Berlin or bust

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...

Day One, Redux

My word for 2008: Discipline. Of the most self-loving variety, naturally. But nonetheless.

The book the book the book the book... Write the damn thing.

Too bad the blog is so much fun and there is so much to tell and I simply can't resist, like... Saturday, every cobblestone glazed over, the city a vast, involuntary ice rink (State of Emergency declared! 438 accidents reported!). In the afternoon, I had biked to the Public Sauna on Gartenstrasse, where one can get bodywork for cheap. No stunner of a massage, but enough to de-knot the shoulders and re-flow the blood, warming chilled and stagnant veins. The masseur is a kind man with gentle hands. And, I discovered, my nose pointed floor-ward through the face brace, ripe-smelling feet. I inched my nostrils upward, into the towel. So as not to notice.

Not until I left, did I discover the perils of two wheels on sidewalk. Twice they whipped out from under me. Twice I lay flat on my side. No pain. Just surprise.

Around 8, Bareuth Boy and I slip-slided on our flat-soled shoes to a tiny art exhibit featuring the work of local Japanese artists, Keiko among them. Rooms crammed tight. Sithar player squeaking in the corner. Scent of Glühwein hanging heavy. On display:

Hundreds of emails, printed on paper and twisted into ropes, cut into leaves, knotted together, tie-dyed in spots, then strung from ceiling to wall, like a living breathing net.

The pages of books origami'd, while still in their covers.

A photo of trees and lawn, percolating with flowers so varied, so rainbow-bright, maybe they were painted, maybe they were plastic. If I could, I told the Boy, I would buy that. The Boy liked it too. There was no price tag.

Day 5

Thursday afternoon I strode into Druck & Stempel.

"Now where did I put that ugly stamp?" said Herr Loescher.

"Ugly!?" I cried.

He handed me a white paper bag, stapled shut. "That's what it looks like." He had stamped it once, in red, on the outside of the bag.

"Perfect!" I cried. I tore the bag open, spun the soft wooden handle in my palm, caressed the rubber text with my pointer finger. "Exactly as I imagined."

Sometimes one-and-three-quarter hours of obsessive-compulsive attention to detail does pay off.

Loescher appeared to bear no ill-will for the freebie time spent. Though he did say: "If you'd gone to a Graphiker, it would have cost one, maybe two hundred." Then he demonstrated how I must slide the face of the stamp along the ruby ink pad to ink the rubber, rather than slam it down, as commonly thought. And how, when I am done, I must always stamp stamp stamp the Stempel on a scrap of paper until it no longer bleeds red.

I proceeded to stamp every square inch of the small white bag: Buyer Beware Buyer Beware Buyer Beware Buyer Beware...

I also learned that Herr Loescher: Speaks no English. Has never been to America. Once made it to Vancouver. Nurses dreams of L.A. beach houses. Comes from Thüringen. Commutes two hours there and back every weekend. Dislikes Berlin. Finds it all too stressful ("You might not want to visit New York," I suggested). Runs his shop in Mitte only for want of business back home (not that I witnessed a throng of Stempel-süchtig customers on Veteranen Strasse).

Day 3

Begins now.

But first...tofu scramble with leeks and tomato. Garlic, too.

Food for thought.

A blog about myself in which I document the writing of a book about myself. Could there be anything more solipsistic?

Forgive me.

Day 2

Entailed one and three quarters hours at Druck & Stempel.

Poor Herr Loescher. I must have seemed an easy enough customer as I crossed the threshold of his stamp store. But:

Algerian D or Bookman Old Style? Boxed in or bare? One-millimeter space between letter and line, or two- Shadowed edges or plain? Corner diamonds or starbursts? Old-fashioned wood or pre-inked metal?

"Can you make the diamonds 7 point? Can you set them outside the box? Are you sure the lengths are even? Can you align both words? Can you shrink the top one? Let's try... Is it possible... Wait, I know..."

Someone somewhere sometime might have referred to me as a perfectionist.

Herr Loescher maneuvered the mouse, slipping in quips about what the young lady might next desire, while I ogled Adobe Photoshop through gi-normo prescription shades (normal specs languishing bedside).

"Try these," he said, handing me his own wire rims

The screen erupted into ripples. "Waah!" I handed them back. He re-anchored them atop his glossy pate.

Day 1

Of working on the memoir. My real job in Berlin, after all.

Meaning a quieter, though not quite slumbering, blog.

Still, I promise to keep 'em coming. There are stories to tell, of four-month-old twins and anti-FDA Wutanfàlle and GDR massages for a mere 16 Euro. Not to mention a vodka-steeped party complete with fox-fur photo shoot, free Ramen noodles, the Gauloise-devouring Felix (one of whose Gauloise, I confess, I devoured), odd inquiries of me ("Excuse me, are you Italian or Bulgarian?"), and very many people younger than I. Including a hot blond Bayreuthian whose hands kept palming the curves my new wrap dress...

Oh, but let's save it for another day.