I am a Jelly Doughnut/Nature's Needs

There are promises we make, but what is the life span we give a promise when nothing is forever? Do we say goodbye to the rain? Eventually, but it pours again no matter where we are. There are parts of what I’m writing that could be written by a man. Time cracks under pressure, catering to nature's needs, and there is nothing we can do about that. Pressure is a scientific measurement, but when placed against your heart, it is a feeling that is very different from what science can prescribe to its laws. According to the dictionary, the two definitions of feeling are as follows: 1. An emotional state or reaction. 2. A belief, especially a vague or irrational one. Guilty of both, as is everyone.

Trucks with speakers mounted to them played over and over again:

On April 30, 1945, the Führer committed suicide, and thus abandoned those who had sworn loyalty to him. According to the Führer's order, you German soldiers would have had to go on fighting for Berlin even though our ammunition had run out and despite the general situation, which made our further resistance meaningless. I order the immediate cessation of resistance. Every hour you keep on fighting prolongs the suffering of the civilians in Berlin and of our wounded. Together with the commander-in-chief of the Soviet forces, I order you to stop fighting immediately. WEIDLING, General of Artillery, former District Commandant in the defence of Berlin.

Former.

I sat with Christoph Van Hooringsting, still wearing his Iron Cross, while I waited for the Soviets. He put a little capsule on our table.

“The Führer, himself, gave me that.”

“Why do you want to die?” I asked. “It’s over.”

Christoph looked out of the broken window at the rubble and fire of that Berlin morning.

“Why do you want to live?”

I remember my eyebrows raising. I told Christoph he was a diplomat and protected by international law, but he refused to listen and asked again, “Why do you want to live?”

I shrugged and, in that time, blurted, “I enjoy tomorrow.”

“Everyone is gone,” he said. “Your family, your friends, your superiors.”

Again, I shrugged.

“We all say hello again.”

His hair still had the day before’s grease, and he ran his hands through it.

“They are gone. All you’ll have is you.”

“That is enough for me. I’ve had less than that.”

When I smiled, he reached for the gun that was no longer there. I, too, looked out at the shelled city.

“You asked. If you don’t like my answers, I’d start heading west, and pray to God some British or American Soldier finds you with a hankerchief in your hand.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re going to swallow your last medal, a cyanide pill?”

“The Führer, himself, gave this to me.”

“I never really liked him.”

I thought I said that, but I thought it, and thank God. This man, this diplomat of the Nazi Regime, saw things one way, or it was the autobahn.

I took a sip of tea.

“You must be awfully proud.”

“Don’t act so high and mighty. I saw you smash an SS Mercedes window.”

“I was angry.”

“You should have turned yourself in. It is the law.”

“Why didn’t you? What is the law now?” I asked, surrounded by Soviets.

“It’s not only that,” he said. “You drink and the very wrench you used to smash the SS windows, you, you hid it.”

“Where?”

“At Refior’s.”

I leaned forward and said, “I’ve watched The Godfather and Goodfellas too many times. I thought it was funny.”

“Wot?”

The sound of cue sticks, pinball machines, and the TV was lively. We were old men.

“You scared people,” he said.

I sat there and did not reply to his dialogue; instead, I asked if he’d like another beer. He stared.

“Dja.”

West Berlin was different, but soon there would be Berlin.

Many kids crossed my path. They played Video Games, and the game I watched seemed like all you did was point and shoot. At who? I hadn’t a clue, but the power died, and in the reflection of the arcade glass, I saw another twenty years. East and West united, like the North and South of America, Vietnam, and hopefully one day, Korea, but what I saw was a post-unification. I could not see the peace flags of my youth, nor the deals that were made to move forward. In my heart, I could never forgive those who condemned me to turn myself into the SS for smashing one of their windows. I knew I was wrong, and in old age I’d see it, but the difference between most and me is that I am happy to see it in old age. Unfortunately, friends and family come and go. One day, the earth will burn, and the name Sophie Scholl, which already means nothing to the international community, will be burned from the solar system, but there is tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Some choose to participate, and those who do so from afar. Who am I to say, a former Nazi, to say what distance can you measure another’s happiness, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret, I am no Nazi at all, as a matter of fact, I’m a 33-year-old in Los Angeles. My name is Stephanie Zepeda. My family says, “Don’t talk, don’t talk,” but I think if anyone has anything to say, say it, or lie in the shadow of your anger. Where skin grows pale, and eyesight is refined to a point that makes you second-guess what you saw, and amplifies what you hear, passed from one to another in a game of banana phone. They’re coming. They’re coming, alright.

June 26, 1963: Touring the Berlin Wall with Mayor Willy Brandt and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, John F. Kennedy remembered New Orleans, in which he said, regarding the newly erected wall, "Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was to say, ‘I am a citizen of Rome.’ Today, I believe, in 1962, the proudest boast is to say, ‘I am a citizen of the United States.’"

Touring the brutality of the concrete, the 24/7 guards, and the fact a resurrected city was split, he stepped onto a podium in front of 120,000 people, and in the midst of passion, lassoed around the strongest part of his being, and delivered, “Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was ‘civis Romanus sum’ ["I am a Roman citizen"]. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’... All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’"

And for the next six decades, people would debate whether or not he said he was a jelly donut.