For the next month or so, True Stories Well Told is featuring writers who have shared their work at First Monday, First Person, my “salon” for memoir writers held at the Pinney Branch Library in Madison.

By Karen Milstein

I felt my feet firm on the ground, my junior year abroad friends surrounding me, gathered in the Rathausplatz (city hall square) in front of the brightly painted off-orange Rathaus. We were young, still growing, all of us barely twenty years old. The uneven cobblestones, probably several hundred years old, but having been damaged in the Second World War, were solid beneath my black Reeboks. As much as my cohort was close by, the depths within me were suddenly touched and felt more akin to the dancing spinning noise blue canary yellow bright red deep green colors that floated about me. They pulled on a part of me that had only been sent to my room before as a child in conflict with my father. A part of me that had run and cried in torrents when friends or relatives had left, and I felt abandoned. A place of deep solitude, but also of revelry, because there was joy in this place. Only no one had ever stayed there very long; I cried when others left it. Sadness spouted from the same deep font of passion and delight.

Fasnet starts at 11:11 on the eleventh month, November on the eleventh day. The end of Fasnet marks the beginning of Lent in southern Germany, where Catholicism and poorer folks started the ritual to chase out demons and drive out winter. This festival is called Karnival or Fasching in the more northern parts but is not celebrated in all of Germany. The cool breeze touched my cheeks as I pulled my scarf tighter around me. I watched Fasnet. Various Vereine (clubs) of fools or characters represented leagues within mostly southern parts of Germany. 

The fools were the first to celebrate: I found company in this promenade. I watched, but I was also somehow part of the scene. I didn’t even mind that it was cold; I dug my fingers deeper in my pockets and breathed in the warmth of feeling akin to the individuals walking by. The old green, orange, blue buildings, white, curl trim, no doubt that I was in Germany, foreign, yet here I was, found, a part within.   

I was surrounded by costumed people who somehow knew what was inside of me. Their faces were wooden and angular: large eyes, deep, dark black pupils, reddened lips and cheeks, large eyebrows etched across their foreheads. Figures danced by, dressed in bright red, yellow, green feathered bodies, some masked faces with slits for eyes—mystery—broad cheeks prominent atop their smile, wearing a purple foolscap over their forest green shirt and pants. Then, the truly whimsical: mythical beasts with goldenrod faces, elongated noses, antlers sprouting from the creature’s forehead. Madness captured in the whole parade, dancing past me. Their huge eyes looking about, sometimes even looking over at me.

Jesters, women, lions, dogs, roosters, all danced to the tune of whistles, drums, cacophony, pipes, all hopping, skipping, running in circles. I could understand this. I could understand freedom: no rules, laughter, smiles, delight, and whimsical beat. I stood still, unable to believe this existed somewhere, that I stood amid this festivity, something I had never experienced before outside my rigid obsessive-compulsive existence. This was abandon. This was happiness. Yes, this was freedom. 

I was pulled in whether I wished or not; via something, possibly love, possibly recklessness. I avoided eye contact so I wouldn’t be swept up by this wave I had never felt so publicly before—only in private—so powerful; it connected my heart, the veins pumping within. I didn’t want them to see me and how shy I was, how distant I was from their frolicking, how scared, but also desperately drawn in. I was something to which even the people within the costumes might aspire; something animal. I wondered what this energy under the masks and gaiety was. I felt a longing to connect to this unknown, but also distant and scared of it.  Long ago, I had constructed an intricate cage within, so good at fending off such powerful, surging energy. I stood on the cobblestones, permitting the creatures to tap into my cage with their colorful costumed energy. Little did they know the effect they had on this youth in the cold: they celebrated Fasnet; I contemplated within.

© 2023 Karen Milstein

Karen is writing a memoir entitled Local Journey: A Memoir of Learning to Love. Karen has been a writer since she was eight years old and tried transcribing the Narnia series into a screenplay and wrote stories in her own red notebook. For Karen, writing is breathing.