Six O’Clock in Sibiu
After Șomartin — Exile in Sibiu
— A Night Musing from the Living Sweater
six o’clock.
Sibiu still dark.
TV flickering soft blue against the wall like the old MD-11 digital cockpit displays at Mach 0.82.
Heart steady at forty-eight.
Muscles once soft, now hard and lean.
Exile has been positive — sharpened the body, sharpened the mind.
Where once there were traces of doubt and indecision, clarity comes clean and sharp.
No anger
No bat swung.
No wall punched.
Just the quiet Swedish pissed-off sitting in the chest like cold lake water that never warms.
The storm rages outside but inside it is calm.
Wishing it was different but wishing doesn’t change the cold hard facts.
How can people be so mean — so cruel, so horrific — to one another?
That question used to live in me like a splinter under the skin.
Younger days.
TV showed the Balkans burning — what happened in Serbia, Croatia, wherever the lines were drawn in fresh blood.
Big man in boots.
No bullets left to waste.
Walked the old people out into the cold lake one by one.
Ball peen hammer in his hand.
Crack.
Crack.
Heads soft under steel.
Water took them quiet.
I sat frozen on the couch.
How?
Was invited to a ceremony not long after.
Elder looked straight into me and asked:
“What is the grief that lives inside you?”
I told him.
He said:
“Write it down. Today we will release it, but first you carry it. Walk with this grief in your pocket all day long. Feel its weight. Then, when the sun is low, we burn it.”
So I wrote it raw:
How can people be so mean — so cruel, so horrific — to one another?
Folded the paper small.
Carried it in my shirt pocket through the long afternoon.
Felt every step press the question deeper.
When dusk came, we stood by the fire.
I dropped the paper in.
Flames took it quick.
Smoke rose straight into the night.
I thought the question was gone — ash on the wind, grief released.
Ceremony did its medicine.
Heart got lighter.
For a while.
But the question came back.
Different hammer now.
Private.
Silent.
No cameras rolling.
Florin and Adina.
They sat at the kitchen table in Șomartin with calm smiles.
They signed papers while the 1907 Saxon house was still warm from my hands.
They took the retirement I earned flying 747s and MD-11s through Alaskan ice and Asian typhoons.
They took the small fortune I built stone by stone, beam by beam.
They took the years I studied with Bert Rooks under the teepee.
They took the future I was saving for Frida’s laugh in that same yard.
They took it all.
Knowingly.
Willingly.
Every single morning they woke up and chose the hammer again.
And now they smile at Frida like nothing ever cracked.
Mary’s gonna call the media.
Stories gonna run.
Headlines in Romanian and English.
“Pilotul american jefuit de foștii parteneri — custodia fetiței în joc.”
“American pilot robbed by ex-partners — fight for
daughter’s custody.”
“Retirementul furat după 25 de ani de zbor — un tată luptă pentru fiica sa.”
“Retirement stolen after 25 years of flying — father fights for his daughter.”
Cameras at the gate in Sibiu.
Reporters knocking on doors in Șomartin.
People reading over morning coffee.
Seeing the quiet evil that walks in nice clothes and speaks soft words.
Seeing two people who thought the lake would swallow the truth forever.
Six o’clock.
TV still glowing.
March cold pressing the glass.
But the soil — the soil keeps regenerating.
The sine wave turns.
Bottom never failure, only inverted peak.
Frida’s laugh is coming.
Seven generations watching from the barn.
The living sweater stretches farther every row.
The digital loom keeps weaving truth into light.
The legal path continues.
The Earthway path continues.
Love continues.