"Why war still? Why hunger still? Why a world still?"

23 May
Beautiful countryside indeed…
Great scot it’s gorgeous…


Listened to some ‘Fiction Family’ and one song struck me; not all of the song applies, but I am ‘elements combined, earth, air, fire, wine…’
Random: I wonder if me possessing abs that my basketball playing friend would kill for even though I havne’t worked out in ages is part of why I’m so tense al the time… or a result of… under the girly layer of fat I pretty much have a six pack and I can’t figure out why…
Why yes I thought of this today, that’s how bored you get with such a long drive.


Jazz today…
Umm…
Practice was…
Well, we’ve had a bit of trouble with the amp. To test out the sound of the rhythm section we played the beginning of song 43 in our repertoire, I am yet to play that song well. Passable yes. Well, no. especially the beginning. I play soft and timidly due to that, I stumble and try to blend it all so nothing is noticed. I tried to play loud and the director told me to turn it up…
but the amp was up all the way…
he told me to play louder…
I tried…
He told me to play louder again as we stopped and restarted the song numerous times.
I said I can’t play that song very well…
He messed with the amp and told me to play louder…
As we went along and he said more I got more uncomfortable, messed up more, teared up (what was up with the crying… is it that time of the month? Wasn’t that two weeks ago? It was weird, my face was normal but my eyes had the water works… sure I was upset, but great scot why was I crying… suppose that in front of everybody was humiliating…) I just messed up more, would skip whole measures and have to wait for a chord I knew the placement of to jump in on…
We started again and again and again…
He got frustrated and said that we’ve played that song all tour, what’s so different that I can’t play it now… it was kind of bad...
The piano player tried to help, told me to play it just like CC in our rep, a song I do well on…
Eventually the director said just pick a song I can actually play…
And so CC it was…
I played it well despite my frustration with myself for crying for such a reason as that primarily, for messing up in the first place, for the director not listening…
The rest of the band was just quiet during it all…
The director did apologize to me and in front of everyone saying his behavior wasn’t right…
It’s okay, he’s toting about 22 college kids in germany; I can understand him being worn thin…


Crying, really Lindsay?
Ah well. My tear ducts are affected by hormones and girlish stuff even if my mind isn’t.


We played at a drug rehab clinic tonight, outside concert… it went well; it was nice to see people ride by on their bikes and stop to come listen, little girls walking their dogs watching at the fence…




24 May
Berlin.
Was here yesterday, yet today it comes into play.
Holocaust memorial.
I have boxes of books about the Holocaust; my sting with German obsession came through hearing about my family tree and reading dozens of Holocaust stories. I was intrigued by it all; how much destruction humans could cause and the callousness behind it… yet in all reality, I just found it all wildly interesting. I thought deeply then yet I didn’t quite fully realize what I was asking yet, that sort of thing comes with age and awareness. Maturity can come at a young age but it still requires aging.
The museum next to the Nurnberg Gate may only be four or five rooms yet I think what hit home today was looking at a picture of two armed men standing on a hill over a ravine full of women; each women bare backed and curled in death… the men in the street laying dead in another photo…
The same human nature that made those men crave power and superiority is the same human nature that drove survivors of such shootings to lay still for hours, heart pounding, knowing that any movement would beg another round of shots fired in your direction.


The same drive that the murderers used for destruction was the same drive the victims used for survival.


Human nature is such a tricky subject…
There are so many facets, I suppose it comes down to which ones reflect God…’
And which ones are our own doing…
I had more to say, yet I said some during dinner as our director asked for us to share our experiences… I shared, and afterwards picked up my soup spoon to try the spargel cream soup (great scot, amazing…) and noticed my hand shaking… sharing my mind is difficult to say the least…
The same blood that runs through our veins flowed through the person that was cracking the necks of children and throwing them at their mothers feet.
Tossing small children into a pit to be buried alive.
Demanding the women give up their wedding rings if they wished to have a drink of water.
Surveying a mass grave looking for the slightest movement to open fire on.
The same blood flowed through the veins of those who bled.
Those who lay still for hours so they could crawl away unnoticed come night fall…
Only to be found and shot.
The same blood flowed through the child that wrote a telegraph to her parents telling them she was going to die; she hoped it wasn’t too painful because she heard the smaller children were tossed in alive.
The same blood of a mother that looked back and thought of how her child would have been a grandmother by now but she shall forever remain a child because she as part of that ‘bloody six million.’
The same blood that flowed through the man that attacked the Nazis that were snapping the backs on infants and throwing them into the pit… he wounded a guard in the face and was beaten to death.
The blood from his body being beaten out by someone containing the same red substance.


My family left germany about 20 years before all of this began, but I know some of my family had to have still been there. Family I never knew or will know.
Were they the ones pulling the trigger?
Risking their lives to harbor escaped jews?
Turning in their Jewish neighbor and taking their possessions?
Biting their tongue as they passed by Nazis mocking Jews openly in the streets?
Throwing the bricks on Kristallnacht?
I can’t help but wonder…


I may have gorwn up knowin the basic facts of the Holocaust; I have read the words, I have seen the pictures. yet for me what got me today was associating those words with the pictures. Those heaps in the street, those bodies in the trench… I’m not certain why I never heard those voices. I suppose the books that I read either ended in survival…
Or ended at their deportation to a concentration camp.
I have thought a great many thoughts, why did I not think of the final words of the dying?


“I fell beside him and his corpse turned over,
tight already as a snapping string.
shot in the neck – and that’s how you’ll end to I whispered to myself;
lie still; no moving;
now patience flowers in death. Then I could hear-
Der springt noch auf – above and very near.
blood mixed with mud was drying on my ear.”


“autumn now. 1 september. September resettlement with its horrors. A story in itself. It doesn’t especially need to be recorded here. If something like that was possible, what else would be? Why war still? Why hunger still? Why a world still?”


“What is my life worth even if I remain alive? Whom to return to in my old home town of Warsaw? For what and for whom do I carry on this whole pursuit of life, enduring, holding out – for what?!”


“…I would so much have loved to hold you in my arms again, my poor children, I will never see you again.”


“Dear father! I am saying goodbye to you before I die. We would love so to live, but they won’t let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death because the small children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever, I kiss you tenderly.”


It’s amazing how quickly children can grow up if you let them.
Yet many shall never reap the benefits of early maturity…
And they have paid the ultimate consequence.


Random:
Today one of the girls I’m rooming with apologized to me… she said she had felt convicted that day of never having treated me as nicely as the other people in the band. She just felt that she wasn’t nice to me… or fair… that she treated me different.
…I suppose I’m too busy trying to not think people do think that way about me or treat me like that so when they do I didn’t realize they were…
And I’m used to being treated that way, but I see what she meant…
We often don’t realize how we treat others, and she is a nice girl.


25 may
Played Frisbee and soccer with my host family’s… 3 year old son I believe? It’s fantastic how onomatopoeias and kicking a soccer ball can translate a LOT when there is a complete language barrier…
I think a yard is necessary for any kid to grow up.
The TV here is in the basement, hardly used.
Outside is enjoyed, toys played with, who needs television, computers, video games, any of that…
If I ever have kids I think going down slides with them, teaching them Frisbee, kicking around a soccer ball, all of that is necessary. tv and such can be nice, but not all the time.
Ah, and a lot of communication happened simply by admiring the ‘erdbeer’ patch with him. He was quite excited about this. He was also excited about the gummy colas that were served after dinner… gummy candy like that is fairly traditional after dinner. It was fun sitting next to him, making the gummy colas jump all over the table and sing before eating them. Somehow little boys end up liking me more than little girls do…
Oh, and the family i’m staying with has an entire wall of ice skates. There are five or six rows of wooden racks, all hockey skates. The family has ten kids (three in the house) so I suppose that many were needed…
I want to go ice skating.
I want to fall and be hurt and be glad he’s not there to catch me or to say that he doesn’t like me getting hurt.
Bruises I say are better than him catching me.
But really I just love how it feels to be ice skating.


The gardens we saw today were wonderful…
Three palaces on the grounds, yet it cost money to go inside… so many fountains…
Yet not quite because of the nature.
There were a few kinds of flowering bushes yet flower beds were not prominent, the tiered gardens were impressive in architecture yet the plants…
Hmm.


Yet the flowering bushes were wonderful, the grounds with the trees, daisies in the fields…
I smiled as I looked closely at one of the flowers, a kind I hadn’t seen before coming here…
‘Thank you Lord, I live in this… in and through this… I am this.'


The soft grass at the base of the trees, whispy, dreamy, and quite frankly… just beautiful. Wish I could have gotten lost in it.
Felt right…
I could live anywhere happily… anywhere.
Yet I would love to have trees.
Grass.
Woods.
A fire pit.
A porch swing over looking it all.
Please Lord…?


*random
I like to talk to myself in front of the mirror.
Talk to myself, to God…
Great scot, last night I had a long talk…
A good friend of mine, the basketball friend, lost her entire house. Her family rode out the tornado under a mattress as her house was destroyed.
I saw that transition that he talked about as I thought of that.
Going from strong and independent…
And wilting…
I’m not sure that what he saw was as deep of a change.
Yet great scot, and my eyes…
Suppose I cannot describe.
‘it laughed as sunshine laughs upon the sea…’
And it cries with the same light the sun gives as it sighs its last breath before night…
Or was it the bright light that shines in the morning?


…and then I shuddered with joy as I looked at my face in the mirror, actually liking what it looked liked because it was me, the light playing with my eyes and making the blue jet out… blue for the sea and sky indeed.
haha, I'm an odd one indeed.


26 May
You know, for days now I have been wanting to blog about pain, depression, and how it’s the most addicting drug there is.
Okay, that’s a slight hyperbole.
Yet I’ve been wanting to type away about that…
And haven’t had the time.
I still do not have the time.
So tired.


This morning we actually had organized prayer time… we all kneeled at our chairs to pray.
i…
started thinking ‘okay. This person is going to pray. Then either this person or that person next but the other will follow, and then probably this one…’
and I stopped.
no, this is not a game.
Lord, I don’t have to be right… I mean, I’m not always right. And I need to learn that when I am wrong that I will not be judged and it will not be held against me.
This is not a game, no guessing, not a game, not a game, not a game…
…then I’m right and this person goes, then this person, then...
Silly God you’re not supposed to prove that point.
It was just ironic, I don’t remember exactly what I was saying to God yet it was… uncanny.


Another thought:
I’m trying not to apply this to the proven opinions I have on certain peoples’ character, I don’t want to judge, so tricky having a scattered brain with lots of possibilities and not letting the billion inevitable opnions affect how you view a person… at anyrate, this is just a general thought that came to mind because of a few people so it’s not directed at anyone.
Yet I just thought ‘don’t talk to be heard in prayer, talk because you need to speak out loud to God. Other people just happen to be there.
I prayed today, out loud… not quite as when I talk to You Lord yet it was still kind of conversation.


*random
The mirror is where I can face myself. See myself for who I am. Talk to God. I used to talk into a mirror so much when I was little… I have a big mirror in my room, you know how you always feel compelled to look into a mirror? And when I’m alone at night, long day, I always know whether I’m at camp, home, host home, Germany… I will have a mirror to reflect in.
‘reflect’ should be read as a pun.
It’s…
Hard to fully describe.
But let me just say it cuts to the core and I can say so much.
What you say really is a part of you and who you are.
And perhaps it is just my own gaze…
Yet it’s inescapable.


Ha, freshman year we had health class… we were talking about stringers, people that may do us harm, potential stalkers, etc… this was mainly directed at the girls. The police officer was talking about how you treat people like that, part of it was how you look at them. If you look at someone like that a certain way they will leave you alone. A few girls volunteered and thought they had it… they didn’t. but then the police officer called me out of my desk and put me up front.
He went through the same thing with the girls that had volunteered earlier…
And then used me for an example of how to have a look that will drive others away. Intimidate. Threaten. “Say ‘I’m not a gazelle’ to the lion” I believe he said.
so a police officer pulls me out of my desk because he noticed something about my glance.
Suppose that year was quite hard.,,


Oh great scot…
To give you an idea of how worn out I am. I forgot something.


I went to a concentration camp today.


How do you forget that?
Really…
I mean come on…


Sachsenhausen wasn’t an extermination camp, it was primarily a work camp… yet great scot station zed…
The barracks had toilets and wash basins…
Where three inmates were drowned once…
A shower room…
Where an inmate hung himself once…
The entire camp was once around 1,000 acres., the memorial and preserved space is in the main triangle of the camp…
The death center, zed (as a prisoner you arrive at A. you leave through Z.) was in its foundations… you could see the furnace doors where the dead were stuffed in… the room where inmates were told they were going though a medical examination and were shot at the base of the neck by surprise in such a way that an inmate in the same room wouldn’t know what had happened. Gas chambers. Rooms with small trenches for the blood to drain out of.
The audio tour told of the methods for killing.
Before going to that portion of the camp I felt badly for not… feeling more. I had grown up with knowledge of such terrible deeds… but then beginning with seeing the trench where execution took place, the burial place of the ashes… the doors of the furnaces… hearing of entire families being gassed to death at once and being reduced to ashes…
A heavy weight settled on my chest.
I find it odd how my body feels in a way that disconnected with my mind…
Well, sometimes.
I’m an oxymoron.
From there I went to the mortuary.
Saw the clean white tiled room where the autopsies and medical experiments were carried out. Touched the permanent tiled tables that had drains for the blood in them.
Went to the cellar, down the stairs with the ramp for the corpse sledge.
Stood in the large room where hundreds of dead were stacked at a time.
People.
With stories.
Families.
People that loved them.
dogs that looked for their master.
Spouses and children that were torn from them… and perhaps in their own respective camps.
Relatives that received their censored and positive letters and thought all was well…
Or rather chose to believe all was well.