Chocolates

PS – last night, tired, dead tired, not aware that you are asleep though awake or vice versa kind of tired. But I attempt to remain awake for a few more hours in order to “relax” by continuing my studies of the final months of Word War II, a project that has now gone for months – a 32 hour documentary in itself, not counting the countless re-watches and re-views in case you miss something or need to rewind for a quote or don't quite catch the deeper meaning or want to get the big picture. We are now deep in the trenches of the controversy surrounding whether or not Hitler took poison in his bunker or shot himself in the head. Why? I wonder. There are also countless hours of the raw footage the Germans took of their “final solution” – the Nazi death camps. Piles upon piles of flabby rotten dead bodies being heaped upon one another. I am dead tired to the point of near drooling and for a moment I have the clarity of mind to recognize that I must be so tired that the horror that I see before me on the screen is not affecting me in the way it normally would. No emotional or visceral reaction. Just an intense desire to fully know, grasp, and understand it all.

The whole time, eyes half open, half closed, at several points I keep thinking that I am seeing some giant black thing walk in front of the small television screen. I realize within a few minutes that it is nothing more than my left eyelid. It is so tired, so exhausted, that I cannot keep it from closing shut half the time. What an odd illusion I thought.

I am scribbling notes I am sure will be entirely illegible the next day with random words that pop out at me from the various interview footage of both the surviving victims and their captors in order to use them collage-style in a song or two at some point down the road in the future. One of the songs will be called Zyclon B – the poison gas the Germans used in the “showers.” Fascinating I thought. How a whole people could go so mad... other words and phrases pop out such as roof grill, where are the allies? Crematorium, killing agent. I scribble till I cannot see anymore and I cannot tell whether what I am seeing is in my head, meaning that I am dreaming, or is on the television.

But while doing this I am eating the chocolates from Switzerland you gave me so lovingly. One after another. And with each one, I am reminded of how sweet you are. I know I am prone to sentimentality in the most meaningless ways, but I could not help but feel such a calm appreciation and love for you due to this simple fact that I was holding a bag of chocolates that you had given me for my trip to Iran. I am not a fool. I only act like one. And I am not naive enough not to realize that you gave me the chocolates for the greater reason of ridding yourself of them so you didn't devour them entirely yourself. But still, they absolutely meant the world to me while I was in Iran. Each day I would eat one. Whenever we boarded a plane, I would open up my bag and eat just one. Savoring not just the taste, but the moment and the meaning that they represented to me as a whole.

And it made me feel very close to you -- to that moment when we sat on the floor of my room and you shared your goodies with me from your trip to Switzerland. These chocolates, as irrelevant, innocuous, and meaningless as they may have been when packaged up by whatever sweatshop factory worker had the unfortunate displeasure of doing so, and then haphazardly thrown atop a generic bed in a generic hotel on yet another generic dreary day by a bored to death housemaid at said hotel in Switzerland, took on a small but important and meaningful role in my life for the last six weeks. They drew me close to you and to all that it is, this strange thing we call a friendship, with all its bumps and wild twists and turns, and to just how damn nice you are even when it is a token as small as “Here is a bag of chocolate for your trip.”

There is one left. When I am finished writing for the evening, when again I have reached the point of exhaustion of the cross-eyed variety I will lie down upon my bed and eat that final chocolate. And I will cherish it with all the love I have in my heart for you and for all you do for me and for us and for everyone else around you. And before I discover that I have indeed fallen into that cherished state of sleep I will whisper ‘good night’ as I do every night and wish you blessings beyond blessings beyond blessings and more happiness than you know what to do with. For if anyone in the world deserves it, you do my friend.



[Yes I have decided to start blogging again. Due to being back in “writers mode” because of having to complete these sample chapters of the damned book. The written word has come back to me.... thought I would share.]