Fare Thee Well

It is time to say goodbye.

The Germans have been gracious hosts, and I could not have imagined a more smooth trip in a country where I am not exactly the smoothest customer. I know embarrassingly little German, but Europeans will turn their lives upside down to make their foreign friends feel comfortable. This much I know, and that is indeed how I felt - comfortable. I don't even feel comfortable in my own house, let alone Germany.

Kathleen sees me off, and as I wait by the gate I feel something altogether too familiar. I cannot possibly keep up any sort of meaningful relationship with anybody 6,000 miles away. I am a footnote to the incredible life of a fantastic person, and there is nothing I can do about it. Even so, I feel lucky to be a footnote, as I find it massively presumptuous to think of yourself as anything but; in fact, I might argue that a footnote might be the most admirable position to aspire to. I am not important, and I do not appreciate those who think they are. Objectivism is played - so played; Ayn Rand was a dangerous menace to society, and anything resembling her backwards views should go straight to the rubbish bin.

Still, it is hard to bid farewell to a saviour of sorts, somebody who enables you to see yourself in a different light and to examine your decisions with a newfound prospectus... as if they were enlightened at all to begin with! Before I leave, she orders a McFlurry and asks if I want kids. Man, how the fuck should I know?? I don't even know if I should renew my subscription to TIME magazine!

"You know what you want in your life," she says. "You have always known. Don't pretend you don't know."

"I'm not pretending!" I raise my voice. I am getting out of hand.

"Shhh. Oh please. We are both confident people. Are you kidding? We both know what will happen with our lives. We just have to peel back the skin."

Nobody talks to me like this. Again, she is right, and she is real. I feel sometimes that I am surrounded with... imagination? I do not exist, and I do not react. This doesn't occur in Europe. She can't help it. We embrace and I try to thank her, but it's no good. Germany is full of life, and I turn a cold shoulder and head through the exit. I stare off into the city until I am well up into the clouds.



We will see each other again. We will laugh and it will be just like old times.

TJH