The Pivoting Point from Jesus to Nietzsche

Sonnets to Orpheus, Book II, XII Rainer Maria Rilke

Aspire to transform. O enraptured be by the fire wherein
something elusive flames with brazen tidings of change;
that generative spirit, master of earth and all therein,
holds nothing dearer than the pivoting point of the evolving image.

The mantle of conservatism is of itself a shroud;
who could be truly secure beneath those folds of gray?
Beware, from afar the hardest warns the hard aloud.
An absent hammer swings high : --wehe. . .

Who pours forth like a spring is by knowledge herself known.
She leads him enthralled through the benign creation
which often ends in beginning and in beginnings ends.

Every astonishing space of joy through which they roam
is child or grandchild of separation. Daphne in mutation,
changing to laurel, requires your transformation into wind.

A poem like Rilke's could be the most exquisite piece of earthliness to continue my musings of the lyrical age, and at saying that perhaps claiming too that it isn't quite over as yet and even as the shadow of a memento remains so vivid as to become often fleshy in that flight from reality at the end of which Hegel awaits patiently for me, we share nectars of differently seized colours and share in the delight of Gods, because our childhoods might have been slightly similar under the spell of Plato and Hoelderlin. While writing, at the same time I discovered a little bliss of almost sensuous happiness, that of being happy not about I wrote but that in fact none of my characters had been fictions and that the turning points of my life in the most Biblical style hadn't been even turning points at all but rather stumbling blocks that shatter one era behind another irreparably and forever as though hiding before a thick concrete wall, yet seen in the light by any pedestrian, if pedestrians could be considered novelesque enough to be accounted for; my general feeling is that in my idea of Utopia they could certainly have, but this is no befitting circle of events for such indelicate musings.

Somehow it seems I might have not spoken enough about my days in St. John's, nor I spoke at all about the material aspects of my home or my own mother; this I did perhaps intentionally or with the innermost wishful desire to hide something, as though I tried to hide from Hermes in the twilight of morningness. At that tender age I experienced nevertheless great triumphs and disappointments, my first escapades to the big city - certainly the Northern Mall, I could spend hours at the bookstore leafing through the most diverse magazines. I was interested in very earthly things, like house construction (perhaps a copycat of my father), automobiles, videogames and obviously male bodies. Yet in being such hypocrite I couldn't bring myself to fancy the naked figures or the adult magazines, I preferred to stare into very discreet underwear advertisements and even more so I loved the gentlemen faces, with ties and elegant jackets, even a little bohemian and untidy, resembling a certain abandonment and the hypocrisy of sensuous piety. I also remember myself peering into the English books but never being interested enough... Later on I also had a very keen interest on music but I couldn't know too much about it and usually wound up buying for a lot of money basically the cheapest music one could think of. The kind of things whose even "ownership" would symbol my intellectual suicide.

But I was pretty happy with my possessions, never to forget when my father bought my first stereo which sadly and surprisingly was stolen only a couple of weeks later; the fate of such an expensive present remains a mystery of the world to this very day. I didn't read too much but as I mentioned before I was hooked on the French writers and the incredible amounts of knowledge I would draw from the Encyclopaedia. I used to chew a lot of candies at the time as well, perhaps because they were hardly available at home; they were also a symbol of infantile prestige to contrast my father's unbalanced weekened menus at the park with dripping fat and cheap paper to wipe your hands. Up to the 7th grade my Catholic hypocrisy turned me into a militant self-righteous Calvinist, an attitude I think everyone despised; I cound never break a plate, rise unearly or leave my homework undone but it was everything an immense facade, a charade to my own life, so unbeknownst to itself and so thoroughly irreligious. Still I was pretty unaware of sex proper but I did give myself away to the older guys (I was by far one of the youngest and certainly the smallest kid) and their sickly ways, untucking my shirt as soon as I left home, smoking cigarettes and every once in a while sipping down some local cheap bear. I guess there was an element of acceptance there and also one of rebellion - of the metaphysical kind, typical of the agnostic believer. I think at that turning point I would cure myself from my scorning protestant inclinations, how I always prached my father about his smoking and his drinking and even though offered, in the most Italian of styles, the usual glass of wine in family celebrations (I was thinking of some French word but it eludes me now) I always refused and sticked to my orange juice, a favourite delicacy. Although I do remember some gathering with a friend D. in 6th grade including vodka and orange juice and waffers.

In the 9th grade I was already owner of the place, and no longer too attached to either J.C. or J.C., unthinking of my own desires and only recently acquainted with the practice of self-satisfaction which rather scared me specially because I feared my father would suspect the reasons behind the cold sweat and fast heart beats. I couldn't bother to study much and often spent the whole day at the Mall or just walking around streets unknown before. Perhaps it is from this period when I knew Jochen Ploetz, the old professor of German literature at the local university who gave me those books I treasured for quite some years, but I never got through the 4th book. It was also then which I had my first contact with an homosexual person proper, firstly through a support group to which I phoned and left a voice message; my call was returned one certain day but my father's presence just a couple of meters away scared me and my interest would end there, right before I knew of any magazines or other spots. I also had my first sexual experience proper, which for me was undoubtedly refreshing and right before my 14th birthday. At the time it looked like the most daring and exciting thing I had done, but looking back at it now he was quite older than I am now and it seems he just had been a sickly pervert, in fact he could have spent quite some time in jail on my account; obviously I would have been too afraid to speak about it with anybody and never again I wished to see this man again.

Only a young woman, tenant of my grandmother's house (she had several) knew about the affair because she had been watching TV with me when the man in question called; she tried to spread the news but certainly no one believed her. At the time one certain day while crossing a bridge on the way to school (for some reason I loved this bridge, therefrom you could see a big lake, the wonderful villas up the hills and a great part of the city's west quarters) I found rip apart pieces from an adult magazine for gays with naked bodies in situ, which of course I would grab and treasure for a long time. Not long thereafter I dared to stand in a very filthy corner of town (whereby no one would know me but it would be close enough to find my back) and asked somebody in the street to buy an adult magazine for me; and what an experience it was!!! Then after I had it in my hands while finding my way back a certain young man approached me wanting to see it as well, but I was so afraid! I just ran away.

I can't exactly remember if it was from this period when I started visiting often the fancy German Mall, but it is very possible... actually I'm right. I used to spend hours listening to music in a Tower Records, in particular Paula Cole and reading the magazines from the stands in all kind of foreign languages; I also remember listening to Monserrat Caballe, the famous opera singer. Thinking again, from this period I might have also met my good friend Ximena that was some 18 years older than me and the first person to introduce me to the world of "night life" of some sorts; it was at the British Council of which I would become a permanent visitor, having bought a membership with the money I earned working as an interpreter at some silly education fair representing a certain American evangelic college. I borrowed a lot of English books which I enjoyed, even though I hadn't been too interested in literature then; I also spent hours using the internet and by e-mail I actually came out to Adriane, who at the time was no longer living nearby, she was the sister of another friend who had become a hardcore mormon, and who happened to have been the neighbour of a certain German I knew. But this is getting ficticious here, this happened only in the 10th grade when I was already at the French School.

The French School... I would remain there only for less than a year, and quite hated it... the teachers seemed taken from some mediaeval tale but I quite liked the religion around there even though I experienced another epidemic of puritanism for some time (it soon came to an end), I hated each and every single class and I doubt I understood anything at all or even learnt. Yet I liked the religion class and computers, the latter was taught by a very warm lady called Elizabeth and she and me became frequent conversation partners; there was also a philosophy teacher, one of the most intelligent men I had met up to that point and who was very fond of me and treasured my knowledge of German and philosophy. I was perhaps the person with the highest social standing in the whole school and had even been very much loved by the dean, a certain Brother Julius. The parish priest wasn't too fond of me, but he was an old-schooler and similar to my father's wife local parisher, very uncivilized and almost stereotypical of that provincial Spanish Catholicism I hated, so different from my aunt's and granny's Italian and German churches full of splendour and hypocrisy. This brother Julius was actually a very wise man and we often had private conversations, some of which I can remember to this day with a certain daunting feeling. One of my classmates gave me as a present once a certain little book in Italian about the Nazi Holocaust, only because it contained an awful lot of texts in German; I didn't know too much about the Holocaust was, so I gave it away to Angela, but I do remember it contained very silent pictures with endless lines of dead bodies and formless corpses. I couldn't know at the time the image of Auschwitz would become the source of an almost political religiousity and individuality that would set me at odds with Rome forever.

I would miss school for several days at a time and spent the whole day speaking with Ximena about life, I also met Nelma Krieger in those days and with whom I would drink a lot of beers in expensive restaurants and prepare for my first authentically Existential flight: The pivoting point from Jesus to Nietzsche that would end up today in Jerusalem. I think I was a very ugly kid but quite immaculate and "anadiomenus" as in the poems of Rimbaud but slowly I started to notice my own inner desires and sooner than I could expect, I turned out confessing it to Ximena and Nelma, who took it with so much lightness! Ximena I saw years ago while coming out of a library but never heard from her again, and the same with Nelma; she moved into a flat by herself after she got herself a job at the Academy of Sciences and promising to invite me over disappeared forever. Still I remained unacquainted with the topic of sex but I saw myself often wooed in public places, which stirred on me an awful mixture of pleasure and shame. From the British Council I also met David, and what a great friendship that would be! So much earthly pain of youth and courage, so much struggle, drunkenness, and how beautiful he seemed to me at the time! We could spend hours and hours speaking about ourselves in cheap cafes.

I also think I started to frequent a certain gay bar but hardly ever drank more than one beer, perhaps I just didn't have enough money... yet I kept smoking menthol cigarettes but not too much. Those days were so important to me because at the time I met Nicolas, my big frustrated love story... It taught me important lessons about the society I lived in, about cruelty and also about passion. He was such a beautiful young man, from St. Carl's School and with a very very sad smile, a little feminine at times but so often too masculine as well. I only saw him at the German Mall almost everyday and we looked at each other from afar; I lost my innocence in those days in the social regard, I learnt about the social clubs, the elitism, the power of money and prestige, the power itself! Which in our childish society was represented by us much more than by our parents, for we were the projected representations of their own frustrations. In the end I just quit school almost officially and spent all day long craving for lustful encounters which never really took place, after all I thought about Nicolas all day long. We actually never spoke and I only know his name from having overheard it, perhaps I invented this but I can't be sure at all, I really don't think so.

There was another young man obviously homosexual and who always kept him company, perhaps he might have even noticed me and always dragged him away from my sight. I can't remember what his name was, but I do remember he was friend to Julianna and perhaps Veronika? No! Something like Kathleen or so, two of the most "prestigious" girls in our "society"; both at the wealthy American school and apparently too well-known. Whenever I saw Nicolas I discreetly ran after him to catch a closer glimpse and despite my endless fear of rejection this made me very happy. A few times we were very close to one another and I believe he stared at me too many times, but always somebody would come and fetch him away from me, so I would just light a cigarette and ail my disappointment in conversations with strangers, all of them so totally uninteresting. Sometimes I would go as far as the Old City to find strange books at the library and watch sad films, specially French and Spanish.

I think it was at this time (perhaps I'm mistaken by a year or so) when I became a permanent guest at the Goethe Institut and never missed their movies, two of them I remember very well, "Nach 5 im Junge" and "Abgeschlossenes Vom Paradise", one of them I might have seen with Till, there was also a film by Fassbinder about a male prostitute which marked me very deeply and then was followed by a short talk with this old German woman and her maid; I haven't seen too many of his movies and in this age of sophistication in which me and my friends consider ourselves to be part of some "intellectual elite", Germany is perhaps the largest section of my mental map and the discussions on German things are as endless as are the stories I'm unraveling here, yet despite the harsh criticism Fassbinder received from all my acquaintances almost unanonimously, I can't bring himself to hate him too much and that's perhaps because I'm a Jew, and a German Jew at that; the portrait of the middle class "Sturm und Drang" German has for me a lot of Romantic biffurcations and remains perhaps one of my self-vantage points into irreality. I also remember a German Independence Party at Goethe, and also having spent almost the whole night in the company of a Spanish woman, her name was Amparo I think, who couldn't have anything but wonderful things to say about the Netherlands; topic that bored me terribly.

I think the story of Nicolas I never really got over, years later I saw him while wandering in between my Greek uncle's shop and the Israeli internet cafe, I also had a serious relationship at the time with a man some twelve years older than me. Then I saw him walking hand in hand with a woman in the most beautiful and elegant clothes, like those of the magazine men I used to stare into while a little younger. I preferred not to call his attention, but the sight of his own sights was a very profound experience to me, even though at the time there was little left of the little boy who would chase after him in the most abject embarrassment through the ice-cream shops and fast-food stands in the corridors of the elegant German Mall. That picture remains with me as though I had been kissing good-bye to my adolescence that day, but it was a very happy picture and even when a less than happy adolescence, I had only a mortal pleasure from its dim images of pale opaqueness.

I had been such a fighter! Somehow else I also had been a very keen climber up the social ladder, much better than any of my parents or relatives. They craved for money and a little social power but me as a mere teen, couldn't be any less concerned about the money yet the world was open to me with the delight of a summer breeze, I walked myself into all the social clubs and venues, events, expositions, presentations. Wherever there was a place where you could make important contacts I had to be there even wearing borrowed clothes or my father's. Then when I became a self-aware intellectual I turned a little bohemian and pathetic and naturally despiseful of this scenario properly speaking, but it was an incurable disease, I had earned for myself a prominent position in the social scale and I could never again drift away from it, if not in the clubs at least in my mind. This position, attained by a person who made himself from scratch and out of the ashes of a broken past, has been earned with sweat and at a point of my life when I no longer need it, it remains there in silence, as though it were a birthright. If at all this must be said, I don't owe this position to anybody in the world but my talents not only as a thinker but also as a human person, and this is the free gift I've received from the divine providence perhaps as a compensation for the darkness that surrounded me with mystery during my early years.

I would never even dare to think of "becoming" into this social norm nor I passed myself forcibly as parvenu, I did it with so much naturality and charm that it almost hurts with longing today; thinking back I had been a pariah since the age of 14 or 15. I exchanged letters with Swiss and German diplomats, found myself in cocktails for politicians, charity events, also corresponded with people abroad, paving the way for my encounter with Nietzsche later on. Simultaneously my parents watched TV and complained about the weather, I for one set myself for the reconquista of the world, for the love of the world; the first expression an image of my friend Ralf, the second the strongest of all Arendtianisms. Right now at this very moment I would name it using a phrase of my teacher Agnes Heller, a great philosopher: "Para cambiar la vida". ["To change the life", mind you I didn't mean "a life" or "life"]. Ever since those purple days with all their endless dark and shadowing twilight I knew I had chosen myself to change the life, knowing so little about the weightful character of the decision that not many years later would throw me into life (Geworfenheit in Heidegger) and choose myself for philosophy. One of the only existential choices that equates with everyday life in that it isn't chosen at all; it simply dawns upon you when the chips are down as the only possible alternative, in choosing yourself for it you are actually choosing your own life and life at all - it makes all pasts seem irrelevant and outmoded (like it's the case in the structure of modernity) but important insofar as you have it, as you own it.

This is the pivoting point of Rilke and of the Bible; the end is a beginning and the beginning is only an end, just like the Israeli writer Amos Oz wrote once "The sky is the limit, but the limit is only the first step". Because you've chosen yourself, you've also lost yourself totally but it can only be a gain because the walls and spiderwebs of your past never disappear while at the same time remind you that there's no sureness of the self at all; you can at best guess things for your own good but the knowledge of life is only therein at the place where you can't obtain any further knowledge about anything at all, in the toil of everyday's life. That is your pivoting point.