I don't suppose that it was a coincidence that I was at Erfurt starving in the soul, foraging through the lessons of Meister Eckhart when I received the note.
"She is dead. I am in ruins. Come if you can."
I was skulking at the back of the church, listening to a modern interpretation of one of Eckhart's foundational concepts... "Gelassenheit," when the mouselike Sister from the little stand at the entrance came near and tugged at my shirt sleeve.
I turned and was at once taken aback by the emotion pouring from her bulging black eyes, which were rendered more stark amid the vast white wells that could not contain them.
I took the note.
It was from Anton.
My friend.
More of a father to me than my father.
More of a brother to me than my brother.
My friend.
I read the note.
Clearly, the little woman had read it too.
I regarded her for a spell without saying anything.
There was the sound of shuffling at the window high over head.
A black bird and a white bird vied for vantage from which to peer within.
The Predigerkirche at Erfurt has held within it many things that were or needed to have been...
Witnessed.
"Gelassenheit."
I lowered my eyes and then looked once more unto the kindly lady.
I smiled and thanked her.
She bowed, turned, and went away.
Two hours later I was on the train.
"She is dead. I am in ruins. Come if you can."
In some respects it was a comical reversal of previous perspectives.
For years, Anton had amused himself by poking fun at my sentimentality...
My inability to simply let things be...
To let the story be...
To let things go.
"Journalists who do not remain objective are condemned to becoming part of the story," he used to say.
"And how many times do we write happy stories?"
He'd asked me that whilst we were sitting together at the side of a road outside of Vukovar...
Near the site of yet another massacre.
But it wasn't until later, in Bosnia, that the line between objectivity and humanity became truly blurred...
Forgettable...
As a matter of human necessity.
And that was just the beginning.
Fifteen years of working together in the most hellish places the world of men and their warring follies could afford begat discussions never ending regarding the truth of humanity, nature, love, hope...
And faith.
"Remarkable," I thought as I took a sip of my whiskey and then set it down again on the table in the train cabin in which I traveled, "that I keep spinning around the same discussions in my head and my heart...
Spinning...
Like a turd that won't flush...
Spinning...
Like the world of wonder that all of this...
Truly...
Is."
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