Carpe diem ((Seize the Day)(a "Romance in Augsburg": Special Edition))

Carpe diem

((Seize the Day) (a “Romance in Augsburg”: Special Edition))



Three time Poet
Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.


Special Index

Train to Munich
(Written 2005)
Evening at the October Fest
(Written 2009)
The Thrasher
(Written 2009)




The general definition of carpe:
is "pick, pluck, pluck off, gather" as in plucking, although Horace uses the word in the sense of "enjoy, make use of, seize." Also this phrase is expressed in: 1 Corinthians 15:32, Isaiah 22:13; and in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Siduri

In this updated version of “A Romance in Augsburg” (originally published in 2003) the author has added three additional chapters into it, and reedited and revised the original Manuscript (the Chapters or section coming under the heading of: “Carpe diem” which are: Train to Munich (written: 2005 the other two written in 2009); Evening at the October Fest, and its linking chapter, The Hillside; and The Thrasher or, the Glass Bar).




Carpe diem

When age shall surround thy face and brow
When deep trenches fill thy eyes and mouth
When beauty’s effect has been long gone
When you stumble, and your worth is nil
To all the fading, raining, and sweet clouds
Your, once beauty’s effect, will have gone!

Seize the day, and make use the moment,
Aagainst the gusty storms, of time and vanity:
Gaze upon the colors of her youthful cloths,
Her fresh shape and colors of beauty…
For beauty’s effect will long be gone!

No: 2605 4-28-2009 © (Dlsiluk)



Train to Munich
(Augsburg, Germany, 1970)



As we got off the train (Ski and I) we were obvious to any onlookers, that we were soldiers, as apparent as someone carrying a sack of potatoes, I would expect, walking through that train station, out its doors, then outside onto the sidewalk, at 5:00 a.m. I witnessed right away young folks walking about, talking in different languages, English, German, Spanish, and so forth and so on. I also saw a number of hippie like characters trying to get a few hours of sleep in the corners of the train station, outside the train station backs against the building, sacks in their hands, in their laps, along side of them, wrapped around their hands, laying beside them, or laying on top of them, the renowned Oktoberfest was in motion, it was the main event in Munich, and we, Ski and I, were going to it, and this was the place to be, if you were in Germany in October of 1970, or at least the place I wanted to be. No reservations needed, just your body, a few bucks in your pocket, time to spare, energy.
Several young Germans were walking on the opposite side of the sidewalk, several blocks from the train station, where Ski and I crossed over to the other side: “You speak English?” asked Ski, to the group. They looked at us strangely; we simply wanted to find our way to the fairgrounds, needed directions. Ski was always, or almost always, abrupt with his way of trying to make a dialogue—with anyone (but me).
“American GI’s” a voice from the group said, with a tone of belittlement.
Ski lifted his eyebrows, I figured this would be a fight, or it was at least in the makings.
“No, we’re reporters from New York City…”said Ski. In consequence we got a lot more respect instantly, I was a more than bit surprised.
“We’re from a …” (a magazine he said, can’t remember which one he said, but they were impressed, and so was I that we could get away with such a fib)—and to be frank, I felt something like a volt of electricity in the air—connecting and shooting into my legs running up to my arms, after this mirage was created; I was liking my part of the charade, although I didn’t do much.

—We then walked about Munich for a number of hours, I saw an old bum laying drunk on the sidewalk, everyone just stepped over him or around him, and I stopped and starred at him, I wanted to help him I think, bent over to see if I could, but Ski said rapidly, “Come on… (pulling me back up) we’re almost there, he can’t be helped, and he’ll sleep it off!”
And for the most part, I think for once he was right, and we could see the entrance to the Oktoberfest from where the guy laid—near the gutter of the street, and we were both getting excited at that moment to get inside that event.
Once through the entrance, we found a big beer tent, like a great hall, and we couldn’t pass it up, or I couldn’t, and we stopped, with inside of it and had purchased a few giant mugs each filled with beer, filled to its rim.

The Oktoberfest was huge, with big beer tents all about. It was perhaps 11:00 a.m. We walked about for a while, I didn’t want to get too drunk too quick, so I slowly drank my beers, and found a place to rest under a shady tree, on an embankment (which I’d return to later on, and where a lot of hippies were, and would be all day into the evening hours; Ski and I would return there to rest again, and watch all the hippies sack out for the night, having their own personal picnics).
Then we went onto another large beer tent I was getting drunk now, and ended up dancing on the tables with folks I never knew, holding hands, looped within theirs. I was talking to a woman later on at the entrance of a beer tent, I had said a few words in German, and she rattled on for an hour, and she thought I could understand her, but I really could only understand every fifth word or so, which I suppose was good enough.

(Then Ski came in from outside, he had been checking out the area, by himself, said he had met this Danish girl, a beauty, she had to talk to a few of her friends and would meet him at this tent later on, he was going to introduce her to me, and we’d walk her to the entrance to meet her friends, and then part our ways, he was hoping to gat her address in Denmark.)

While we waited, we both went into the tent bathroom, and some guy was taking pictures of folks urinating, with a Polaroid, Camera, instant pictures, I said to myself, this was bad news, and Ski blew up, grabbed his camera and broke it in front of him, broke it into several pieces, and the guy almost cried, and when he started yelling, Ski leaped on him and beat him, I had to pull him off the guy before he’d kill him.
“Let’s get out of this bathroom quick Ski, German police may somehow take his side…!” I had experienced that in San Francisco, in a bar when a man put his hands around me, and appeared to be ready to kiss me or who knows what, and I told him not to, and he was gay, and he did it a second time, and I put my elbow into his ribs, and I heard one of them crack, as his head fell onto the bar counter. And the bartender told me to get out of his bar, and called the police on me, of all things. Evidently I was in the wrong kind of bar, at the wrong time.
So I told Ski, what I said I told him, and out we went nearby the entrance of the tent to wait. After a few minutes, we went back up on that hill, we could see the entrance from there to the tent, and we had purchased a sandwich and we ate it, sitting down for once. Then we went back to the tent to wait.





Evening at the October Fest


As I waited with Ski by the entrance of the beer tent, I wanted to jump back up on the tables—, and dance some more, and drink with all the strangers, and all the wives and girlfriends of the male strangers, wives with their husbands could have cared less. Matter of fact, they preferred you, in this case me, to dance with their mate, so they could dance with someone else’s. I looked about there were not many GI’s here in the tent, but many folks from all over Europe. And we just waited, me, with a beer in hand for the Danish beauty.
I called the waitress over again; she was dressed with a cute old fashion, German dress, loud horns were playing in the background, brass horns.
“A dark beer, please,” I asked the waitress, doing it far enough in advance, knowing it took ten minutes before she’d get back with it, and I had only half a beer left, and that would be gone by the time she got back.
“Yes, of course, in a minute, don’t move…!” she said.
“Good,” I said as she walked away, and Ski checking out around the corner of the tent to see if his little Danish beauty was coming. I had seen her I felt, walking about with her friends early on, and I think Ski had also, and that is why he left me in the tent alone, to find her.
“I’m going to meet her in Denmark, in two weeks,” said Ski.
“Really!” I said, surprised he was so confident.
“I hear they are kind of free spirited up there, maybe she likes pot or drugs, then what?”
“I think she does, I think she’s using now with her friends, but when I visit her, I’ll change her mind.”
“What makes you think you’ll make her?” I asked.
“That’s a good way of putting it, but I will.”

(The waitress came back with my dark beer, “Here sir, seven marks!” I paid her and she left, and I heard Ski say:)

“Here she comes,” said Ski, “I think that’s her,” he added, “quite now, don’t say anything to disrupt it…let me do the introductions.”
“Thank you, pal!”
“Yes…yes, isn’t she a beauty?”
She was lovely, bronze skin, dark eyes, long black hair, it made me think of what I once read in a sonnet by Shakespeare ‘When forty winters besiege thy brow…’ something like that. It meant to me, women lose their beauty, and for a short moment in youth, it is best to gaze upon it while you can, and I found myself doing just that, and I think she took notice of that.
“Hello,” she said, “so this is you friend, Chick, he calls you?”
“Yes, that me,” I said, kind of lost for words; it looked like she was doing her own introduction.
“My name, Barbatte,” she said with a very darling smile. She looked at her watch, “Listen,” she said looking at Ski, “You and your friend come visit me in Denmark, I give you may address, okay?”
“Really,” I said, Ski looking at me. “I have a girlfriend, but it sounds inviting, but I can’t get any time off from the Military, used my vacation days up before I came to Germany.” She looked a little disappointed.
Her dark bronze skin and her gentleness were very alluring, but I could smell pot on her, it reeked from her cloths. I figured Ski was going to have a rude awakening when he went to Copenhagen; he took pot as being no different than heroin. It really didn’t matter to me if she used, Mac and his friends used it in the barracks all the time, I avoid it, I had my beer, that was enough, although Mac invited me several times to join their pot parties; perhaps wondering if I was ever going to tell Ski, knowing Ski took it hard, his sister had been strung out on it, I had learned recently, and some tragic thing took place with her because of it. And Mac didn’t want any trouble with Ski. But I didn’t say a word to anyone about Mac use.
As we walked Barbatte, to the entrance of the gate to the fest, to meet her girlfriends, she made out a card for Ski, giving him her address and phone number, and wanted to make me one out for me also almost insisteing, but I discarded the offer of taking it, saying, “My girlfriend Chris was very jealous,” and I’d simply never get to Denmark, but I wanted to and she perhaps could see it but, I just felt as Shakespeare wrote in his sonnet: “Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now…” and I did.

“I’m getting tired of this whole event,” said Ski, to me, as now Barbatte was far-off on her way to the train station.
And so we left.



The Thrasher—and the Glass Bar

(An Chapter story to: “A Romance in Augsburg,” previously unpublished)


I walked slowly out of the October Fest, Ski along side me. Our train would note leave until 2:00 a.m., we looked up and street, at some lights, walked around the curve. There were people on both sides of the street.
I felt my pants; my knees were green from kneeling on the grass of the embankment, inside the fest area. My hands were dirty somewhat, his finger nails dirt under them.
“I need to wash up someplace,” I told Ski.
“Come with me, I have an address, got something to show you,” said Ski.
“What?” I said, didn’t care for any mysteries.
Ski went over to the edge of the sidewalk, flagged down a taxi, “Take us to the Glass Bar.” He said, and the driver seemed to know it. When we arrived at the nightclub, it was amazing I thought, three floors of glass, all glass, you could see people walking up and own the stairway. What a trip I said to myself. You could see everything that was going on.
“I guess this is something to show me,” I said to Ski. He had never been there himself, yet he had heard about it.
“Come on, let’s go in and you can wash up.”
There was a bouncer at the front of the door, and a few inside, all dressed like penguins, with big broad shoulders, in their late 30s, hanging stomachs. I found the washroom, washed up carefully in the cold water, the hot wasn’t working. Getting the dirt out from under my nails, and I squatted down and wiped my knees clean with a paper tower.
When I came out, I saw Ski rubbing his eyes, he was tired. He had two beers in his hands, “Here Evens,” he said, “Take one.” And I did.
I looked around, we went to the second floor, there were weird looking drawings on the mirrored pillars as we went up, step by step, these three flights, they looked like Dali’s or Picasso’s, drawings, I’m sure replicas. There was a horde of drinkers continuously coming down the stairs, as well as going up them, bumping into Ski and me almost one right after the other, and Ski was taking a disliking to it. I sensed he wished he had not come, but it was near Midnight, and we had at least an hour to burn. It was dark outside, loud music from floor to floor, and it was something to do.
My hands were still a little wet, I put my beer down on the floor, we were in the middle between the second and third floors, wiped my hands on my trousers, and then picked up my beer, someone bumped into me, it fell out of my hands, and crashed on the floor—beer and glass all over, the man kept walking up the stairs, with no apology, didn’t look back once, Ski grabbed him, and said “Look at what you just did—jerk!” The man had a tie on, he turned about, a young man—a ahead of him was his two friends—the man stood there looking, firelight in his eyes, Ski could see it and so could I, I was now wiping my pants off again, with a towel I had taken out of the bathroom just in case, had put it in my pocket for safe keeping, it came in handy. The man didn’t look alone. Ski stepped out from the railing, “Well,” he said; the man looked up at him, at Ski, and Ski said to the man, “Where did you get that shiner?” and he said “What shiner?” And Ski hit him a solid blow along side the temple, and he dropped to his knees, and the other two turned about.
“Why you bastard!” he said, and they both went for Ski, I grabbed the foot of the second man, I was on a lower step than Ski, and he slipped down three stairs beyond me, on top of the wise guy Ski had previously hit.
The guy that was going to hit Ski, had second thoughts, and the bouncer was rushing up the first flight of stairs now, Ski said to the man backing off, “Thought you were a tough one, didn’t you!” and went to grab him.
The man rushing up the stairs yelled, “No more fighting, no more rough stuff, this is a glass bar, a glass bar!”
The man I tripped, his nose was sunken, his eyes red, he only saw the man’s face as he rushed up the stairs then fell back as if he passed out, he was a German, perhaps faking it to get sympathy.
“Look here!” the bouncer said, a big man, and heavy. “This is a glass bar, ever see one before,” Ski didn’t answer, but I did for him, “No we never did.”
“I don’t know who started the fight, but you two got to go.”
I think Ski wanted to argue, but I saw two more penguins coming to assist this one, and I could take no more, “Let’s beat it Ski, our train to Augsburg will be coming in, in an hour and a half.”
“Smart friend you have,” said the man who rushed up the two flights of stairs.
“You bet!” said Ski, “it’s time to go.”
As we walked out of the bar, everyone seemed to bust their eyes on us, Ski gave them the finger.
“Don’t bother with them Ski,” I told him.
“Sure,” he said, and he looked a little down.
“What’s the matter,” I asked him, outside the bar.
“Their crazy here, can you believe it, they kick us out and the German gets to stay and drink? Honest to God I can’t figure it out.”
I hesitated, “Come on, let’s walk this off…” we walked three miles to the train station, checked our watch, it was 1:45 a.m.