Chapter 1
Berlin
The flight to Amsterdam was long and I just couldn’t sleep. I mean I was too excited and freaked out. Doing pujas in the toilet was no fun; airplane toilets are lonely and brutal, and God-awful cold. Amsterdam airport was no better. I was in shock, I really was! I was no longer in California dealing with the complicated complexities of my family. No. Now I was in Europe dealing with the complicated complexities of the planet. I bought a ticket for Berlin and stored my heavy bags at the Central train station, which was filled with millions of weirdoes. It didn’t even feel like Europe. There were black faces protecting the toilets. There were Arabs selling falafel, and there were Chinese selling tickets for boat trips along dirty canals. I saw Dutch policemen rousing some Bulgarians sleeping on the floor. It was all one colorful armpit. I had eight hours to kill in this crazy place. I was sleep-walking and almost got run over by a bus. This was my little Dutch dream and it was an expensive one. American dollars were almost worthless. They barely bought you anything unless you had wheel-barrels of the stuff.
The red-light district was a tacky bore. It was all just THFUMP like a sound in a dry tank. Everybody just stood around confused and dilapidated where the old was mixed in with the new in a strange and utterly miraculous way. It was sensual overload. It was heaven. It was my new life in Eurasia. It had just begun. A young Dutch widow shared a drink with me by the main canal. Her blouse was a see-through and she wore nothing underneath it. “Oh, Dutchmen are such perverts,” she emphatically stated. “That’s why I married an American man. I would never live in Holland now. It’s too cramped and too expensive. All these foreigners are sucking on the welfare system here. Taxes are too high.” I was falling asleep. “Oh, where is my sister?” the Dutch widow exclaimed. “Her daughter is so beautiful, you know she married an Indonesian.” I looked up at the sky and didn’t know what to say. Seeing that I didn’t know much about myself. This was the new Europe after the FALL of the WALL. I was observing and feeling it ALL without an agenda.
The night train to Berlin left exactly on time. I could hear the grinding wheels heave forward in the dark and cold mysterious night. Loud and isolated booms announced, in German, the lonely and temporary stops along the way. Most of the stations were completely deserted. I shared my sleeper compartment with a young German looking for work in Berlin and a young Swedish kid going to work in Yugoslavia. Both thought I was an Italian and were surprised when I told them I was an American. My dark complexion liked playing games with the world. Was I Mexican, or really Russian? Was I a Jew or some lost Arab? The German was amused that I was Buddhist. He helped me locate the dream address of the Grand Wizard’s center on an old and used map of Berlin. It still had the old borders marking it like a nasty coffee stain. The Swedish kid gave me a Serbian dinar note worth one million cigarette butts. “Ech!” The German screamed. “It’s gangster money.” I did my first puja somewhere east of Hanover.
Berlin was awesome the next morning. It was hectic and deep. The old and crumbling facades of Potsdam signaled our imminent arrival. THE WALL WAS GONE. A surge and a swirl of newly released energies announced THE OPENING OF THE VORTEX. The Russians and Americans were going home. They could no longer keep the damn thing shut. Moscow and Washington were broke and Europe now had to take care of its own dirty laundry. It was a wonderful time to be young and insane. It really was.
Berlin from outer space:
These strange Earth creatures seem to eat up a lot of energy as they move towards higher complexity. They have no choice, in order to stay alive they must continue existing FAR FROM EQUILIBRIUM. This is an inherently unstable process. To stay ahead of this complexity these Earth creatures seem to have discovered a crude way of hyper-organizing. They do it mostly with symbols. Unfortunately, the rate of energy dissipation is now accelerating and the different complexities being produced seem to be leading towards new kinds of stress. There is a spectrum of instability, and processing high-grade energy demands greater and greater hyper-organization. More simulation and less useless tasking is required inside and out of the complex and perturbating organism. Instability needs to be “monitored and managed” more and more. INSTABILITY. What a beautiful word. We will send our next report at the appropriate time.
The facts on the ground in Berlin:
Germans can be the kindest people in the world, or maybe it’s just Berliners. I sweated and heaved my large and monstrous bags along Bundesallee and was constantly helped across streets and up death-defying stairs. I got lost and a young mother put my hideous baggage on her bike and her little blonde tyke on top of the handlebars and expertly steered the mess towards her apartment. “Please, wait here and I shall get my car,” she shyly said and in a completely unrehearsed tone.
The sun as seen from Berlin:
A seemingly undemanding orb this giant light bulb. But in fact quite a moody and whimsical puppeteer with many strings. Its mysterious solar wind spills its magic breath around us. Flares and sunspots are peaking and falling, giving Berliners the gift of decent temperatures before a new Ice Age scrambles down into the ravine like Zorro in a cheap western B movie.
“Hello, ah .... wie gehts, you must be Bruno?” I timidly smiled. The tall and chunky German wore nothing but a bathrobe and a large pair of glasses. He also spoke little English. “Ya, Ya, Ich bin Bruno. Sie sind Amerikaner?” He gulped. I pointed to my bags. “I wrote you a letter last week. Did you get it?” Bruno just stared at me in delinquent abandon for what seemed an eternity. This was my first con. It had to be good. “I’m a friend of Jenson’s in San Francisco.” I collapsed onto the floor. I hadn’t seen Jenson in years. He was the guy who had given me the little Mahakala flash before I got the real thing from the Arizona monk’s teacher. Both of them hated Jenson and even more so his eccentric mentor, the Grand Wizard. Bruno broke into a wide grin. “ Ya, ya Jenson .....”A magic light had gone on. Soon we were feasting on poached eggs and gourmet marmalade. I was escorted to my private room and shown the bathroom. It wasn’t such a bad place after all. The center was housed in a huge apartment owned by some hideously rich and absent owners. Bruno was just a house-sitter.
Bruno introduced me to Inge. She was this tall and thin German beauty with an impish grin and boyish feel. Inge could easily have been a man in another life. But now she was a typically passive German wife with two special little tots. I found myself in the middle of Kreuzberg, the old new front line of Berlin. The punks were being booted out by the speculators. The wall was gone and Kreuzberg was hot real-estate. Inge’s husband was over-educated and unemployed ó but my hosts got by on the generous German welfare system whose fascinating intestines out-rivaled what I was used to back home. Inge didn’t like the Grand Wizard’s whoring around, but kept quiet. Her husband helped run the center and it was a matter of family pride to have this dubious honor. Indeed, the center reeked with subtle signals of dissonance. The energy felt diluted and scattered; the good German organization hid chaos underneath. The big split over the young kid in Tibet was exposing demagoguery, and even sexual manipulation, when the crazy Danish Guy rolled into town. the wizard denounced the young kid in Tibet as a phony and tool of the ugly Red Chinese hordes. I just looked at all the luscious Teutonic looking babes in the audience. Most of them loved the wizard. Spiritual practice seemed lax here; and sexual hormones were raging inside the crowd. Oddly enough, The Grand Wizard agreed with my young Lama friend. The tulku system was falling apart at the seams, SCIENTIFIC METHODS were needed to verify the new kids. A cult-like odor pervaded the room. It was an odd scene. One particular gorgeous German brunette with high cheek bones and a regal chin kept looking my way. Most young Germans speak good English and she was no exception. “How long will you be in Berlin?” she smiled in anticipation. “Just a few days,” I sadly muttered. “Oh, I see,” the brunette quietly chirped in disappointment. “Isn’t he wonderful?” she prodded. “The best,” I smiled. “Are you from the other side?” She continued prodding. “What other side?” I absent-mindedly asked. “The other side .... you know.” Her deep blue eyes penetrating me like a marvelous convenience. “Yes, I support the little guy in Tibet.” I matter-of-factly remarked. “Why are you staying only a few days?” the brunette hopingly inquired. I wasn’t sure about my answer. I was beginning to like Berlin. It was a snazzy and sexy place with much to offer any kind of taste. I reminded myself that I was on a tight schedule and needed to discipline myself. “I have some business in Prague,” I said in dead seriousness. “Prague?” the brunette intoned with a quizzical look. “What are you doing there?” I looked out the window and softly said: “I don’t know.”
Berlin. What can I say? It’s a great walking town. A great place to U-bahn around and not get caught by the ticket hounds. The “liberated” eastern sector looked terribly drab. Most of the inhabitants looked shocked and sullen. I could see remodeling eating away at the ugly edges of the old border. Bullet holes from the Second World War still serenaded much of east Berlin’s old town center. Alexander Platz was filled with begging waifs and underage blue-eyed prostitutes. I sweated and heaved my way through Unter den Linden and reached the Brandenberg Gate on a cloudy over-cast day. Turks and Russians were hawking stolen Soviet army gear mostly for idiots like myself. But I bought nothing.
EYES ONLY:
Berlin’s no-man’s land is in a bardo phase. It has all been sold now to private interests, but while time remains German history can still be experienced in this weird space. You can explore the old SS torture chambers; and Hitler’s bunker makes for quite an inconspicuous site. All of this is underground, deep in the bowels of the city. But the demons and ghosts still abound. The Second Wave went hyper-vertical in Germany and this ugly flux vomited wrathful blood. The Russians have left behind this heavy mound of ghost marble in Treptower park. Now German women are the best-looking women in the world and YOU CAN QUOTE ME. DESTROY AFTER READING.
Berlin from inner space:
Inge had two daughters, Tina and Gisela. Both were terribly cute, but it was Tina who caught my heart. We recognized each other instantly. Though only six years in age, Tina would take my hand and hold it like an experienced lover. It was highly possible that she could have been my Druid teacher in the not so distant past, while Inge was definitely my elder brother. Berlin lost out in the Olympic sweepstakes, but a lot of Berliners including Inge were ecstatically happy. No “Ich bin dafur” here.
Berlin from the outside:
Yes, German women are stunning and a great place to look at them is on the U-bahn karmic subway. The way I look at it, each individual ride is a lifetime. You get off and you die. The people you see on that ride you will never see again and this is a terribly good exercise in detachment. I returned to Hitler’s bunker and did a puja. It was my offering to Germany. Berlin was in a strange funk. A long night had now come to an end. Morning had finally come. The Germans were scared of the future, but glad the past was finished. In delirium, Berlin negotiated its way forward. These thoughts plagued me now as I struggled with a cold and with jet-lag. Tina took to calling me “the sleeper,” so I began doing the Blue Medicine Buddha puja. I was spacing out badly from all the complexity. Brown and red ruins were on this fading display in the center of town. These ruins were silent reminders of sinister black solutions to white stress.
Berlin from outer space:
An intense pressure is building up again. Our computers have scanned the recent charts and hint at complexity stress. A kind of space-out of the mind due to intense psychic overload. Our print-out warns of a long cycle. In these huge blasts from the past the nineties are resembling the unutterable thirties. The usual response to overload or white stress is clamp-down or black stress. Out of the last vortex Brown and Red demons popped out. So authoritarian and homicidal minds could lead the way again here. We will monitor carefully this grave situation and report any “new demons” popping out on this grim vortex watch in Eurasia. Vortex Number Two of planet Earth is now open after forty years of artificial closure. Further reports will be pending.
The facts on the ground in Berlin:
Inge was sad to see me go. Her husband was pissed off. “What do you want to do in Prague?” he asked. “I have to deliver some peanut-butter to some friends,” I answered. “It’s terribly important.” Inge’s husband took off and I hailed a taxi. Inge hugged me with stiff and awkward affection. The big gray hulk of Berlin lay before me. Red bricks, sooty steel, and unhappy demons. I bought my ticket to Prague and tripped on the fast-moving escalator as young toughs boomed by, singing something sinister with ignorant conviction.
