know who they are.
They'll keep on kicking me in the face, or keep helping kick me in the face. Then they'll say they're sorry. They always say they're sorry afterwards.
Empty words.
Thanks, then. And you're welcome. For everything I've done for you. Apology not accepted.
I'll be free falling for a little. Maybe try and catch on to a ledge and break my arms in the process.

Golden October

In the afternoon my cellphone rings and I get up and head out the door.
In the middle of October the air is cool, refreshing and there is a breeze.
The forecasters here call it "Golden October" and it looks like that as I walk down the street of the small town.
Sunday afternoon and all the windows have their blinds drawn and no car is on the street and no walkers walk with me along the sidewalk. The breeze is cool and you can here it ebb and flow through the trees. The town sits in a bowl of a valley, surrounded by hills covered by forests. Seas of forests, the hills like waves a surfer would die for. I walk through the town and up one of the hills where the ruins of the Medieval church are and where the cemetery is.
Golden October and the trees are red and orange and purple and fire and yellow and green and brown. As the wind blows and I'm caught in a storm as a down pour of the bright leaves are flung from the trees and rain to the earth below.
I'm walking up the hill and the world is quiet. Save for the waves.
At the cemetery I stop and unlock the gate. The black metal is cool. I latch the gate closed again and walk into the cemetery on the main boulevard that intersects the rows and alleys of walkways lined by tombstones and flowers, the dead's last apartment.
A few blocks down, near the end of the city the blind grave digger tries to light a lantern but can't find the candle stem. The breeze keeps blowing out his flame and he struggles to relight it. I find myself near a tree and the tree is leafless and brown and gray old and it zigzags up to the blue, cloudless sky. The tree doesn't move in the wind.
Behind me an angel statue smiles, or cries, and as I wonder which one it is the blind grave digger walks over to me.
"Can you, my friend, light this?" He shouts, though he stands next to me and I'm annoyed with him but light the lantern and hand it to him.
He thanks me by patting my shoulder with his boney hands, but then doesn't let go.
"What do you want old man?" I say.
His eyes are white and his face stares away from me and he wears rags and is hunched over and struggles for breath.
"The night is coming." He shouts.
"I'm right here."
"Are you?" And his hand tightens.
And the sun is shinning bright, but in his white, pupil-less eyes I see the clouds gather and it is dark and there are clouds - grey and blue and purple and green - that streak across the sky. There is a moon and it is full and blue. It's light shines bright on the graveyard. The clouds speed past and make the moon's light flicker, like the flame of the lantern the blind grave digger holds. The angel behind me cries, or smiles, I don't know which one.
My cell phone rings and it is loud an annoying and I answer and brush the blind grave digger's hand away and he stumbles but catches himself.
There is no one on the other end, no call received.
"Always quiet here," he says.
And I am alone.
And I stand and stare at the man and using his lantern I light a cigarette, but he doesn't know it and keeps talking.
"Beautiful isn't it," the blind grave digger says and gestures out towards the city of tombstones. "The way the blue light splashes on the grey headstones, the dark, oozing green of the forest, the hiss of the wind, the glittering stones, the white bones, the air and sky and stars and blue night. And the lantern lights it all. Do you see?"
The lantern flame is orange and yellow and glistening and splashing warm light on the world. And the ground shakes and the skeletons come alive, their empty eye sockets looking where I look and at what the man gestures towards.
"Even the dead have eyes."

Friday

These days it's Friday that's the hardest.
Used to be another day.
Usually Monday. Sometimes Wednesday.
These days Fridays I just sit and ache and wonder what I'm doing here. Wonder.
Working in a self-depricating profession, spending more than I make (and not on drinks, that's for sure), dealing with battles that aren't mine or I don't want to deal with.
Been up since 5 this morning. Nothing better to do. Worked for eight hours and took a one hour driving test. Somehow managed to get my German license. Drove 40 minutes to the place, 40 back. Little real conversation at any point throughout the day. Little meaningfulness.
"You want to get drinks later?" She asks.
"Sure."
"Hope about next week?"
How about now. How about I drink til the bottle is empty and order six more.
Ate lunch alone today. The conversation wasn't that great. Me starring out a window, thinking about the people who tell me it'll get better or it'll get worse or the ones that told me so and the ones that say they think about the same things I do. I think about everyone who has pissed me off in the last couple of weeks and realize that it's a long list and that a lot of the people really should be put in their place. But I'm in no position to do that. And that just makes me angrier.
And what about all the ones that try and rationalize or turn it around to make me the villian?
I want some whiskey, I think. Gin would be good, too.
I come home. Want to be alone. Been working for the last 14 hours. Realize I got up too early. Close my eyes. Try and enjoy the Friday afternoon because that's what that time is for, closing your eyes. Then people start yelling, screaming, shouting, fighting.
I walk out of my room. Think somewhere else.
Around dusk I realize I'm depressed. For all the right reasons, of course. Mostly the people in the world, the people in my world.
Him and her, her and him, them, me, us and everyone is on my mind.
No use arguing, I think. It's Friday and I should rest, I think.
Wednesdays used to be hard. I was born on a Wednesday.
I'm listening to St. Germain's "Forget it" and the song seems appropriate for my life, I think. Then I make the decision to add it to the soundtrack of my life - a list of twelve songs I've decided to pick that describe me.
Then I forget what I'm talking about.
Who knew in the first place.
Forget about it.
Forget about her.
Forget about him.
Forget about them.
Forget about us.
Forget about most, if not everything.
It's Friday.
Like the song, just different, really.
Friday I'm alone

Vampire

In the morning I feel like a ghost.
It's 5:30 a.m. and I'm on the train, starring out the window, into the still night, wondering about nothing. I see my reflection in the glass. I wonder who I'm looking at. I'm not looking at myself. I have no reflection.

Random Dispatch

Oct. 1
Kaiserslautern, Germany- I start listening to Jack Johnson's "Bubble Toes" as I watch as an Army Blackhawk helicopter with a white cross on it's nose big to rise in the air.
Earlier my partner told me about his adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't think I could ever go there. I don't think I could ever go to war. I think that all of this, all the land around me, all the hills and woods and mountains and the city, all of this used to be in it's own war. I wonder if it was easier then, for Morrow, in Bunkered-in England, for the cameras of the Stars and Stripes crossing the Rhine.
I guess, looking back it's always easier.
I watch the helicopter rise in the air and speed away, and I can still see its white cross and I think that it might be going to help the world, maybe. It's kind of deceiving to have "Army" and "help" together.
Kind of odd that the same machine that kills people also saves people.
Weird how people are. The white cross kind of lies to you, when you think about it. Only helps those who have been injured in meaninglessness, caused by the same powers that sent help.
I don't think anyone can help the world.
My cousin, he's a nutcase (but who isn't?), he showed me a brochur of some evangelist who cures people. Blind people. Crippled people. Deaf people. Dead people. Doesn't matter. In the middle of the brochure is a three-page pullout of this evangelist in the middle of Dark Africa with, as he puts it "600,000 people" standing around him.
It sure looks like 600,000 people. It also sure looks like a computer enhancement. Who cares.
Liars make the world go 'round.
I turn my music up to stop thinking and remember that I have a train to catch and think that it might be a good idea to sleep on it.