James O’Keefe Goes Undercover in Greece During Financial Crisis

Published on Jul 16, 2015

This Project Veritas video shows an unfettered view of Greece’s citizens on their country’s economic crisis. Project Veritas President, James O’Keefe was chased from riots under the threat of violence and was even tear-gassed. And O’Keefe and other Project Veritas journalists infiltrated the Communist, Socialist, and Anarchist movements and even captured Members of the Greece’s Parliament on hidden camera.

In this new video, Andreas Katsaniotis, a Member of the Hellenic Parliament (Greece’s legislative body) was caught on hidden camera saying: “The referendum is so foggy…” Referring to the recent national referendum in Greece on whether to accept the bailout conditions jointly proposed by the European Commission, International Monetary Fund, and European Central Bank.

As the situation in Greece continued to deteriorate O’Keefe and other Project Veritas journalists were right there to capture the footage. Things got particularly intense when they spoke to members of the anarchist movement. One anarchist, who would only identify himself as Paolo and was covering his face with a black bandana, was caught on hidden camera saying: “One day we’ll burn, not only parliament, parliament and the police stations.”

O’Keefe also attempted to vote in the recent Greek Referendum. Unlike his numerous attempts in the United States, O’Keefe was told that photo ID was necessary to vote in Greece. In fact, the Greek poll worker was shocked that the U.S. did not have such laws saying: “You go to vote and you will not give an ID, and how they know you are the one you say you are?”


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NJO: Title, video and blurb from James O'Keefe's YouTube channel VeritasVisuals.

Coastal Norway.

jamesokeefeiii
Coastal Norway. Majestic fjords. Tasty fish soup. The weather constantly changes but all the towns look the same. Monocultural. Egalitarian. Secular. Expensive.

NJO: Source: Instagram.

Hiking in Norway. Spectacular.

jamesokeefeiii
Hiking in Norway. Spectacular.
 
NJO: Source: Instagram.

Goodbye Switzerland


Arrivaderci Svizzera

Mention the names, Lugano, Ascona, Locarnoand Bellinzona located in a region called “Ticino,” and the listeners might naturally assume they’re inItaly.
Send them a postcard and it might not set them straight: palm trees, mimosas, Mediterranean red roofs, loggias, azure waters with bellagio fountains piercing through indigo skies, surely this must be either the coast of the Adriatic or that of Sicily. But behind the waving but stiff date palms and velvet lilacs are telltale signs are freshly painted crosswalks, manicured gardens, punctual trains, a 6 PM curfew and men traipsing around train stations with machine guns wearing berets. You’re not inItaly anymore, Toto.

Coziness under guarded control, anarchronism versus state-of-the-art technology, strange bedfellows in an isolated, majestically storybook fantasy land with no natural resources but rock and earth. Cautious but Resolute, Welcoming, but alien, claustrophobic and prudent; clean, rich, stingy, prudent, orderly, beautiful and sparsely populated, comfortable and as transparent as a disengaged glass cable car rising up above the clouds; as quietly paranoid as a red-bellied hummingbird, with the fervent militarily mettol of Braveheart.

These are the Swiss.

Walking paradoxes, whose principal national aesthetic pitches rustic Alpine coziness against high-tech efficiency. Proud, sober and self-reliant, the Swiss have maintained so much independence and neutrality, yet remain some type of microcosm of Europe, composed of alternative French, German and Italian types. But don’t dare call them one of those. “They’re…… Swiss!”

Painfully neat and rigorously prompt, shabby and the slipshot, the Swiss have a weakness for cuteness. They indulge in coy diminutives. A German Biertsube becomes a Stubli, a Wurst become s a Wurstli. And as they fly off mountains with sticks attached to their feet they yodel in their predominant dialect, the pseudo-German dialect of Schweizerdeutsch, crackling with “K” emphasis in a innocent yet raspy Alemannic rebellion of the Country that gave them their language. Don’t dare call them German. Fur-clad socialites raise jeweled fingers at Geneva’s quai du Mont-Blanc, as the women of Appenzell stand beside their husbands on the Landsgemeindeplatz, raising their hands in the purest form of direct democracy on the planet. (They were only given that right to vote since 1991!) But don’t dare call the French.17 year-olds party their asses off in Bellinzona at a “Discoteca” for Carnivale. But don’t dare call them Italians.

And there are perks to them not being French or Italian or German. For one there is the infrastructure. Trains are always on time and seem just too clean. Hiking trails are equipped with freshly manufactured signs every 35 feet telling you your exact coordinates. The cable car has gone through myriad inspections. Curtains are broiled, hotel rooms are spotless. Cheapness isn’t offered as an option. Your clocks are all made by Rolex, and your bed linens are tossed four times a day, with a slice of chocolate turned back at night. The smoke that accumulates in the cafes are aired out, as the soil is turned in the flowerboxes in the quiet town of Goeshnen. Men with mustaches and recessed cheekbones air out their cottages each and every day to allow mountain air to flow through.

Wealthier than Sin, the Swiss are also stingier than a Mormon at a strip club. Shots are measured with scientific precision as if it was poured in lavatory beakers. Towels in your bathroom will be straightened, spaced, toes pointed in the same direction, as orderly as little Soldiers. Glass, Steel, Concrete, and the electronic turbocharged engines in the Mercedes and Alfa Romeos are cleaner than a Virgin’s honeypot. Law Enforcement agents look more like tourists, strolling through their safe, clean, boring cities making sure pedestrians aren’t deviating from the crosswalks.

In Beogoius, Zurich, behind closed doors mysteriously sly little Swiss gnome bankers rub their hands and manipulate world currencies by sitting on top of their gold, then return to their homes transient of their wealth.


Then, take a yellow “Postbus” 2,000 meters above sea level and the country is transformed. Amidst the Alpine whiteness find rocky trails and brisk clip, cheeks glowing, eyes as icy bright as the glaciers, and the healthy faces disappearing behind mirrored goggles and war-paint sun block. A Horse-drawn plow peels back thin topsoil on an impossible steep hill above the clouds in the country where the government spends as much on subsidies to maintain their farmers harvesting cheese and chocolate as they do on manufacturing.

The German-Swiss cross through the Saint Gotthard pass and emerge in blamy Ticenese Sunshine, vacationing in the Italian portion of their country. They drink Merlot and eat gnocchi while resting assured that the hotel they are staying in is strictly regulated by the Swiss Hotel association, and they are spending the Franc, not the euro.

The Italian-Swiss only constitute a mere 8% of the population.They are geographically cut-off from their northern countrymen by a mountain chain, and have a minature geography that allows from constant sunshine amidst stunning foothills. The people are more rustic than their fashionable Milanese counterparts, old women putting on wigs and lipstick like they were 7 year old Americans playing make-up. Ticino is the most glamorous of regions. Along the water promenades of Lake Lugano or Locarnoyou’ll see pollards, rododendrons, and bobbying yaughts. You’ll even see sailboats in Janurary. The mountain villages are scattered with stone huts and castles, church towers that serve as a testament to latin Dukes of Milan, from whom they gained independence from in 1798.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Y'all caught that one simile, right? About what the fucking car engines are like? I KNOW RIGHT.

The Mystique of the Swiss Army

The Mystique of the Swiss Military

By James O’Keefe

At any given moment, 4,300 stationary sirens sound off in Switzerland, indicating a foreign invasion and a nuclear holocaust.
Within 12 hours, a militia of 600,000 Swiss men enrolled in either Auszug, Landwehr and Landsturm, aged between 18 and 40, grab their Sturmgewehr M57 semi-automatic assault rifles and army fatigue from their closets and storm out of their apartments and chalets onto the front line to protect their homeland. Mined bridges and tunnels criss-crossing alpine passageways including the Gotthard, the Simplon and the Great St. Bernard are blown to pieces. “Dragon Feet” prevent tanks from climbing the mountains. Bunkers in Andermatt and Lucerne store 24-round magazine ammunition, and the Auszug foot soldiers continually reload near strategically placed stockpiles of war materials and foodstuffs. Swiss radiation and bomb shelters hold women and children near the Austrian border in Sargans. Bern, Geneva and Zurich are all destroyed, but the citizens do not surrender. The Swiss scatter themselves about, continually shooting while retreating into the higher elevated Alpine tundra where they resort to mountain warfare, strapping on their skis and battling at this point an unprepared, frostbitten foe. Disguised cannons near the Gotthard shoot at targets 17 km away and the heartland still stands.[1]
Fortunately for the Swiss as well as the world, the siren aforementioned is just a simulation, performed every year in an annual test of its mobile and highly technological full-coverage warning system.[2]
Put quite simply by one government publication, “the Swiss do not have an army, they are the army.” Switzerland, a confederation governed by direct democracy through referendum by virtue of its size and cantonal division (the method is so direct that in one town named Appenzell, leaders are elected by show of hands – a policy that would potentially bring mob rule if implemented in the US). The land of cheese and chocolate has managed to avoid armed conflict for hundreds of years, by virtue of two key elements; geography and manpower.[3] Strangely, the Swiss people have become so accustomed to thinking of non-alignment as a prerequisite of Swiss identity and Swiss prosperity, that it has reached near dogma status.
Even though not mandated in its constitution, Switzerland’s parliamentary-emphasized neutrality was officially recognized and respected by European powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, then in Swiss policy through the Alpine confederation in 1847. The landlocked country has a policy of armed neutrality, static defense and the somewhat mythical reduit; fortified defense structure. These military themes have been so unique and fruitful for the Swiss that the traditions have stood the test of time under recent, progressive, socio-cultural trends. For example, the right to bear arms in Switzerland is still as natural as the right to vote, unlike anywhere else in the western world. The gun crime-rate is so low that substantial date is not even kept.[4]


Conscription, a main pillar of the Swiss participatory system, begins at age 20.[5] Every Swiss male (other kinds of services are optional for females but possible due to “moral” pressures), goes through 118 consecutive days of recruit training in the Rekrutenschule. Because Switzerland is a land divided by four distinct languages and cultures, German, French, Italian and Romansch, this will usually be a young man's first encounter with his countrymen who speak a language other than his own.
From age 21 to 32, a Swiss man then serves in the Auszug, the “front-line” division of the military and devotes about three weeks per year (in eight of the 12 years) for continued training.[6] Then from 33 to 42 he serves in the national guard, or Landwehr. Every so often he reports for duty at two-week training periods. From ages 43 to 50, he serves in the Landsturm where he only spends 13 days total in the ultimate form of fortified defense: "home guard courses." Military Expenditures are approximately 3 billion a year and are 1% of the country’s GDP.[7]
The Swiss army is civilian, not professional, which impressed Adolph Hitler during World War II. In a 1940s conversation depicted on a contemporary postcard, the Kaiser of Germany asked what a Swiss Army of about 250,000 would do if faced with an invasion of 500,000 Nazis. A Swiss militiaman replied, "Shoot twice."[8] (It can be noted that the Swiss took in many Jews and others fleeing the Nazis -- far more, per capita, than any other country -- including the US. Hitler planned an invasion but believed it far too costly to invade a country where everyone was armed, and no one had the power to surrender.)
In fact, Swiss leaders advocated increased shooting skills so that as many enemy paratroopers as possible could be shot and killed while still in the air before landing on the ground and having any advantage.[9] Historically, a well-regulated militia was necessary for a secure, prosperous and free state.
However, given changes since the cold war, political challenges have became global and Switzerland potentially faces east vs. west conflict rather than Soviet pressures. The framework of a cold war rationale for neutrality has diminished in its relevance. But the populace’s justification for its armed neutrality continues. Although an internal weakening was thought to be revealed by the 35.6% of votes cast in favor of abolishing the army in November 1989, 70% turned out later and rejected an attempt to abolish the country’s army by the year 2000.[10] 64% in 1989 voted to keep the army whereas about 1.9 million voters voted against a constitutional amendment which simply says “Switzerland has no army.” Traditionalists called the attempts to remove the army “A slap in the face of the establishment,”[11] a form of rhetoric progressives claim indicated unjustified dogma. The government urged voters to reject the proposal since it was vital to Swiss “independence.” The head of the federal military department Kaspar Villiger attributed the unexpected number of anti-army votes to an ethos of relaxation and tension that “happily dominates the international scene.”[12]
The government’s emphasis on “independence” in the recent votes of the late 20th century traces itself back from a philosophy espoused by General Guisan, Commander-in-Chief of the Swiss Amry during WWII. He said that independence was even more important than neutrality, since without independence there would be no neutrality to protect.
At the time, the need for independence came from the threat from Germany. On his orders a thousand factories, public works and public services and Switzerland's numerous tunnels were prepared for demolition. On the Rutli, Swiss army officers took an oath to resist, exemplifying another Swiss military doctrine; fortification.[13]
The military doctrine of reduit, or fortified defense structure, is based on the assumption that heavily defending a region such as the Alps to make it untakable, will be too costly to merit attack an enemy attack. Max Wiebel, Chief of Infantry, and Alfred Ernst, Commander of the 8th Infantry Division, believed that only an infantry-oriented army clinging each foot to Swiss soil could guarantee a successful resistance to enemy forces in either a traditional or nuclear war. Inspired by the dramatic philosophy of General Guisan, a mountain redoubt would be fortified where fighting would go on even if Switzerland's borders were forced and its frontier cities; Geneva, Zurich, Basel and Bern, were all taken.[14]
When Switzerland was surrounded by German and Italian forces, General Henri Guisan revealed at Rütlirapport, a meeting of theSwiss army staff at the founding site of the Swiss confederation on 25th July 1940, that in case of attack the Swiss would only defend the high Alps, a natural defense line, including the important transport routes. Mountain forts would become the new strategic importance. Nestled at the crossroads of three major Alpine passes--St. Gotthard, Oberalp, and Furkatiny, would lie the very heart of Swiss resistance. If invaded, the army would destroy the access routes to these alpine passes.[15]
Major cities would be defended by artificial fortifications backed up by large numbers of infantry units with supporting artillery. The primary objective was to be strong enough on the frontiers. If the cities are taken, the Swiss would retreat into its Alpine redoubt, and every foot of Swiss soil would be defended without surrender – all in order to make the cost of pursuing the attack prohibitive, using a dispersed continuing resistance movement throughout the alps. To provide the large number of troops necessary for this “static defense,” conscription became mandatory.[16]
Speed of mobilization was aided by strategically placed stockpiles piles of war materials and foodstuffs. The Swiss constitution provides that the government maintained a minimum reserve 80,000 tons of food grains at all times. The actual amount of materials kept in readiness in vast man-made Alpine caverns during the cold war has been classified. [17]
Also classified is how many tunnels, roads and bridges were mined. However, Christoph Schuepbach, who works on developing Swiss combat infrastructure, said recently in an article about explosives found underneath a residential neighborhood in Lucern in Swissinfo that “Yes, we are still maintaining several hundred sites with permanent explosives.” There also seems to be a divide between conservative, traditional military experts and modern society. For example, a mother complains in Lucerne, “I think it’s unfair that [the explosives] were there for years and years, and none of us knew about it.”[18]
Some of these citadel bunkers fortresses have recently been declassified and the Swiss government begun selling them off to repay debts. On the top of Rigli, a camouflaged green door opens up into a huge underground mountain bunker, one in a chain estimated at 10 billion dollars. The entrances were covered with foliage. The bunker could hold 1,000 soldiers at a time.[19]
The sight of Swiss units on their summer maneuvers is familiar to tourists, especially where the four valleys meet near the ski resort of Andermatt. Today Swiss troops have come here for decades to train in the art of mountain warfare. Drop onto one of the glaciers below 9,721-foot Gemsstock and you pass soldiers in groups of 20. Soldiers flounder in the deep snow with skinny skis and camouflage packs doing avalanche training, setting up tents above the clouds, where storms hit Andermatt from all sides, consistently blanketing it with more snow than anywhere else in the Alps.[20]
This “Static defense” was even thought no longer feasible by The Swiss Chief of General Staff himself. Hans-Ulrich Scherrer discussed the future of Switzerland's military in 1998, making three major recommendations as a result of the profound upheavals taking place in Europe. The first was that the strategic environment has to be reassessed and the necessary security policy deductions made. Second, as a small state, Switzerland can no longer deal with all dangers and threats on its own. As a result of the first two recommendations, Mr. Scherrer said it has become necessary to cooperate with other nations. The extent of this cooperation will have to be defined in a political process, what some think lead to Switzerland joining the United Nations and cooperating with the European Union.[21]
But however explained, there may always be a mystique associated with Switzerland’s armed forces, just as there is a mystique and ambivalence about the country itself. The armed forces has come to define Switzerland’s continued neutral presence; consummate, uncontroversial and withdrawn. As one business writer put it, “in Switzerland, they may not produce anything, but they don't produce Baywatch either.''[22]






[1] See Halbrook, Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II.
[2] http://www.ascom.com
[3] Codding Jr., George A. Foreign Affairs. Vol. 40 Issue 3 (Apr62): p489.
[4] Halbrook, Ibid.
[5] Jonathan Steinberg, Why Switzerland? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[6] www.wikipedia.com
[7] The Economist
[8] Halbrook, Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Jonathan Steinberg, Ibid.
[11] “64% of Swiss Vote to Keep Army.” New York Times. 28 Nov 1989: pA6.
[12] Ibid.
[13] See Pecer Calvocoresssi and Guy Wint, Total War: pp 248.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Codding Jr., George A. Foreign Affairs. Vol. 40 Issue 3 (Apr62): p489.
[17] Ibid.
[18] http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=41&sid=4123773
[19] “Swiss Reveal Secret World: Their Defense From Nazis.” The New York Times 25 Jul 1999: p4.
[20] “Switzerland by Train.” Skiing Vol. 57 Issue 6 (Feb2005): p66-69.
[21] Hans-Ulrich Scherrer. Military Technology. Vol. 22, Issue 6 (Jun 1998): p 43.
[22] Business Week. Issue 3751 (Oct. 2001) : pg 24.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Before and After

A Man and his Girl



A Letter Never Sent


I've realized the world is filled mostly with little girls and little boys really; children.

First there are the little boys.
These “dicks” are unpredictable, of course, perhaps air the girls’ laundry, make fun of their stomach, shoes, nose, or ass in a bar so that the girls feel challenged, i.e. believe they now have to “earn” his gaze by “working out” or losing weight, then want this guy as a result – these girls get highs of these cheap thrills, but the highs don’t last very long. The sexual and superficial gratifications with the “challenge” and “unpredictability” last as short as minutes and at most 5 years. But invariably, they go away. Guaranteed. And with that departure, the little boys and little girls hurry with restless urge from one passion to the next. One fuck to another. Girls get jealous and cry about the boys they lost. Little do they know, they cry out of envy and jealousy, not love.

These are the little girls.
Little girls want a guy who will cheat, challenge, and abuse them. Little girls want dick and negligence. Little girls stare at themselves in the mirror for a boy’s approval. They only want what they can’t have. It's not that they don't want marriage with children. It's that they can't handle something so powerful and mature. This is the type of girl you are, a child, no different than the majority, who thinks the aforementioned attributes of “little boys” represents “love.” Even worse than the boys, little girls like you are also hurry from passion to passion, mistaking these temporary passions for “love.” For example, you just leapt out of a four year relationship just like that after making incredible promises; you just gave up so quickly - you'll do the same thing with him, guaranteed. Little girls also get off using one person as a crutch, like you did with me, finding someone else, and then they, you, "take a break" to figure out if it's a good thing to leave me.
They like you, use people.

Then there are the real men.
Real men know what love is.
And love has nothing to do with attraction or repulsion, passion or excitement, adventure or challenge. Those things feel good but are not the best of things, because we don’t spend our lives with those things. We couldn’t. After all, nobody spends 80 years with that giddy, dainty lustful feeling, and rightfully so. It’s not possible to be attracted to the same person for a lifetime without hard work. Love is about commitment – I speak of the type of thing most children like you – can’t handle – or may ever be able to handle.

You left me for a little boy. A little boy who went after a girl who already had a boyfriend. He knew this yet he persisted and persisted, and you turned into a little girl; you acquiesced.

So let me tell you about a real man….

A real man, on the train with his woman, before he leaves for college, kisses the warm tears rolling down her cheek, comforts her in the street when you collapse, missing him, and when you’re all alone in the world, have no friends, nobody understands you, your parents emotionally abuse you, a real man listens and supports you, even when it discomforts him to do so – at one point he calls up your parents and pleads with them – he fights his ass off for you, takes trains home on weekday nights for you after knowing you suffer without him. He deals with your screwed up family, your suicidal mother, seeks approval of your French father all the while getting screamed at – why - because he knows that deep down in places you don’t admit about, but can see it in the way you react in your eyes, his father’s approval makes you proud. He does this because he’ll do anything to make you happy – he cares, a trait not often exhibited by little boys. A real man will walk, crawl through a blizzard, on a weekend during his freshman year in college while his peers are far, far away getting drunk every night and having sex with random girls – he’ll brave his biggest fear; high school nostalgia, by dropping off a valentine day card on your high school locker – while other boys are in other states chasing after a future life, dumping their high school sweethearts, he stayed home for you, didn’t leave for a scholarship in Texas, he dumped all that just for you, not that he regretted it or made you feel bad for it. He didn’t join a fraternity because you didn’t want him too. Sure the whole future world may teach him it was futile, but that doesn’t matter right then. Nor does it not matter that the relationship wasn’t perfect. It’s the principal, something only men have. He’s too good of a guy. Unlike others, he doesn’t need perfection, he’s content with what he has.

A real man hitchhikes hundred miles after getting in a car accident, abandoning his classic car on the turnpike, just so he can be there for the end of your mother’s funeral. He prays every night on the beach that summer, to the stars, that he can ease the suffering and the pain that you feel, end the helplessness that pervades ever phone call he has with you. He waits silently on the other end of the line for the woman you’re becoming – even in the darkest of times, he stares up at a poster of France and dreams he will one day be there with you, even though he hates France he loves you. Sits in the stairwell and comforts you when everyone else is out partying, not because he is “attracted” to you or is “passionate” about you, but because he cares about you and he cares so deeply about your feelings. He dreams of the woman you will become, and uses those dreams to get through the hard times. A real man rents a car and drives 600 miles, on impulse, through three different countries, just to see your face. Then he in trembling desperation tells you his feelings when you claim to be in love with someone else, only to be scoffed at over and over. He makes mistakes – say taking what he had for granted because he is genuine and real. But he has nothing to apologize for. He sang for you when you were sad, wrote you letters when you were lonely, gave you massages and expected nothing in return. He taught you to drive stick shift, bought you your first car because he knew you like that type of car even though you screamed at him when it broke down, he even tried to fix it; he taught you how to kiss, introduced half of the feelings you feel, gave you a new life, and taught you everything you know about music. He helped you grow up.

During collge, little girls, sluts, confront your man and tease him or tempt him, once going into his dorm room and taking off their clothes, one even offers to have sex with him, he never, NEVER acts on these sluts. This is far more incredible given he may be attracted to them, because he is human, but he doesn’t LOVE them, a mistake you make. For, you seem to think it is wierd for someone in a relationship to, once in a while, dream or fantasize about someone else ? Imagining yourself in an intimate situation with someone other than your partner is normal-and then some. If you don't understand this fact about human nature, you will keep divorcing your husband because you mistake ATTRACTION FOR LOVE. Childish jealous little girls and sluts get off challenging his loyalty - they wants a real man but for the wrong reasons - they want to see if she can tempt him away from you, these girls. But his commitment and service to you outweighs childish sexual fantasies. All around him his friends cheat on their girlfriends, then the cheaters tell the girls they love each other on the phone. He witnesses this, it’s all around him, he’s like an anthropologist, witnessing horrifying things. His peers tell him to dump you, forget about you. The majority of boys, under those constraints, stray, mostly in secrecy but a real man doesn’t Never. Not once. And you know what’s incredible. A real man suppressed his urges and instincts for a love he may not entirely grasp or understand. But he has faith that he one day will. He does this for love. That’s power.

That is confidence.

So that is why I spent about 20 minutes every morning for seven months crying my eyes and heart out after being abandoned by the girl I served for a scumbag. It is so unjust that you look at me as week or insufficient due to this, it is not because I am just overly nice or overly weak, but because I am strong and so confident and committed, losing you was like a death, but even more so when you were lost not only in flesh but in spirit. When you leave your man, he stays against all wits, he fights the urge to leave completely, he comforts you when you talk about your new guy, he listens when you tell him the new guy makes fun of your for the way you look and may drive you into an eating disorder.

Then your stepmother, a woman I fought so hard to make happy, a woman whose wedding I attended says “abandon him when the dog dies, cuts ties with him after your dog he’s taking care of dies” That is when he’s just about had enough.
You proclaim “I love Jason. Jason and I are doing great!!” This is why he cries and starts to lose hope. Not that you would understand. Not that you could understand. You're just a child.

Because Jason cheated on you multiple times, or did you ever tell your family that while they were telling you to cut ties with me forever (after your dog dies of course). Did you tell her that after he cheated on you you went and had sex with him again? Or did you neglect to mention that part. And how DARE you tell me the sexual details of your relationship with this ass hole ; what incentive do I have or did I ever have to hear about your sexual positions with these guys, your swallowing whatever, about your "skillz."

But there is hope for me. A grown woman wants a real man. And there are thousands and thousands and thousand of women, mature women, beautiful women, who want a man like that, someone who will take care of them, someone who they can trust no matter what happens – these women, like the real man, are a rarity, but they are there and usually find each other, they are far more lovely than the little girls – and when these people meet, they’re relationship surpasses attraction, these people become soul mates and stay through sickness and in health – good times and bad. This is the type of relationship we had. You followed my lead, but now your following the lead of your slutty, drunk, childish girlfriends.

Your peers have influenced you in the worst way, and what was once a special soul, a beautiful human being inside and out, delicate but strong, has become nothing but dirty laundry. Now instead of selflessness its lust, “hey babe, hey hun, chill out, peace out, hey dudes" etc., etc., and all the other "chill" shit Jason taught you, I fought for 4 years to help you but a guy who abuses you and cheats on you teaches you more. Now I don't see anything beyond your "chillness", and nobody else wants to because the only reason they hang out with you is because of THE WAY THAT YOU LOOK. All the compliments, the obsession with your appearance, the belly ring, the crying to me about Jason pressuring you about your flabby stomach; you're right you've changed, changed for the worse, and you want someone to appreciate you for the wrong qualities apparently, started blending in with the scene I described, the outside. You were once altruistic, devoted your time to soup kitchens, alleviating others suffering, listening, volunteering your compassion and understanding, even if it was just to make people smile... Life was a “bowl of cherries,” you had a pair of green pants with a few stains. Now you’ve got a whole wardrobe of pick ups and hand me downs and innuendo flirtations, all about you appearances, and your bambina bullshit.

You child.

You find more amazement in learning about marijuana than you do about significant, noble things. You left a creative sensitive compassionate guy – you left him for a boy that can kick a ball into a net. You have become more impressed with a soccer jock who needs you to correct his English papers, remember, he’s “only smart matched with you.”

So you can go off and see for yourself the difference I speak of. You can go and get your heart broken the way I have. Dump him for someone else or he’ll dump you for someone else. Either way, learn the heard way, and chase after the guys who "challenge" you. Like a feather in the wind, that’s the way attraction works. Do you understand?

I’m tired of crying, suffering, wondering, and hoping for your sake. That’s the real type of fighting – the type of dedication and soulful redemption we seek in the deepest of places. No words of mine could ever supplant your understanding. They are unnoticed, unrewarded, even scoffed at by you. You laugh but mostly ignore – take it as a plead, not a truth. Your eyes glaze over, wisp away on your train of content that you have “a friend” in me and a “lover” in him, both misconceptions, especially the later. You tell your “girliez” you are my friend like it’s a goddamn prize in a popularity contest. And the paradox becomes how to communicate with you on why I cannot be friends with you. Again words, thoughts emotions, song, poetry are all fruitless to you. You only respond to jealousy, an emotion you have nearly forced me to succumb to, and I can not in good conscious spend my time making you jealous or being jealous, a decent human being does not live in envy. And that is why it hurts, that is why I can’t be your “friend.” That is why I don’t know what to say on the phone when you want to be friends.

Think about it, if you’re even capable.

You are drifting into a different life, a 5 year long phase of emptiness and immaturity, you abandon your past self and the real man who “reminds you of your dead mother.” Never mind I cradled you in my arms and comforted you when it happened, when others told me to leave, no, when they weren’t even there, Including your father and stepmother who told you to get over her death. Tell me, where were the jocks when she died. Where were your girliez. Where was everyone. Even your grandparents were gone. Never mind your father called me up crying asking for advice as to what to do when she died. Nevermind I helped you blow out the birthday candles on your cake, and covered you in the rain, I fought to bring down the walls, every day of my life for nearly 4 years, the walls you proudly proclaim are tumbling because some jockcock has challenged you. You listened to your 700 online acquaintances when they told you to dump me and fuck me over. What in God's name did I ever do to you or them to deserve such a verdict.

So much for faith, so much for self-reliance, so much for “love,” so much for strength.

I’m too young, I’m too passionate, too healthy, but I’m too tired, goddamn tired of girls like you and your fucking games and formulas, as an old friend recently told me, why go though it? To get a girl like you again? It is no longer worth it to even try to make you understand. Worn on the outside like a snake skin, I need to shed, not change. Rebirth in journey, not in spirit. You need to make deeper changes, unfortunately. You were abused as a child – you will carry around that baggage your whole life. And I was willing to work with you through the long run, help you and support you in every way I and only I can. But enough about you. This time I’ll do it this time for myself. I trusted you, fought for you, and thought that we could date others, but keep that special bond, nothing else would compare. We would always love each other. But then you told me you “don’t love me anymore.” I realized you’re not capable of loving. My “not knowing who I am” was a false confession brought on by your psychological manipulations and my heartbreak. But it is all over now. I know exactly who I am.

It’s done. There’s nothing to reflect about – especially in regard to you.

I am damn proud of who I am and what I believe in. The fact that no one will convince me otherwise is a testament to my strength, confidence and security, the type of things that blow away in a stiff wind with the tempting whispers around your little-girl ears.

So you can go on and say you “love” Jason, and tell yourself that you “don’t love “James” anymore to your family. They’re all screwed up anyways. Your mother, god bless her soul in heaven looks down on us and knows differently. She knows how many girls Jason has had sexual relations with, how he cheats on you, how he spent a year of his life, persisting and persisting and persisting, while he knew we were together, knowing we loved each other, he kept on persisting at you using his little boy tactics, and as soon as you had sex with him, he started cheating on you. Isn’t that textbook. You are too stupid to see that. So you went ahead and cheated on him, but worst of all, you now say that you love him now more than you loved me. No words can mine can describe how wrong you are and how sad that makes me. But it is all over. No more conversation, no more slutty teasing, your games with me are over. It is all over now.

And you know what, I have never touched another girl in my life, I have kissed one girl once this past December. All the others were lies, fruitless, lies, Amsterdam, lies, Juliet, like the song was a lie, because I care about you so much, but I’m tired of the games and jealousy. It’s not who I am. I can't play danger, I need a sensitive compassionate woman who will appreciate for who I am, and you can't do that, Time will heal my heart but teach you that behind words are meanings, and like all the other little girls in the world, by the time you grow up, all the real men the best of them, will be all taken by girls who grew up before you did.

So you can go fuck your jockcock "boyfriend" for all I care. You know what, for the first time, I don’t give a shit. Go rent your apartment in Venice this week and fuck him long and fuck him good. Betray your father and move to Ohio! I want you to give everything up for him, break every rule, change everything about yourself. That way, when he breaks your heart you will burn and go through the same miserable catharsis you have forced me to go through. You’re his flavor of the year. He's slept with over a dozen girls, he's said "I love you" to each and every one of them... You're just a footnote in his life. So you can sculpt your body tighter and tighter, sclupt away, go running and pierce all parts of your body and spend 3 hours a day straightening your hair and doing your makeup for him there is bound to be another body out there for him. Did you honestly think that you were the one? Do you honestly think lucky #14 is going to be the one? There are bound to prettier girls and one day, a beautiful woman, inside and out, for him when he changes his ways, in very long run, women will even compete for him. Keep blocking me from facebook, but remember to keep sending me those giggity emails, I’m just a tally to your list, another faceless name, so keep sending me your travel email updates with your bubbly, fake sentences detailing how wonderful your new life is and how much you hated the girl you were. We’ll see how long that lasts....

* * *

When you were 15 years old and I was 17, we went deep into the park and into the woods and I inscribed our names on the log and gave you that promise ring. I taught you something special. We taugh each other something very special, commitment, precious tears of innocense and youth, and unbound faith and trust in each of our young hearts for better or for worse. And there were no games or corruption or the festered need to impress anyone or portray ourselves happier that we were. It was just that moment and it continued for years. You learned that there was hope in the world beyond the abuse in your household and that hope made you strong. Now I teach you somethign else... one day, 5 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, you will change for the better, you'll grow up, revert to your pure, past self, and realize the world is filled with nothing but trash and dirty laundry. Scumbag asshole jocks are a dime a dozen. You'll realize that love is the stuff that keeps people together through the hardest of times when attraction and passion are nowhere. When you're week and scared and helpless love will keep you strong, the type of love that isn't just muttered at a height of an orgasm. You'll realize the jocks you dated just used you as arm candy, nothing more, nothing less. And they'll laugh at you or ignore you when you cry... and you will grow out of your phase, your childish curiosities and temptations will expire, memories will haunt you, ironically you're dog will have died but you'll return, dirtied up, using me as your crutch, you'll 'a come knocking at my door. You'll love the innocent, caring, passionate women you were when you were 15. The makeup will wear off and the ditry sex will lose its value. You'll realize the world can sometimes be a dark and lonely place. That there are few men willing to guide you and lead you and protect you out of those woods and into a fulfilling, happy and successful life. And when you realize this, you will be wise.
I’m the one's that sorry now.
Because when you get there, I'll be gone.

You swallow that a while, █████.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

The German Backpacker.


SION, SWITZERLAND.
Switzerland's supposed vastness frightens a foreigner, but its geography, mountains aside, is simple and the trains which traverse its cantons are strikingly effiecient - in a few hours you can cross the entire country. With an youth pass, approximately 250 dollars for two weeks, you can ride its trains indefinitely, exploring its towns, cities, valleys and countryside.

My program gave me the pass and a free weekend, so I decided to take a quick train to Geneva to catch the auto show. I stayed overnight in a small french town called "Sion." The story follows from my hostel there.
I waited at the counter for 15 minutes, then entered a frenchie dressed in all black, smelling of cigarettes, with an expression of a sad puppy dog, worried I would scold him for being late. He said something in french, then german, then english. Unlike Italian-switzerland, I immediately notice more reception, more friendliness, people are less matter of fact, not so much kind as gentle. I went to the bathroom to wipe all the yogurt I spilled in my backpack. Yogurt is cheap and convienent in Old Europe, but has a saran wrap cover, and as a result, is not the best to stuff in a bag amogst books.

I entered the 4 person hostel room, old orange blankets and bunkbeds. THe hostel was completely empty, save a few backpacker hangers on. Sunday night, in the dead middle of Swiss Winter, in a small town 3 hours southeast of Geneva. Thought to myself, is a sunday night and I don't have school tomorrow. In fact, Im three thousand away from everything I know. I felt free, but too free, the type of space-time feeling that made me miss having priorities and deadlines. I was grown up, and made a conscious decision to be so far away. What am I doing here. In this place. At this time. nostaliga took over. Back to reality, I scanned the room and there was a man scrunched overhimself snooring. Looking around 30 years old, couldn't tell if he was American or not. Appartenly, all the backpacking got the best of him and he fell asleep sitting in his bed, map and pack still on his shoulder.

It turns out his name is Herald, he is from East Berlin, Germany. and for the first time yet, I made a local friend. Story of Ticino, really, emersed in Lugano, and no significant deep convo, but meet a wandering German in the mountains... Harold is a 24 year old college student on "vacations," spending two weeks backpacking down throught Italy and Sardinia. I told him I wanted to see downtown and maybe grab a bite to eat. His stillness meant he wanted to go too.

The french receptionist with crazy black clown hair reccomended a place downtown, I expected ski-bums and swiss blonds and breweries, distilleries, what I got was an abandoned city block with one single french pizzaria. Herald and I acquiesced. Fate would bring us to more than just food.

Harold and I immediately started talking politics. His English was good and I tried to speak slowly so he could understand, often times i felt like i was going overboard, but he never gave indications except for facial expressions, though he did tell me he barely understands American Engligh but understood me quite well. but he often gave me a blank stare, the kind of stare that is ambigiuous between a. you look fucking ridiculous speaking so slowly - I understand what your saying or b. I am smiling because I don't know what you're saying - tis polite to smile.

Harold and I were both well educated young lads on a jouney, adept in political and sociological matters, and engaged with our surroundings, secure with our views, experienced in debate. Biggest difference was he was German and I was American.

He used the word "reunification" alot, often relating to the collapse of the BerlinWall. He struggled to produce vocabulary words, often pulling out one of a dozen pocket dictionaries. He was curious to a point, about the American political structure, but unsurprised at my confessions, again giving me that goofy ambiguous gaze. He understood archaic American concepts like the electoral college system. And he knew a hell of a lot more about America than I knew about Germany.

I have always wanted to tacklet Hitler with a German, but didn't know how to raise the subject. So Harold just went on talking about the division in America, especially related to Bush. It could be the language barrier but I do believe Europeans have an innocense to them about politics. The differences between the East Berlin and the West Berlin, however great, are nowhere as near as huge as the differences between West Kansas and East Harlem. These myopic sociocultural contrasts amaze europeans. And they haven't the slighest clue about how grand they are. Harold was fascinated by the "partisanship" in America. For in germany, ther are the christian democrats and the dems, slight difference really. Then he mentioned an incredible small minority of neo-nazis. There was my chance to bring up Hitler.

"some People in the US call Bush Hitler" I said.
Harold scoffed.
"that makes HItler's actions not as bad."
I asked him more bout the German conception of Hitler.
"We are ashamed of what happened, but we are tired of being labeled as the Hitler-generator country. We don't want to be remembered by this event."
Then it got really interesting...
"But I cannot, help being German. I was born here. I did not choose to be."
Harold began talking about how divided Germany was, how there was a subtle sense of shame about the country, their flag isn't as glorified, their history is debunked, the berlin wall collapsed, but its just a wall. Ideologies still burn in hearts and minds. families "don't fly german flags in their flowergardens." "If you see a guy with a germany flag on his shirt, you think it's wierd." Seeing all the swiss flags in switzerland, I can understand where he is coming from - but I found his observations so somber, so cynical, unfortunate. Could it be because he was from East Berlin. Or maybe his age. Is Germany really that confused, ashamed, lost.

We spoke about euthanasia, and eugenics, both words he had to look up to tell me about. Those were too of the most shameful acts of nazism, according to the Berliners. Harold was adament about a person's right to terminate his own life and I gently challenged that assertion, his moral stubborness, with the rhetorical quip, "what if that person is not able to make a decision." Harold put down his wine glass and gave me that gaze of his through those emo-german glasses, and mentioned the terry schiavo case. he helped me understand how poweful ameican politics were. Could I, could any of you, name one german moral issue today.

Up came Nietzche, and his "god is dead" assertion. Both Harold and I agreed it was missaplied by the German Socialists. Nietzche wan't a nazi, which led to another one of my realaizations. We both shared common conservative grounds. Whereas there was a form of German political correcntess, i.e. not allowed to appreciate romantic era poetry and art and music because it was a precursor to nazism, also in America we can not appreciate certain forms of literature because they are, well, a precursor to racism. To some, Naturally, anything from 1860-1930 in Germany was a cause of nazism. To others, anythign written by a white man in the 1940's does not include the necessary cultural obligation of the supressed black female. Harold was nostaligic for the culture, not the politics. He was a young leftist, simple in his decscription of foreign affairs, on common grounds with me on logic, different in our application of that logic. And he made such moros observations about the current situation in Berlin.

Such morose correlations between two travelers using the equivalent of a third grade vocabulary. Funny how that works.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

An American in Davos

By James O'Keefe

CommentaryPublished: 2/15/06

The Daily Targum

Weathering a storm dumping seven feet of snow on the Alps, my train ascended north into the alpine village of Davos, Switzerland, and I was amongst 2,500 delegates from 90 countries at the 35th World Economic Forum two weeks ago. Although there was the usual WEF schmoozing inside the conference room amongst global elites exchanging business cards, the talk of pervasive growth and highly-skilled labor in India and China was particularly ominous. With massive American trade deficits, declining domestic investment and its effect on American buying power, Western leaders with a stake in the United States were biting their nails and forecasting the greatest shift of global economic power the world has ever seen.

Among those I met were Swedish auto-part manufacturers losing their jobs to Imatra Kilsta of India. High-tech entrepreneurs from New York spoke of how difficult it was to raise venture capital for their "ideas." One software engineer from Silicon Valley lamented on moving to Lake Tahoe and taking up snowplowing where "[management] can't move the white stuff out east."

While my ears and eyes would typically glaze over vocabulary words like "deficits" and "currency" to topics like the Danish cartoon strips, which are far more sociologically captivating, everyone was worried about the emerging skilled workforce in India and China.

As I write this now, headlines in The Wall Street Journal Europe and London Financial Times read "American Giants Push for Nuclear Sales to India" and "Toyota Expands in U.S. as GM and Ford Retreat."

Monday, the WSJ reported the U.S. trade deficit at a record $725.75 billion - some 7 percent of our gross domestic product - and deficits with China alone are rising 25 percent in one year to $201.62 billion.

Some commentators think this is a practical joke. "I have a 'trade deficit' with my grocery store; victuals are exchanged for scraps of American green paper," said economist Walter WilliamsWilliams.

Cute analogy, but tell it to the central banks that are overflowing with "scraps of American green paper" and treasury bonds we have no intention of paying back. The east is in talks of developing its own currency, following in the footsteps of the European Union with the Euro - the first European currency since the time of the Romans. The International Monetary Fund hints Asian banks are backing up their fortunes with gold, and this week's reports indicate emerging markets in Singapore and Hong Kong acquired western companies at $9.3 billion in 2005. Meanwhile, our investors are pouring money into the east for better returns at America's expense. Since we import everything from China, a future decline in the value of our currency would be devastating for our way of life and on U.S. consumption - which the world economy depends heavily on.

The inevitable increase of the accompanying interest rates to offset hard times would have worse long-term consequences for our stocks, inflated by get-rich-quick-pitches to management about exporting the whole caboodle to India and saving pennies on the bottom line of the balance sheet. Outsourcing is justified by the remainder of "high-tech" and "service jobs," but skilled labor abroad is now jeopardizing those.

Our de facto economic strategy should not just be reducing costs, nor should it be protectionism. American management should be creating value for the customer, and our government should be pursuing a long-term accountable economic policy of balanced trade, with an emphasis on high-technology innovation. President George W. Bush is taking only one step in the right direction in his State of the Union Address, by putting emphasis on the latter.

Whether or not our current trend of outsourcing will present a crisis will be debated among economists. Not even the Europeans deny America is currently the most powerful, influential nation the world has ever seen. We boast an $11 trillion GDP and consume 40 percent of the world's output. We have the strongest military on earth, which defeated Hitler and is now spreading democracy in regions that stone women alive. Our art, music and literature currently dominate the Eastern and Western hemispheres the same way blue jeans and rock 'n' roll brought down the Berlin Wall. I've seen long lines at McDonalds in Geneva, heard Kelly Clarkston blast throughout Milan train stations and, on Sunday, saw American snowboarders win gold and silver medals in Torino, Italy. But after attending the WEF in Davos and seeing first-hand our remaining highly-skilled engineers running to the ski slopes - pun intended - it is disconcerting to think all that power and influence could soon change.

James O'Keefe is a Rutgers College senior, studying abroad in Switzerland.

NJO: Originally published in The Daily Targum and later posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Print the Cartoons

An email sent to the staff of the Centurion:

The Rutgers Centurion is the paper that put a picture of a black Rutgers icon on its cover with a phrase "GLORY TO STALIN." at the university with the highest african american concentration and ratios in the country. Not only did all of you applaud this decision and others like it, many people outside Rutgers did - Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard did, so did G. Gordon Liddy and Ronald Reagan's son when I personally handed him a copy at Radio America last summer. So did hundreds of marginalized conservatives at Rutgers. We did not only because nobody would or could do it. the weekly standard couldn't get away with it. The real reason we did or at least I did print that was because IT WAS TRUE.

BY doing so, (hopefully) we created debate, we intiated the gears of thought in rusty, indoctrinated minds, got them thinking a bit about the Soviet Union, about the cold war, about racial injustice; and no, we walk no fine line in danger of becoming the medium, our journalistic integrity is canyons away from that of the medium - They are a piece of shit; a rag and don't put yourselves down by making a comparison. But Kian and I did The Robeson spot spontaneously, I believe, because we knew that we were balancing, not dominating, in the same way a prosocuter would allow the defense team to pursue justice. Liberals professors and deans were furious by our progress. In the same way Islam has rules against drawing Mohammed, the pulpits in the Rutgers ivory tower prohibit speaking out against their beloved Robeson. This was far more polemic than any cartoons.

In that same issue, Kian authored an excellent article entitled "Condi Rice: the Black women liberals love to hate;" it was so good, it caught the eye of a young journalist Justine and I met in DC and he wrote about The Centurion at Salon.com. That Salon.com article brought us national publicity. At an ISI conference in Princeton last summer, whordes of brilliant intellectuals, including Princeton professors, were huddled together laughing at the stunts we pulled. Some had even heard of us, through the grapevine, some had even read that Salon.com article.
Again, stunts far more polemic than cartoons.

In another one of our proud, super-polemic moments, Jeff's awesome idea, we printed a picture of the towers under attack; a very taboo image. All of us supported that decsion, because deep down in parts of our conservative hearts we can't expain, we can't stand the thought of letting those people dictate our architecture, brand taboos on our buildings, our city, our culture, our media. Moreover, nothing discusts us more than cencoring their destruction, not rebuilding taller and higher, maybe even building the same. When the letter attacked us for sensationalism; we responded with a sarcastic "I'm sorry." This was great, but far more polemic than printing cartoons.

People don't seem to understand in europe right now it is war betweeen hemispheres. The populations of Italy, Spain, Britain, France, to a certain degree Switzerland, are all declining as a result of feminist single parenting, islamic immigrants are quickly taking their place. The peaceful Danish consolates and being burned down, their products boycotted. Liberals/Europeans are in a panty twist becaues in general, they hate organized relgion, but they're all worried about hurting minorities' feelings; and in Denmark although the prime minister hasn't apologized, Chiriac has apologized and criticized the danes, who were meanwhile holding candlelight vigils, a candlelight vigil, why their consulate was being burned to the ground... in Europe everyone's afraid of the reprisal.

If you lived in Europe, you should be afraid.

But we (you), don't live in Europe; we live in the United States of America. We are adults living in civilized societies; we do not murder and pillage whenever our sensibilities are offended. We don't negioate with terrorists, we don't tolerate violence and arson in response to speech. We're a funny people that way. Our founding, our consitution, our currency is based on christian principlies, not islamic principles. We have earned our right to go to colleges like Rutgers, and publish papers like The Centurion. In God we Trust. Hyperbole aside, If you don't like that get the fuck out of our free and historically prosperous land.

Go back to where you came from.

Where they burn and stone women alive, go to Europe where the economies are planned, go to European union where the beurocracy is so bad the permits are obtained with bribes; where citizens won't stand up for themselves or their rights to go as they please, purchase as they please, innovate as they please; stand up for their culture and peaceful way of life against an islamofascist bayonette; a pervasive fear that I can sense in the air even in Lugano. The same people that whine about our imperialism are now hiding under their beds afraid to build tall buildings, afraid to speak out against murder, afraid to defend their borders and way of life.

To those of you who are afraid of the New Jersey Solidarity Groups, you will be yielding to the authors of this post, WHO ARE ALL TALK.

http://santacruz.indymedia.org/newswire/display/17526/index.php

in the words of W. Bush, "Bring 'em on." Fuck 'em. Print the cartoons.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

They Can't Take that Away from Me
Four years ago exactly this past Tuesday the 14th, when I was 17 years old and a senior in high school, I put on Calvin Klein Cologne, apricot chapstick I bought from Walgreens, and lit a cranberry candle in the morning at about 5:30 AM. I drove to school in my spitfire, top down, and into the parking lot at 6:30 Am. I took the single yellow rose I bought the night previous and went into the high school cafeteria and hid it behind one of the chairs. I sat and waited until the Mr. D█████ dropped off her daughter in that scary looking oldsmobile, and I ran into the bathroom across from her locker. When she came out I confronted her, and told I her I had something to show her in the cafeteria. I went with her into the cafeteria and gave her the rose. I asked her to be my girlfriend. It was Valentines’s Day 2002. That night, and later than month, I lit that candle every day, I put on that chapstick and used that cologne, even for the night of my part as lead in the high school musical in March. I danced and sang and acted song after song after scene after scene, and in-between scenes of the final amazing performance I hooked up with the girl that said yes back stage. (It was my first kiss). I knew nothing about the world, I knew no politics, I wasn’t as intelligent or as worldly or as experienced or as strong as I am now. I lived in the protective bubble that was high school suburbia, ate the chicken and potatoes my mother made me each night before she tucked me in, and borrowed 7 dollars from my father to go see a movie with my friends.

But God did it feel good. I had the girl in my arms giving me my first kiss, I had an audience of 1000 people behind the curtain waiting to hear me sing, and the classic sports car in the parking with a rebuilt engine, waiting to take me to the cast party in all of its glory. The college applications were out the door. Prom and a summer of fun were ahead. Everything was in order. All my silly teenage dreams had come true.

Fast forward past college: I left for Switzerland last month, I grabbed the bag in the corner of my closet with some chapstick and cologne in it, not realizing or caring or thinking about the significance of the aromas inside, just seeing that it was chapstick and I’ll need chapstick when I’m skiing in the alps, and I’ve run out of cologne at Rutgers, I grabbed it and stuffed it in my suitcase. Wouldn’t ya know, that cranberry candle was in it too.

4 years, 4 days and 21 hours after I religiously used those items, in the privacy of my apartment 3,000 miles away, and even father in spirit from that high school journey, I just felt it all over again. I lit that candle and Like a tidal wave, I heard the audience clapping, my grandfather in the audience shouting my name in pride, I felt the innocent 15 year old girl melt in my arms, her curly hair dangling from her head, staring up at me in awe, and all we had to do was smile at each other to be happy, we were so dumb and naïve, but it felt so good. I remember the night in the spitfire in Ridgewood, I remember my room completely dark with that candle the night before prom, it all comes back to you like a tidal wave, like a time capsule, and what through the years was nostaligia, then depression because you missed it so bad, then forgetting about it and making better or different memories in college; now just smiling – just peace.

We live in a cynical world now, where the hell do I start. Jealousy, Girls are nothing like their 15 year old counterparts, instead of 7 dollars for a movie I think about paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for grad school….

Is ignorance bliss, do looks and status and intelligence really matter. Because there was nothing rational about that feeling – it was just awesome, and we really do get caught up in a race of feelings and desires we can’t possible win.

The smell of the cologne, chapstick and candle gave me pause, as it should. I debated on whether or not to contact that girl Tuesday, it was quite the calculus and I thought of ranting about things that piss me off, but I felt this was more fitting on that anniversary – in short that girl doesn’t think of anything of February 14th anymore - her eyes have glazed over since, her head doesn’t dangle in awe up at me anymore, her hair isn’t as curly anymore. And in too much complexity and emotion to describe succinctly, she left me for another man. Maybe the cynical world got to her, maybe I became cynical.. The reasons are petty. In my heart I’ll never forget her and the way we were, and when I’m married with someone else I’d say the exact same thing. And in my heart, on the 14th, I knew what I would say if I did contact her, I would recite the lines from my solo in that musical four years ago. There she was, a member of the chorus in the wings of the theater melting as she watched me sing the classical lines to my lead counterpart, lines I couldn’t possible understand until having lived through them.

“The Way you Hold your Hat
The way you sip your Tea
The memory of all that
No, no they can’t take that away from me
The way your smile just beams
The way you sing of key
The way you haunt my dreams
No no they can’t take that away from Me
We may never never meet again on that bumpy road to love
Still I’ll always always keep the memory of
The way you hold your knife
The way we danced til three
The way you changed my life
No, no they can’t take that away from me
No, they can’t take that away from me…”

I guess it’s an analogy for all of life. There I was, a 17 year old dumb and naïve teenager, oh so happy, singing those incredibly, simple, sad and excruciatingly lovely lines about loss, as good as an actor as I think I was, I had no idea what they meant until now. And there is the scent of the chapstick bringing the memory of being on stage back. All the memories and people and moments blend together, and I begin to understand what time means. As I look over those lines and how their meaning has changed a tear comes to my eye…

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.

Illiteracy Count: 22

1. spitfire
2. 6:30 Am
3. the Mr. D█████
4. Mr. D█████ dropped off her daughter
5. Valentines's
6. oldsmobile
7. later than month
8. . (It was my first kiss).
9. car in the parking with
10. and Like a tidal wave
11. spitfire
12. I remember my room... [Badly constructed run-on sentence]
13. nostaligia
14. We live in a cynical world now, where the hell do I start.
15. Jealousy, Girls are [Also just a badly constructed sentence]
16. Is ignorance bliss, do looks... [Question mark?]
17. can't possible win
18. became cynical.. [Period or ellipsis?]
19. couldn't possible understand
20. way you sing of key
21. those incredibly, simple,
22. about loss, as good an actor [Period after "loss", new sentence, capital letter]