things here, things there

words words words. the more i try to learn german the more i am aware of my speaking and so the less i am able to speak it. it even effects my english. i need a break from words.

For the sake of an update

The careful alchemy required in the conscious convergence of two worlds should not be underestimated, especially when both elements being brought together are places and people to which (and to whom) one is deeply attached— and moreover the meeting of the various parts is an event on which one has preparatorily bestowed great emotional significance and expectation. Such a mixture can almost only lead to disappointing results, but a merely peaceful though unsatisfactory anticlimax may be preferable to chemically explosive.
Those who are on the move, or have moved, should especially know what I mean by two worlds. there is, or ought to have been, some break between the few years leading up to last may, the vague summer following and the Now and To Be that follows, i.e. that Rest of Your Life that we were to have been preparing for (been prepared for) and have now entered, however much we may have stumbled on the stepping in, or caught our oversized shoulderside against the doorframe.
the one world is inhabited by people we know well, some too well, whose faces we see in passing, arbitrarily or like clockwork, in meeting, parting, moving or in waking in the morning. and then there is the New. where we savor (or fear) the unfamiliar that surrounds us, are stimulated by the novelty and possibility, or made hesitant by the sudden absence of safety and soft familiar hands, voices, thoughts.
both realms having their individual momentum, is a meeting necessarily a collision?

Things left behind

My father and I walk through rooms, half rooms, quarter rooms, tags hanging from the closet units, the footstools, the lampshades, saying wouldn't this plant look pretty beneath my window, these new shelves for your familiar books. Then we put a few white candles in the cart and shuttle swedish prefab furniture home to a house furbished in sleek white antiquity. New York across the sea I am wearing the new green dress, allwide pocket in the front like a marsupial pouch.
It rains in Bielefeld of course, the day I arrive because my father promised it was perfect sunshine all last week. But I am not dissappointed, this is the german gray I recognize. morning dawns unfamiliarly bright and we visit Bärenort, the Bear-place (brick house, birch trees) where I discover things I left behind. like uncovering, abandoned in an attic, the incomplete remnants of some stranger's life—except that this was my life and nothing is so strange, only for a time forgotten. these shirts that no longer fit, those coats that never did. the lavender left in the wardrobe, the blue pillow, the pens run dry; letters discarded, piled on blank postcards, misplaced copy of Howards End (there it was,the mystery solved), sketchbook, watchchain, accordioncase, rice-paper lightcover. not everything exactly as I left it, but exactly everything I left and, for the most part, never thought of afterward.
Why so many things? stuffed in our pockets, in pouches of our ever growing belly, the widths and breadths and bottoms, basements bowels, of our houses, saved, stored, sequestered. we've sunk into the ocean of objects swallowing up all space to breathe, think in. or at least I have, even here the more noticeable because there is more space to move my limbs in, space that is still enough to overtake the many things i fill it with. brought from another home, bought at flea markets, borrowed from someone else's discarded storage. Before flying I worried for days about what to bring, what not to, anticipating what I might need or use, what I would want to have. Now I wonder how much I left behind that I will never miss.
Things already forgotten, what fails? Just people, places, moments.

oh canada

to prove my ever barefoot state here I am out of states....

in the seas of nova scotia. my one short week visiting christine is ending in blaring sunglare, the waves hushing, the oceanwind whistling, harpstrings vibrating and me, humming with pure contentment

El Batay

In a small dive bar, three-quarters up the steep calle de christo, I was offered a choice. Black sharpie or white out? Stepping down into the first room I felt as though stalactites should hang from the dark ceilings instead of the yellow lamps which illuminated, on every curving wall, what was most striking about the place: decades of names layered in every medium in every font, size, design, from floor to archway, in every room, one one top of, through, obscuring, obliterating or accompanying another. there was not a single stretch of plaster or wood left bare.

33,000 words later

A year, I know, but you didn't miss much. I spent time being a serious senior, being a summer fling, being self centered, being sacrificial.
I danced and wrote and dawdled and dreaded and splashed ink across giant drawings on my floor.
Now all I have to show is a stack of papers. printed, colored, penciled, other-sized.
not too bad really.

and guess what...
I have moving on the mind.

it began with a handshake and ignorant idealism. and willpower.
some people can re-construct reality easily, out of pure obstinate idea.
and a little money.

suddenly everyone is gone.
the fireworks faded
the tables folded
boxes packed, furniture re-arranged, carpet cleaned, glasses washed, rooms empty, plans in the midst of being followed through...
i know there must be people around here somehwere,
but now the cafe is almost closed and I am the only one sitting
in the corner on the orange sofas.
counting my predicates.

On receiving 79 comics in a book dedicated

I have been very good at keeping the things I accumulate, and letting go of people.
I want to learn to let go of things, and keep the people

in the red heart snow hook.

coat
socks
red sweater
three scarves
two undershirts
three overshirts
two pairs of thermal leggings
one underskirt
one overskirt
legwarmers
purple boots
gloves
hat

valentines

Back to back

Bard shuttling forth and back to red hook now. trying to make this bard life anew. a new apartment but otherwise everything is tooooo familiar to allow for very much memory of absence. The first week poured a full dose of irony down my throat, tasting of bitter apricot and pennies.
I open my suitcases, the scent carried over sea planes, still zipped in with too many scarves and striped stockings. So this is how germany smelled? smoke and lavender.

Berlin is gone. She disappeared backwards into the dusky passenger side window.
On the last day, somehow, I accidentally visited almost every place important to me in the last few months. Humboldt vorbei, the Linden trees, ancient hospital courtyards of St. Hedwig, those bridges, the hinterhoff with the bonbons, the riverside willows, my first neighborhood in Kreutzberg (didn’t I swing on those tires as a baby?). The cragged dry waterfall I climbed up with clare, the posh poplar avenue, the crisscrossed street star of Eberswalder station. The ink store, the gold victory statue, passed the glass spirals of the Bundestag, the Tiergarten area where I once got a tour from an old grandfather-like man and saw Christmas lights all along the Ku’damm and cried…but that’s only one story…
In the last week I saw all the people I meant to and said four hundred drawn out farewells, none of which felt the least bit final. Clare and Felix left before I did, to meditate ten days somewhere in the mountains. Goodbye to Naima and Örjan, who looked just once back in the night and Elena, after promises of going to help her brother make wine in italy. To andreas, who has begun to re-awaken and to mathilda, who has just begun to speak. Goodbye to Paul the towering upstairs anarchist who smiled so kindly and who shared so much. In this place, people are less afraid to ask what they need of eachother. How different this is from ny..where everyone is expected to do it on their own. Asking help..a weakness. But we all need.
These farewells were different than the ones I’ve been used to…fierce, dramatic, absolute. No, this was a calm and delicate parting, no ripping of muscle from bone. But I wasn’t disappointed, more relieved.
I’m tired of trying to make things more meaningful than they are. Things just are, and that’s meaningful enough.
Berlin will always be there, in one form or another. Nowadays, this city neither welcomes nor despises. She just lives there along side you, interested or indifferent, accepting, appreciating but preoccupied with her own ideas, and troubles.
Berlin is not trying to be majestic, be some glorious past, or the city of the future, or anything other than she is.
I don’t really want to attempt some long reminiscing recollecting meditation on ‘my time in berlin’. At least not now. And not all at once. There’s no wrapping up that could do the experience justice. And as far as that sort of tying up creates an immediate distance, I have the feeling that it is still going on… this is just the continuation and not a separate life.

Kiez Mentality

Kiez Kiez...like birds chirping.
Kiez is a word thrown around a lot here. It was one of my first new terms coming to Berlin and refers to a neighborhood or region connected by one community. Getting to know the Kiez means not just learning the streets geographically, but also culturally; the events and local happenings. There might be Kiez meetings, where members of the community get together to discuss Kiez issues. It can be used as an identifier, ie. ‘coming from in the Bergmann Kiez’ (in Kreutzberg). As in this case, it might be named for a popular/central street in that area (Bergmann str.). In Kreutzberg for example, you also have the Oranien(str) Kiez.
It might be mistaken to think of Berlin as a cohesive city. Something you can sense early on, is that it is very neighborhood based. Even more, areas like Wedding, or Charlottenberg, Spandau or Treptow are really their own self-sufficient little towns. Even Kreutzberg, Friedrichshain and Prenzlberg, though there is more crossover, can be very self-contained. The idea didn’t come together for me until someone pointed out that these names of present neighborhoods represent what once really were separate towns. Over time they expanded into each other and were eventually subsumed into the greater Berlin. Neukolln (the ‘junkie’ hood) was once a city, larger than Berlin. Until it was swallowed. In many ways, the ‘city’ is still just a collection of these towns, bound by name, some streets, some train tracks, separated by a preserved identity and their own Kiez mentality.
Undoubtedly there are other cities like this. NY is not this way, because it is so up-close against itself. Sure, it has areas with distinct personalities, but this is different than pseudo-towns because it was a modern, planned city as opposed to an evolution from ye olde townships. Berlin is just so verdammt big. I don’t know LA but from what I’ve heard maybe it has a similar feeling, or rather is on another extreme end: sprawling decentralization.