BEETHOVEN'S BENCH

I mean to say here only briefly--to discuss, or even just to mention before they come again...before they find me and figure out I've been talking to you and then, well, God knows what will happen--that there's a bench in Vienna--and I'm totally aware how this is going to sound, and I know too that that in itself is a thing that people always say to be dramatic and to suspend the disbelief--saying "I know this sounds crazy but..." like somehow just saying that makes the whole implausible nature of whatever "fantastic" story is being told more plausible, and easier to swallow as it were--the wheels are greased and so the story can go on and anything can happen.  But I'm not saying that here because I don't expect you to believe this, what I'm going to say, and ultimately I guess I don't really care since I fully expect to be dead as a doornail by the time you get around to reading this.  This here...what I'm writing to you dear reader, is really all about me...meaning it's all only for my benefit.  I need to be able to go to my grave knowing at least that someone knows what happened to me or at least know what I think was happening to me (that's something that people also say when writing something like this but I think I've made my point and I'm not going to belabor it anymore.)  I'll leave it to you to wrestle with questions of my sanity...to decode what I write, search for hidden indications of mental illness, compare notes (if there's more than one of you) consult the latest psychiatric journals and narrow the symptoms down.  Either way you'll still be left with the nagging question of my death, although now that I think about it I would imagine THEY (and I really have no idea who "THEY" might be, just so you know, although not that it matters) would either (a) make my death look like a suicide or (b) dispose of my body, both of which unnerve and depress me so I'm going to just press on so I can make sure I wrap this up in the time I have left (aye! the cliches are killing me...I wish I had more time....)   


Anyway, there's a bench in Vienna, as I said, along the park side of the Rue de Merkenstrasse.  I really should say "La" Rue de Merkenstrasse shouldn't I?  Although now that I think about it isn't it sort of redundant to call it the La Rue (i.e. street) de Merken-strasse ("street" in German, right?)?  So basically it's Street of Merken-street.  Or more accurately Merkenstreet Street?  I guess it is redundant but that's what it is, so be it.  Or maybe I'm just not remembering it correctly.  Maybe it's just Merkenstrasse.  Or La Merkenstrasse.  And come to think of it why "La" at all?  Isn't that French?  Or I suppose it could be Spanish too but I thought since I was remembering "Rue" that we were talking French but the point being why French and German in one name.  That should have been the tip-off right there.  I should have guessed once I put La Rue in with a German name that I made a mistake and re-thought the whole thing.  But I digress and like I said, I'm running out of time here.  I mean they're coming.  I can hear them.  There's sirens in the distance and they're getting closer.  And there's that hum that won't go away, and it's getting louder.  And then there's the thing where my iPod keeps shuffling to Beethoven Symphonies when I have at least 6,000 other songs on there for it to shuffle to but it won't it just keeps plowing through the 9 Symphonies (but, and here's the tricky [and I have to say really annoying] part, it's shuffling within the symphonies--you know, first the second movement of the third symphony, second the third movement of the fifth symphony and then the first movement of the eighth, and continuing on like that).  Isn't that weird?  And I don't think that in itself is any indication of the fact that they're coming which they most surely are or that I'm running out of time which I most surely am...it was more the thing with the sirens and the hum.  And that scratching noise.  And I think they've poisoned my wine.  And the guy in the wine store with the thin little mustache and all the grease in his hair and the weird way he wears a doctor's white coat that he never seems to change although it never seems to get dirty and the funny little look he gives me when I ask for Cabernet like maybe I'm mispronouncing it somehow (and I'm not even saying the end like "net" - you know with the "t" actually spoken hard instead of cab-er-nee so I don't know what his problem is other than maybe he's feeling self-conscious about the fact that a bunch of men who look like government operatives [and I'm just making this part up now but for effect, you know?] were just in his tidy little store and were switching out some of his inventory and he can't do anything about it [so there's the whole helpless, being used as a pawn of the man thing] and it just so happens that those [the switched out ones] are the very bottles that I pick off the shelves and so he can't decide if [a] I'm part of the whole conspiracy and his little shop is being used as some sort of clearing house/exchange center for government spooks of which I am one or [b] that maybe they're doing something to me that I'm not aware of, the effects of which may take place in his very store--the store he is so obsessed with keeping clean and tidy so much so that he's imposed the unconventional wardrobe thing with the white doctor's coat on himself).  Or maybe he's part of it too.  I hadn't thought about that until just now...
What was that?  Oh no, I have to hurry.  OK, so there's a bench in Vienna along the park side of Il Place du Strassemerkel...Merken!  Merkenstrasse.  And no one ever ever seems to sit there but me.  And all the pigeons stay away...they never fritter around that bench the way they do other benches.  And I hate birds so I sat there.  And it was empty like I said.  And then walking along the strasse, the rue, the street, right past my bench, I swear was Beethoven himself.  And he regarded me with this queer little expression like I was sitting at HIS bench.  Like I was in his place.  The expression was nothing like that of the little greasy thin mustached man in the wine store with the white coat.  This was a stormy, angry look.  And so I stood up and then he stepped around me and sat himself and started playing at some imaginary piano...and I swear I heard the Moonlight Sonata playing but then he just faded away right where he sat.  He didn't vanish as much as fade away...and the music did too.  And then there were several men all at once you know like triangulated around me the way the government has men on surveillance trying to plan for any eventuality--like they would be ready no matter which way I ran but instead I leaped over the bench and ran into the park and got away.  I've gone back to the bench everyday on the Merkely and every time it's the same, although the piece Beethoven plays is different.  Yesterday he even played a Chopin Polonaise which there is no way he could have known because it was written after he had died...only now I think the men have found me and they know what I'm doing and...