A Divergence from the Log: A Musing

I have just finished The Historian and the tale of the vampire haunts me as always. Whether Vlad the Impaler is, in fact, dead or not makes no significant difference. He is, after all, impaled upon my imagination and his legend thrives. In the end, though, it is just a story, like all stories, but for whatever reason, it is this one that envelopes me in fear, like the mist of the vampire. Perhaps it is my search for history and my longing to know it intimately, like clothing, or men, or secrets gone-to-the-grave-with. The Historian gives something to the Impaler that Bram Stoker's Dracula does not: a voice. And it is a voice imagined and cast out through corridors of long-forgotten time that rings out clearly in my ears and that is echoed in my own voice as I read it aloud: "There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean with blood."

How? I have lived a lot of history despite short years and I have always at once regretted and treasured experience. The regret does create in me a longing to wash my mind clean, but I have wanted to wash it clean with wind or water, or pleasant dreams. But life moves swiftly, like a river's current, and perhaps the only way to wash our minds clean is to have our memories overshadowed by newer ones that gleam more powerfully in our minds' eye than those that came before them. Perhaps the only way to wash our minds clean is with blood, as that liquid holds its own both as proof of life and as death, first within our veins and then, without. We do, after all, build our lives in the present upon the decayed lives of past--a past that is very much alive but that moves in a different way from us, a way that is not quite living, but maybe--of the undead? Who can know? I am just wondering and I shrink from the knock of wind on the window at night for fear of letting in a uninvited guest that will make of me something (I am quite certain) is merely a fairytale. But, like I've said before, fairytales are as real as their makers and I am one.

So here I am, retracing history in the present with my eyes and my feet. It is not just to see the world but to understand the past from which I come. There are things of which people do not speak and although I cannot hear the whole story, I have found that land offers up whispers if you listen closely enough and in it, you can find yourself and follow in the footsteps of your ancestors. It is worthwhile to hoard just a slight bit of superstition in the back of your mind. All myths come from somewhere.

I walk around cities that were part of an empire that ruled one-third of the earth. "Be careful and mind the foreigners," I am told, "because look what happened to England. We were once the greatest of all nations. We supposed. And we didn't treat them kindly. Now, they have come back to take us over." The text between the lines? "What can we possibly do? It is no one's fault but our own, but we are seeing the same thing happen to America, this rise and fall from greatness." It is sad, but it is the way of history. Rome rose and fell, as did Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire. This one strikes a chord because it is mine. But from a distance, the earth still looks blue and green and none of those existed at all from just a few miles up. I am a strange mixture of holding things in perspective: I strive to be limitless and without category, but I know I am doomed to confinement. I do not resist. Still, we destroy ourselves and will continue to until the sun swallows the Earth. I resist the destruction if not the confinement to categories. But I still fear the vampire.

Sometimes I lose sight of what it is I'm looking for here. Is it a renewed sense of self? Am I just some young wanderer searching for answers like everyone else? Or have I found my answers and am merely out here trying to prove to myself that they are wrong, that there is something I am missing, that there really could exist some greatness in one measly little life? I would ask an oracle if they existed, but wisdom speaks out to me from pages everywhere. I choose this version, by Ursula LeGuin: "'Tell me . . . what is known? What is sure, predictable, inevitable--the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?'
"'That we shall die.'
"'Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered . . . and we already know the answer. . . . The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.'"

And so I put it in permanent ink, with an ouroboros on my back, to remind me that "we all owe death a life" and that we can meet that "permanent, intolerable uncertainty" at any moment, anywhere--so that I do not miss a beat; so that I make the most of it; so that each moment counts. And each moment is alone...but I can share them sometimes, and I can write them down so that they are not lost.

On the way I meet people and I try to keep them with me. Of course that keeping is never in the flesh, merely in thought, but thought is often more powerful than anything else. So words spread across a distance and contact is maintained. But relationships fade across time and people fade like ghosts, in and out. Everything in its time, right? I am no fool for time and my youth never tricked me into eternity. So I record as much as possible: moments, thoughts, absurdities, normalities, the way darkness fades into light and vice versa on a horizon, and how land and sky and sea get lost in each other somewhere between the zenith and the ground beneath my feet.

In two days, I leave England and head for the continent and Berlin, a city in which I have never stepped foot. I am excited, yes. Also: apprehensive, terrified, lonely. But I am used to all of these things. I will also be stepping into a part of history that puts a bad taste in my mouth, yet I keep on moving forward because that taste is from the extrapolation I have made in my mind from the experiences of others. I need to know for myself. However, I have packed accordingly because I have been to the region before. My necklace will never be visible if I can help it and all my labels will be hidden except for the most obvious: that I don't speak German and the fact that I stand like an American and am thus recognizable as one without being conscious of it. The way in which I stand makes me identifiable as an American, apparently, even before I speak and let on that the only language I understand and speak completely fluently is English. But I learn quickly and learn how to hide. It only takes a few rides on a bus and few words in the local language, with the right accent. I have done this before and shall do it again.

The next time I write, it will be from Berlin. I can only wonder how I will fare. The Iron Curtain has been down almost two decades now. I have my own to knock down and perhaps, build up again. We'll see how the reality compares with the theoretical. I have six weeks to find out.