Dear Reader, well, we need some comic relief badly here. The only thing I can think of is a joke I heard when the Berlin Wall was coming down. I was in Berlin; I had just learned to speak German and I was enjoying telling this joke. As a child I never got to enjoy being listened to. I never got the feeling anyone wanted to listen or that anyone would laugh if I said something funny. Hmmm... now not sure if I should tell this joke. Most people won't get ii, I fear. Forewarned. In East Germany the leader at this turn of events was a man named Mr. H. I don't like to say his name. The joke goes like this: Mr. H dies. Because he was a bad man, he has to go to Hell. The only thing is, there is an East Hell and a West Hell. (Just as on earth there was an East and a West Germany.) So, when he goes down towards the underworld and arrives at the gate, the gatekeeper asks him to choose. Would he like to go to the East or the West part of Hell. Mr. H thinks for a few seconds and then declares to the gatekeeper, "well, might as well stick to the East." The gatekeeper then bids the former head of the German Democratic Republic to follow him to the Eastern part of Hell. "But first, Mr. H, please understand," says the gatekeeper to the underworld, "we much first go through the Western part of Hell before we arrive in the Eastern part of Hell. So, then they started off. And it was truly horrible. Everywhere there was the acrid smell of burning flesh. There were people screaming and suffering unspeakable tortures such as thumbscrews, needles pushed under the fingernails and other horrors too terrible to describe. Mr. H was becoming more and more terrified with each step. Finally after a long time, the gatekeeper approached another iron gate. He banged on the gate and it slowly opened. When Mr. H stepped through the gate and emerged on the other side, slowly the smoke cleared from his eyes and he could dimly see after he had wiped the tears from his eyes when the burning stopped. Suddenly all around him on the floor he saw people sitting and playing cards with each other. He was more shocked than relieved. Someone sitting near the gate looked up and said, "Oh, there you are, it's you. Finally made it, huh?" Mr. H was still speechless. The man who spoke to him then realized that the former head of state was confused and finally said to him. "Ah, you know, Mr. H, East Hell isn't really anything like West Hell. We often run out of coal and the fire goes out and brimstone gets cold; sometimes we don't have any thumbscrews available and needles have to be imported and are very expensive. But we are writing a new 500 year plan that should adjust for it. Never fear... in the meantime, just have a seat..." ===================================== So, this was perhaps the first joke I told in German and it was a grand success and got a lot of laughs. Now, I am thinking about this problem. In my life there was one theme that ran through my whole childhood and adult life and was very, very constant, up until now. Somehow, finding out that my mother was a floozy and that everything that had happened in my childhood suddenly made sense and that there was an explanation. For some reason the guilt factor has receded. I told my friend today that whereas before I had experienced maybe 50 or 60 percent guilt feeling underlying my thoughts and feelings, it has gone down to about 10%. Suddenly there is relief and I have to tell about it now. I have to investigate what happened that I suddenly don't feel bad about things any more. Hence, in the next installation, I will explain how this all came to be.
Dear Reader,
There has a been a break in the story. Several volumes of information have come down the pike. I was feeling it needed, desperately needed, to be told, but alas, how can one live one’s life and write it at the same time? However, now I feel there is enough of a feeling of closure, that it can be told. It can be told and it will be much better this way. It would not have been a good time to write, because the thing was not whole yet, not rounded out.