Berlin or bust

Unpleasant, Unbelievable

Sick. Again.

Possessed of a queer divine dissatisfaction

That's where I'm at, folks, with this weird friggin' memoir I'm trying to write/draw here in grey Berlin.

The weird friggin' memoir also happens to be the reason photos outnumber words on my blog these days. Only so much voice to go around.

However, to keep the more verbally inclined of you satisfied/inspired on this melancholy Sunday, I have hired the incomparable Martha Graham to do the talking. Many of you may know this quote. But great words bear repeating.

When a bewildered and worried Agnes DeMille confessed to "a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that she could be," Graham quietly replied: 

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open...

No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."

Makes me wish I had my own mini-Martha, whispering such wonders into my ear all day long...

Can you spot the wiley tulip eater?

"Crunch. Crunch."

This photo has nothing to do with Berlin

That is my father, Pops, and his trusty sidekick, Soda Pop, whom I adopted from a toothless crone while on a solo road-trip twelve years ago, and whom my grandmother adopted from me when I moved to New York ten years ago, and whom my parents adopted from my grandmother after she was moved to Sonoma eight years ago.

Soda Pop was one of a squirmy black-and-white litter, tucked amongst a yardful of junk along Highway 101. Every dilapidated item was for sale. "Pops' place," the roadside business was called, after its previous owner. I cupped the kitten in my palm and puttered away in my yellow Subaru, leaking oil and ravaging the engine without my knowing it. Cleo was already riding in the backseat. She was not pleased.

But Soda Pop is in San Francisco. And Cleo is in Berlin, relishing it a little more each day. How else to translate her purr, louder and more persistent than I ever heard it in Boerum Hill?

I think it is clear who has the grüner thumb

The Boy's tulips:

Lilan's tulips:

The Boy has five. And I have...seven!

I am sooo the winner.

april is the cruellest month

Maybe t.s. eliot was right. For days now it's been rain rain rain. Pillowy gray sky. Earth wet and dark as espresso grounds. 

Every morning: Hope of sun. Disappointment. My arms sprout goosebumps.

Then again: "Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night."

So said Rilke.

The tulips Bayreuth Boy planted on his balcony have burst forth. He showed them to me yesterday. Apricot and amber and cotton-candy pink. So perfect I thought he must have bought them full-grown at the flower shop, stuffed their cut stems into the planter box.

But that's more my style.

We cooked dinner in his kitchen. Broccoli eggplant carrots cashews — cubed and quartered, sauteed in sesame oil. Also: brown Basmati rice, chunks of tofu — seasoned, salty. A Satay to drown it in. Coconut milk, dots of red, peanut butter unmistakable. Dreamy

I peeled a single garlic clove. Crushed it in the garlic press. The Boy did all the rest.

Afterward he insisted I watch a YouTube video of the White Stripes performing live on Conan O'Brien. I might have gotten the better end of the deal. The song took three minutes. Some bricks now baby, Say let's build a home, Some bricks now baby, Say let's build a home...

Jack White was red and raw and savage. His guitar was one big howl.

Which brings me to this:

"For aren't you and I gods? Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Release life's rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming. Laughter. Running."

Nabokov. He always says it best.

Unpleasant, Unnecessary

Walking over cobblestones in high-heeled peep-toe pumps. In the rain. After dark.

But damn did they look hot.

Unpleasant, Unavoidable

Bicycling over cobblestones.

Such are the hardships of life in Prenzlauer Berg.

Other Matters of Grave Importance

1. Curtains

Beware the gauzy white fabric, drifting languidly from ceiling to floor. Beware even that same diaphanous swathe in a marachino cherry.

Dawn dawns and a rose-tinted sun stains my eyelids, rustling me from my dreams. On Chausseestrasse, thick navy blue beat back the day, granting vital extra hours to this immuno-challenged hypothyroidic Epstein-barrist, especially when caught in jet lag's trap (down at 2 a.m., up at 11).

Now it's three broken nights on Rykestrasse and I am mean and grumpy and downright delinquent. How severe is the prison sentence for stealing navy blue from your previous sublet and slapping it over the window of your current? Stop me before I do it. Please.

2. Cleo

She does not like German-brand salmon paté. She won't speak anything but English. She meows at the Boy and me till we follow her into the living room. It is the loftiest room in the flat, the one she has claimed for her own. Tufts of fur already sprout from the soft white rug. She hops onto the sofa (velvet cushions the color of olives, worn and patchy as fallen gentry). We try to pet her and she bats away our hands. We leave and she follows, peeping at our ankles.

Perhaps she simply needs us near, the scent of us, the heat, reminding her: This is home now. We are here. You are not alone.

3. Girlfriends

When I returned from San Francisco last week, I thought, I MUST foster female friendships NOW. A boyfriend is a blessing. A kindred-spirit cousin causes the heart to swell, the pulse to quicken. And yet. Girlfriends are roots. They fasten the soles of the feet to the ground. Without them, I would keel over at the ankles.

You have met the French waitress. She is boigant and delicious, cheeks the pink of a fresco'd angel. Let us call her Amie.

New York Times Travel Special, featuring...

...American expats (sort of) like me! Read it here. 

As for the Ex-Berliner, whose editors are interviewed in the Times article's opening paragraphs, fuggedaboudit. It's all unreliable critic's choice listings (just ask Katrinka) and sub-par prose (high demand for English-language zine +  relatively few English-speaking writers abroad = lowered literary standards, natch).

But that ping-pong table you see pictured? It is the shit. I stood and watched, late one night, as forty Berliners clustered at its edges: the start of a new round. Each held a beer in one hand, a paddle in the other, and so began the slow circular march, players winnowed away failed hit by failed hit, until a mere two remained, hacking at the ball like China's spryest pros.

"Oh, that girl," said Bayreuth Boy, nodding at a broad-shouldered chick in a white hoody, "always wins." This time, however, she did not. By then the counterfeit Marlboro smoke (sold for cheap from Poland) was choking the breath out of Peter and me. So we left.

And that is about the extent of partying I do in this devastatingly hip arty-party city. Perhaps if I had arrived here five years younger, I might better fit the Times article's (sensational) expat demographic.

As it is, you will be reading posts about boilers and stomach flus, leftist movers and unhinged felines.

Hope that suffices.

Do Not Underestimate the Importance of a Functioning Boiler

The apartment I moved into has an old metal bathtub. Deep and beveled. Long as a bed. There is a silver-dollar-sized spot near the drain where the enamel has chipped. My new subletter was worried this would distress me.

The last time I lived in an apartment with a tub it was 1997 and my hair was dyed black and my fingernails painted robin's egg blue.

Actually that is a lie.

The apartment I just moved out of had a tub. However, the water ran hot just long enough for me to stand beneath the showerhead, wet myself down, swiftly soap up, and barely rinse off. Two and a half minutes. I timed it once with a Kelly Clarkson song.

First it seemed romantic. Nostalgic, even. When my mother lived in West Berlin in the sixties, resources were so limited she could shower no more than once a week.

Then winter came. And it was no longer romantic. Hair like mine takes a minimum two minutes to shampoo, followed by five to rinse. That left me with negative four and a half minutes of hot. Result: Many consecutive days of hair as slick and stale-scented as an aging otter pelt. When vanity finally had its way, I ducked face-down into the kitchen sink, stream of lukewarm pouring down my neck, futilely shampooing from behind but at least sparing myself an entire body doused in ice.

Therefore. Chipped enamel? Not distressing.

Berlin Relocation Number Three and a Half

Yesterday I moved. An aging lefty with patchwork jeans heaved my bags and boxes down five flights in Mitte and up three flights in Prenzlauer Berg. During the 10-minute drive between, he regaled me with thirty years of Berlin alterna-history. The influx of homosexuals in the seventies, he said, increased the appeal of the city for non-conventional artsy types such as him. Where homosexuals go, he insisted, creativity naturally follows. Lesbians too.

Naturally.

He was not pleased with my new choice of neighborhood. Sanitized to the point of soul-less-ness.

I could not fully disagree.

On Rykestrasse, the dilapidated charm for which I love Berlin has been painted over in spotless pastels. The storefronts are a string of bourgeois baby offerings. Retro lamps go for too much money. The cafes house pale-skinned thirtysomethings who sport designer denim. They prefer their coffee brewed from the bean.

So gentrified, it makes me vomit a little it into my mouth.

Kreuzberg, said the hippie, is much more diverse. Many Turks. Artists, too.

I know this.

And yet.

The streets of my new neighborhood are fields of cobblestones. The sky is wide, the sun floods the open spaces. Down the block stands the Wasserturm. Swingsets, ping-pong tables, budding chestnut trees encircle its base. Climb the stairs: a big lawn and benches and bushes have been planted atop the water tanks. There is peace up there. Plus a halfway-high view of Prenzlauer Berg you can't find anywhere else.

On Thursdays and Saturdays, at the market on Kollwitzplatz: organic raspberries, wild salmon, sheep's milk cheese. Around the corner, two bookstores: Paul Auster in the window, his wife Siri Husvedt, too. Next door, a knitting store rich in hand-dyed alpacas. That is where I found the skeins of powder blue and mottled acqua for Bayreuth Boy's scarf in December.

Also, last time I checked, I was a pale-skinned thirtysomething who sports designer denim. I prefer my coffee brewed from the bean. Oops.

Bourgeois all bad? I don't think so. Just don't tell the hippie.