A moment

captures Michael Ackermann…haunting moments, in photographs that are disturbing, often repulsing but... Maybe it was the grainy dusk outside, maybe the scratchy radiohead playing inside, but I stared so long at frightening eyes and what could have been dreamscapes.

Meanwhile…
Gluwein stands have appeared on every corner, next to the guys with the currywursts. The Weinachtsmarkts are getting into full swing now. I get waffles with cherries on top and chestnuts while marveling at all the bright little objects displayed under the endless rows of green kiosk roofs. Everything is light and stars and woodsmoke.
Mmm…Ich liebe es!

Moving in Triangles

Moving again, somewhere. I love my room so much. I wake up to blue and auburn and..stale cigarette smoke. My housemate smokes a lot. and in the small kitchen a lot. and doesn’t believe in opening windows or airing out rooms. I’ve lived with smokers before and never been bothered, but…
It's back to
‘hallo, ich ruf wegen den zimmer an…’

Meanwhile
Maybe it’s just that good exhibits inspire exaggerated love for the artists shown, but after seeing a collection of Robert Häusser photographs I was moved to name him my favorite photographer, at least for now. The show was at the Deutsche Historisches Museum which has a newer part designed by I.M.Pei which is gorgeous and which I was obsessed with for a while just from the outside. The inside is fabulous, with triangle themes popping up and down everywhere, as in the rhomboid elevator.

Thanksgiving 2: Felix's Birthday

I spend a good amount of time with the people in Berlina’s WG. They range in age from about 21 to 33 and could all have graduated from the ‘old’ Bard. Pasana, vegan meals cooked together, button curtains, contact dance…its all just part of life. I think it is funny to have found contact dance people here. Maybe not unusual that this is here, every kind of thing is here, but interesting the way certain types of people find each other. Maybe we send out waves of some kind like a signal. Lighting bugs do it…
After dinner, for which Askhan cooked a vegan ‘turkey’ (a big stuffed butternut squash), we sat around the dance floor making lanterns out of paper, tape, pomegranate shells, feathers, a green pepper. We dressed in robes and carried our lights in a silent procession up the dark Kreutzberg. I wondered if I had been there before, maybe many times, when I was small. It all seemed almost familiar, but it may have been the familiar that comes when you believe you should be accessing vague memories.
So we all stood shivering slightly on the windy tower top reviving ghosts. Or we were the specters ourselves. The spectators. Surveying the berlin lamplights spread northwards below.
It was the first time I could think of that I had seen such a nighttime overview of the city and it gave me an unheimlich feeling. As though being at this remove and having such a broad perspective on the land momentarily brought a stepped back, distanced, consideration of my life. Extro-intraspection. I thought of seeing paris from the steps of monmartre, I thought of seeing ny from buildings and boats. All I could think of was ‘what? what is this place? where am I, and how, and how, and for?’

Later that night, we flipped through incredible graphic books that Felix and Clare had created. Felix has volumes and volumes of drawings and collages and comics printed out…it was overwhelming. People create such amazing things.

German and Italian

I tell Elena the story of the Pied Piper, since she’s never heard it.
She says, the subway station walls remind her of a pool.
I say, I’ve gone to concerts in an old pool.

She says, I need something sweet
I say, chocolate croissant?
She says, cookie?
Berry cake?
She says, that?
The apfeltasche?
What’s an 'apfeltasche'?
It has apples.
You like apples?
Yes. Let's get it.


Elena and I go together mid morning to find those fabled ‘black brothers’ and try to discover anything we can about the camera, jacket and key.
Surely, and strangely enough, there is a noticeable divide in the population of the park. In one half there roam the baby carriages, the joggers, and the dog walkers. Then, turn a corner, pass some trees and there is a cement plateau and benches and suddenly not the hint of a soccer mom. This part is predominated by guys, listening to music or just hanging out who seem to have grouped themselves together in general accordance with ethnicity. After some strange minutes talking to one and then another of these men, all of whom only try to pick us up, the experience brings nothing but a phone number we will never use, an exchange of cigarettes and declined offers of ‘the best stuff [weed] ever, right here’.

Turkeys and Strange Turns

I did not expect to have much of a celebration for this holiday (which is maybe my favorite back home…I thought I would be sadly reminiscing instead) but Askhan, one of the people in Berlina’s WG (an American who just graduated from Vassar, funny enough), invited me to a celebration with some other people on his internship program. He is an amazing cook, and the whole thanksgiving was a good time. Berlina comes as well to join the fairly international group. We all head home to sleep happily on distended stomachs, dreaming dopamined dreams
Though, just before I do get to sleep…
On my way home that late night I happened to run into an acquaintance sitting with another slightly dubious character. While talking, the subject of my camera came up (I had made posters and everything that week).
“Wait, did it look like this?” asks the second man, and indicates with his hands the approximate proportions of my camera.
It turns out it may be being sold in the nearby park here, for 50 euros.
Really? I wonder.
“Sure” says the man “just go into the park and ask for ‘the two black brothers’, and then one of them, named D___ has the camera. Say you’re a friend of C___.”
“They’re just in the park everyday?” I asked.
“Yeah, in fact, you could go right now, they’re there” (this was about 3 in the morning).
“OK” I said, “I’ll go there now, alone, in the dark, to a park I’ve never been to, and ask for ‘two black brothers’ who may or may not be selling a camera ….”
Then he wanted me to pay for his beer (in exchange for the info). Yeah, right.
Dubious as he was, I am sure he was telling the truth about the camera. Of course, it still might not be my camera, and if it was it's probably sold, but it’s the best lead I have. I don’t know how to go about this at all but I’ll have to do it soon.

Bärenort: The Exhibit.

So I have curled back this weekend, into the red brick shell of Bärenort. I realize I have never seen it this time of year, but suddenly everything blends into the rustling rust and gold landscape.
The exhibit is hypnotic. glass pieces sparkle in the windows, candles reflect bronze, white porcelain curves around gold clay pieces. kinetic sculptures hang from the ceiling wearing lights shining through feathers and jagged metal jutting out like wings which revolve dangerously around the room. I think of feather filled caves, of spirals in sand, of Aughra's planetarium. (do you know the dark crystal?). They whirr faintly, mechanical hearts purring.
I spend a lot of time with Mathilda. She is worried about the dogs. I carry her towards the woods. She falls asleep on my shoulder.

She is just about to tumble over the edge of articulate speech; in wordless understanding. what a mysterious moment.

Finding and Losing

The story goes that I do find an apartment…a peaceful and beautiful large room with sunny windows. Right by the willow trees bending over the river bank. So close I wonder if I can jump from my balcony into the still water. But also very conveniently next to a train station. My housemate has two dogs and lived in LA for three years. She smokes, but I don’t think this will be a problem.
So that’s all good, but then a terrible thing happened. On the appointed day she helped move a not quite ready me into the new place, chocolates on the pillow awaiting. We carried all my stuff at once between the two of us, bags, violin, heavy suitcase. An hour into unpacking and being in the apartment, I realized my jacket…wasn’t…anywhere. It must have fallen out of my bag while we were walking on the short (and dark) stretch of street from the car to the door. Panic.
It was nowhere on the street, just gone. Gone. I searched longer and asked in all the nearby cafés and bars, but to no avail.
I am devastated: my camera, my beautiful camera, was in the pocket (ironically the safest softest place, I thought).
And, so were my old keys.
I had kept the keys because I wanted to go back that night and make sure everything was super clean, and because I wanted to give them up to alex personally or leave a nice note at least. I went the next day to explain what happened to him and he was…really angry. He railed, and raged. Insultingly so. Absurdly so and.. it's just not an episode I care to dwell on. (things are alright now)
So I found a place and...lost my camera.
After an eternity spent at the police station waiting to make a report that I already knew wouldn’t bring anything, and exhausted from the emotions of the last two days (moving out was confusing enough itself) I was ready to crawl back into the shell.
So I did. Or back Bärenort I went—where I had been planning to go anyway because Ulrika had organized an exhibit themed Sun Moon Stars. I met up with Andreas, a family friend, and we spent the four hour drive mostly silent through the night, with the occasional babble from Mathilda, his two year old in the backseat, who fell asleep just before we arrived, mesmerized, midnight, to so many candlelit windows.

Momentary Maxim of Idolatry

Maximilian Hecker. Roter Salon.
Oh, to hear, so ethereal, such a voice breathing lyrics, so schmalzily nonsensical, and nonetheless so beautiful. Excuse my brief lapse into starry-eyed fanhood but this was perhaps the best concert I have ever been to. Never mind the mass of people making the womb of the dark Red Salon nearly unbearable. Melted into one, the intimate crowd, enclosed by burgundy walls and moving fluidly through and around itself in the dim light, awaited those sounds like a first living breath. I stood at the edge of the platform light and laughed and awed and danced and ummed and wanted nothing more than here.
Ok. I’m finished, but seriously, the band is really good. And not above a satirical rap song, or the extremely effective use of a glockenspiel.

Twenty Planes

One evening on my way to visit the Musee d’Orsay, (or Carnevale, I hadn’t decided) I passed the open door of a large Église. Inside it was dark: little light came through the windows—it was already getting late—and all the walls and arches and columns were painted in various colors and patterns. It was stunning. it seemed to me unbelievable that this building was just a step off a street, and that people passed it by all the time, just as I might have passed by, and never see the tapers in the corner, the green eagles perched above the arch.
By the time I came out I realized it was getting too late for a museum to be worth it, and, as I stood in a moment of indecision, a bus stopped nearby: 95 destination Monmartre. Well, that sounds fine, I thought, and got on.
If I ever make a list of traveling recommendations this will be one: just ride buses around a city.
I got off at Sacre Coeur stop, and just kept walking upwards, hills, steps, until I found myself in an strange alley with a prehistoric looking rock and an unexpected view over the city, the Eiffel tower doing its disco sparkle in the distance.
Then, higher, yes, I saw the cathedral, ivory stone, yes, gazed down the steps, over all the lights of Paris, yes I oohd, and sighed, and listened, and breathed.
There is a frightening oasis of a ‘tourist monmartre’, where everything seems to be in miniature. But once outside of this haven, walking around the dark, slightly menacing streets was some of the best time I spent in the city. I felt for the first time that this was the irreplaceable paris; that this could not be berlin, or new york, or new orleans or any and every other place I’ve been.
I walked into a time capsule of a tumbled about closet, actually a clothing shop with silk top hats, dancing shoes from the 50’s, dresses, gloves, purses and jewelry.
The time for the shopwoman seemed stopped as well, alongside the coats and capes.
I stopped to pick out flower tasting tea cakes, lavender, rose geranium, orange blossom. All bright fuschia and violet.
But it was time for me to wind my way south and so, remembering the word for ‘lost’, I used it copiously with other ruins of my high school French.
Less lost, near the Opera I caved to the aroma of roasting chestnuts. Having finally gotten used to asking directions in French I appealed to one man, who asked me, ‘Portuguese...?’
‘mm, English?’ I said.
‘Deutsch?’ he responded.
‘Ah yes’ I said triumphantly (in german) ‘I speak that’.
and so we talked, for a few minutes, with intermittent english and spanish and portuguese words and, somewhere in between the five languages, had quite a pleasant interchange.


There were more moments of reveling and revering over the next few days, but then thursday, stepping onto the twentieth plane so far this year, I flew from the French sky blue back to the German gray, suspended an instant between dreams and monuments.

rêve à la cannelle: quatre lunes en Paris

I am in Paris unexpectedly, or sooner than expected because, though I wanted to visit Christine anyway (whose resplendent rendition of her Paris life you should read at http://www.uneannee.blogspot.com/) , two friends came from ny, for only one weekend. A one time deal. So off I went, and here I find myself…here.


What can I even say? Paris is uniformly exquisite. Wrought balconies, finessed facades, everywhere you turn something just too refined. The people, like all the buildings and parks around them, are dressed up and made up with a certain attention to detail that makes for a more subtle beauty. It is pointed out to me that the men wear the collars of their black wool coats up around their ears. Anywhere else, this would look arrogant. Here, it is elegant. The delicate perfection is so thorough that I wonder a moment whether the homeless man sleeping against the cathedral side is just pretending. Even with his pants half way down in the frosty night.

The first night there is a full moon. There is a blackout in the labyrinthine 6th district, so bars revert to candlelight, and I find a small rickety shop with bonsai trees shelved on one side, and strings of pearls hanging opposite.

In Paris I am barely footing it…the bill that is. I stay with Alyssa, we change hotels, take cabs everywhere, try the best hot chocolate places, eat every kind of bread and croissant that the bakery offers… Perhaps I have gotten too used to broke Berlin, but I am in mild shock; this place is expensive.

Wandering around the second day we stop in the pantheon, it happens to be free. Inside, it looks at first as though the ceiling, having melted, is dripping over us. Really it is a sculptural installation.

Paris is mostly dusk to me. The sun is always just setting, the sky still holds some light and the buildings and sites are already being illuminated.
Jet lagged, or otherwise used to a different schedule, we walk around in the empty night, looking at closed doors, leaning buildings and forgetting the century. It is hard to find places open late enough.



We do do some big tourist things, and the city does not disappoint. I find out that the Eiffel tower is actually gorgeous in person. The day we go there, somewhat brouillard, turns out beautiful and my boots get heavy climbing the steps. So I take them off and trip the rest up barefoot. The metal is cold, it is November, I remember.
The view from the top is not as anti climactic as I’ve heard. It is gratifying to see the city stretched out under you, flat as a living map, and realize as you gaze at the maze of streets, why no one seems able to give directions around them.

The nice thing about traveling places off tourist season is that you don’t have to wait. At the Louvre we get in directly: no delay to ogle masterpieces. Moving through rooms, it is impossible to give works the time they deserve. Especially the paintings. Some we pass are massive. I like the feeling they give me, of being swallowed up.
We take our time idling at the front of the small crowd by la Jacond. We try to complain about the ridiculous way that the painting is displayed, about the entire cultural obsession around it, about the piece itself. But in the end, we can’t deny that it is a pretty picture after all. We move on; the people behind us were beginning to murmur.
Too many Watteaus, Caravaggios and [insert ninja turtle name]s later we emerge. I am left with the blurring impression of painted eyes and stone wings.

German Gyromancy

I'm moving. again.
Alex is flying sooner than planned back to Sydney.
and around we go.
I will divine the place to stay by walking in circles till I fall.
dizzis. I mean, diz is ze place, I will say.