Moving_cloud
01-02-2005, 06:49 PM
Sam ...
... sometimes I sit here and wonder about many things … sometimes it is America that comes into my mind, and the images we had been imparted long before any of us entered, or even came close to it … yet sometimes the more I try to understand the more alien I feel, in the middle of good old Europe and my own good old self. So I stop trying, and just ramble.
You know the first thing I heard about America was what I was told about the end of war when they raised white sheets from those bell towers that were left intact, to show no enemy was there but relief and new hope. And american tanks came rolling through crashed cities, with friendly soldiers who brought chewing gum and chocolade to a starving people. They had penicillin which saved my father's life. This was in my mind when I found they were still here, in strange barracks obviously cut off from the rest of the world, with many layers of barbed wire, and in the air, too … where the stillness like a cocoon laying above the dozing lands, drastically was cut and broken and none could escape when they came out of nowhere, almost touching the ground. They called them starfighters. I saw real black people's faces smiling out of military trucks on maneuver, with white shining teeth and I stood amazed. We lived in a small world that too was slowly openening.
Later we got to know the music of CSNY, Hendrix, Arlo Guthrie and Bob Dylan, we had AFN, and we heard tales about a war that now was far from here. We went hitchhiking all over Europe … Spain, North Cape, Greece and Amsterdam … some went to Morocco, India, Afghanistan, Bali and to the Canarian Islands, and to Ibiza when it was not yet so crowded … to come back with shining eyes and dreams that were still alive. But America was still far …. as how to get there with nothing but a backpack … yet it was close to dreams that we found we could change, and transform.
I was with a guy from America, for a time as long as the sun needed to climb from the middle of the night up into a dizzy morning, who held my hand and also promised to go skating with me … and another who promised he would take me for a ride out of the streets of Amsterdam, with the Rolls Royce he was pipe-dreaming of. Back in the days … but well we all live in the Now where we find we have left more things behind, and found, that we ever had dreamed of.
The images I had they asked to be turned, and thrown overboard as all the worlds old or new were changing, and each of us, and sometimes we realized this happened within a heart beat and moment of awareness that this is all the truth.
America for me is as strange as the act of entering it ... yet just as strange as I realize I am changing inside my own self, entering new unknown worlds of who I am. We are called aliens and as such maybe not treated with much friendliness nor great trust on the ports of entry, asked bluntly to tell what it is we want. I found myself humbled, and raging, and laughing again, and still more wondering. Well yes, I know pretty well how alien I am. The strangest being I ever saw was looking out of the mirrors in Wegman's bathroom for ladies, looking right at me with eyes bright and clear, pulling weird faces and no doubts had she that I was quite as strange. Again I stood in wonder. Shit was that me, so skinny, and so dirty, and laughing too, or was she crying. Hey look, she said … change does not fight you.
America is like everywhere else ... wherever I look into the mirrors of what is present, to find the grass is wanton green, and the snow amazing white, and people walk in dreams not always mine to share. But sometimes it takes only one step out of your front door no matter of which part of the world, to find you are the stranger yourself, and a look into the face of someone who is passing by tells you, holy shit … it is true.
We just change.
And my dreams are still alive ... just because, and just in spite of it.
Geez what was the topic ? Yeah ... saying hello to good old Sam, and wishing her a wonderful day
:)
... sometimes I sit here and wonder about many things … sometimes it is America that comes into my mind, and the images we had been imparted long before any of us entered, or even came close to it … yet sometimes the more I try to understand the more alien I feel, in the middle of good old Europe and my own good old self. So I stop trying, and just ramble.
You know the first thing I heard about America was what I was told about the end of war when they raised white sheets from those bell towers that were left intact, to show no enemy was there but relief and new hope. And american tanks came rolling through crashed cities, with friendly soldiers who brought chewing gum and chocolade to a starving people. They had penicillin which saved my father's life. This was in my mind when I found they were still here, in strange barracks obviously cut off from the rest of the world, with many layers of barbed wire, and in the air, too … where the stillness like a cocoon laying above the dozing lands, drastically was cut and broken and none could escape when they came out of nowhere, almost touching the ground. They called them starfighters. I saw real black people's faces smiling out of military trucks on maneuver, with white shining teeth and I stood amazed. We lived in a small world that too was slowly openening.
Later we got to know the music of CSNY, Hendrix, Arlo Guthrie and Bob Dylan, we had AFN, and we heard tales about a war that now was far from here. We went hitchhiking all over Europe … Spain, North Cape, Greece and Amsterdam … some went to Morocco, India, Afghanistan, Bali and to the Canarian Islands, and to Ibiza when it was not yet so crowded … to come back with shining eyes and dreams that were still alive. But America was still far …. as how to get there with nothing but a backpack … yet it was close to dreams that we found we could change, and transform.
I was with a guy from America, for a time as long as the sun needed to climb from the middle of the night up into a dizzy morning, who held my hand and also promised to go skating with me … and another who promised he would take me for a ride out of the streets of Amsterdam, with the Rolls Royce he was pipe-dreaming of. Back in the days … but well we all live in the Now where we find we have left more things behind, and found, that we ever had dreamed of.
The images I had they asked to be turned, and thrown overboard as all the worlds old or new were changing, and each of us, and sometimes we realized this happened within a heart beat and moment of awareness that this is all the truth.
America for me is as strange as the act of entering it ... yet just as strange as I realize I am changing inside my own self, entering new unknown worlds of who I am. We are called aliens and as such maybe not treated with much friendliness nor great trust on the ports of entry, asked bluntly to tell what it is we want. I found myself humbled, and raging, and laughing again, and still more wondering. Well yes, I know pretty well how alien I am. The strangest being I ever saw was looking out of the mirrors in Wegman's bathroom for ladies, looking right at me with eyes bright and clear, pulling weird faces and no doubts had she that I was quite as strange. Again I stood in wonder. Shit was that me, so skinny, and so dirty, and laughing too, or was she crying. Hey look, she said … change does not fight you.
America is like everywhere else ... wherever I look into the mirrors of what is present, to find the grass is wanton green, and the snow amazing white, and people walk in dreams not always mine to share. But sometimes it takes only one step out of your front door no matter of which part of the world, to find you are the stranger yourself, and a look into the face of someone who is passing by tells you, holy shit … it is true.
We just change.
And my dreams are still alive ... just because, and just in spite of it.
Geez what was the topic ? Yeah ... saying hello to good old Sam, and wishing her a wonderful day
:)