Tag Archives: Hardangervidda

Narrator – A man without a face

Note: this post is a study on trust and betrayal; the people and situations in this post are fictitious [1].

On November 9, 1989 my main contribution to the work of Raven began at 8 pm in the evening. We were in West Germany near Bonn. On the eight hours of news, an item was announced regarding the spokesman for the East German Government who replied to a question by journalists when free travel for East German inhabitants would be possible, after some hesitation with: “Right now”.

[2]

This was the signal for Raven to book our flights to West Berlin. That evening we practised my new role for several weeks. Due to my years with my beloved in Sweden and Norway, I could flawlessly speak American with an East Coast accent from the vicinity of Washington.

The next morning Raven in the role of high employee of a German Ministry of Justice and I as high American officer travelled to West Berlin. It was my first time in an airplane. During the flight I looked in amazement at the apparent landscape that was formed by the clouds. This rarefied world reminded me of the fjords in Norway and of the ever repeating clouds during the day trip with my American beloved across the Hardangervidda [3] . Did we live together now in this dream landscape?

[4]

Upon arriving at the airport Tempelhof in Berlin we moved to the Kaufhaus des Westens to buy additional clothes for our work in East Berlin.

That night Raven and I crossed the just opened border post to East Berlin together with East Germans who returned home after visiting West Berlin for the first time after more than 28 years. We took two rooms in a hotel near Unter den Linden.

The next morning we visited the headquarters of the East German secret service in Lichtenberg area. Upon arrival we introduced ourselves as representatives of German and U.S. Government agencies who wished to ensure that the archives were not handed over to wrong persons. We were welcomed by three heads of units who were in charge of the service after the resignation of the political leader a few days before. One of the heads of unit looked exactly like the sailor from Rostock that Raven had met some years earlier in Nyhavn in Copenhagen. I understood that this head of unit was Fox.

[5]

After a morning of meeting it was decided that we were allowed to make an inventory of the archives under the supervision of the heads of unit. Raven and Fox would carry out the detailed inventory, and another head and I would supervise as second party. The office of the previous political leader was given to me as temporary workspace.

That afternoon the general overview of the archives in the main building and the outbuildings was made. The next four weeks Raven and Fox prepared the detailed inventory. I suggested a lot of awkward and painful questions about the regional archives: during these weeks I studied the answers.

At the end of the investigation, a fivefold reports was made; one report for each head of unit and a report for Raven and for me. Everything was ready well before Christmas. During the period of Christmas shopping, Raven and I left West Berlin under different names by plane toward Frankfurt.

Later, I suspected that Raven and Fox had adapted the archives as much as possible to their advantage – the pages that could not bear the light were gone or replaced by innocent documents. Fox and Raven had prepared this operation very well.

When in January 1990 the people of Berlin invaded the building of this service, the archives about Raven and Fox were in full order thanks to their loyal cooperation within the limits of the law. During later investigation no one could find any irregularities in their actions during the Cold War.

[6]

A year later I met Fox another times in Vienna.

[1] Although the title of this blog corresponds to: Wolf, Markus, Man without a Face – The Autobiography of Communism’s greatest Spymaster. New York: Random House, 1997, there is no link at all between the author – and the content – of this autobiography and Raven, Fox and the Narrator and their fictional activities. The writer of this blog has no indication and/or knowledge of adjusting, cleaning up and obscuring information from East German archives.

[2] Source image: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Mauer

[4] Source image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud

[5] Source image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_fox

[6] Source image: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerium_f%C3%BCr_Staatssicherheit

Narrator – back to the civilised world 2

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After the day trip on the plateau of Hardangervidda – a National Park in Norway – my beloved and I travelled in one day to Oslo. In Gol [1] we visited our last medieval stave church in Norway. Actually, it is a copy of the original that once stood on this site and now is placed in an open air museum near Oslo. It struck us that this church was much lusher than the stave churches that we had seen before – we were approaching the civilised world.

[2]

From Gol to Oslo the road became fuller and busier, we approached a medium-sized city. The quiet floating on the roads in our Goddess [3] was finished, now traffic required attention again.

Upon our arrival in Oslo we first put the tent in the city camp-ground. Then we visited the Norwegian Folk Museum where we saw the original stave church from Gol again. We noticed that the interior of the traditional Norwegian houses was always the same and always different. The design of the furniture and the household was different, but inside the house the objects were always positioned in the same place. This created an immediate recognition for every resident and visitor, while the individuality of the residents was shown. A unity in multitude and multitude in the same design.

[4]

The next day my beloved and I visited the Frogner Park [5] in which a sculpture collection made by the Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland [6] is exhibited. In the Centre of the park stands a monolithic column composed of intertwined human figures. My lover was deeply touched by the similarity with the stave churches and by the intertwined worlds of people portrayed. He thought the column looked like a forefinger reminding us that we will once pass Heaven’s Gate together.

[7]

I told my beloved a parable which my father has heard of his ancestors:

“When I was a child, my parents taught me and said:” Let Your heart carry our lives! For peace will increase in days and nights of Your life. Our benefit and fidelity will not leave You, You carry them, breathes them and the world shares in Your peace [8]. Hereinafter my father began to recite the first verses of the īśāvāsya upaniṣad: “That is overall. This is overall. Overall comes from overall. Take away overall from overall and thus remains overall. Peace, peace, peace”.

In a pitch dark period of my life I have violated the trust of my parents. My heart was cold and empty, my fidelity to the peace in the world changed in hatred and I enjoyed myself in wrongdoing that I committed to fill my heart with vanity. In one night I set the forest around a village on fire, the wind and the fire gods spread the flames. I shot on everything and everyone who wanted to escape the flames. I was happy! [9]

The next morning I saw that everything of value for filling my empty heart with vanity was turned into ashes and corpses by the fire. The stench of rotting and the flies remained. Hungry and empty I moved on. On the road I filled my stomach with food and my heart with compassion. Kindliness, detachment and joy came into view again.

Years later I shared my food with several hungry beggars. They thanked me with the words: “All in All, may you realize that Our fidelity and benefit cannot leave You”. Via the words of this passer-by, my heart felt again the continuing benefit and fidelity that I always carry and breath wherever I go”.

After this parable my father taught me the meaning of the key word “realize” that is composed of “re”, “all”, “ïśe” [10], whereby “realize” origins from honouring “again and again”, “all and everything”, “in Your omnipotence”.

Wherever You go and whatever You do, the benefit and fidelity will not leave You”.

At the end of this parable my beloved said that everyone and everything is enlightened; we must realize it constantly. I still had a long way to go. Fortunately, there was benevolence and joy in my life again; detachment would follow soon.

After the visit to the Frogner Park we walked a few streets in the Embassy district where a friend of ours lived with a group in a beautiful traditional wooden house. During our visit we heard worrying news from Amsterdam. Many of our friends and former lovers suffered from a mysterious illness whereby they quickly lost weight; the disease fully exhausted them. The doctors had no cure and no answer; at the West Coast of America several distant friends were already deceased by this mystery.

When retrieving the post-restante at the post office in Oslo, my beloved read in a letter from his sister that his mother was very ill. During a phone call with his sister, he heard that his mother had less than a year to live.

Although we felt at home in Oslo, our concern about the fate of our friends in Amsterdam and the illness of the mother of my lover overshadowed our stay in this city. After a week we travelled to Stockholm via a water rich area. At the beginning of autumn we arrived in Gamla Stan. The leaves on the trees at the water front showed their red, brown, yellow glow. That autumn and winter was the last time my lover and I were carefree together.

[11]

[2] Source image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol,_Norway

[3] Our white Citroën DS

[4] Source image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Museum_of_Cultural_History

[7] Source image: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigelandpark

[8] The first sentences of this parable are a free rendering of chapter 3 of the Proverbs of Salomo in the Old Testament.

[9] See the last part of book 1 of the Mahābhārata where at the fire in the Khandava forest, Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa shoot arrows with joy to all that leaves the forest. Sources: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/maha/index.htm boek 1 Section CCXXVII and further; Katz, Ruth Cecily, Arjuna in the Mahābhārata: Where Krishna is, there is victory. Delhi: Molital Banarsidass Publishers, 1990, p. 71 – 84; in her study Ruth Katz can hardly explain these crimes done by Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa.

[10] This is the locative of Īśa. In Sanskrit Īśa means amongst others “God in Heaven”, “someone with omnipotence”. The sound of īśā resembles “ich” – the German pronoun first person singular.

[11] Source image: http://www.communityofsweden.com/photos/photo/?photo=41411. This image is not included in the Creative Common Licence; see the conditions for use via the following hyperlink: http://www.communityofsweden.com/footer/editorial/community-of-sweden/terms-of-service/

Narrator – back to the civilised world

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From the empty gate to the North Cape we travelled in the eternal light. No night, no darkness, no visions of murdered villagers who wanted to escape from the nightly fire in the forest, no vigils for the breath of the deceased, only the constant day where the sun did not set. This peaceful world without nightly phantoms was new to me. Finally I could sleep quietly.

My beloved was in euphoria about passing the Empty Gate – his here and now was boundlessly connected with the universe. At the North Cape he did not need any sleep; he rested peacefully sitting on the ground while I slept.

[1]

The outward journey to the empty gate in the north was straightforward. The return to the civilised world included many detours along the winding coast of the fjords in Norway. From the North Cape my lover studied the endlessly intertwined worlds described in the Avatamsaka Sūtra [2].

My beloved was deeply moved by the abundance of descriptions of these intertwined worlds. Dumbfounded he read that there had existed many Buddhas in the past and in the future unmentionable Buddhas would follow according to this sūtra. Until that moment my lover with his American Protestant Christian background knew but one god. After he had studied Buddhism, that one god was replaced by Buddha.

The road to the empty gate led to a unity including the comprehensive Buddhist universe, but now this sūtra proclaimed the existence of infinitely intertwined universes in which many, many Buddhas were involved. His dismay was complete, just as complete as my amazement about the eternal days and about the infinitely intertwining separation of mountain landscape and sea along the coasts of the Norwegian fjords.

[3]

During our return along the Norwegian coast, the nights with my dark phantoms came back almost unnoticed. I kept the vigil while my beloved slept. In the northern ports and places I was an attraction – not many people arrived with a blue-dark complexion. Fortunately we were in transit; my mask of an idol evaporated on leaving the place.

After a few weeks of study in the Avatamsaka Sūtra, my lover was used to the intertwining of the universes, but he also read that the universes are mirrored in each other and thereby affect each other. He could understand this intellectually when he looked at the water and the air in the fjords, but these thoughts were inconsistent with his cultural background. His euphoria and happiness after passing the empty gate was shocked upon reading this sūtra.

[3a]

The descriptions of Indra’s Net [4] brought some clarification in the confusion that had arisen after studying the abundance of intertwined worlds, but he experienced this model as artificial. The euphoria and liberation of the Northern Cape changed in care and doubt about an infinite winding road that my lover could never finish during his life. A parable of my father – about an endless life with many rebirths in which living beings in many manifestations (from microbe to enlightened people and gods via individual universes) followed the road to a blissful existence – gave no rest. My beloved uttered gloomy comments upon the description of the 32 abodes “from hells, titans, hungry ghosts, animals, people, gods in 22 categories to five spheres of infinite space, consciousness and emptiness” [5] in the long discourses of Buddha.

From the Sognefjord we decided to travel to Oslo via a direct route along stave churches. First we visited the stave church in Kaupanger and then the oldest stave church in Urnes with a crucifix whereof part of the original paint came from Afghanistan according to the guide. The dark night was inside the Church with glimmer from above – outside there was the excess of the summer light.

[6]

My beloved and I made a day trip on the plateau of Hardangervidda [7]. To the North the clouds and the landscape appeared to go on endlessly. My lover compared the repeating clouds with the intertwined universes from the Avatamsaka Sūtra. He wondered how we can achieve the enlightenment of all the intertwined universes. I indicated that the clouds and the worlds can take care for themselves; the wind is the same everywhere – ultimately there are no two kinds of wind [8]. After my remark my beloved started to beam again; his concerns and confusion were gone. My nightly phantoms remained.

[9]

The joy of my beloved remained in my life until the following spring he returned to his parents ‘ house.

[1] Source image: http://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordkapp

[2] See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatamsaka_Sutra. De full name of this sūtra is: “ Mahāvaipulya Buddhāvataṃsaka Sūtra ( महावैपुल्यबुद्धावतंसकसूत्र)” or “The extensive marvellously decorated garland of flower-buds sūtra”, wherein “Avatamsaka” means amongst others “marvellously shining garland” and “sūtra” stands for “transference of the good”.

[3] Source image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geirangerfjord.jpg

[3a] Source image: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sognefjord

[4] See also: Origo, Jan van, Who are you – a survey into our existence, part 1. Amsterdam: Omnia – Amsterdam Publisher, 2012, p. 65 – 67

[5] The Long Discourses of the Buddha. Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications, 1995 p. 38-39

[6] Source image: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabkirche_Urnes

[8] See: Cleary, Thomas, Book of Serenity – One Hundred Zen Dialogues. Bosten: Shambhala, 1998 p. 110.

[9] Source image: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardangervidda