Part VII: Einstein Café

there is no part vi

 

The man in the hat
walks into the café
orders a latte
in broken German
Checkpoint Charlie
visible from the window
and in his bound black notebook
fills with words
stanzas

neglects tempo and metre
oft,
the mystery man
named himself
the social scientist

He
coming direct from Checkpoint Charlie
the site where World War III
and nuclear conflict
reached a knife’s point
before the opposing sides
carefully withdrew

Then, often briefly
admiring the debris
of oppression and Cold War
gone into
Einstein’s
café
contemplated upon
the mysteries of the universe
solving each equation
one by one and putting it all together
in a way that creates semblance.
Life is beginning to make sense
again

Spend a lot
but spend wisely
the time we have;
priceless yet valuable
how much? (wie viel?)
I’m a 50-euro note
Break me up
into a thousand cents
let my pieces spread across
far around the world
(industrialisation)
exchange many hands
buying ice-cream, electricity
I put smiles on the faces of children
and young lovers

And the depressed-
melancholics
find some relief
in a cup of black
coffee
or whiskey
It's a temporary
easing
but still relief
nevertheless.
They spend
a short-term,
usually impulsive
but
if it gets them through
a day
two hours…
it's worth it
who says it isn’t?

Inflation.

Tax the rich
and feed the poor
that’s always made sense, but not
not this life… not here
not yet.
Buy coffee.
Sit in a café
four hours
stare out the window
deep contemplation
as hundreds of
people
busy
walking to and fro
with somewhere urgent to go.

I don’t know
ich Weiss nicht
the truth about the world
I tried so hard
for so long
to come to that realisation
that epiphany
climbed mountains
ventured oceans
travelled planes, trains
but mostly walked

Walking.
I Think:
I’m an emotional person
I’m not ashamed nor proud
just stating as a matter of fact
a fact of some relevance
There have been things I’ve done
mistakes, plenty
but even then
I don7t think anyone deserves this
being reduced to �" what?

I keep up the fight
and will go on
not strong, not strong any more
but with what energy
left, the uphill hike begins
and as I ascend the mountain peaks
the light of morning way out of reach
and my hand and fingers black cold
the weather crushing me down
feeling tired, feeling old

Fatalism.
I didn’t want it like this
sure, I wanted adventure
but I meant going on a date
falling gently in love with someone
not this,
never, nothing like this, no.

Bipolar disorder type two.
My mood swings up and down
like a pendulum.
Meanwhile the world surrounding me
drifts over my head like a dream
I observe it
with curiosity
Trying to find out
what it means

…
I live
to see the sky
always changing
but seemly static and still.
What will
what will I do?
what will I will
�" Power
�" Humour
�" hope
the rest is up to the weather
give me rain
so I can stay indoors
without any feeling of guilt.
And so I shall live
I’ll write poetry
to have an excuse to live
to appreciate language
the spoken and the unspeakable
feel sorrow
and indulge in self-pity
then overcome
Love
become Übermensch
and be the King of All
all over myself
this body
my domain
the spirit; the untouchable
part of me

Then we can slowly drink coffee
talking quickly as we chat about
all sorts of things
most of it should be nonsense
politics and philosophy
are unhealthy for the heart
so is excess
of exercise and travel
smoking
I’ll quit one day �" I swear!
Give up smoking
before it all starts fading…
fading away
O �" what wonderful terror
it would have been.
…
When I walked to Mt. Fuji
I didn’t go to see the mountain
but to Aokigahara
The sea of trees
and Japan’s largest suicide site.
   We were planning to…
No. I just wanted
to see,
feel what it could be like
and find something within myself.
What I ended up finding
  -What?
Fear. I was scared
like never before.
O what an exhilarating emotion
is fear!
…
So I told this
to Ben
he shrieked
then laughed
and afterwards drank
from his bottle of cognac
I tell him also
about my last year
everything
that happened
from the very beginning
and when I met her…

It just gets harder
I say
  That seems to be the way
For some of us, sure,
and we chuckle    at the irony
One should
let the panic thrive
and all pain come at once
Madness splash over us
like a waterfall
drenching over our faces
and so,

we laugh
each of us to himself
then at each other
and the whole situation
and the fact we exist at all

Zeit heilt alle wunder?
nicht so
nimmer, never
insanity expands as far as the universe
far as the ends of the earth
where Titans reside
The rabbit hole
only goes deeper
deeper
like a bottomless well
nothing at the bottom

at the bottom
further still
you will meet
Ben and me
laughing in the kitchen
rolling our cigarettes
drinking coffee
our lungs and livers
complete fucked
but still a sign
that the mind can be redeemed

in each other.
Two madhatters in a boat
sinking
rolling in the tides
sailing against the wind
rowing into the current
sinking,
then upon reaching
  the middle of the ocean
we won’t know where next to go

so instead
  set anchor
and laugh
in the very back
of each of our thoughts
the hope
some Russian container ship
will find us.
Hope. So it still remains
but never spoken of
nimmer.

Along the horizon
there is still a glimmer
faint
then fainter still
still there
over the mountainous waves
like the light at the end of a cave
of which we are prisoners
condemned by our own devices
and the devices removed from us
lost or stolen
too weak or broken
to battle
the gloomy night of silence.

(Violence.
A death. The audience
hold their breath)

Tick-tock.
The church bells
ring on the hour
the kitchen clock
is off
by 20 mins.
Tick-tock
time flows
like the river
carrying its sediments hither

 

2015.

Author's Note

my friend Ben promised to show me around town, but he was drunk all the time and incapacitated during the morning. so i set off on my own. i studied cold war history in high school so i was eager to see Checkpoint Charlie and the remains of the berlin wall. and though i got my dream, i was still feeling severely depressed; walking was a strain mentally and physically. einstein cafe is a real place, a very touristy shop - i ordered my coffee in german, and the staff replied in english lol.

Reviews

[Sami Khalil]

As you connect the dots, trying to find meaning in life and connection of the living, your despair tightened the senses of being in the moment, of augmenting your reality.

[Sami Khalil]

OMG! I would really like to see all of that; how history unfolded in that great city, country.
I like to see Einstein's Cafe and stay hours enjoying coffee and reading.
Watching people subtly going to and fro is a habit I picked. I like people, places, cultures, languages.
You are a great narrator, sir Ern.

[Coyote Poetry]

I visit Berlin in 1977. I gave the money I had to poor women with children. Old Berlin was cold and hard. I enjoyed the story Ernest. You took me to my days of my youth. Thank you my friend for sharing the outstanding chapter.
Coyote

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

that's incredible. i know there's quite a few homeless people there, but i didn't see that kind of poverty. im glad things have improved. thanks for sharing your experiences, i really like to get to know this city well.
and thanks as always for the comment.

[Coyote Poetry]

I enjoyed the story and you are welcome.

[Lorry]

I, like you often think of the journey the money in our wallets travel as it is broken down into smaller and smaller denominations, making its way from hand to hand and if its on holiday, where they use the euro often think how that journey is more welcomed by most than the plight snd struggles of the refugee, trying to make his own journey only to be met with "Entritt verboten!"
And speaking of Checkpoint Charlie, I used to hear wild stories from my Dad about it and miss how he would tell me as a kid that a few of his officers thought he was helping the Germans more than us. (He was a chef in the army and because of the banter, which kept most sane in an insane world, always took it well when the lads asked if he got his medal from Hitler himself!) 😃
I really do miss his self deprecating humour!
Now the only time you hear about it is in movies like Bridge of spies, THE spy game and atomic blonde (all great movies) as well as the older classics we grew up watching on rainy Saturdays.
Walking is usually when I do my best thinking. It is so very underrated but can be like a free therapy session and unclog some of those hard to remove stubborn thoughts, if given enough time to contemplate them, away from phones, the Internet and other distractions that have now grown into compulsions.
And finally, another quote from my Dad. He said that the best way to quit smoking is to have a heart attack at fifty! It instantly cured him! 😃

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

Lorry--- thanks for your comment. loved reading this, especially about your dad. he lived quite an interesting life by the sound of it. i only read about Checkpoint Charlie in books, and the odd espionage film, but i find it really fascinating. so much happened there and so much DIDN'T happen there. it was one of the places in the world i wanted to see with my own eyes once.

[Eilis]

Each one of these parts is like a short story. It is interesting to me how the narrative and environment seem to mirror each other in some ways. Or maybe more the environment is a character in the story. I can feel that sense of trying to connect to things but feeling a sense of life has been sucked out. The inability to not only understand others but the difficulty in understanding oneself. And all of that becomes part of how the story shapes itself. How the eyes and mind interpret all that is seen and experienced.

I feel the strangeness of dissociation at parts. The dreaminess of being in the world but feeling more like a ghost. I find these somewhat difficult to review because in each one I see so many threads or roads by which I could approach explication. There’s a great deal of thought, feeling, and experience here and I think it would be a sort of essay to explore all my different trains of thought. But I like the way the emotion sort of lulls and jolts me at the same time along the way. The sense of feeling lost after being disappointed is quite heavy. But there’s this struggle between hope and despair that I find to be a cornerstone of your work as a whole.

The darkness is there staring out from strangeness and it’s as though a constant choice must be made. Not just once but maybe moment to moment. I understand this. Some things never reach a summit they just lead to hill after hill.

I am enjoying reading about the literal and figurative journey that is being experienced. The inner world so often shapes how we experience the outer one and I think this work shows that well.

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

thank you, as always for your review. it certainly felt as if berlin was a character, even while i was there. but like my friendship with Ben at that time, there was disconnect. i was not really there, a kind of ghost, dissociating a lot definitely. writing these memoirs was really a wa of trying to find that connection, to see the world in all its glory even as i feel a pit of despiar. and yes, i have felt that a lot, which is the reason why Hope is such an important thing for me. and it was never something gifted, it was something i had o always struggle and fight to get my hands on. after all these mental battles, i am actually getting good at finding it when i lose it. that's kind of a bittersweet irony there. here in this city, on my travels, i was looking for it and writing frantically thinking that was how i would find it. im not sure i did, well, that would be giving away the ending anyway. i hope you do read on. ill post the next chapter in a couple days.