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.