Culture Shock

My item has been submitted for consideration in "Inspiration Station--August 2010"

Based on Prompt #1

I was twelve, when we were liberated from the death camps in 1945. What I watched for five years in those camps probably changed my perspective on human beings. There is no such thing as humane concern. Either humans indulge themselves in exploiting and damaging nature thoughtlessly for their own needs, or doing the same to themselves. What a remarkable species; we seek comfort in knowing some other person hasn’t got the same opportunities as we have, and hence, we’re happy with our own pathetic lives in knowing we’re at an advantage to survive, thrive and prosper in self-importance. Perhaps I just understood the concept of Success wrong.

We’re merely monkeys, armed with guns and nuclear codes. We’re not rational beings. Or logical, or compassionate, or artistic, come to think of it. We’re capable of being all those things, for the briefest periods of time, that’s it. Two minutes of lateral thinking, and we immediately crave for mass periods of irrationality, superstition, genocide and abuse. How do I know this? Human Culture.

Culture is a reflection on society, and hence, a reflection on what humans thought as the best ideas to implement, to benefit the majority of people. How appropriate then, that we celebrate mediocrity, banality, injustice, envy and greed; a mere twenty years after the most devastating experiences in human history. Quite a learning curve, and it repeats… Say, five years of madness, five years of a mixture of logic and paranoia, fifteen years of indulgent self-importance, and we’re back to madness again.

I traveled to America in 1946, and began attending school, something I hadn’t done previously for six years. Weird experience, that. I was classified too smart for class. To be fair, it probably emanated from the fact that the teachers wanted to get done with the class, and go home for beers, rather than explain things to me. High school was a breezy affair, I think even bullies in school had been taught at home to not ridicule nerdy Jewish kids, after what we’d been through. This annoyed me; politeness for the sake of politeness. Nonetheless, this was what school was like.

My parents, rather inappropriately, chose the opportune moment of my completion of high school, to have a road accident and die. I think most of the teachers felt a certain sympathy for me at the time, and tried getting me a job as a result of this. In my view, I lost people either in gas chambers, or concentration camps, or car accidents. It was that simple, really. I just lost people.

1953
I worked for a while as a primary school teacher, which seemed like the easiest job in the world, before I took it. It still makes me cringe, when I think of all those times those whiny kids chose to moan and whimper and cry, because they hadn’t, for instance, got a piece of candy they wanted… I stayed on for another two years, because I had a plan.

Either I had people around me who talked about equal rights, or I encountered the ones who were pig-ignorant. And, to me, those were the only two kinds of people; both equally annoying. And I realized soon enough, that I had bad days; as opposed to numb, routine days; whenever I encountered people. Hence, I reasoned to omit people out entirely from my frame of reference. I saved up for a couple of years, bought a rickety old house in the middle of nowhere, and moved. I’ve been here, ever since. To be away from people, their selfish motivations, their genocidal fantasies, their inconsequential concerns…

Here’s my life - I wake up, and drink from a babbling brook right by my place. If I do get hungry, I trek fifty miles to find some food from a petrol station, and then walk back. I’ve been concentrating on writing a Memoir on my subsistence in Dachau, but I don’t write a lot. I just lie back on the grass, or sit on my porch and smoke a pipe, watching the unkempt grass and a couple of frail trees lolling about in the wind. Not an entirely productive life, perhaps, but a relaxed one, nonetheless. This has been the definition of existence to me, for the last eleven years.

1966
Until now…

A day like any other. Unless I consider something like a few hundred blaring distorted sounds, and what seems like a multitude of conversation outside my house. I get off my mattress wearily, and open my window, to see tents in every color in a rainbow, scattered across what I call my front lawn. And to top it all, there are a few people who’re running around naked with certain bits of them painted purple, while others in brightly colored robes seem to be skipping behind them, with bags of sugar cubes in their hands.

As if my bewildered, livid expression is sufficient to suggest I’m ready for casual conversation, a kid wearing a tattered pair of jeans approaches me with an effervescent smile. There’s material for my uncomfortable cringing again…

Kid: Hey man, you live here?

Me: I own this place. What do you people think you’re doing? This is trespassing…

Kid: The Earth belongs to everyone, man…

Me: Hmm… Maybe I should’ve tried saying that to the person I bought it from… Who are you people anyway?

Kid: We’re hippies, dude… We’re recreating society, man…

Me: Are you? What are hippies anyway?

Kid: We’re the counter-culture…

Me: Strange term… I wasn’t aware mankind had any culture to begin with…

Kid: Dude that’s hilarious… You should be a poet…

Me: Get off my property… Now…

Kid: Dude, look, we’re just camping out here for a couple of days, until we get our supplies ready for The Trips Festival. Please let us stay till then…

Me: And then you’ll leave?

Kid: Of course…

Me: Yes, all right… But cut down on the noise, will you?

Kid: Sorry man, we’ll try to keep it down…

They didn’t keep it down. It was either the blaring sound of what they called electric-guitars, or chanting with drums. After two days of sleeplessness, I saw signs that they were moving off pretty soon, and the kid I’d met previously stopped by to say farewell.

Kid: Farewell, humble spirit…

Me: What?

Kid: Thanks for letting us stay…

Me: Oh, that… For a moment there, I thought you were drunk…

Kid: Not drunk, just some water from the brook, man… Here, share a glass with me, and I’ll leave you alone… We’re leaving in the morning…

He poured out a measure of water from his bottle.

Kid: Cheers, man…

I drained my glass. Yeah, it was water. He smiled, and said Thanks again, take care…

I had the funniest night of my life…
I saw Hitler in fluorescent shorts, singing the national anthem. I watched Luftwaffe and RAF jets collide with each other, and bounce off, because the planes were both made of rubber. I watched flowers bloom , and buried in the middle of the petals, were clown faces. I watched children pointing at their naked teachers, laughing themselves silly. I watched kangaroos jumping over the heads of lions, almost in pinball motion. I watched rabbits breathing fire like dragons, sending foxes scurrying away in terror. Then there was a light show, which seemed to go on for hours. Then, the visions stopped, and I fell asleep.

I woke up, hearing someone knocking on my door. I opened it to find the same kid again, with a grin on his face.

Me: Yes?

Kid: How was it?

Me: How was what?

Kid: Didn’t you have visions yesterday?

Me: … How the hell would you know that?

Kid: Well, that wasn’t just water, dude…

Me: What?

Kid: It had acid in it…

Me: What?

Kid: Acid, man. LSD. It gives you hallucinations for nearly 5 hours. How was it?

Me: Who, or what, gave you the idea that you could drug me…

Kid:… Oh c’mon… Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy it…

Me: Well… That’s not the point…

Kid: What is the point?

Me: …

Kid: The day I met you, you looked like you’d lived through some really awful shit… I’m not going to ask you what that was, but don’t you think, that if you’ve managed to live through all that unpleasantness, you could try living it up now?

Me: Unpleasantness? Living it up?

Kid: Enjoying life… you deserved a tiny measure of unstructured happiness, I thought… I might be wrong, of course… We’re going to a festival of weird music and acid. Coming?

Me: … Alright, sure…


END

Word Count: 1445