Rude Awakenings

I was going through a very dramatic phase of adolescence, and the peer expectations of the community I was stuck in at the time was not helping things. It was a Canadian army community on the fringe of the German Ruhr District. A political island obsessed with some rather inane ideas about “God and Country”of the dreaded WASP variety (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant). They seriously believed anything outside of their mind-set was of subhuman nature if not satanic. My father was responsible for the domestic needs of the personnel married quarters there. He was a sergeant in the construction engineers, and by this time quite cynical towards the rather banana republic attitudes that prevailed in that insular hierarchy. Needless to say, his headstrong obstinance and point-blank forthrightness made me the unwitting target of the many retributions against him. Although berserker blood runs thickly in his family, having to perpetually beat sense into bullies on all levels of that strange society gave me a lot of serious doubts about humanity as a whole. I think what really blew me away though, was how they used Christianity as a ruse to justify their extreme prejudice for anything that differed, no matter what the circumstances. To make matters worse my mother was a refugee from Selesia (once Prussia) left brain damaged by an attempt on her life in 1953. So here I was with no one for moral support. It was at that point I had serious doubts about survival against the overwhelming odds. Came April 1968, my mother dragged me off on a bus trip to Prag. I remember her stories about how she had hid out there upon going AWOL from the German Luftwaffe. She had been involutarily drafted upon the incarceration of her father in a labour camp. He was a devout conservative who despised the national socialist regime. When confronted by the authorities demanding he salute Hitler, he shook his fist in the air, yelling out “Hitler verrecke!” (may Hitler die miserably). The fact is that powerful clairvoyant ability has always predominated both sides of the family. Of course given the circumstances of my mother’s untimely fate, I suspect nature made some pretty major compensations in my psychic means of self defence. Thus that trip to Prague was truly an eye opener. It was the Spring before the Red Army laid seige and deposed Dubchek in October 1968. I have never seen such a once beautiful city in so much terrible destitution. Although I was only 14, it became clear to me that these were all the classical consequences of megalomanic control freakdom. The blind desire for omnipotence through sheer ideological parasitism. A special kind of soul-sucking greed, so insatiably driven, that at the end of its resources will devour itself.

Having seen all this, my return to that foolish community was not a relief. Rather, I came to realize the true proportions dilemma I was in. A choice between evils, neither of which I wanted any part. Nonetheless, deep in my mind, resolution was already taking shape. Over the course of the months to follow, a war raged in my head over human worth amidst so much futility. At the same time the peer abuses and harassments of course escalated. Little did they realize though, I had one passage of escape they didn’t reckon on, and that was the Germans of my age group. It was from there on in I began to distance myself from that ghetto and adapt to German civilian life. With German as my mother tongue, this was not a problem and my Prussian grandfather lived nearby. Typically this was not well received by most of the Canadians who all too avidly called me a traitor. Still I stuck to my guns and told the lot of them off- children, adults, the military police, even the base commander and the general if I had to. At least amongst the Germans I was treated with respect and responsibility as a young adult should.

It was in this awakening I had a most extraordinary dream on the question of the great unknown. It was the first and only time I ever went sleep walking. As there wasn’t much in the line of open spaces in that densely populated region, instinct took me to a baseball field at the edge of the community. There I looked up into the sky and for once it was clear enough to see the great deep sea of stars. I watched amazed as their light began to stream down, and each seemed to represent a soul spirit. I could hear the thoughts and prayers of millions calling out from the darkness. I could hear the sounds and calls of different creatures as it all merged into a great wind and then a surge like the ocean. By this time the decending rays of light formed a great aurora of all colours across the sky. Then all the sounds merged into one breezy voice that assured me that not all was futile. It explained to me the true order of the cosmos, in that there can be no absolute. That like the stars that evolve out of the depths of the void, through change there is continuity. It is through nature’s will to make a difference that integity is dynamical maintained. The many different things that make the whole. Many things were explained to me that night. The real surprise however came when a friend approached me a week later to ask if it was me she had seen out in the baseball field that night. As her family’s apartment was next to that field, she had been witness to my escapades. What I did not expect is that she had also been witness to the strange goings on in the sky. Being as I took this for more of a personal vision than a shared visual experience, I was quite lost for words. It was just as well, because she also had told her mother of what she saw. Her mother was the president of the Protestant woman’s league and extremely pious about it. As I might expect, she did not allow her daughter to even so much as say hello to me anymore. From thereon in I became branded public enemy no.1, so it’s not like any love was lost turning my back on them.