Stepping off a short flight by way of plane, I’m riding the night train towards something unknown. Always staring out a window thinking simple thoughts. Welcome to Berlin, this is Germany not France. Inside the metro, I’m bit by a sharp yellow light and I’m paralyzed watching the world go by with the people I care about. Bonded by bewilderment, they too are experiencing firsts and at this moment Berlin is way too tired but the excitement has arrived. We’re getting closer to the edge here. Great citizens of the German republic are all over the streets, including the populous minorities and the ever present authority. Everyone is out, sub-citizens digging through trash, tough turks lurking on dark corners, african immigrants hustling and bustling with a variety of non-essentials, eastern europeans making a better life, asians running restaurants, americans sounding stupid, nationalists feeling proud yet ashamed, liberals fighting for change, tourists with khaki hats and huge SLR cameras. Politics is stinking up the air with a raw energy and tensions are ringing heavy chords through the streets. I’ve been teleported to another world and I cannot recognize the look of the place, nor the looks on your face or the everyday things. Green trees, grafitti, new families, cats n dogs, all the shizer on the strasse. I could be anyone here and I’m soaking in history with my own eyes. I only care to see as much as I can, to listen and understand but everything smells shitty and I’m aware of what’s going on when I’m not here. I ordered an adventure with moments of bliss and small bites of shit. It leaves a funky impression on my taste because Berlin is not just another city. Berlin is a good place, it’s cheaper than most places and has a good rating on the fun factor. Money goes further and you can get wasted on scenery, food, and drinks. Had one of the best kebabs in my life, the cheapest beers tasted great, and generated a surplus of good energy with the ones I love. A lot of laughter and healthy promise for an adventure delivered in real time.
Like Berlin, here’s cheap food for thought to cultivate discussion.
Walking about the city and looking around, listening and smelling, all at the once. Life is going on and I want to know the local people, the side streets, the big buildings, but everything is at face value and I’m welcomed with a light reception. This is ground zero of World War. Bullet holes survive on buildings and I think to myself “shhhhitler”. I can remember once upon a time being unable to distinguish the difference between fiction and non-fiction. From a young age, he was the most exotic character in school books. You could pick Hitler out of any large crowd. Nowadays, it might be possible to change Hitler into a pop-culture icon, give him the Andy Warhol treatment, make the swastika cool again, and let the innocent children experiment with his iconic stache. It was, and still is a scary story to tell the kids. Death, of Black Plague proportions. Heaven, hell, and the abyss backed up with all the souls crossing over to the other side. How about what’s happening right under our noses with these photoshop pros pulling societies strings. Could an invisible holocaust exist? What is worse than a holocaust? What’s the absolute worst thing to happen to someone? Genocide, extermination, annihilation. What about being denied your humanity, a decent living, and a right to live free. As long as you can fall back on your couch and watch the new drama reality, World War 3, the new TV series that’s exploding your mind with sex, power struggles, money whore-ship, guns and violence. It’s great to see all this bullshit on TV but it’s not real until all you ever had starts to change and you wake up in chains.
I think about my home country America and I imagine if all history, sculpture, museums, art, books were destroyed. What would happen? How kids would be raised without all these tools to shape and reinforce history is funny. I think it prevents the evolution revolution for idiots because conclusions are good enough. That statue has been there for years so yep it’s real. The TV said that, so yep it’s real. George Bush indirectly killed people but he gets his own permanent library because he’s a family man. Why do we kill each other? Does being a family man justify murder? I fight with myself in my dreams when I’m destroyed of conscious thought. I’ve killed people in my dreams so I try to be more good and less evil in real life.
Not sure where I’m going with this. So let’s move to the main course of the story.
When I took a seat against a concrete pillar in the airport and checked my phone reading “Jan. 6 1980” my perception of time went off axis for a few moments, I’d been shaken out of reality and felt that I could be existing at anytime and everything would remain the same. In 1980, I could’ve been anyone. In 2080, I could be anyone. That’s when I came up with the train. We choose which trains we’re going to ride. We city-folk hop on trains everyday for the weekly grind, sometimes you might hop on a night train to see another town or a long distance runner to escape the world. Some journeys last long, some as long as you’re sentenced to work or raise a family. Some get on and others get stuck. But time is a choo choo train. Here’s a thought on rails, we’re going somewhere but it seems like most people on board can’t slow down or take a moment to see and feel things. The first step is freeing yourself from within and deciding hey I can get on or off at anytime. The collective whole human condition is a runaway train fighting itself and I’m looking out the window in eternal wanderlust. We’re all riding the pain train and it keeps going and going and going. Until Van Damme, Seagal, or Willis step out of Hollywood and fight these motherfuckers who highjack our thoughts than we’ll continue to head to war, continue to struggle with poverty and soon enough we’ll be too dead to do anything. Train keeps rolling, rolling down the track, gonna take me home, gonna take me home. Gonna sit on my couch and scratch my ass because I’m OK.
Waking up in the wee hours of Berlin to catch the return flight back to Copenhagen proved to be a trip.
In my head is a city always in crisis and I’m forgetting why I’m here.
onlyslu 