#like I remember telling the riddles from that movie to my peers the adults around me and THRIVING when they were stumped | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

orenstern · 4 years

Text

I’d like to admit that I’ve never in my life read the Diary of Anne Frank. I’ve stood outside her house before, almost 14 years ago, and could feel something of her echoes, but never had before or since seen her words or witnessed her mind.

Up until a week ago, that is, when I chanced upon a copy of her diary. I picked it up the very moment I saw it, an instant reaction and so quick I forgot to realize I’d always been innately afraid to read her work, her letters to self. Because it somehow always seemed to me like, of all the work available by now-dead writers, her diary entries would feel the most like ghost stories, like real life talking to a ghost. It’s always scared me, the notion of talking to this particular ghost. No other ghost ever proposed to raise in me the slightest feather of a concern let alone fear.

But she always had.

And I can’t even remember having seen a portrait of her until last week. As hard as that might be to believe.

Where she was concerned, it has been like living in a house where all of the mirrors had blankets covering them. And believe you me, I’ve been in many houses where real life people were still living there and it was just precisely that, blankets over the mirrors, and the inhabitants were just looking at me without a hint of shame, sorrow or remorse in their eyes. Without any hint of knowledge of the display they had erected. If it fact it was them who had erected it. Just, this is the way it is here looks in their eyes.

The fucking things you see over a life. The understated non-plussed near-miss, oh boy did it hit though I am yet unstruck, horror you sometimes see. And how often it doesn’t even faze you. You just step over it like you would any old mound of dirt, not at all an active grave, except the low key and surpressed knowledge reminding you that all the earth is an active 5 billion year old Grave and Tomb and Monument and Pyre all wrapped into one, and all the universe a 20 billion year old same thing.

So I picked up the book. And I gazed at the front cover for a good long while. At her portrait. At Anne. I looked at her portrait for the first time, and I transported my mind back to her house, and I imagined she and I were standing there together, side by side. Outside. Looking at her own house in silence, together. And we both walked away, together, headed for a fast train to Paris, by way of a stroll along the Prisengracht, and short interlude at the Van Gogh museum. No other manifestations than that. I did not even imagine our bodies or our faces. I just remembered having done that before, peering out from the windows of my own eyes, with a companion by my side, and imagined this time, Anne was there with me doing the same.

And then after these thoughts, I opened the book. But I turned immediately to her very final entry. And I read only this Tuesday, August 1st, 1944 entry.

I’m sure I am not the only one who has read her writings and recognized themself in her words. But for certain, what she had written seemed and felt like something I’d written at least a thousand times. Her precise sentiments, and word choices, her very style. Parts of her style is my style. I must have picked that up either from writers who were familiar with her writings or just plucked it out of the wind somehow or some other way. But still that was not the eerie part.

The eerie part was the last two paragraphs. Which I copied down by hand into one of my own journals, with a blunt non-sharpened 3 inch pencil with no eraser no less, was all I had at the time. It was eerie because for at least a decade but more and more lately like the curvings of a quadratic formula, I’ve been hearing the phrase “Set Intentions” like you might hear during guided meditation or whenever someone wants to Exalt the Secret of Manifestation to you.

And I wasn’t at all going to share any of this with anyone. I had no plans to say any of this outloud to write anything on it or engage it any further or even ever again. I wrote the passage in my journal and I’d figured I was fully intending to never ever look back at that passage, or talk about it, or allow myself to recall it, and otherwise resolved to keep the blankets over this mirror forever.

But then I was scrolling this evening and just saw someone had shared a picture of Anne. And that too was a first for me to witness. Now I saw her face twice in a week, at the bookends of the week, both on Wednesdays at roughly about the same time of day. Happy to call that coincidence. Very happy to call it that.

But, I had also been just on a smoke break from my own writings, a letter I was writing to a loved one and the tenor of the letter of where I had left off when I stopped for my smoke break had just moved onto omens.

Oh boy, right?

Well now, still happy to be coincidentally maybe now just only synchronistically having this experience. But given it all, I’d resolved to share.

And by share, I’m not sure I can bring this all into any firm sense of things that could make it any less eerie. Though I will try. And if I don’t fully strike the right note in this attempt, I will know it, you won’t have to tell me, but I will publish the attempt anyway as an earmark of this encounter, and double back on it maybe whenever it is that I have found the right note or chord to strike or strum.

I’m thinking of two things, one I was going to save for my letter when I moved past omens. And one I was going to tell a friend of mine after watching a movie he recommended that I still have not told him. So I will choose neither and tell you both of them in this writing.

Most importantly, this is not at all about victim blaming, please have the courage to see past that, as Anne apparently might say that, at least, one of your two voices, if you only had two, would have such ability. And this, even if that means this courageous voice disappears after only 15 minutes.

First, I can remember back to a time when I am not more than a few months older than my son is now, maybe six months older. I am lying in my little boy bed, in my little boy bedroom in the house I grew up in, a little cape style enhanced cottage. It is night. The walls are blue. The headboard is all white and soft and plush to the touch, and riveted by silken buttons, smooth to the touch and shiny to the eye, though woven round by very fine white thread.

I am laying on top of the covers. This is colorful Snoopy and the Peanuts bedding. It’s not exactly yet bed time. But it must still be before the Vernal Equinox because the sun has been down for a good while and its not yet past my little boy bedtime. And the room is lit golden by a single 40 maybe 60 but really probably 40 watt incandescent bulb. It’s gold in there, it’s almost orange that low gold glow. And I’m laying at angle on the bed. And I’m pointed feet first at the east corner of the bedroom, which is also precisely lined up with Cardinal East. And I shit you not, but on this evening, a few weeks before my actual birthday and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was on my original due date, I was thinking to myself, “I must be dreaming in this life. I am going to remember this moment forever. When I get older. And I believe I am going to wake up someday from the distant future back here in this moment, back here in the age, back here just the way I am now.”

I’ve not tampered with this memory at all since then. I’ve remembered it precisely and often ever since. I’ve referred back to it thousands of times. In a sense, I in fact have never left that room or that night. I built it into every single night since. Like one of Tom Riddle’s horcruxes. And this before I had ever heard Row Row Row Your Boat. And this before I had enough speaking skills to say these thoughts outloud even if I wanted to but enough language understanding to think them and remember.

So that’s the first thought.

The second thought, it’s about that movie my friend suggested I watch over the summer. It was a horror movie, a new one. You may have watched it yourself. Called Ghosts of War.

My feedback to him the day after I watched it was pretty simple. A. I enjoyed it. B. The sniper I think is my favorite. C. It reminds me I have another horror movie That I do not mention to him by name then, but I only say that it is in the genre of horror that is not shriekingly scary, or rather does not rely on shriekingly scary moments. Because it does contain a couple of those potentially frightful jolts. But that is not it’s best foot forward. This type of horror is not the exciting amusement park kind. This type of horror is the kind that enters your bloodstream and stays with you and haunts you over a long period of time, long afterwards. The kind of horror you might find yourself waking up from sleep even a year or more later and not feeling right and having witnessed. D. I might get back to him someday with more commentary. Oh and E. I really enjoyed seeing Billy Zane. Particularly as the dichotomy of American Doctor and SS Colonel.

But wouldn’t you know shortly after I finished writing down that passage from Anne Frank’s final entry, pledging to not look at it ever again, I found myself in another room talking to a person about that actual movie that ghost of war reminded me of that I didn’t tell my friend what that movie was. To this new person I did say its name. It is paranormal activity. The first one. I said that movie is the first time I had witnessed a genuine horror film, That has the capability of genuinely haunting me for a long long period of time, in my adult years. And it doesn’t contain hardly any,if at all, shriek moments.

The horror of that movie is it’s power to slowly and steadily and surely wrap itself around your heart with fear and anxiety, and with full command, Sustain you in that state while flexing and relaxing it’s own valves, to show you who’s boss and who is in command.

Furthermore I told this person, that such a film as this paranormal activity is is not a film to watch when you are in a heightened state of consciousness. You’ve got to be half asleep at the wheel half dead inside to properly survive that film. Because in the final moment, and I admitted this to that person, when you see the demon at last, he jumps straight into your eyes. Straight into you. That movie is perhaps the ultimate act of transgression, that I’d ever seen to that date. And I admitted to this person that it took me a good long while of concerted and methodical effort, to rid myself of that motherfucking demon. Such is the exquisite accomplishment of that particular horror movie. I spared my friend this story, because I’m pretty sure he would’ve shit his pants if I told it to him in person. I think I’m only about 30% joking about that.

But tomorrow being that some stories stay with you longer than others. Some stories you actually have to exorcise from your mind. it’s very good training. Especially if you happen to frequently find yourself in other peoples houses and those houses have all the mirrors draped over by blankets. And those other people walk about aimlessly as though they have no idea how odd that appears to be. if you know what I’m saying. And if you can believe what I’m saying is actually true.

But no I don’t think I’ll ever tell my friend about the paranormal activity story. What I will tell him is another thought I had about ghosts of war. That I think on some level in someway we are all ghosts of every war. Wars that we’ve seen and wars that we haven’t seen, either depicted in books or movies or for trade for real on the news both of foreign lands and domestic. And even wars in our own mind, common place words with our neighbors or friends or family or loved ones. I think in someway we just are ghosts of it. Carrying the crosses of it.

And I remember a story I wrote or a poem maybe it was about a universal snake and a universal monkey. The universal snake head swallowed the universal monkey. Seemingly defeated him in battle. Seemingly killed him. Seemingly was digesting him. But unseeming to the universal snake, the universal monkey to this day will not die. And for all eternity the universal snake has had indigestion on account of the universal monkey’s eternal will not to be extinguished. They say it ain’t over til it’s over. They say don’t stop believing. I say that’s probably very good advice and we should all listen to it. The Monkey is listening to it right now, and has been forever. That monkey won’t quit. That monkey is in a pickle but he’s got a slim to none chance and yet he won’t quit.

How this works back to ghosts to war and how we’re ghosts of war with everyone, and how this works back to Anne Frank. It’s up to you what you wanna believe in, I believe in the fact that God won’t ever let us really kill each other. We might see it happen with our own eyes. Right before us. But I believe that even as it happens it also instantly unhappens.

We have the ability to look backwards in time and forecast forwards in time but we only have the ability to live in one moment of time at a time and that we called the present. We have no idea what actually happens in previous moments of time once we’ve moved past them. Except how they exist in our mind. But for all we know in a moment that someone apparently kills another, whether it’s a person to a person or an animal to an animal. How do we know it doesn’t on happen once we’ve left that moment? Natural law has a place in this world. So natural law gets its way in this world. But there are such things as the overlapping thesis of all the different laws. And divine law is a thing in that overlapping thesis. Just as well as natural law is. So it is totally possible that once we make a mess of things, the Custodian comes along to fix it.

It’s possible along the same probabilities or maybe even slightly better than Lloyd Christmas’ chances of getting the red head which he eventually did.

To another person who overheard me talking to that first person last week about paranormal activity, the next day she came to me with concerns. I listened to these concerns. And my response was what you do is up to you. Including whether or not you trust yourself or not. If I were in your shoes I would try to trust myself. Even as everyone around me might seem intent on leading me to betray my own trust. if I were in your shoes, I would choose to believe that no one actually has the power to do that. No one actually has the will to want to see you fail, to fail yourself. Because that would be them wishing them to fail themselves. And while they might get away with that in one moment in the next that moment is wiped clean. If I were in your shoes I’d be telling that to myself every moment I had these concerns you are telling me about.

I further said, and I stop talking about if I were in her shoes. I further said what you think is happening is happening. What you understand about what is happening is only ever coming into focus more and more. You may not have all the Time in the world, but you do always have the luxury of patience. There’s no rush when it comes to the process of understanding. Something tells me we’ll repeat the lesson infinitely if necessary. something also tells me that won’t actually be necessary. The lesson will come clear eventually. Have faith in that and likely all of your fears and concerns will be abolished. The probability of it being otherwise, however great it seems, as Pascal very effectively demonstrated, infinitely pales to the seemingly tiny probability, the Boson particle infinitesimally small and impossible to fathom yet there it is nonetheless almost something you can now actually reach out and grab but even still something you can see if only by way of prediction probability, of it not being otherwise.

So that in other words no sword actually ever really falls upon the neck but he’s only ever caught by the Hand.

I’ve been waiting to wake up to this reality ever since my two-year-old self woke up to that reality and said I will be waking up here someday again.

But I did tell that second person, be careful the stories you tell yourself. They could be like that movie demon that enters your mind and poisons your body, like that story I told last night. The mind can make almost anything real. That’s a quote from a movie also, but it comes from somewhere. Didn’t it? So possibly probably in all likelihood whatever story you tell yourself whatever imaginary though you have as an objective: if somewhere in this universe. Somehow manifest itself. Somehow find a way to be born and become true. Often a lot faster and more hellishly than you thought possible.

The mind is it’s own place. It can make heaven out of hell and hell a heaven. I don’t need to read the whole diary of Anne Frank, to know beyond what her final entry says. That she was equally gifted at doing both. And that, my friends, is not victim blaming. That is just what it is.

And so behold the final two paragraphs of her final passage:

As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I I’m always up against a more powerful enemy. A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people, who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.”

Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside g out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if… if only there were no other people in the world.

Yours, Anne M. Frank

#Anne Frank #Diary of Anne Frank #set intentions #Ghosts of War #manfesting #summoning #positivity #be careful what you wish for #mysticism #book review #movie review

9 notes · View notes