Farewell

Because of the skipped Spring, early foliage, melting Svalbard. 

Farewell to "academic quarter", homework during the school break, furry "wanna-be"s.

Supposedly it’s been the rash, and the rush, and the “hush hush”,

Farewell to red and green stickers, idlers sitting on couch full time and bitch about the world whole day,

Do you hear my ears, back to my back?

Farewell to what you knew about "argument", "definition" and "normal"; 

Red beads with raked beans.

Farewell to the possibility of "if you don't know it, fake it."

It is for the empty entities, raised casualties, trig identities, 

Farewell to artificial intelligence, over dosed ignorance ---- forbidding everything not identical to themselves,

Invaded by the mock, slowly boiled into lock, cut through by the look,

Farewell to unhappiness.

The suitcase

It was my first night shift. We sat in the patrol car and just cruised around. Derek worked only night shifts he said, so that he would have time to be with his son during the day, to take him to the karate and whatnot. I hate working nights because I want to catch the Sun light if I can; the Sun never shines at nights.

We drove down the Main Street at 2am on a Thursday, besides some drunk tourists and regular bar goers, there wasn't much going on. Derek said that he never had any problem with the creatures wandering at nights; but why this odd impression of everything appeared more suspicious then? As we turned on the Second Avenue the radio announced that we were supposed to raid a bar on the Jefferson Alley.

"Now? What? We are raiding a bar at 2am because of what? Someone started a bar fight because he missed the last call? Why?! The bar is probably closed by the time we get there."

"I know I know. This is not that uncommon. Some bars stayed open after the curfew, but these are not the ones on our priority list. We are going in now because of some drug related story."

"Who else is gonna be there? I hope that we are not the only two."

"Don't worry about it, there are 3 patrol cars are being sent to back us up. We will wait for their arrival; we are not going in alone."

Nooooooo. I hate this. I hate working at nights, I hate raiding the bars, I hate my job! I don't even recall why I applied for this, what happened to my interests and the promise that I would only do something that I liked, what happened to... all these choices that I had?! What happened to my passion for novels, or pastries, or gymnastics? How long am I going to work for the police? Gah! I hate raiding places; I hate to come in someone's private place unwelcomed and flipped over random stuff ... when does the Sun finally come up? I will never cover for someone at nights again. Oh man, it is only 2:15am, and my shift doesn't end until 7am! Why me?! Maybe I should start something new, but now? and why? because of this one-time night substitute shift?

"Why the police force?" I asked Derek.

"Pension." he said, "and I hated Math."

It was meant to be a joke but somehow it didn't feel like one. We turned left to the Jefferson Alley and our back-up was already waiting at the door. Oh boy. There were 12 of us.

The light in the bar was dimmed. You could still see people sitting at the counter, finishing up their last glass. This was one of the bars with either name or receipt; in a quarter where we turned a blind eye. You can't make every quarter in the city a saint-quarter, as long as they didn't stir up violence, small amount of grass under the table wouldn't hurt anyone. The deal was, a body was found with needle still stuck to the left arm while in his pocket, the address of this bar was written in pencil on a small piece of scratch paper. We were not likely to find anything, but we had to look for it.

We came in and ordered everyone to put their hands where we could see them. Derek announced loudly:" I am sure you all know why we are here..."

"No..." a stern voice came from the table near the Jukebox.

We all turned around. This happened rarely, and the man at the table didn't seem real: he was in a suit and wore a tie; in a bar filled of people who almost belonged to the forgotten population. The man in suit had a suitcase next to him, a big square one with wheels. Was he a pilot lost in the navigation system?

"Well, there was a body found with the address of this bar in his pocket. So we are searching for hard drugs." Derek rolled his eyes to the ceiling and uttered:"any question?"

It was supposed to be a rhetoric question. It had always been.

"Yes..." What a surprise, the man in suit.

"Yes?" I asked him.

"Can I see your search warrant?"

"I don't have it with me..." Derek said, looking at me, suggesting me to complete the second part of this sentence...

            "We just got the call during the shift; and the judge on-call told us to go ahead and raid, for the search warrant will be printed out first thing tomorrow morning." I wished to remember the paragraphs of the law, but I didn't. Theory was never my thing, ugh! But seriously, I never had anyone who took the rhetorical question as if it weren't until now. "Can I see your ID, sir?"

            "Sure, it is in my jacket, in the car." Man in suit said calmly.

            "OK." I said, hand gesturing that I would be accompanying him to his car outside to get his ID. Can this freaking night shift be any worse?!

            "There you go." he gave me his ID.

            "What do you do?"

            "Paralegal."

            "What are you doing in this place at this hour?"

            "Drinking. As you can see. I couldn't sleep."

            "And I am guessing that you are not driving home tonight, right?"

            "Sure I am. I am not drinking booze."

            "OK, fine. You can go now." After I padded him down and handed him back his ID.

            "Thanks, officer. I just need to go and get my suitcase."

            I didn't care. It was one of these shifts where you wished it to be the end before it even started. Why it took so long for the Sun to come up?! Through the almost opaque window panes, I could see the shadow of my colleges padding down the people inside. A dozen of half-sober guys stood in line and had their hands on the wall; one of them was even taken to the kitchen and stripped. I turned around and saw a book lying on the backseat of the car belonged to man in suit -- it was a novel that I read years ago, a novel that almost stopped me from applying for this job. "If on a winter's night a traveler."

            Man in suit rolled his suitcase from the bar to the sidewalk --- "The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph."

            There was something peculiar about this picture, but what?

            He stopped in front of his car, looked for keys in his pockets --- "I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather: that man is called "I" and you know nothing else about him, just as this station is called only "station" and beyond it there exists nothing except the unanswered signal of a telephone ringing in a dark room of a distant city."

            He put the key in the lock, turned it to the left, the trunk flung open, and he threw the suitcase inside before driving away --- "And my arm might not hold a briefcase, swollen and a bit worn, but might be pushing a square suitcase of plastic material supplied with little wheels, guided by a chrome stick that can be folded up."

            We found nothing from the raid. It was almost 3:30 when we were done there. Derek and I had to cruise the quarter until the shift was over.

            "Want some coffee from Dunkin' Dounuts"?

            "Sure, why not." I wondered if the man in suit liked Calvino as I did.

            "What was in the suitcase?" Derek asked.

            "I have no idea. I thought you would know for you were inside with the other, where the suitcase was."

            "Yeah, somehow we thought you were the one who took a glance in it outside, before he drove away."

            "Well..."

            "It is probably just documents."

            "I am sure of it."

            A couple of months after that night shift, I decided to quit the job and got a position in the public library instead. On a very ordinary afternoon, I saw the man in suit at the newspaper desk, with his suitcase leaning against the chair, open. I collected a few books, pretending to be putting them back to the shelves; as I walked passed the suitcase, I nervously took down --- there was a small bottle of sparkling water and ..... lots of documents, black and white. Man in suit turned around, he might have sensed me sniffing his personal belongings; but he looked a bit puzzled when he met my eyes -- it only lasted a second, then he figured that I must have been just looking for the right places for the books in my arms. He didn't recognize me, why would he anyway? Mystery solved.

An inevitable war with only casualties

How to win a fight with someone who doesn’t understand my reasoning? I guess I can’t win.

It rarely happens anymore. I can read her like a book, roughly written sometimes, unwillingly written maybe, with almost no room for an open end. 

Stuck on the linguistic level on the phone, I opened an online dictionary in a hurry and tried to translate German or English into a language she understood. How do you say “privilege”, how do you say “scientifically”, how do you say “psychologically” or “doctrines”? How do you piece the words together to make a sentence? Why didn’t she respond to the sentences I made? “Why don’t you speak my language?!”

“You just don’t understand!” she complained.

“Yes, I do. I understand perfectly why you are at where you are right now and all your so called good habits. But I can’t accept it, and I don’t want, and I shouldn’t have to!”

So, it comes down to fundamental personal choices, well, my personal choices. Maybe I am not ready to take you in as you are. I can’t un-learn what I have learned; and I am sick of lying to myself.  I can’t pretend not to know what I know now, I was fully aware of the consequences. 

Do I want to be an unhappy Socrates or a happy pig? Have I become a victim of modern humanity studies? 

There was a strip from Calvin and Hobbes where they were about to roll off a cliff:

Calvin: Knowing means suffering. The less you know, the more happiness you will have. 

Hobbes: … 

As they rolled off the cliff and landed on their heads in a pond.

Hobbes: I don’t know how much of this happiness I can bear. 

I had to paraphrase it, couldn’t find the strip online just now. 

It did surprise me somehow, that we fight about tiny issues; but I knew right from the beginning, such conflicts would come, and maybe at a velocity exceeds my mental capacity. I am not from the 70’s, and I will never be, and I worked hard to develop the ability to question what I do, or what I had been doing all through my teenage years, what I had learned under given odd social circumstances, now I have the right and ability to question it all and think critically – translated into her worst nightmare and kept both of us awake all night long. It is an inevitable war without winner but casualties. 

“We will find a solution,” I said to her, “it won’t be a Hollywood happy ending, but it will be the best we can make off. I am willing to compromise, if you are meeting me half way.”

“I have been doing it all my life, your grandma has been doing it all her life too!”

“And the cycle ends here.”

“We all think that you have studied too much!”

“I have heard that before. You’d rather me to lead a life that resembles yours, but it won’t happen. I worked hard to prevent it from happening to me.”

“It’s the generation gap that causes the trouble! And your over loaded studies and theories!”

“Do you realize that I can just turn the sentence around and accuse you of being ‘under loaded’ of studies and theories? Just like you used to compare me with other people’s children constantly, without knowing that it’d break your heart if I were to tell you that I’d wish for other people’s mother?”

“Hey, you are dealing with human beings here!”

“I know, I am one of them.” 

Sorry love, this is the only way I can protect myself, even it means I might compel you to question your entire belief system and make you realize that what you have been doing in the past 30 years is … actually … in vain. It saddens me to know that you are thus hurt, it saddens me to know that I still have to protect myself from you; but at least this time around, I won’t allow any insincerity, even it means to give up a fairy tale ending.  

Homework

Don't recall the last time I sat down and wrote,

didn't stay for the last bus dressed in cloak,

between the morning traffic and suppressed crave,

a woman next to me smells like an ashtray.

And I am thinking about the asymptotes,

crossing over that tangent line,

stepping into an unite circle,

only place where I can see that angle.

Hypothesis over the hypotenuse,

I refuse to watch the news,

and there are odd goals,

and there are even instincts.

High school episode of a brawl,

hydrogen peroxide in a college dorm,

light years away,

and I am going to pick up that unfinished business,

and I am going to crack up Pandora’s happiness,

it shall be more than everything at ease,

it's about time I poke the base.

Spider dudette?

OK, I won’t do this ever ever again. (Hopefully not!) This is probably the stupidest thing I have ever done in Germany. 

I locked myself out in our winter garden.  This had never happened before, for no one would think that it could ever happen. We have a double-door between our living room and winter garden. One of them you can open it from both sides; the other one, you could open it from inside (the living room). There are about 10cm gap between two glass doors. (See visual aids below… alright, pictures)

As usual, I just wanted to water the plants and check on my birds in the winter garden; then since it is terribly windy today, both doors slammed SHUT and I was trapped completely in that 1 Square-meter: without telephone; there was no one to be seen in the court yard, even if there were, they could not help me because I put our keys INSIDE the keyhole in our front door; since there was only 10cm gap between them two, I couldn’t get my hand through the gap to break the glass of the second door. Then I tried to cut out pieces of plastic (from ice cream box, which I used to contain sand, and I found an old scissor in the garden) to poke the crack between the second door and the door frame, but I couldn’t get it through because there was practically no space in between: well, I could break the glass of both doors (not sure I could manage to break both layers and not being injured, it was 1M² tiny place).

OR, I could do it like a mad man -- without any security, just rip out the mosquito nets from a window in living room, which is 90° to a window in winter garden, and CLIMB. We live on the third floor.

The wind was strong and both window sills are made out of sheer metal. Luckily they weren’t wet. I could either wait 10 hours without food or bathroom, or I could take a leap (of faith). I looked out the window: 11 Meters to the ground, gray, concrete ground! And I don’t fucking like heights. (Maybe I should finally check out the film Vertigo tonight.) 

I reached out and tore away part of the mosquito nets in front of the window in the living room; took off my sweat pants (so I was on my under wear), emptied the jacket pocket (just in case anything in the pocket might surprise me, and I wouldn’t want surprises hanging at 11-Meter height), got on a chair; got my right foot on the window sill, then my left food; I reminded myself NOT to look down (but I did!) ; I told myself not to panic because I would soon have time for panicking, so don’t let any “premature” panic ruin the rest of your life…

I am in.  

Now, if you don’t mind, I am gonna get some food and freak out. 

Pic 1: The stupid iron bar that kept me because of the bitchy gravity.

Pic 2: The ripped mosquito net and the windows through which I re-entered.

Pic 3: This is what you see when you look down.