tie me up

Living behind the iron curtain, or just reading about it. I'm doing a little of both, today, encouraged by metallic skies and enough precipitation to rust a couple of healthy holes in any steel barrier. This book chronicles the chaotic period when Germany had a split personality and show trials passed for Soviet entertainment; my daily cup of morning tea has developed the stale, stony taste of the gulag. It is required reading, even if it makes taste buds weary.

This morning, this line snared me: "the manipulation of fervor is the germ of bondage." Uttered by an "old" Communist, who witnessed the rise of Soviet power and the subsequent enslavement of eastern Europe, a dream aided by so many rosy-cheeked youth who may have thought at the time that they were truly changing the world. We sit sometimes on silent evenings and wonder what exactly went on in this apartment, now our apartment, a stone's throw from where that iron curtain did hang. Around the corner on Bernauer Str. people dug tunnels like animals with crude tools to get to the other "side." Fervor turned survivalist, in the face of a semi-vivid dream gone gray.

Our fervor today comes in the guise of prejudice and fear and is too-often made frantic with homemade bombs. I wish it was wrapped in prettier paper, something to the tune of equality and fraternity and all that good 19th century stuff. But it's ignorant, finger-pointing xenophobic crap such as this, and much more of this, and generations undoubtedly of this, that we have to fuel our modern dreams. No wonder I can't sleep.