berlin, part ii

Toward the end of Wings of Desire, there is a sort of Psalm recitation. A soliloquy voice-over about what we long for and think about as children that remains a thruline throughout our lives.

"On every mountaintop," the voice says, "the longing for a higher mountain yet." And, "in every city, the longing for an even greater city."

This rang so true for me. I've lived in many many places, and in each one, after I've "conquered" them, I've thought - Onward! Upward! And whenever I've returned for a visit, I've often thought, "However did I live here??? [e.g. Boston, San Francisco] It's just so *small*!"

But Berlin seems different. I think it's quite ironic that a movie about Berlin claims that no matter the city, there is a longing for an even greater city. As I mentioned in my last post, I found Berlin rather impenetrable; a great unfurling metropolis... with so many layers.

After all, there isn't a spot of geography without history, but few have been emblematic of so many diverse ideologies in such a short span. This is the place of Prussia! Of Wiemar! Of Nazism! Of Sovietism! Of the Cold War! Of squatters! Of art! Of engineering!

So many elements, all heaped upon the next and then pushed out from the center into a sprawl of districts and neighborhoods so far-flung I couldn't begin to try and get to them. How could anyone really truly long for a greater city than this one? It seems the ultimate in challenge, in riddle. Berlin seems like a place that needs years of deciphering.

So with that as a caveat, since I had days, not years, I bring you some additional promised pictures from my journey there. Enjoy!


The predictable first pic - no? The Berlin Wall...



"Madness" - think that sums it all up nicely.



This footpath could not have happened a few decades ago...




There's a continuous line of cobblestones throughout the city that indicates exactly where the wall once stood.



Brandenburg Gate 50 years ago, when they rolled out barbed wire before the wall itself went up.



And Brandenburg Gate today.



Toys for tots in East Germany during the Cold War... Grenades are fun!




A luxury stretch Hummer going through the site of Checkpoint Charlie (which has all been recreated... and according to my tour guide, is now manned by Eastern European immigrants...)



No idea...




Love the options here.... "Do you vote?" Ha. "No - I don't care for nothing!"




Couldn't resist... a new cartoon character for 'Don't Walk'!



And walk!



Am I an idiot for not fully realizing that Berlin has a river running through it??



My hotel (a former bank) - the building beside the green dome (thank you corporate expense accounts that aren't mine). This is also the square where books from a university were burned during the Nazi-rise.



And where I spent a good dealing of my Berlin evenings... a few lovely receptions on top of this roof... (need to get my camera lens cleaned, clearly).



So this wasn't quite as fantastic as the to-die-for breakfast at the hotel, which consisted of every variety of fruit, muesli and yogurt you could possibly imagine (in an atrium setting, no less) but it also didn't cost 40 euros (whoops!)... Rhubarb Kuchen and Caffe Americano by the river.



This bird was seriously interested in my Rhubarb Kuchen... had to enlist that fork to try and fend him off!



The mall, Quartier 206, which looks like it was designed by M.C. Escher.



Nice pic from one of Berlin's many many wonderful parks. Which happens to go well with the last line from the Wings of Desire monologue:
"When the child was a child, It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today."

attention: this is a live performance

"Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for — for another time?
There are no other times.
There is only now.
Right now."
— George Balanchine

Lives are changed because of silences. Because of words unspoken. Requests, desires, feelings, never articulated. We think that our actions are what shapes our future, but it is the void, the things not done, the scope of the unspeakable, unknowable ether is what weighs down upon us more than we know.

I have left many many places in my past, but as I explained to a friend the other day, the likelihood that I would have stayed put in any one of those locales had someone, the right someone, sat me down, taken me by the hand, looked me in the eye and said, "I wish you wouldn't go. Please don't. Please stay right here for a little while," is frighteningly grand.

Granted, I come across as pig-headed, as unswayable, as confident and unwavering and devil-may-care - to the point that perhaps it is my own fault that nobody ever had the guts or the grist to get in the way of one my decisions and request a serious reconsideration and reversal. Nonetheless, my life's trajectory has largely been shaped by drastic exits simply because nobody ever put up a good case, often any case, for otherwise.

Which brings me to an recent experience of a friend of mine (no, this is not a veiled tale about me). There is a person in this friend's life who was planning a move - a major one - across an ocean. My friend did not want this person to go.

Me: "Have you asked them to stay?"

Friend: "No. But isn't that a huge request? An unaskable request? Something that signifies neediness on my end. Insults them by implying I think they'd consider such a sacrifice, a redirection of their life, on my behalf?"

Me: "Maybe, but sometimes, the only reason I've left, is because nobody told me not to go."

So my friend asked. Imagine it. A life was asked to be changed. And guess what? The person in question is staying put - for a bit longer anyway.

I am not surprised.

We are so afraid of showing our need; showing our affection; our depth of care for fear of frightening away those whom we feel those things toward. But that is the true irony. For really, isn't that the grand quest we're all on anyway? Finding a person, place and thing who can furnish us with exactly that sort of unrestricted devotion.

This prevalent hesitancy and the potentially life-altering wrongness of this hesitancy reminds me of another of my favourite quotes:

"Say "I love you" to those you love. The eternal silence is long enough to be silent in, and that awaits us all."
- George Eliot

Ahh... the eternal silence. Which brings me back to my airplane theme that you've seen recently, together with the girls in dresses and the quotes from choreographers (above).

I've been taking a lot of risks lately (those of you who know me may say, 'but you always take risks' - true, but these are perhaps more directed, more *calculated* risks than usual). Risks of the heart and the deep deep soul. Taking plane rides and grand leaps of faith. Some have worked. Some not so well.

But a novel is being written (there are dancers in it - I feel eerily in sync with the zeitgeist and all the Black Swan buzz) and a venture is being formed. And if I don't hold back - well, actually, the *if* of that is almost irrelevant as I've reached a point where I don't feel I *can* hold back anymore... a sensation that makes me feel as if I've backed myself onto the right gang plank (diving board?)... a place of such overwhelming surrender because there simply is no choice.

In effect, to appropriately end with another Balanchine quote:

"I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance."
— George Balanchine

And if you have to dance, dancing then, is what you must do; the very abandon of your existence is fulfilled through the act of dance itself.



Photo is by the similarly-minded Rodney Smith, who (if you read his blog) rarely loves exactly how his photos turn out, but the process, the elements that make up the vocation of photography, is his reward.

cutting bait

"I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections.

The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals (an explanation that each of them would at least find acceptable), but also (and this is more painful to admit) because they don't hold the same importance for each other.

When Irena saw Josef at the airport, she remembered every detail of their long-ago adventure; Josef remembered nothing. From the very first moment their encounter was based on an unjust and revolting inequality."

— Milan Kundera

I find it quite hard to leave people behind, even when I know I ought. Yes, more than places or work, people prove my foil. Don't they have a way of weaseling in and making it nearly impossible to completely abandon them? Even when it would probably all be for the best? At least, that's what I find...

This photo, entitled Nancy is by the fantastic Alex Prager. It's pretty clear to me that whatever impending circumstance awaits this red head, she needs an extra dose of courage. Whether she is running from or arriving at her fate, there seems to be an ominous fog and longing in the air of the sort we'd all rather avoid altogether if we could.

On a related, but wholly separate note, if you missed Prager's stylized short film Despair (somehow I did!) starring Bryce Dallas Howard - do waltz on over to Nowness for a viewing. It's totally worth the few minutes - ha - for me, watching it conjured up the the equally technicolour work (albeit, written) of Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down.

buona notte

The rain pounded against the black cab; flooded the gutters.
We were not lost, but stuck. In traffic. In our wrong decision.

Then rescued. Plucked from the side of the street in Lesley's Foxtons Mini. Whisked to La Famiglia, an obscure and wonderful restaurant at the end of King's Road; Italy when you step through the door frame.

It was not the easy choice - not the restaurant, not the assemblage of people, not the night with its torrents; not easy simply because this was London and it was what I wanted.

I insisted though because it would be my last orchestrated occasion in town; a last forced bon mot, a toast to what had been my life. Good conversation. Good friends. The sort who are kindred pieces of you, who had taken a long time to find, to make mine. And London was there too - inside of Italy; the crux of everything; seated at the table, indifferent.

"Goodbye, London," I whispered to the empty space next to me after we'd 'ooh'd and aah'd' at the cheese and tarts on the desert cart and the waiter had wheeled it away.

"You're still here?" the city retorted, rolling its eyes, "Will you ever get the message you stubborn Warbling! Be gone."

"I'm going, I'm going..."

"You're sure? You're sure you'll do it once and for all - without a tear or sentimental regret? You've extinguished all romanticism? Smothered every seed of nostalgia? Every past and future sprout - withered. You're taking it all with you - your whole soul - in tact."

I laughed at the city's skepticism. It knew my general makeup too well. "You've done a good job. There will be no tears, I assure you. Not in my eyes or in my heart. Every cell of optimism, of conviction, belongs to my future; there's no latent belief in the gold I might have unearthed if only I'd stayed a little longer. And yes, it's really happening this time."

"You, living here - you were expected much later."

"I know. I arrived before I should have, forced my in, then proceeded to wear out my welcome."

"Next time, when you come back, if you come back, it will be time..."

"It would be the only way I could stand it. And I'll await your blessing and an engraved invitation. But I've got more faith in the 'when' than the 'if.'"

"Take a good swig of the downpour on your way out then - just in case, just so you're not tempted to come back before then."

I had to laugh at the city's consistency. "I expected as much of a parting gift from you - though there was really, honestly, no need." The rain drops sounded increasingly fierce against the canvas roof. "Alright then. Chin chin and buona notte, London."

"No, not good night. Last night - that will be my only tribute to you - among all the nights that have not been good nights - I will toast to the last evening. Serata finale, my willful girl. Go back from whence you came. Go. And don't look back."

just like that, all the magic was gone

i once had a boyfriend who said, "you're like a siren of the sea - men see you and they just don't come back." a sentiment he not only acutely felt, but had also witnessed among other men; his own friends and acquaintances; the type of emails i'd get from ex-boyfriends.

i used to smirk whenever i recalled this statement - revelling in its truth; sometimes it seemed if i snapped my fingers in the right way i could cast a spell that would extract a man's heart from his chest and put it in the palm of my hand, to fondle or eat whole as i saw fit.

but today, i suddenly felt nothing more than human. and that power, that wily brook of magnetic pull - i felt it evaporate - sink down through the cracks of my soul and disappear into nothingness. the beguiling flame, which i probably very falsely believed i could control, could wield for better or worse, to captivate, to bewitch, has gone cold; entirely depleted, diminished to nothing more than the flat reality of my white blood cells.

in its place is a pervasive awareness that i am just like everyone/anyone else. there is no elusive allure. there is no je ne sais quoi; no mesmerizing quality. i am no enchantress. i am just another person among the flesh-and-blood populace. and a largely unextraordinary one at that.

all the while, i'm sitting on yet another runway, hitching a ride to somewhere - hoping to end up - well, maybe not another incarnation of an enchantress, but maybe, better off.

The rather fitting and Hollywood-esque photo is by Alex Prager of LA, which is the city I've just left (again).

straw poll

Would you move here??


Even if the people think a little too much like this?




And you were the only person in a dress?

a lonely hunter

“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
- Carson McCullers (author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)

After a long stage of restless limbo, it appears I'll be on the road again very soon. I'm glad. I'm ready for a new place to settle. A place to put myself and breathe in a new routine. It's been an interesting and difficult couple of months - life has felt increasingly liquid, less concrete, like I can't get a grip on anything - am treading water in a vat of Jell-o. So many things up in the air - my emotions and things on no one geographical point on the map. Being a perpetual vagabond is a lonely endeavor. I know I do it to myself. But it often seems unavoidable. I long for roots, and I envy those who have them, yet I still can't seem to put them down - not for long.

In the days of old, gypsies used to move in packs. I guess I was born to the wrong time. I've been watching loads of Carnivàle lately, an HBO series that traced, you guessed it, a traveling carnival across the dust bowl of the Great Depression. It got cancelled after a couple of seasons about 5 years ago - I somewhat think it was ahead of it's time - I have a feeling people would relate more to the uncertain desolation of that era now. Me, I guess I've always related to the desolation of that era. But superimpose the magical wanderlust of a carnival on top of it... whoa... I know that. A life that's a series of places and incredulous events... I know that.

Maybe it's just a sign of being a life-thirsty American - who knows. But here's to getting back on that quiet road, to embarking on more jaw-dropping adventures, to hunting down a plot of land to stake a tent... and to writing about it.


Photo is by a guy who still travels with the gypsy packs, and astounds me with the emotion he can capture in a single still frame, Mike Brodie.

over

just back from the hamptons and am feeling thrown. it's odd how some of life's best moments take a while to sink in... take months, years, and other continents for you sit back in reflection and think, "my, how sweet, almost ambrosial, that was."

other moments, such as those final glimmering seconds of christmas, are appreciated as divine and passing within closer proximity to living them - often *as* you live them. my trip to the hamptons this weekend was more like that - a rare circumstance animated by its unchecked merriment and singularity.

so when kasey, our friend tom (international man of mystery), and i boarded the train home, it felt like i was sorrowfully dimming the lights and pulling down a bittersweet curtain over the memory of our weekend. i have not laughed so hard, nor been so thoroughly entertained and surprised by events in a very long time. we gathering hopped, we met artists, we met (other) eccentrics, in some ways, we met each other... and through it all, we laughed, oh how we laughed. it was an unexpected and redemptive bit of perfection... a freeing gust of air... the type of unleashed contentment you'd like to cork up; consumed moments that somehow, someway, you wish you could down again so you could savour different elements of them; those rarest of unmarked hours that are not grand or extraordinary per se, but sober you up with joy, make you wince at their passing, magnify the reality that life is temporary... all of which make it difficult to let go of the experience while it's still up close.

our trio's trip to the hamptons of aug 20-22, 2010 may have been absorbed by the sponge of time passed, but i do hope that something very similar will unfold again, ideally sooner rather than later... and perhaps with greater frequency... yes, being able to count on that would make me less mournful and more gleeful, replace my clingy reminiscence with a sense of anticipation - like the promise that a thousand imminent christmases from my childhood are going to appear on the horizon and i'll have the exhilaration of watching them draw closer and closer, and living through them, all again.


Photo is by a very cool Los Angeleno (can't you *tell*?) who I discovered during our weekend - Alex Prager.

Re: the picture... Is her life over? Or is this some kind of liberation? The moment looks both transcendent and lethal. At any rate, it seems to capture a point where one thing has stopped and another has begun. Shrug. It seemed appropriate.

rebel

"In my childhood I led the life of a sage, when I grew up I started climbing trees"
— Philip Roth



when i was a child i'd climb out onto decks, balconies, anything that put me above-it-all, and marvel....
at least my adult-life has witnessed *some* consistencies...

midtown girl

right. so i'm living life mid-air right now. not quite here, not quite there. my belongings are in boxes on one continent, i'm across the atlantic looking at them from another. an atrium in my heart is tremulously balancing - teetering, really, on a grain of sand in a bankrupt western coastal state, while i'm waylaid in the hello-limbo tar pit of new york city, though my long-term future plans don't look to include either locale.

basically, i'm a homeless, bi-coastal, bi-continent, decision-straddling vagrant who is waiting.... waiting, as my friend said today, for something solid that i can place both feet on to appear. yes, that would be ideal or even as wishy-washy sounding as nice. but at least trying to hover over the unknown till something materializes shouting "me! step on me next!" till then, i'm nothing more than your common, everyday, living-on-good-graces squatter.

i've mostly imposed at my sister's apartment on the upper west side, but it's a bit of a literal and figurative war zone (not going to get into that) - she calls it baghdad. so fortunately, i've got the equivalent of switzerland on reserve as a place to put myself. have occasionally fled to my friend's ridiculously appointed midtown high rise as a quiet, air-conditioned, oasis of refuge. his pad is *quintessential* new york - what people mean when they say 'the big apple.'


sleek and polished with near-360-degree views.


taken from the balcony 50 floors up - it gives me the shakes to even put one foot on it.


ahhh... central park... surrounded and enshrouded in all its smoggy and dreary architectural glory. honestly, if there's one thing this stint has taught me, it's that even though i always thought i'd *eventually* end up in nyc, i actually don't think i could live here permanently - after london it's just too anonymously urban, too poorly executed, grimy, blah.....


though it looks better at night. which is when i tend to live anyway. so i ought to appreciate it, since i'm here.... until.......

la, la, red rover... and where will she land?

most people aim to minimise the number of unknowns in their lives... sometimes, it seems, i do my best to maximize mine...



Illustration, which very much captures the way I feel at the moment, is by the lovely Rebecca Dautremer.