Some Things Shouldn't Be Sold... As the Mind Collects Those Things It Needs

By John Aschenbrenner

There are times in some lives when the truth is too difficult to realize, and the horrified psyche seeks comfort in the safe harbor of denial, where it creates a more palatable reality which generalizes into everyday life. Buddha stated emphatically, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Even safe harbors weaken to the devastation of wind and battering waves. Andreas Landsmann lives in the small Wisconsin Community of Mayfield. The village derived its name from an early pioneering group of Amish folk, who suddenly left their farms and homes unexpectedly and without a trace in the late 1800s. Eventually the village was rebuilt within the mist of dark rumors and speculation. Andreas, a retired school psychologist, husband, father and grandfather spends his time collecting old beer steins and digging ever deeper into his German family heritage. His private study is a refuge for his family history, his steins, and himself, and at times the study takes on a life of its own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483439006

Book preview

SOME

THINGS

SHOULDN’T BE SOLD

… as the mind collects those things it needs

JOHN ASCHENBRENNER

Copyright © 2015 John A. Aschenbrenner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3901-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3900-6 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/13/2015

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

I   The Collector

II   Old Mill Antiques & Curiosities

III   Mayfield

IV   An Uneasy Calm

V   1884

VI   O Holy Night

VII   The Darker Recesses Of An Early Spring

VIII   Endless Longing For Eternal Rest

IX   The Impending Storm

X   Into The Cellar

XI   Night Is Usually Darkest Before The Dawn

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It remains interesting that no matter how good a writer is or becomes, the quality of his writing is based on the collective and positive criticism of those who surround him. I’m fortunate to belong to a group of writers, with whom we not merely share our craft, but also our friendship. Professionals in many ways, but crazier than a bunch of baboons on amphetamines in others, we enter the realm of writing as free spirits. Fran, Jan, Paul, Bruce, Dan and I have come to collectively call ourselves, Writer’s on the Run, not to be confused with Writers on the Rock (the Rock River runs through our town.) We’re the renegade group, and proud of it. We’ve shared many years of critiquing each other’s work, sharing in the pride of those who have published, and enjoying the laughter of our camaraderie. Through our writing we’ve shared with each other on an intimately human level that few friendships rise to. Thank you all for your wonderfully constructive criticism, and for the laughter.

fritz.jpg

This work

is humbly dedicated

to the Ancestors

I honor deeply,

who continue to find mortal refuge

in my heart,

and especially to the memory of

my second cousin,

Fritz Aschenbrenner,

who has given me

The Gift

I need to always come

home to.

-John Aschenbrenner

June 21, 2015

FOREWORD

The human condition is, in many ways, an anomaly. What we believe we understand to know, is actually contingent on a system we’ve created. We define what we know as the truth, and yet when the future affords us information that challenges that truth, we redefine what the truth is, and that truth holds true until it’s challenged again. The more analytical of our kind see the truth as being fluid, and over the course of millennia, ever-changing. Prior to Columbus in 1492, the truth understood the earth to be flat, and yet the present evolved truth, based on new information decries such former posturing as being idiotic. Yet in its time, it was entirely true that the earth was, indeed, flat.

Ken Wilber, a transpersonal philosopher and psychologist, who I’ve admired since the early 1970s, has challenged our ways of thinking. Within Christianity, for instance, the concept of original sin is defined as our turning against the Power of Creation, throwing us out of a blissful paradise. And yet, as Wilber suggests, that metaphor is truthful as metaphor. I think therefore I am… differentiated us from the other creatures continuing to exist inside the bliss of and existence that doesn’t think, and reacts rather on inbred instincts. As Wilber suggests, when we differentiated ourselves from the animal world, we began to analyze, define and take control over it. The profound questions regarding life and death, the questioning of whether this new level of consciousness we’ve acquired is immortal, and that, because we now define, and to some extent control the Nature Mankind excluded itself from, are we now not bound entirely by the natural laws of death.

As scientists began to delve into defining more about the Nature that surrounds us in the physical realm, so too have they moved, over the past 150 years, on a yet maiden voyage, attempting to define Mankind’s inner realm. The psyche is an elusive world. Some deny it exists outside of a behavioral realm based on cerebral functioning, and yet others are courageous enough to allow themselves the insecurity of traveling on an open sea in yet uncharted waters. They travel into the foggy realm of illusion, where sea monsters are named as fear, anxiety, depression, and where individual spirits find safe harbor in the bliss of denial and escape.

With that as foreboding prelude, I introduce to you Andreas Landsmann, who through his own creative and protective psychic frailties, finds himself in a thick mist-laden harbor of safety, and having no idea what lies beyond it, is about to sail off the old world’s edge.

I

The Collector

"For who can wonder that man

should feel a vague belief in

tales of disembodied spirits wandering

through those places which they once dearly affected,

when he himself,

scarcely less separated from this old world then they,

is forever lingering upon past emotions and bygone times,

and hovering, the ghost of his former self,

about the places and people

that warmed his heart of old?"

- Charles Dickens, Master Humphrey’s Clock

Andreas always thought it a bit odd and off center that he fascinated himself with his collecting, and his hunt for that certain object that might satisfy some deeply engrained and nagging need in his being. He was uncertain what that might be, and yet he found himself delving into the past in search of it, as if it would offer him some sense of security - not merely to validate his own time on this earth, but perhaps the lifetimes he believed went before him and which he somehow felt connected to. If he had found himself living during medieval times, his contemporaries would say he was searching for the illusive Grail.

Morning found Andreas up early, long before he drove to the Antique Mall. A nightmare caught him waking in a panic, dreaming his wife had been killed in an accident. He laid there, in a cold sweat, staring at the ceiling; fearing turning to his side and not finding his wife beside him. He began to breathe more slowly, trying to ignore his aches and pains, and eventually the ceiling became a blur as he drifted off into a more palatable realm. Time seemed to pass, and waking, Andreas had forgotten the dream as he turned on his side, finding his wife sleeping and breathing slowly and deeply. He smiled to himself, grateful for their life together. Again he closed his eyes, hoping for another hour of sleep. The pain in his right shoulder - the aftermath of a too-long workout at the gym, nagged him relentlessly, no matter how he positioned himself or his arm in bed. Rather than disturbing Rachel with his restlessness, he grabbed his robe, went downstairs to his study, and pushed himself back in his overstuffed leather recliner, hoping to fall asleep before the early dawn drew him into another day. Unfortunately, as was usually the case, Andreas found he was fully awake, as he repositioned himself on the soft leather arm of the chair, trying to get comfortable.

The sun was just beginning to find its way into the room as Andreas fell into a reverie, his eyes slowly and aimlessly searching from one end of the room to the other. He smiled, finding himself comparing his study to Alistair Cooke’s library at the opening of any episode of the PBS Series, Masterpiece Theater. Proud as he was of his books, old wooden chests full of family genealogical work and his writings, he reflected that he certainly could use Cooke’s stage designer in finding a balanced way of displaying those things that had become important to him over the last half century.

He searched the faces of ancestors looking down at him from the tops of bookcases, his desk and the walls – old portraits covering the span of years since photography was in its infancy in the late 1830s. Andreas had never met most of them. He was first generation German American, as his parents had immigrated from Bavaria in the mid-1920s. He had never known any of his grandparents, as he was born late in his parent’s lives, and their parents had already gone to their eternal reward. Having researched his lineage back to the early 1400’s, he recorded each of the generations of Landsmans; Andreas taking pride in the fact that he was the 15th of the recorded generations of early glassmakers and farmers - his son being the 16th, and his toddler grandson, the 17th.

Andreas focused on an early 1830s photograph. Primitive by today’s standards, it was painted over with watercolors, showing only the subject’s photographed face and hands. It was his great-great grandfather’s brother – a priest and professor who authored books that continue to remain highly regarded as German cultural treasures. Culturally important still, his books contained new considerations, terribly controversial for their time. Professor Michael Landsman was a brilliant man and professor of Metaphysics and Philosophy. He was a contemporary of the German idealist and philosopher, Georg Hegel, whose writings he admired immensely. A liberal for his day, the learned professor taught at the Catholic University in Aschaffenburg, until his writings began to contradict orthodox Catholic doctrine. He was dismissed in the early 1830’s, and became funded under the protection of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, moving to and continuing his teaching at the University in Erlangen. Later, at the age of sixty-five, he fell in love with and married a twenty-nine year old beer-brewer’s daughter, continuing his writings dealing with his new philosophy for the reunification of the factions in an already deeply fractured Christianity.

Andreas, a Liberal and somewhat of a rebel, was intrigued by the Professor when he learned of him at the ancestral homestead on his first visit there when in his very early twenties. Only the photo and a vague knowledge of the ancestor remained. At university during that time, Andreas took it upon himself to research The Professor’s life, get copies of his three books, and as the family tongue-in-cheek chided, dug up a skeleton the earlier ancestors would rather have kept buried and totally forgotten. Andreas, on the other hand, not only metaphorically dug him up, but befriended him in a very personal way – The Professor had become his inspiration to not only think freely, but to also become a writer and Tell it like he saw it, as the vernacular of Andreas’s earlier days might best describe his efforts.

The Professor’s portrait found a place of prominence on one of the study walls, and though it seemed odd at times – even to Andreas, the Professor’s eyes always looked directly at him, from no matter where Andreas stood in the study. He felt a certain kinship to his ancestor and sometimes felt as if the normally stern-faced Professor was actually smiling down at him. Andreas never felt alone in his study, and always felt it to be a place of refuge that held an almost other-worldly encouragement and pride for his efforts.

Andreas’s passions were not relegated entirely to writing. He was an avid collector. Some said his collecting had become an addiction. He loved collecting the past and especially those relics which his ancestors might have used in everyday life. Andreas smiled to himself, repositioning himself in his chair, remembering one of his friends say, Opening the door to Andreas’ study is like opening the door to a Bavarian attic that had remained sealed for two or three centuries! Andreas held onto that remark as a great compliment, and yet there was something a bit disturbing about it.

Andreas was educated in psychology and became a school psychologist by profession. Over the years he had become interested in World Religions, particularly Buddhism – not as much as a religion, but rather as a way of life. He loved to meditate, and in the meditative state which generalized into his being more aware of being in the moment in life’s day-to-day, he came to believe in reincarnation as the only viable explanation for life’s questions regarding life, suffering, inequities and death, and subsequent incarnations. In Andreas’ mind, it was the only explanation for tragedy and a world that seemed to be lacking justice. Karma answered many of his questions. Man’s reincarnations worked off bad Karma in those lifetimes, and moved on to deeper understanding through the blessings of good Karma and in the next lifetimes, which eventually would lead to Nirvana. When his meditations began to wander out of the light of his solitude, he would, at times, not bring his focus back into the solitude, following instead where his thoughts led. The images of people, their times and everyday possessions became very vivid, and there was what seemed to be, a certain emotional attachment to them. In the day-to-day of his life, he began to sense certain kinship to some people over others, and in a recent trip to Bavaria had an uncanny certainty something tragic had happened to him on a certain village street long ago. Yet, he had never been in that village before, or as he mused, certainly not in this lifetime.

Following his friend’s comments, he had googled