Beyond Cloudia

By Raiden Germain

A fictional memoir of a boy born with the knowledge that 'it can be different.'
GG is the protagonist, also known as Galaxy Galacus. He dreams prodigiously, dwells beyond Cloudia and ventures through earthly life tossed between fantality and reality. Fantality is that which lies beyond reality, it is an extension, a world only limited by our imagination.
Before finding his true I-am-ness his experiences are varied, dramatic and tumultuous. Barely escaping a deadly virus as a toddler he loses someone very close. For the first eight years he is raised by his grand parents, living in a self-built rock and timber cottage bordering a forest high on a hill in central Bavaria. They are surrounded by nature and beauty and blissfully at peace without television or computer. From this seclusion he is torn away to a life vastly different in South Africa. A childhood of grave unhappiness unfolds followed by intensely rebellious teenage years and ending up in a boys' boarding school. Branded schizophrenic, stupid, mentally ill and a hopeless dreamer this teenager tries to assert himself. He finds early love and loses it. He meditates and practices Yoga and philosophizes; he rides horses bareback, walks barefoot through winter, shovels sand and climbs mountains.
Suddenly he finds himself back in Germany working a job, commuting with soulless beings in the tube and ending up in jail for a night and then in a psychiatric ward. Disillusioned with Europe he scrapes every penny together and heads back to South Africa. He immediately buys an old Land Rover, and his love for Africa, especially the Okavango, flares into a lifelong addiction. One desperate day he emerges as a reborn Christian thinking he had found 'the secret', but alas, it did not work out. Nature calls him ever deeper into the African bush. A big dream goes bust. He succumbs to drugs and befriends Al Cohol. Questions of purpose swirl around endlessly in his mind. Why? Where to from here? How? When... and why again? Unrelentingly he slips into the shadow land of his soul. No friends, no love, – a senseless existence. More drugs are consumed and in a bizarre turn of events he escapes into the abstract world of Assembler language coding. Darkness swallows him.
It all changes and GG awakens to a life of abundance, joy and purpose; flying aeroplanes and finding love and magic locations and marvelosome events. Zambia's Lusenga Plains, Mozambique's Quirimba Archipelago. Amazingly successful friends; a beautiful woman; his own island; flourishing creativity; music, guitars, stories, writing, – the superlative life he always knew could be unfolding.
One day he returns from fantality and changes his life radically. It had become a mindless rut. He quits a lucrative job disillusioned to the bone and searches for that elusive gift he believed was within. But nothing happens, instead life gets worse and the belt has to be tightened further and then he crashes his aeroplane in a far off place in Mozambique and becomes a muttering recluse lost in searching thought. When it all becomes too much and nothing seems to work out anymore he goes into the mountains alone for weeks on end, to find that thread in life again. He batters his brain to find a way forward that would make sense to him. Fear and worry take control and he battles with the nemesis. A fatal relationship mistake with terrible episodes, accusations and abuse pull him down even further. His soul screams from loneliness and hurting. Life balances on an abyss and thoughts hurdle down forbidden and unspeakable paths. And then, as the pain of forlornness reaches its peak, – as was predicted in the beginning, that ‘it can be different,’ – the storm subsided. Peace returned to the exhausted being. There was purpose again and love too, and life had finally taught its last painful lesson and the time for happiness and joy and fun, in abundance, began.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raiden Germain
• Release date: Jan 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310675409

Raiden Germain

Adrift in a sea of thoughts blown by the winds of imagination.Raiden Germain wears no watch. Is mostly vegetarian. Loves sinking bare feet into the dew-fresh grass early mornings.Surrounded by the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands 'garden province,' on the eastern side of South Africa.Raised close to nature. Conservation and wildlife-protection swell the heart. Reclusive. Dreaming consumptive. Fuelled by music. Then like a kite the spirit soars. Resonating in the notes of a guitar.At heart a Safari boy with a love affair for exploring the African universe. An expedition equipped Land Cruiser waits in the yard. The smell of Mopane wood smoldering in the memories of last night's coals; an endless Miombo forest canopy; coconut palms swaying in a sea-breeze, – cherished experiences.Flying an aircraft. The drug of choice.Writing starts early in the morning till the spirit leaves.Celestial objects are fascinating and so are birds. Elephants are precious. Big cats feed the imagination like only birds can.A beautiful grown up son and a most wonderful, understanding partner.The future: Man's superior mental and psychic abilities progressively diminish the use of technology. Envisaging a super-evolved agrarian, vegetarian society.Naturally, other intelligent life-forms exist in the multiverse.Why hasn't it happened?...a long story.

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beyond Cloudia - a fictional memoir

Raiden Germain

Copyright © 2015 Raiden Germain

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system. For permission, contact the author at mailto:[e-mail]

Published by Raiden Germain at Smashwords.

Coverpage - al mar de nubes, copyright kesipun, fotolia.com

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Act I (Becoming ...lost)

Chapter 1 -Descent-

Chapter 2 -Michael-

Chapter 3 -Tina-

Chapter 4 -Wa-nki-dom-

Chapter 5 -For the last time-

Chapter 6 -Leeward-

Chapter 7 -Moremi sky-

Chapter 8 -Firetalk-

Chapter 9 -Sisyphus-

Act II (Flying high)

Chapter 10 -Vida sentimental GG-

Chapter 11 -Imaginação-

Act III (Dreaming on...)

Chapter 12 -Wake me Gaea-

Chapter 13 -Island anguish-

Chapter 14 -Rhapsody of Fear-

Chapter 15 -Sophy-ogy-ism-itis-

Chapter 16 -Anathemania-

Epilogue

Characters

Galactionary

Trade Marks

About the Author

Other books by the author

Connect with Raiden Germain

Acknowledgements

I thank the real and unreal characters who came alive in this story.

My sincere and deep thank you to all who have encouraged me along the journey of this creation!

I am grateful to those guiding lights along this path who helped me disperse doubt and gloom of writer’s doom. Hugs and deep gratitude to my family, loved ones and close ones for their endurance and belief in me, – you know that I touch you. To the highest of the high and the greatest of the great, to the awesome being inside, – respect and veneration.

Belief is fundamental, thanks are the pillars and dreams are the structure.

I feel enormously privileged and grateful to have witnessed GG, who, with soft whisperings, mortal feelings, and volcanic rage, has unrelentingly reminded me of what it is like to be human and part of the whole, – of everything.

Without Cyberspace at my fingertips and the availability of amongst many, many others: thefreedictionary, dict.cc, urbandictionary, thesaurus, wikipidea, google…, this work would have been far more arduous, and, while pen and paper root me firmly in the history of writing, modern technology, my Apple iMac, gave me warpdrive.

There is immense adoration for music and adulation of its creators who floated my spirit, – enabled mostly through Youtube. A continuous stream of, inter alia: Space Night, SBE, H.U.V.A, Café del Mar, Flamenco, Fado, Folk, Waylon, Willy & Jessi, Beethoven, Johann Strauss II, Ali & Toumani, all the Blues,…Lightnin’, the Why Store…and then David Gilmour…this can go on and on…

To Africa and its incredible people and the many beautiful moments shared:

ngiyabonga kakhulu, muito obrigado, natutela mukwai, and asante sana.

Prologue

All composed things are like a dream, a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning. That is how to meditate on them,
that is how to observe them.

~ Diamond Sutra ~

Thus have I seen!

Levitating in a hammock, one foot dangling partially over the rim of the cotton weaves and the other stretched out in bowlike comfort, the umbrella of a towering Cumulus cloud providing respite from the African heat, a theatre of life played out acts in the dramaturge’s m-eye.

Six turbulent and emotional years passed and now there is closure. It started with a few hesitant scribbles on a journal by a pen that knew little about stringing sentences together and even less about what was eventually becoming.

This story is about an unfolding being. It weaves through the forest of reality and lifts into clouds of Fantality. It is about one Galaxy Galacus, who, when he was serious he was dead serious and his reality was hard as concrete floor and when he dreamt he dwelled beyond the clouds with emotional intensity in accentuated harmonic ‘dominant seventh,’ in a space called fantality. A beautiful and (in)-sane boy on an eventful and emotional path towards realizing that penultimately achieving I-am-ness in the is-ness of being was the only requirement to experience glorious, happy life and his purpose quite simply was to continually and prodigiously dream and expand the limits of his self-imposed world.

Is there an ultimate achievement in life? It shall be left open to ponder for now.

The more we become the more we are and the closer we get.

I am a stone and a tree and the water and the bee

I am the green of the grass and the nighttime and stars

I am fire and wind, nature and the sky und das Kind

I am space and matter and nothing at all

I am the flower and beauty, I am big and I’m small

I am and I am not, I am the designer and I am the plot.

Realizing, even through life’s perpetual motion, that there is an inner compass lit by your own light, and learning to use and trust it, was like finding a path in an overgrown jungle to a treasure chest in the sun.

Why ‘beyond Cloudia?’

Because it just takes a wisp of a cloud in the sky to hide the sun away.

To truly know something one has to experience it in some way and to fulfill its obligation the knowing is complete when one knows its other, – that which it isn’t, – the opposite of it.

You want to know love, you will also experience dislike and hate. You want to be rich you will feel what it is like to be out of pocket or downright poor. You want to sing: you will also find sadness and cry. You want light: there will be shadow and darkness. From one to another there is a path. Some of us learn gently, others need to be persuaded by a wooden mallet. GG was of the second lot.

Self-Realization is the knowing in all parts of body, mind, and soul that you are now in possession of the kingdom of God; that you do not have to pray that it come to you; that God’s omnipresence is your omnipresence; and that all that you need to do is improve your knowing.

~ Paramhansa Yogananda ~

Sometimes he viewed himself separate and from a distance; that’s when he tuned from monologue to dialog. Some part of him always knew it could be different and he even saw a staircase in heaven to many other levels.

Slices of: Pain, loss, frustration, drugs and sex, Christianity, yoga, disappointments, nastiness, hate, despair, dis-ease, life-threatening actions, Africa, safaris, beaches, dreams, Tsilvings, awesome flights, love, wonders, ecstasy, clarity, beauty and peace and – much thought and philosophical determination.

Between now and forever there was only now which was filled with thought.

Sometimes the dreaming turns into a nightmare and surrounds us for real, which even our deepest wish seems powerless against. And then it all changes.

His first audience then also consisted of all the illuminated, eximious Galaxy Galacus.

While we dream, that dream world is real, but they say in reality it’s actually fantasy. Don’t they know reality extends into fantasy and dreams happen in reality? Such fascination with what is really real can surely just produce more of that reality. Why not dream new dreams while we are dreaming, nested dreaming so to speak and extend reality into fantality.

Also:

There is No intention to offend anyone; if it does, it is because you choose to let it. Radical thoughts about some ‘stuff’ are not forced upon you, pass them by. Any value gained from ideas in this book, like the Unguja-comfort-sandal, obviously pay royalty to the author.

And importantly:

The meaning of certain words is explained in the Galactionary at the end of the book and all the Characters are listed separately for every Act as well.

Thus a perfect dream was born to a happy, love-struck, dreaming couple …

Act I

(Becoming …lost)

Chapter 1

(Descent)

Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.

~ Friedrich von Schiller ~

If you want to understand the jungle,

you can't be content just to sail back and forth near the shore.

~ a thought by Carl Gustav Jung ~

Go dream, play and soar in freedom without a worrisome moment! was a message from a higher instance to GG.

Hidden away deep inside he knew that what he wanted he could have, and what he wished for would happen. It was imprinted onto his soul by some universal law long before he set foot onto this planet and was combined with a growing awareness of his timeless existence that gave strength to that promise. It was as if filling his lungs to bursting with deep breaths of fresh mountain air, like after a long climb, the knowledge thereof spreading inside him, – sweet, pleasurable and gratifying inhalation into every fiber of his body.

But it remained an intuition only for a long time, before his awakening, and even then he was plagued by long periods of doubt, – in himself, who he really was, his abilities and sometimes everything. Intrinsically however he could never shake the feeling that he was created perfect and with the promise attached that everything he wished for was available and there was always enough. He thought it possible to be deification incarnated by a big burst of love; the big bang of the human being, with the creators completely submitting everything they were capable to muster in a true fusion, and birth being the creation of another reality and a rung to fantality. At that stage he was pure and still unaffected by experience and indoctrination. He was tabula rasa, vulnerable and exposed, even if the spirit was ancient.

Marvelous stuff!

No parent would want their love-creation to endure suffering. Nobody wants to endure struggling and suffering in any case, – by default, surely?

Was there actually a solution to living a happy life?

Yes of course, was the echo in the universe, choosing a happy thought is all it takes, – always remember that!

Hmm, he thought, let me not forget that!

From a little bit of happiness grows more happiness, it just happens like that; it grows instantly and then flows over into euphoria and doesn’t cost a cent. With everything only a thought away there were no limits. His life should be a breeze then and lots of fun. Thoughts have no limit and take no time; It is as if they can stack themselves up, increase the depth of vision, present everything, the whole picture in the now and no matter how much is thought and how many intricacies those thoughts portray, they don’t consume time. Why? Thought has no boundaries either. We humans create boundaries. What boundaries does the universe have that we haven’t created?

A concept of an extension to reality revealed itself to him early on and without any further delay or procrastination he immediately decided to call it Fantality.

When we venture outside the fabricated structure of our reality, consisting of experiences, beliefs and anchoring thoughts and away from the tactile, the tangible and sensual, we bridge into that fantality. That’s where everything else is. That’s where the limits of reality vanish and we allow liberation to fly our kite. We see more; we feel more; we think more and become more as we are now (once again) beings of fantality. Our reality isn’t if we aren’t, but everything always is even if only on the slumbering shelves of the Land of Is.

Every one of us has a peephole into that fantality but we can also remain voyeurs for the rest of our life or stuff the keyhole with toilet paper and deny its existence. We build and keep our reality structure alive, but fantality is the unattached and timeless everything and nothing beyond that, and we can venture into it at any time and define it with the spotlight of our thoughts. Mostly we don’t allow it, seldom consider it and probably fear that we will lose the grounding in our fabricated reality if we do embrace this enormous concept. We create physical realities and build them up all our lives long, slaving away and making them all there is, knowing truly well they are only for this lifespan, and because of their importance to us they hold us with lead chains in that reality. It is like a Ferris wheel mostly going around and around, firmly grounded and we are attached to it via ties of compulsion. We see the land beyond our reality from the lofty height but only admit to a glimpse of it before immerging fully into our reality again, stepping off the turning wheel, maybe for the rest of our lives without ever venturing across the bridge in a determined effort to explore and experience, – or even peep again.

Limit, in any case, is a word invented by humans because they found intangible infinity incomprehensible and for sanities sake needed to define the extent of everything. We are measurers of note! And time, well, someone decided to segment the ‘now’ into linearity and ‘chop-chop’ it into ‘limited’ pieces like the ‘long past,’ or the ‘yesterday,’ or the ‘tick-tick-tick’ of seconds. Since then the ‘now’ became a moment that never stayed long enough to present its whole story, and the greatest God called ‘Time’ was born, worshipped above all, – except during our years of innocence when we were wholly absorbed in the now. Fantality was our playground and God our playmate and we were occupied in the worship of creation with an inherent subconscious acceptance of the creator and a belief that did not include words like possibility or impossibility because everything was.

Yes, so simple. Somehow however we opted for complexity. The more difficult the better it answered our question. We made ‘impossible’ a possible reality in our life. Yes, read that again. We created ‘impossible’ and are very happy with its impossible possible outcome. Bizarre!

In which teachings may I ask would you come upon these words?

But then the conscious self in us grew through our perpetual thinking, instigated and directed frequently by our mentors. We separated from the whole and became a unique thinking entity of our own. We started to construct our reality and the now disappeared in favor of the future and the memories of the past, and so too did happiness, once upon in time our solid foundation, now found anywhere else but in the present. With the thought process activated humanity had found the propellant to catapult and liberate it from the snails pace of evolution. From now on creation could happen in a thought and fantality became another door with a sign saying ‘Please enter,’ and not like other entrances warning, ‘Beware of the dog.’ But so many of us decided to put a peg in the ground and anchor ourselves down and while thought can catapult, it can also thwart any intention, and our choice is honored throughout.

Can Creation, – this marvelous, awesome, majestic universe, – the galaxies, the planets, magnificent-beautiful earth, – the elements, all fauna and flora, us humans, our emotions, love, – really be summed up as the product of the big-bang or steady-state theory without any further thought about a greatness behind all that which we clearly cannot fully comprehend? We resort to ever more intriguing and complex explanations, some of which have to do with waves or particles or both. The devil is in the detail, right? Analysis paralysis must have befallen many. What would we do if the answer to everything were indeed something so entirely simple and abstract like 42, would we try finding another answer because surely that can’t be it and 01 sounds more like it?

Truly, take a walk outside into nature at the very infancy of dawn and look above and listen and you will amaze yourself when you come and report back about the birth of a new day. The individual pieces are marvelous and eternally fascinating; the whole is arrestingly magnificent. Fantality extends reality beyond and therefore includes the wholeness of creation, which includes the creator if we so have to insist on one, and man should simply consider the needlessness to question, as it is such a human trait and distracts so valiantly. There it is all in front of us displaying its unquestionable being to us yet we have to break it down. The why and how cannot add or take away from it. It is there to remind us that there is so much more than just us and that we, if we want it or not, are part of the grandeur. By all means let’s indulge in protons, electrons and tons of other tons for cool and inventive reasons, but finding an answer to questions of life and who’s behind it all, contrived by the restlessness of our spirit, – finally shaking the hand of the one sitting contemplating its next move and asking How did you do it, – still delusively assumes we are in control as we have the ability to say It is talking crap, and therefore eternally continue the search for a better more appropriate answer. We have learned that the little control we think we have over things is more an aligning with processes than controlling them because even the biggest schemes and grandest buildings will succumb to something eventually.

It is clearly not about finding an answer to everything because answers presuppose questions. Do we really want to get onto that infinite treadmill or do we actually want to get on and prosper our life?

Many cowered and adapted to life, resigned to its ways and put up with all the crap that they were exposed to, spending their time between acceptance, resistance and being somebody they didn’t identify with and from whom they had to escape in some form or other to prevent their implosion. Some challenged and questioned the purpose of life and its events at every turn, internally driven to search until they were satisfied with their lot or their choice, if ever. Whatever ‘higher’ reason there might have been, and let’s just put that endless debate aside for now, – we are here by conception. We are possessed of an inherent being made up of genes, DNA, and we have a unique spirit painted with its own makeup wherever it originated, the primeval soup of black energy or by the spark of intelligence. Early in our life the elders around us make decisions and to some extent their thinking is embossed onto ours. If they think they have the key to living a ‘cool’ life then that is the one passed on. Be it by means of a business, a bank account, status or philosophy – a belief system. But most don’t know themselves and we are commonly building our foundation on the fabricated wispy structure of others’ ideas, which we then attempt to squeeze ourselves into. The real awakening to the truth sometimes comes late in life, if at all, and so we begin to engage in battle where there should have been blissful life from the word start.

Does their cool key really fit my lock and is their ‘cool’ really what I want?

Certainly some of their ‘cool’ is the same as mine: like wanting happiness, a worry-free existence, health, love, success and fun. Most humans we can safely assume don’t differ much in that respect. Where the difference comes in however is in our personal dreams and how we think we should go about achieving our bliss. That’s where the key becomes crucial. The ‘master-key’ concept starts to look quite generic and often doesn’t unlock what we want, or more specifically guide us how to get there. A generic key opens a generic lock to a generic life, – that’s all… not our life. The key really is the knowledge, the roadmap, the GPS of how to achieve our life.

Being self and dreaming our dreams.

If we believe in a certain way to achieve our dreams then that is our key to unlock them. Belief most often is not grown on our own thought-patch but has been adopted for various and ‘good’ reasons. Usually others who have tried (and also failed) are paraded as examples of why things are just the way they are. Well, that is exactly were GG cut with tradition and was different. His belief was a product of his power of imagination of how it could be. But to blow any misunderstanding out of the water right here and now, it actually was not about believing or belief or faith at all whatsoever in the first instance. Yes of course belief is most important but serves little purpose if we never really know who we are and how to firmly become that again when we lose it. The two together, belief and beingness make the magic potion.

‘I am,’ – are the powerful two words that realign us.

Immediately of course the question arises: I am what? What am I if I am?

Just for a moment let’s not even contemplate to put our I-am-ness into any context described by language. Let’s grant our I-am-ness limitlessness and let us just walk around ourselves and marvel. Just ‘whoww’ and ‘huhu’ and ‘marvelosome,’ as we look at that being and let explanations rest for a while. That’s how easily you arrive at the beingness of I-am-ness.

Nothing pulls me together like these words. Now I can add the high voltage of belief from inside myself.

From birth onwards and for however long we are left to be, we are truly ourselves. However, unless we are very forceful we soon become who others want us to be. No wonder then that with the lack of any power to resist or the ability to argue, our intrinsic knowledge of beingness is swamped by those closest to us and instead of being firmly instilled from the earliest possible cognitive moment onwards life becomes a rollercoaster of emotions paired with confusion and ignorance as tumultuous and restless as a stormy sea. Looking at the rapidly unfolding events around his life it became a matter of adapting and accepting the circumstances, and learning to fly the plane of life as he was thrust into some commotion for a thrashing of note until way on.

Instantly the whole family was torn out of their peaceful slumber into a survival situation and their quest to unlock the secret of life turned into a survivor episode. Some would never find that thread which guided them again. Remorselessly life expected them to tackle the situation immediately and unsympathetically left them by the wayside as a ‘sorry casualty’ when they didn’t respond appropriately. It can be philosophized that life never heaps more upon us than what we are capable of dealing with in its momentum of perpetual push and change, but that is just a postulation. It was definitely not placid, more like ‘get the fuck on with it now, pronto, and stop feeling sorry for yourself!’ Mercy is not a concept in evolution; it is a human desire allegedly of divine nature, but in short supply, and there was none available here.

Suddenly, taken totally by surprise and as if the ambush was intentional aimed at his family, they were all flung from joy into a drama of tragedy.

Was there a lack of dreaming which created a vacuum and attracted prowling forces?

The promise attached to his life faded away and was then erased by events like the disappearing tail-lights of a culprit fleeing an accident scene. GG was not thinking yet, he was too young, but some other part of him was always processing sub-consciously and absorbing.

He was not one who believed that his life was in fact pre-programmed and therefore pre-meditated and defined to the detail, but because everything in this universe ‘is,’ this also was. The coming events and experiences shaped him through the choices that were made and it slowly, yet uncomfortably-forcefully, awakened the knowing, which lay coiled in slumbering anticipation of the dawn of his realization.

By default life pushed relentlessly towards light and warmth. As humans we can add a picture to this energy-force and bring to life the blank canvas with love and romance and fun. We can dream, we can pain, and we can add spirituality. What picture do we want to paint? A beautiful picture that attracts or one that repels? Once we are committed to this new life, which we obviously are when we are born, we have agreed to play along to our awakening and let earth life unfold (once again perhaps). And so for the first time in this new life we actually walk off the cliff, the first of many steps into an unknown, relying on our inherent ability that we can fly. Maybe in the past we came crashing down many times and that’s why we are here to try again and this time perhaps we will finally wake-up and succeed. Maybe it is our first time?

It was like watching a bird leave the safety of its nest to attempt flight for the first time. Not every bird gets into the air. Once fallen to the ground the odds immediately stack against it. Perhaps it has a broken limb unable to continue the quest to fly any further, exposed, vulnerable, abandoned and forlorn. With no help around it is up to the individual to get back into the air as quick as possible or perish as prey to opportunistic feeders. Like the birds we need to keep flying even while rooted to the earth. Nature has provided us with incredible role models and examples, which give us wings. Birds are perfect examples because they are truly magnificent cognitive creatures that clearly live up to the promise of perfect creation displaying the abundant joy of owning the freedom of flight as they enthrall us with their mastery of the airy medium. Anthropomorphizing birds never did them any justice, as it demoted them to have human attributes and misses the point of their existence entirely. Let birds be birds and let us learn from them and nature around us.

Despite monumental challenges and setbacks he wanted to believe that prior to entering life through the portal of birth he had been equipped to handle every eventuality that came his way either by having all the tools necessary already in his repertoire, or by having an idea how to find them, by a notion of inherent resourcefulness, to ultimately use them effectively. Failing he would probably just fall back into the cycle of life and death, like the bird that couldn’t fly. What a meaningless existence that would be except as fodder for evolutions endless hunger. As if proving the theory, ‘many times over equals certainty,’ after the failed flights’ attempt another bird was born and that one did fly, – first time round, but on closer inspection probably the nth+1 time over. This is the relentless progression of default growth which some of us have been saved from by the possibility of engaging our thinking capacity.

Oh shit, glimmered through his mind as he watched what subsequently unfolded.

How will I walk this labyrinth of life now? Who and what will guide me?

Shortly after his first birthday his mother complained of feeling weak and displayed symptoms similar to flu. But alas it was not flu at all. It was the Poliomyelitis virus, an endemic pathogen (the infection is maintained in the population without the need for external inputs), which had infected her and claimed her from here onwards. Within three days she succumbed to the onslaught not even the Iron Lung could prevent as her breathing muscles were immobilized. Acute and highly infectious this viral disease mainly affected young children and rarely the elderly. This was definitely a break from the norm. The sudden loss of a mother’s natural love created an immediate vacuum, an imbalance that screamed for rectification. The ensuing turmoil, chaos, desperation and pain of her passing changed the family and shifted his life fundamentally.

GG was still connected with the world of angels as all babies are and that world made sure that there were loving humans to care for him. Suddenly however he was without a mother, the greatest love of all imaginable love, the only truly understanding spirit in our life, the comfort and softness in flesh. But, he was surrounded too by the dearest loving beings of another generation who all cared immensely and became the substitute.

Often throughout his life he questioned why this had happened. It was obvious that he had no say in the choice of events. It was outside his influence. Nevertheless it gave him little peace to know that his life could so easily be affected and that there was no way to avert such disaster. It seemed there were no protectors over ones life. As a grown up he harbored doubts about this world of angels and guides, if they existed, metaphor or not, and if he could communicate with them. He heard it said that they could facilitate ones progress when called upon, but had to be told what to do because of their own accord they did nothing. They had to be invited into ones life too. As children though we are automatically connected and in touch with that world and then we lose it because we become increasingly distracted and grow ‘clever,’ and our mentors mostly don’t remember to tell us either because they are too busy with their lives. As we develop the emphasis shifts towards a reality that excludes the ethereal beings and increasingly distances us from our dreams and wishes as the drums of reality beat louder and the immediate world takes over. Sometimes we isolate ourselves a whole lifetime from our dreams and the ethereal. We accept the resultant contortion of life by believing this is all there is, and then wonder incessantly what it is all about when the answer actually always wanted to express itself.

Many of us search for meaning, purpose and answers and find solace in religion or philosophy especially so when we are hard hit by bad luck. Others say, Hey, just do your best and don’t dig too deep. Till his spiritual awakening any answers to his life’s questions came from an external source and only faintly, instinctively from within. The loss of that motherly love would leave a huge vacuum in his earthly life, which when filled by passionate storms of love would disappear, but reappear just as fast again, like water absorbed in the unquenchably thirsty desert of his heart, if not sustained.

As if one disaster was not enough, more drama appeared on stage.

The virus infected him a few days later paralyzing him initially and then leaving a lasting disability. The vaccine of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin came too late for them all.

Dreams, perfection, … he asked?

What a magnificently fucked-up start!

Even what we think might be impossible in life happens. The concept of impossible is another limiting human construction because everything is, – everything is possible. There is no distinction between what is good or bad either. There is everything; we might think some is good or bad; and there is everything in between. If we can we should run or cower away from the bad, rather than facing the almighty dark forces of invading evil. But, what do you do if you can’t run yet?

He recalled the story of his fathers prognostication, which revealed itself in the form of two omens: in the first omen he had lost his wedding band while swimming in the Gulf of Guinea off the Lagos coast in Nigeria where he stayed on a work assignment, and he said that he was overcome with a feeling of great loss that night; in the second omen, three weeks before his wife’s passing, she solemnly requested a promise from him to look after her ageing parents and GG, should anything happen to her. As if to provide proof, a picture of her was captured on film which was only developed many months later and which showed her in uncustomary pensive mood, – as if she too had a premonition.

Do we know when the end is near? If we know that, do we know everything else too?

Suddenly his families’ world crashed brutally as they stood on helpless, and even his dad’s entire strong-willed might could not change a thing about the plotted path of those unleashed destructive forces. Desperately angry, resigned in spirit and traumatically victimized, he found relief by committing himself entirely to work as he endeavored an escape from the recurring, stabbing, painful memories that played his mind and plagued him for decades to come. Tragedy, maddened and ravenous, having found a soft target, was yet to strike a third time a few months later. GG’s maternal grandfather suffered a colossal stroke and also passed on.

For grandmother this successive onslaught was unsustainable, terrible soul massacre: daughter and husband taken by the reaper in quick succession and grandchild stamped with a disability. Overnight her light extinguished into deep sullen sadness as she visibly sunk into herself. Increasingly she was occupied with visions of her loved ones, as her pain never subsided again, – for another thirty years.

What an insensible amount of hurting.

For many months they were unable to manage the agony of this loss except to allow tears to wash the pain from their soul. Incessant calls for the reversal of this cruel reality to a God, seemingly just as helpless as they were, followed in vain. Eventually they succumbed to the stubborn wall of silence and their fate with more bawling and sobbing. Their numb minds preoccupied with the replay of the tragedy were disturbed and affected for years to come. A sky of sadness and grave shadows descended, barring any sun. Surrounded by so much grief GG longed for laughter and smiles and the only escape was to find a way forward past the pain and loss.

Fortunately he had ended up in the devoted care of his paternal grand parents and that provided a much needed and welcome distraction for the old people too. His bereaved father in the mean while escaped into work and ran away to distant countries and continents, sending home money for their existence. The loss of his wife tormented him unremittingly as he fought with the cruel reality of being alone. Sadly the pain was so severe that it also permanently damaged his soul and later his health too and the key to his life was lost with the ring in the sea.

With his early life so defined he grew up in the absence of both his parents and he knew little about his dad apart from an occasionally letter and a picture.

The grandparents were remarkable people. A big part of their lives had been spent in the turbulence of war. One imagine for a moment enduring two wars: the world wars of 1914 and 1939, – and his parents had survived the later one. Is anyone able to picture the imprints this must have left on their souls; the meteoric impact this had on their lives and their attitude? Living through one world war must already be like experiencing hell on earth; two surely is unimaginable purgatory. They were witness to raw and unforgiving, manic slaughter guided by the most evil kind and then, as if that wasn’t enough, personal tragedy had to drive another spear through their hearts, squashing their souls.

How severely have wars affected people psychologically? Despite all the tragedy, history does not teach but just orate, repeating itself like a regurgitating school syllabus to all but the fewest who comprehend its message. Are we really that pertinacious? Warring, it seems, was a necessity in human evolution and history was writing progress with the feather of war and the ink of blood. Wars were allowed, – justified, – democratically or despotically declared, and they were sanctified even by religion in delusional comfort that the all Merciful decreed them too. Man, through all ages, had progressively lost the plot which neither any Abrahamic religion, monotheism or any theism could stem. Man had to declare himself almighty, time and again, to realize his fallible impermanence. We look on in fearful silence when works like Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ have become a textbook to war farers of the world ever since. Many of us agree that the scope of war should never leave the confines of the chessboard and therefore the craft of deceit and any Machiavellian principles have a set dojo in which to perpetrate their evil nature. At the very best we should call it ‘The Rat of War’ and void ‘Art’ from any evil intent to grant it the spirit of expressing creativity and beauty.

During those formative years the grand parents quite naturally became the role models. The boy and his grandfather formed a particularly close bond. He was fascinated by his guardian’s stories, the wealth of knowledge that the man had accumulated, his gentle ways and disciplined nature. Here was an organized and focused man and it rubbed off onto little GG. This older generation formed his value system and gave him a foundation and structure in life.

Grandfather was his hero and bff and he would watch him dreamy-eyed, lost in a world of child fantasy. The worldliness and yet recluse like lifestyle of the man cast an undeniable attraction. Resting on a rock somewhere on Otala Hill, the name given to their home, and reflecting for extended periods of time in silent thoughtfulness, only to jump back into youthful action, made the boy adore and love him. Nature was an open book to him because he knew much about animals, trees, berries and the mushrooms of the forest. He cultivated many different fruit bearing trees in the small orchard and there was a huge walnut tree and a hazelnut bush too. He also knew about cars and airplanes and about the stars too. Grandmother also loved the garden and grew berries and herbs and vegetables for the kitchen and many colorful flowers decorated her garden; she knew all the birds’ names and could paint and make picture books and cook delicious meals. Many a winters’ day was spent sitting by the window watching the birds come to the miniature-feeding shelter erected on top of a long pole and GG soon knew all their names, fascinated by their colors and their ability to traverse the nothingness with ease.

Boy and man spent their lives in nature, as they lived on her doorstep. Stunning, blissful hot summers on the fringe of the vocal forest high up on Otala Hill overlooking the open land beyond, with daylight extending past ten pm and deeply snowed-in winters with fir trees straining under the weight of the white powder, – their life was mythical in this picturesque seclusion.

At the onset of WW-I grandfather was still conscripted to an Uhlan regiment of the Royal Bavarian Army light cavalry and that association had also made a fine horseman of him. His jacket and four pointed Czapka (cap), sabre, boots and spurs lived in the treasure chest in the attic, with countless other memorabilia. Like many of the brave warriors of those days, he eventually integrated into another area of the Imperial German Army as horses were replaced by mechanized means and so a pilot was born just before the end of WW-I.

GG particularly remembers, during their frequent hikes into the forest straddling the small dwelling, listening to his grandfather’s flying stories and his description of how the world looked from above, as if the freedom experienced in nature kindled those fond memories in him. It was during these moments in his young life were the love and fascination for nature were born. Without doubt grandfather’s love of flying and driving open sports cars, like the Dürkopp he once owned, rubbed off too and there were a few alba of old sepia pictures which showed how life played freely in the youth of his mentors.

Soon after the end of WW-II grandfather had managed to trade property for a disused railway wagon and transported that, in a miraculous display of effort, will and power, onto the top of Otala Hill where he owned a plot of land snuggling the forest in rural central Bavaria. It was to provide temporary shelter for his family while he and his sons built the new house and where GG subsequently stayed for a while.

Grandfather just seemed unaffected by ageing even though he was born in a previous century. He remained agile and fit, wrestled and even did pull-ups. In winter there was some real boy’s fun when they drove a sledge down their favorite slope. They had bundled lots of scrub and bushes as a buffer to catch them at the end, incase the sledge ran away down the steep embankment to the side.

Necessity was still the biggest driving force for their hikes deep into the forest rather than just pure pleasure. They required wood, so grandmother could cook on the stove in the kitchen and for the oven in the lounge, which provided the heating. Mushrooms and berries always supplemented the dishes on the table too. There were no supermarkets and money was sparse. Schlepping logs of wood back home was one task, quite exhausting and with frequent breaks; the other was to cut them up into sizeable, usable pieces later. There was a whole area behind the house, carved from the forest, where the logs were piled up and the saws and axes were kept. In their wanderings they always looked out where the next Christmas tree would come from and made effort to remember the place when the time came nearer. Lean grandfather took the large backpack, which also harbored an array of ropes and slings to later bundle and pull the logs and he carried the small one, with grandmother’s lunch and the thermos flask. While grandpa was a stern and serious man he was also a true friend to the young boy and could laugh heartily with him. When it was time to rest he would roll his own cigarette and relish inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs as if wanting to bring about an extra high reminding him, perhaps, of an old opium addiction? In the evenings, retired under the light attached to one blade of the propeller he had rescued from his single engine bi-plane which crashed in a moor, he would read, motionless and absorbed, curling the ends of the pages with his fingers, his lips moving silently to the rhythm of the words as they occurred to him. Other times, when the writing bug bit him, he would clatter away on his precious old Adler typewriter placed on top of an even older oak desk in the corner of the large lounge. There he would often stare through the window into the distance as he formulated the words in his mind followed by more clacking confirming the accomplishment of his thoughts. Sometimes the flow was interrupted with muffled expletives as two or more of the typebars bunched together in the typing frenzy to bring a sentence to paper before it changed or altogether vanished, and the bundled pile of bars now called for delicate undoing. Occasionally when inspired he would draw faces and people with colored chalks or practice on his concert Zither, the exquisite theme music by Anton Karas from the movie The Third Man, the Café-Mozart-Waltz or a Ländler. GG would listen spellbound, swept away by the piquancy of these immortal, heavenly melodies and the enchanting harmonies extracted from the strings. His grandpa possessed an enormous soul and was a connoisseur of life and had the greatest influence on his character, kindling his passion for beautiful creations, music and syncopated emotions.

Such creative stimulus only inspired GG to more dreaming and his father stood little chance in effecting any further change to his perception of life. But, was it not strange that from the closest family members to society at large everybody wanted to change him after those protective years?

You must do this…you have to…you can’t do that…you shouldn’t… were words often heard in the years that followed. What instigated this desire to want to change him and what was it with those that could not let him be? It certainly remained a mystery to GG.

The soul grew far beyond the body of this small boy, – a free and dreaming boy, who knew at this early stage already that he sometimes lived in fantality. This was indubitably confirmed when he watched the Easter-bunny running across the meadow into the forest one day, with a big basket on his back, which he presumed contained all the eggs that were later hidden away for the children to find. It had been really real what he saw. He kept it a secret because he knew nobody would believe him. With Father Christmas however he was suspicious but played along because of the benefits.

His dad in contrast was not a dreamer in any way imaginable. Anything beyond reality was not even contemplated. He was an authoritarian man, who could be gentle and patient as long as his will was followed. Decide to oppose him however and you struck great resistance. Contrary to what he must have anticipated, this boy had developed a will and mind of his own, and was quite stubborn too. Of course he could be walked over by force, he was a kid after all, but force generated a negative reaction and force was unfair too, and was certainly never agreed upon.

And then one day, as if playing with a pawn on a chessboard, he was whisked away from the recluse life on Otala Hill into great turmoil and confusion, – in shock, to be re-born later, much later in life, into a love affair with Africa and enlightenment he could not have imagined. If anything, the plane he was learning to fly right now however was first going into a spiral dive. He was quickly taught how limited his abilities and his scope were. He was told he was a boy and he had to listen and do what was expected and requested of him. He wasn’t allowed to be himself anymore. His ‘I’ dwindled. Despite efforts to stay in fantality this new reality became overbearing. The feeling that this was not what he wanted became overbearing. The constant bickering, criticizing and adjusting from both his father and his stepmother seemed to indicate that something was always wrong with his behavior. Now he had better behave in the strictly prescribed ‘shut up and do as we say’ way of his ‘new’ parents, else there was no peace at all. They obviously had ideas of their own how to raise a child, way different to the grandparents and different to many. GG had to adapt, but it caused terrible unhappiness and endless quarrels. Things started to go progressively more pear shaped, a trend that would continue for a long time. Occasionally he still got a fleeting handle on life, when he managed to get away into nature, but it was a lengthy, evasive and searching process. He concluded stuff happens because there is a lot of movement in this universe creating universal-dust, and much happens by default without his intent, because he never created one in the confusion of trying to be who he was not. We are always exposed to stuff. Sometimes this stuff is not good and sets events going in our life along tracks of what seems to be unintentional purpose. At the stage when we become aware of the state of our reality, we have to assess our position in relation to our emotion and act accordingly in adjusting our life to our intention and objective, if we have formulated one, and if we are in a position to do so, otherwise some default takes over again. It can be that the awareness is late and much of life has been spent in aberration and even misery. Our life-force will eventually bring us to a point of decision-making.

One of the frustrating incidents that stuck in his mind from those days was of the tiny solid- state Panasonic AM/FM radio that lived in a black leather pouch and had a big, serrated tuning-dial. In those years not many kids were given a transistor radio and he was overwhelmed with joy and addiction. This tiny radio however was on a rubber band. As soon as he did something disagreeable to his guardians, the radio went back to them. That was incredibly irritating power play, and made bad friends. Often he felt that they were having fun wielding about in their strength, laying down ridiculous rules and regulations, issuing orders, demanding respect and expecting submission. This modus operandi continued for years and applied equally to air rifles and bicycles and the like.

Communication mostly sounded commandeering or had an unmistakable undertone of ‘it would be better you do as I say’ to it. It must have been a German thing. Being seen was sort of ok but being heard was not desirable. This confused him and not knowing how to communicate he lost self-confidence. Whenever he was told things their voices were intimidating and he felt invalidated with every criticism. They corrected incessantly and that was destroying the basis he had established that everything was always good in his life. Now nothing about him was right anymore. Not his manners, or speech or any behavior. There was constant moaning. It would have been a nice home for a dog, but for a human with a mind and thoughts of his own, and feelings to express, it became an emotional prison.

Dreaming was for dreamers but certainly not for his father’s son. The constant domineering guidance