Flowering leaves rustle as Germany’s wind moves through them, shutting doors in my apartment, pushing flying things into my kitchen, and I know Berlin has come in for a drink. He must always make an entrance, waking me up with his hard thunder or distracting my work by ringing bells outside my window, he kisses me on the neck and says things like, just an hour, baby, and I always go with him. Yellow and white windows flash by my vision as he plays with my dress, holding my hand tightly, staring down any guy who glances our way. From Heinrich-Heine Straße, we’re off to Brandenberger Tor to flaunt to the new ones, still clutched to their cameras, holding their “Sonya was here!” faces tightly in place, how much Berlin and I know each other.
One weekend as the sun was beating down on Germany, Berlin and I met. I felt ashamed of what I was wearing: then dirty jeans I had been tiring for three days and a bright blue shirt I’ve had since sophomore year that comes tight right beneath my imperfect belly. My hair was in a sweaty ponytail and my make-up, untouched for eighteen hours, was almost nonexistent. I was hardly charming, but his hand still fell upon my cheek. Allo, we said to each other, upbeat and flirtatious, I was silly with this wonder before me, half German, half Turkish, staring his blue-green eyes into me and slightly pursing his rose-colored lips (lips like those on the boy I fell in love with in the fourth grade, when I first started to understand their sensual appeal) into a thick smile. We began holding hands, his arm found its way around my often tense shoulders, a sweat barrier between his soft skin and mine: the mark of a summer romance.
Morning dew draped over rust-colored bricks and old brown architecture gave us a romantic and classically European setting. Marshmallow storybook clouds framed a summer sun whose rays couldn’t split us apart. We would sit for hours talking about everything from nothing to something, agreeing or gaining understanding from our disagreements. We both tried, but sometimes found disappointment in our cultural misunderstandings. I sat at the table, shoulders drooping against the long rainbow dress I wore for our first big date, forcing myself into a more up-beat mood as I stared at the chicken enchiladas he made me knowing I was craving a taste of home. There they lay, two helpless tortilla cylinders with grilled chicken inside, a thick dollop of nacho cheese over them as sauce. Creamy guacamole, recognizable sour cream. White fucking rice. There is white rice on my Mexican dish. A trivial thing, I know, but from then I was soured by the concept of anything serious.
It of course was not just an aim and miss dinner which prevented me from falling in love, and I do not maintain that I was not deeply in like, for I was, however Berlin showed me slowly that he did not contain the particles of happiness I require for a heart to bubble between me and the man who’s kissing me. And he did kiss me. He kissed me the way every girl wants to be kissed: his hand in the small of my back and his body lightly touching mine; he kissed me like a gentleman. He brushed the hair away from my face as his lips fell into mine, pressing tightly, but politely, against me. I was occupied, but not entertained. Where was the sex?
Not once did Berlin trail his fingers into my hair and grasp them against my head, tugging my roots, giving me no control over my own mobility. He never dug his fingertips into my skin, pressing me against a wall I knew was too thin to fathom. He never handled me like a lover, or anyone he felt fervent about. I was his delicate interest, only to be stared at harshly. This was something that was challenged when I stumbled upon a hot Turkish delight: Istanbul.
Cloudless rich blue skies fell over us as we spread ourselves giddy about the streets. He dropped honey onto my tongue, sweet with its natural, playful kick, biting at my taste buds like lovers in Paris. My stomach actually hurt as I kissed him: it was jam-packed with a swarm of anxious butterflies, flittering at my nervous excitement. Alright, so maybe I did have a fling with Istanbul while I was—mind you, casually—dating Berlin, but for these three and a half days, I was more enthralled and caught up than I ever found myself with Berlin. I felt honored to be in the presence of such immense beauty. He was passionate, loving, caring… he smiled at everyone who passed him by. I laughed so hard so many times that my cheeks went numb. His sense of humor and overwhelming kindness swept me off my feet and his undeniable beauty had me at Merhaba. His charming old soul, his excitingly open nature, his color…he’s a smoker, but I was open to living with that. We were in love.
Istanbul and I shared four beautiful nights together filled with air-like laughter and ardent embraces. He would send the wind through me, hot with his craze, and play with my hair as he sat beside me. He never seemed to shame his past and his beliefs pointed out of him like minarets, interrupting the smooth lines of Turkey’s rolling hills. His family was endearing and loving, they smiled at me even when our eyes were not locked and greeted me with life-long warmness every time I entered their house.
“You’re beautiful,” he said to me after teasing by placing the cowboy hat he was playing with for a moment on my head. The cool breeze and his cool words refreshed me. This lighthearted, loving man humbled, housed, and comforted me—his hands and my hands intertwined with meaning (I feel Istanbul must give meaning to everyone. What he felt for me is not something miraculous or special, and I’m okay with that). The tight grasp between our fingers caused me to sweat and my heart to pound with honest provoked emotion. This doesn’t happen often.
One morning as the sun was slowly filling my room, Istanbul poured himself into bed with me. He tickled my toes then pulled my hands over my head, stretching me, as if to command me into an awaken state in which we might play like we had the day before when we walked for two hours, up solid slopes, without getting tired. We were supporting each others bodies, not letting the cobblestones slip from underneath us, three mile-high hills in one day, feeling a sensual breathlessness smoothed over by a glistening August sweat, finding each others hands, laughing pathetically and falling into our lover’s support. But this morning would not be like the others when I greeted him with an anxious smile and he stuck his finger into the creases in my cheeks, gripping my hips and pulling me into him. This morning, I would not take my time tasting him, gazing into his Bosporus-blue eyes, searching like the rest of his friends for something to pull out (as I already had so much), and feeling his blustery hands around my body. This morning was bitter, but Istanbul let me go with ease, as I was the one shamefully kicking and screaming at the sight of our gradual departure.
He stayed there and waited, gleaming however not waving: he only smiled and sent me romantic thoughts. As I got further away from him, I contemplated his complexity. I thought about his blue skies and busy body, how he was always going somewhere, had a job or a purpose, but never seemed rushed. Istanbul always had time to slow down, which he often took, looking out for the playing children around him for he was very much a child himself. I thought about how I amazed him with my TeşeKurler and how though he did not bring me the tastes of home (this may be an unattainable thing), he showed me the jam-packed real estate, one home smashed right up against another, sharing walls but not apartments, scaling up the hills of this coastal gem like the stairs of San Francisco. I thought about how Istanbul brought me seagulls, a gift I find in every man I live with save for Berlin, and my instability was ignited when I considered if these somewhat sordid birds are what I need to feel alive in my residual content.
Back to Berlin I went, falling into his gentle arms, greeting him with a kiss and understanding even more the difference between the two lovers. As he kissed my cheek and brushed my hair up toward him like my mother still does, quiet and calm, I felt emotions I was not expecting to experience after spending four days in bed with Istanbul. I decided not to tell him about my weekend in detail—my adventures were accented with the words beautiful, interesting, amazing, and incredible. I kept it broad, but positive. He and I went to a movie that night in Kreuzberg and as we sat wordless outside waiting for the kino to free, I felt bothered by my negative thoughts about him in my time with Istanbul. Regretting my actions would be dishonest; I’d go back to Istanbul without blinking if the chance presented itself but for now I was with Berlin and into the grooves I suddenly fit, cozy and comfortable. Poor but sexy.
I spent that night after our date sitting in the chair in the corner of my black-and-white apartment, a silly pit in my stomach and heaviness on my chest as I struggled to define my relationship with Berlin. This unexpected attractiveness he had in my head made my thoughts of Istanbul become tangled and rigid, they almost pricked the sides of my brain as they bounced around in there. Comparisons, comparisons. No choices. I was not taking sides. Tonight Berlin had comforted me against the intensity of my time away from him. I felt in the soft, cushioned by his familiar embrace. As the movie flashed before us, Berlin surrounded me with Gernglish and honesty. He accented me with smiles and kisses, communication and understanding. Where was this before?
Boredom in an all too safe situation drove me into a wild and high-paced infatuation from which I was forced to leave, however upon returning to what was once boring I found that it was now appealing and therefore thrilling. He had taught me things, Istanbul did, or rather he had let me learn from the things he had to show me. Berlin hadn’t done that… or maybe I hadn’t let him. Maybe I hadn’t let his collection of sounds and tastes exist thoroughly in my time with him. Maybe I hadn’t been open to his undeniable intricacy or his profound diversity. I hadn’t made myself open to being his. This was the problem.
Night two back with Berlin, I let him feel free with me. I taught him, indirectly of course, how Istanbul had made me feel. How he had trailed his fingers softly down my neck, how he teased me just to keep me vigilant, and how he would make me feel like I was the first he’d ever had this type of connection with, even though his playboy demeanor made me know otherwise. Berlin made himself open to looking at things differently. He couldn’t ever be Istanbul, but our time together dictated something more profound. We suddenly knew how to please each other. We knew how to make each other feel significantly uncomfortable: a fun game we liked to play. We were artists in and of ourselves. We were dancers. We were comedians.
Pastel clouds framed a dazzling day-time star, moving around this planet filled with charming men as Berlin threw a kiss goodbye into my balcony. Sexy sun, draped with kisses and golden smiles, floated away west and out of this fourth-story apartment. I sat and watched it set with a bubbling in my body, feeling light and tactile, wrapped in his arms even after the end of our date. Deep in like, I didn’t think about Istanbul until I fell asleep and dreamed of his songs and clarity. I thanked him in my unconsciousness for the wisdom he was giving enough to share with me and for the four impassioned days he gave to me.
I am ready to part with Berlin and I have made my peace with the time we lost in our first two weeks unknowingly not knowing each other. Closing my eyes, I can feel Istanbul’s rough hands gripping my waist as he steers me and hear his handsome voice telling me, almost too believably, everything I wish to hear. I can feel the arms of both men wrap around me in my memory: one has his around my stomach and one drapes his arms over my shoulders and I feel comfortable with both. It’s good to know I have these places I can return to in my mind where I can be with both Istanbul and Berlin, and that I can find solace in not having a reigning preference (if maybe just a momentary lapse?). And when I return home, friends will want to hear everything. I will tell them about the wind and the cobblestones and the sunset. I will tell them about how much I learned from each of them but that stepping away from Berlin to be with Istanbul, though maybe not the most moral of decisions, was the smartest choice. They will pine over the details and ask me if I will keep in touch and I will say no, nein, yo. The contact I have is in my head and in these words and there (and here) it will remain.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Death and Laughter
One solid steel knife, sharpened against black seatbelt, a leather hand piece braided like Bill’s to perfection, of course, presses into your forehead as the blood trickles down the in-swoop of your brow. The pain overcomes you and you’re not sure if you’re yelling or not for your body has lost the sensation of the presence of air. You can’t maintain the status of the knife’s path however you know what he’s carving into you. You’ve been wearing it for the past fifteen years: it has become you. No, but now it really has become you. Fucking Basterds.
I genuinely felt every emotion possible while watching that movie. Tarantino has a way of doing that to me. She ran away from that Frenchman’s house, crying, splattered in the Jewish blood of her aunt and uncle, swastikas flashing red like gunfire in her head. She just ran. And she kept running. We are the Nazi killers. I expect one hundred Nazi scalps from each and every one of you. There he was, Brad Pitt with a southern accent and a moustache, doing comedy and sticking his finger into her bullet wound. I was in the front row. We swam in the blood. We lay in the dreamboat’s eye wrinkles. We read subtitles as long as the walk from Heinrich-Heine to home…and that was if we could move our heads fast enough. After it ended, I said to Sally, “That was such a great movie. I bet it was so good the way it was intended to be seen: from a distance.” Our sectionmates let out an open laugh. It was nice to have people understand me for once. I forgot what that felt like (and have probably hurt some feelings because of my I’m in a foreign country act. Dummy. To who ever you are, I’m sorry I’m such an ass).
“You can go back to eating your sauerkraut sandwiches, you wienerschnitzel finger-lickin’ prick.” The hum of mildly insulted yet altogether amused Germans fills the American-like theater. I sink into my red cushy chair, looking up at the screen, which spans triangular, like the beginning of Star Wars. Yes. I watched the entire movie like that.
Hard, genuine laughter filled the full auditorium at the hilarious portrayal of Hitler, the loss in cultural translation, and the satiric approach to the Nazi regime and its attack by this American Nazi-killing squad, eight men strong. Absurd! So funny. An interested humph filled the room as a character held up his pointer, middle, and ring fingers, requesting Drei whiskey and suddenly the Englishman’s ‘German’ cover was blown. Thumb? Nein. This was later explained, as this was an American movie. People will ask me what I thought of the film. Well, it was excellent. Fantastic. Cinematography, acting, direction, foley art, even! They were all immensely spectacular.
However. The experience of seeing a comedy about such a sensitive topic in a crowded theater (when has it been long enough?) is fascinating in and of itself, but watching an American film concentrating on Germany’s shamed history, with funnies, surrounded by Germans, was almost more appealing than the experience of viewing the movie alone.
The vibration of that room cannot be recreated with any amount of words.
I laughed so much today. Sally’s ardent ”Yes,” to Shanga during our acting workshop, met by a flaming circle of abrupt laughter, embedded in her glistening eyes and adorable red face as she looked at the dry, sparkling recipient of her three-letter word left me laughing for a solid five minutes. I never want to forget how much I laughed today and how much fun I had. I hope I was in a moment of extreme elation when he let go todaylastnight. And I hope that that place of extreme happiness is where his soul found solace after his heart stopped beating. Maybe he has the ability to visit me in Germany and see me in my height in the country that makes me think so much about him and the impressive life he led.
And if he can, I hope he can come to our showcase on Friday and watch me dance. I don’t think my grandpa has seen me dance live since I was seven. Maybe soon he’ll be watching me from heaven but I’m not entirely sure if I believe in that. I believe in love. And she sure loved him. He was her life, you put it, Mom. And maybe Nicholas Sparks knew what he was writing when he wrote love and death. His wife said, “You know, I think today’s the day.” And it was.
God, I love you so much. Dad, you told me to be happy and at peace and I’m really trying. It’s not about art any longer, though. It’s about feeling something and feeling connected. I couldn’t wait to write when I got home: my fingers felt like being busy but my body felt like sitting still because it feels heavy and almost not allowed. But tomorrow, after sleep, it will feel light. I will be able to dance and roll my feet from one point to another, feeling healthy, feeling free.
It’s about connections. He was about connections. Mom, you told me once I remind you of him the way I talk to strangers. So now I’m giving myself to Germany and I’m giving myself to dance. I’m giving myself to writing and I’m giving myself to friends. Since right now, I can’t give myself to you guys. But I miss you so much and my fingers are wrapping around yours and I’m cuddling you as I go to sleep at night. I hope you feel it.
This dance is for you, Grandpa Al. I love you.
I genuinely felt every emotion possible while watching that movie. Tarantino has a way of doing that to me. She ran away from that Frenchman’s house, crying, splattered in the Jewish blood of her aunt and uncle, swastikas flashing red like gunfire in her head. She just ran. And she kept running. We are the Nazi killers. I expect one hundred Nazi scalps from each and every one of you. There he was, Brad Pitt with a southern accent and a moustache, doing comedy and sticking his finger into her bullet wound. I was in the front row. We swam in the blood. We lay in the dreamboat’s eye wrinkles. We read subtitles as long as the walk from Heinrich-Heine to home…and that was if we could move our heads fast enough. After it ended, I said to Sally, “That was such a great movie. I bet it was so good the way it was intended to be seen: from a distance.” Our sectionmates let out an open laugh. It was nice to have people understand me for once. I forgot what that felt like (and have probably hurt some feelings because of my I’m in a foreign country act. Dummy. To who ever you are, I’m sorry I’m such an ass).
“You can go back to eating your sauerkraut sandwiches, you wienerschnitzel finger-lickin’ prick.” The hum of mildly insulted yet altogether amused Germans fills the American-like theater. I sink into my red cushy chair, looking up at the screen, which spans triangular, like the beginning of Star Wars. Yes. I watched the entire movie like that.
Hard, genuine laughter filled the full auditorium at the hilarious portrayal of Hitler, the loss in cultural translation, and the satiric approach to the Nazi regime and its attack by this American Nazi-killing squad, eight men strong. Absurd! So funny. An interested humph filled the room as a character held up his pointer, middle, and ring fingers, requesting Drei whiskey and suddenly the Englishman’s ‘German’ cover was blown. Thumb? Nein. This was later explained, as this was an American movie. People will ask me what I thought of the film. Well, it was excellent. Fantastic. Cinematography, acting, direction, foley art, even! They were all immensely spectacular.
However. The experience of seeing a comedy about such a sensitive topic in a crowded theater (when has it been long enough?) is fascinating in and of itself, but watching an American film concentrating on Germany’s shamed history, with funnies, surrounded by Germans, was almost more appealing than the experience of viewing the movie alone.
The vibration of that room cannot be recreated with any amount of words.
I laughed so much today. Sally’s ardent ”Yes,” to Shanga during our acting workshop, met by a flaming circle of abrupt laughter, embedded in her glistening eyes and adorable red face as she looked at the dry, sparkling recipient of her three-letter word left me laughing for a solid five minutes. I never want to forget how much I laughed today and how much fun I had. I hope I was in a moment of extreme elation when he let go todaylastnight. And I hope that that place of extreme happiness is where his soul found solace after his heart stopped beating. Maybe he has the ability to visit me in Germany and see me in my height in the country that makes me think so much about him and the impressive life he led.
And if he can, I hope he can come to our showcase on Friday and watch me dance. I don’t think my grandpa has seen me dance live since I was seven. Maybe soon he’ll be watching me from heaven but I’m not entirely sure if I believe in that. I believe in love. And she sure loved him. He was her life, you put it, Mom. And maybe Nicholas Sparks knew what he was writing when he wrote love and death. His wife said, “You know, I think today’s the day.” And it was.
God, I love you so much. Dad, you told me to be happy and at peace and I’m really trying. It’s not about art any longer, though. It’s about feeling something and feeling connected. I couldn’t wait to write when I got home: my fingers felt like being busy but my body felt like sitting still because it feels heavy and almost not allowed. But tomorrow, after sleep, it will feel light. I will be able to dance and roll my feet from one point to another, feeling healthy, feeling free.
It’s about connections. He was about connections. Mom, you told me once I remind you of him the way I talk to strangers. So now I’m giving myself to Germany and I’m giving myself to dance. I’m giving myself to writing and I’m giving myself to friends. Since right now, I can’t give myself to you guys. But I miss you so much and my fingers are wrapping around yours and I’m cuddling you as I go to sleep at night. I hope you feel it.
This dance is for you, Grandpa Al. I love you.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Headached Writing
Black and white dusty faces smile at him as he lay beneath waffle-patterned blankets; there is no breeze for his moustache, still growing from loosely wrinkled skin, to waver in. I wonder if he is cold. I wonder his eyes move beneath thin crinkled eyelids as he dreams in his all-encompassing sleep. He experiences a silence that doesn’t exist as I imagine people come in and out, checking pulses, seeing if he’s awake for a meal, bed pans, phone calls, what ever else he needs. They’re not feeding him through a tube or continuing his medication.
I’m sending him thoughts but I’m not sure he’s receiving them. When I close my eyes and really concentrate, I can feel his unshaven face against my cheeks and lips as I kissed him goodbye, hugging him as he sat in his chair, his dark wooden rocker lined with powder-blue cushions. I can feel his left hand weakly pressing into my back. His voice sounded like morning cold voice, pressed through a thick screen of fading and cracking. I wonder if he’s scared. I wonder if he knew it was coming, if he felt prepared as he sat in his chair for nine months thinking about death, staring mindlessly at his silver T.V. blaring through the walls and not getting past his ninety-year-three ear hairs.
I wonder if he hears music in his head, playing from nineteen forty-four, or laughter from my mom and her sister. I wonder if he thinks about an afterlife with his first wife and his second daughter or if he thinks about the life he’s to leave with his second wife and his first daughter. “Kelsi’s so beautiful,” she told me that was one of the last things he said to her. That one made me lose it even more. A hot coughing-cry, breathless with extremity, moved through German phone lines and came out an American receiver.
She said it’ll be fine. She said they’re going up there to make the arrangements for everything so that it’s all set for when it happens. That’s how people always say it. She was so calm and I was so distraught and now we both have headaches.
That they can’t be here to be silent with me and that I can’t be there to be life for them while they are so consumed with death pains me maybe more than this inevitable truth. That I can’t bring them laughter and that I can’t pull my arms around her tiny waist while I rock her back and forth, tell her it’s okay, I’ll love you forever, that kind of thing.
So this is hard, in Berlin, death pending in the state of Oregon. The hands of program members drawing circles on my back, let it be. Love and care and tears and comfort will be right there.
Love should be able to be anagrammed from family.
I’m sending him thoughts but I’m not sure he’s receiving them. When I close my eyes and really concentrate, I can feel his unshaven face against my cheeks and lips as I kissed him goodbye, hugging him as he sat in his chair, his dark wooden rocker lined with powder-blue cushions. I can feel his left hand weakly pressing into my back. His voice sounded like morning cold voice, pressed through a thick screen of fading and cracking. I wonder if he’s scared. I wonder if he knew it was coming, if he felt prepared as he sat in his chair for nine months thinking about death, staring mindlessly at his silver T.V. blaring through the walls and not getting past his ninety-year-three ear hairs.
I wonder if he hears music in his head, playing from nineteen forty-four, or laughter from my mom and her sister. I wonder if he thinks about an afterlife with his first wife and his second daughter or if he thinks about the life he’s to leave with his second wife and his first daughter. “Kelsi’s so beautiful,” she told me that was one of the last things he said to her. That one made me lose it even more. A hot coughing-cry, breathless with extremity, moved through German phone lines and came out an American receiver.
She said it’ll be fine. She said they’re going up there to make the arrangements for everything so that it’s all set for when it happens. That’s how people always say it. She was so calm and I was so distraught and now we both have headaches.
That they can’t be here to be silent with me and that I can’t be there to be life for them while they are so consumed with death pains me maybe more than this inevitable truth. That I can’t bring them laughter and that I can’t pull my arms around her tiny waist while I rock her back and forth, tell her it’s okay, I’ll love you forever, that kind of thing.
So this is hard, in Berlin, death pending in the state of Oregon. The hands of program members drawing circles on my back, let it be. Love and care and tears and comfort will be right there.
Love should be able to be anagrammed from family.
"Your Opinion" Sounds Like "European"
As she explains it, a series of flashes and wavering pictures race from one to another in a set virtual square behind her head. It’s snow falling and snow playing. Graffiti arting and other things. Speckles of paint fragments hitting the wall like rain drops – in sequence but not in sync – moving from the top to the bottom, from right to left to right again. You can hear the hiss in your head but the sound waves do not transfer. The sound is off. She talks.
Tacheles is an artist collective in Berlin. “Artists can live there without paying rent. Squatting.” As she says it, her eyebrows raise and she sits into a smile and she seems to almost be bragging, but not it a bad way. It’s the way your sister does when you feel like somehow there’s love embedded into this boastful comment.
I love collectives.
“By artists for artists… we just do this because it’s art.” Art has a strange authoritative nothingness in this city, and in this way, it is everything. I’ve seen more art in this city than anything else and I know much more about Berlin’s art than I feel I could ever know about its government. “Communism doesn’t work quite well because there’s this human element involved.” It’s the human element.
The human element.
So here I sit in the office—unknowingly having intruded in a place that seems un-intrudable. My feet rest beneath me, covered with sand and dotted with last month’s garbage: the wrong day to be wearing flip-flops. It’s fine. I like feeling my surroundings between my toes. I hear rock-influenced trance music throbbing in some downstairs room, they probably sit and nod their heads to it as they tap their marijuana cigarettes on the dirtiest ashtray I’ve never seen. I entered this room by stumbling through an invisible door in the wall of an empty room plastered with years of graffiti—I wonder how thick those walls are with art and how they used to look. I see in my mind a sped-up movie of days of busy graffiti artists, with their paint and their rollers, busying these walls with dark color.
I just feels dark but the concept and reality of it is so light.
It’s remarkable to me that no one can ever see a picture as someone who’s been there. And the picture-taker can never see a photograph as those seeing the still frame for the first time out of context with no idea of the temperature, smell, wind, or what’s outside the frame. We say that a picture captures a moment but there’s so much more to a moment than an 8x6 set of pixels varying in color so that our brains register it as a likeness of reality…
Tacheles.de
Tacheles is an artist collective in Berlin. “Artists can live there without paying rent. Squatting.” As she says it, her eyebrows raise and she sits into a smile and she seems to almost be bragging, but not it a bad way. It’s the way your sister does when you feel like somehow there’s love embedded into this boastful comment.
I love collectives.
“By artists for artists… we just do this because it’s art.” Art has a strange authoritative nothingness in this city, and in this way, it is everything. I’ve seen more art in this city than anything else and I know much more about Berlin’s art than I feel I could ever know about its government. “Communism doesn’t work quite well because there’s this human element involved.” It’s the human element.
The human element.
So here I sit in the office—unknowingly having intruded in a place that seems un-intrudable. My feet rest beneath me, covered with sand and dotted with last month’s garbage: the wrong day to be wearing flip-flops. It’s fine. I like feeling my surroundings between my toes. I hear rock-influenced trance music throbbing in some downstairs room, they probably sit and nod their heads to it as they tap their marijuana cigarettes on the dirtiest ashtray I’ve never seen. I entered this room by stumbling through an invisible door in the wall of an empty room plastered with years of graffiti—I wonder how thick those walls are with art and how they used to look. I see in my mind a sped-up movie of days of busy graffiti artists, with their paint and their rollers, busying these walls with dark color.
I just feels dark but the concept and reality of it is so light.
It’s remarkable to me that no one can ever see a picture as someone who’s been there. And the picture-taker can never see a photograph as those seeing the still frame for the first time out of context with no idea of the temperature, smell, wind, or what’s outside the frame. We say that a picture captures a moment but there’s so much more to a moment than an 8x6 set of pixels varying in color so that our brains register it as a likeness of reality…
Tacheles.de
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Imagine Turkey:
Turkish evil eyes hanging on every wall and possible space: blue and yellow and white circles, black in the middle, staring down, targeting your wrong inclinations and silly thoughts. Children playing with little regard to the world around them, recognizing the fun and playful elements but none of the bad. Houses aligned along the hillside, packed together so tightly they look like steps heading up the steep formation of earth. Fish smell. Mosques, with their pointy grey towers, remaining visible from every location in the city, seeming uncountable. Deep blue water, rich with color, lines the banks of both Europe and Asia. Smile exchanges. Pigeons, seagulls, stray cats and dogs (and wanting to take home the kittens). Calls and odd attention from salesmen, peddling the latest perfume, cowboy hats, corn. Restaurant workers inviting you in. Merhaba! Hello! The Grand Bazaar, flooded with people and colors, gifts, delights, teen boys recruiting you to be their next stunning American customer. Being ripped off because, oh yeah, I don’t know better. Turkish tea, served in those little Turkish tea glasses with womanly curves, two sugar cubes and a tiny spoon. Mint hookah and the way the thick smoke lifts out of my mouth. Smooth raki with the taste of earth-like licorice, one part water, letting it sit in my mouth as I convince myself to swallow it. Cobblestone pathways. Flags, translucent in the sun, blowing proud in the wind. 5 AM call to prayer. A delightful Turkish hum in crowded places. Finding restaurants, not eateries. Smiling. Loving.
August 15th and Identity
I feel fine today. Istanbul’s splendor woke me smiling. Its complex hillsides and bright blue skies greeted me as I took my first look out the window. I saw the slopes of this captivating city covered with aging buildings; they look like steps going up the earth’s slant, and there live the people of Istanbul. The colorful, playful Turks busy themselves as they move about the city, their motorcycles, which their boys helped them wash by hand, buzz by on their way between peddling jobs. My lips press through a cherry near the rich blue water today to find a pit, which falls between the stones I’m walking on.
I don’t know Turkish, but it’s okay: a smile spans all languages.
“You’re beautiful,” he says to me after teasing by placing the cowboy hat he’s trying to sell to tourists for a moment on my head. The cool breeze and his cool words refresh me. This lighthearted, loving community humbles, houses, and comforts me—its hands and my hands intertwine with meaning (I feel Turkey must give meaning to everyone. What it feels for me is not something miraculous or special, and I’m okay with that). The tight grasp between our fingers causes me to sweat and my heart to pound with honest provoked emotion. This doesn’t happen often.
Places like the bazaars of this city capture its essence perfectly: a diverse collection of Istanbul’s people, each one tumbling with excitement over a new person, who themselves are stumbling with elation of a new taste, smell, or sight. Patterns, patterns, patterns! The complex array of this scarf before me, resting in my hand, calms me: it looks to me like a mosque ceiling. Tangled swirls and flower shapes accented with brilliant colors, it registers as cashmere as I smear my fingerprint across it. “For you, thirty lira!”
Being in Turkey makes me think about money. How much we long for something that has such intense power to ruin our lives. Having it and not having it can prove to be the same; we feel the same emotions, sing the same songs, bitch about the same type of trivial things. The haves and the have nots are essentially divided by what they can attain, for they both feel a sense of I want what I want when I want it and it’s really just the ones who can get it who we may call “privileged.” I beg, however, to differ. The privileged ones are those who are surrounded by not a cushion of money but a cushion of love. Their nest egg is health and their net worth is measured by happiness. Ethics remarks that it is not a large wallet that we strive for, it is happiness that makes our life worth living. Money will come and go—and maybe I can sit here typing on my laptop as an American student in Germany saying these things because I have lived a life with money (mind you not a bottomless sum, but enough), and maybe my remarks and economic leftism would differ had I grown up in a different part of my fiscally diverse city, but I still maintain my viewpoint. Why should something so unimportant –seeming have the power to divide us when our common human experiences should be strong enough to bring us together? But it does. Money does divide us. And very few people share my borderless viewpoint.
Istanbul.
Here are the rich and here are the poorer. Three city blocks and one hill away from each other. There they sit, sipping their steaming Turkish tea in what I can only imagine are their stuffy lofts, overlooking a city they care not to venture through. Some can see the slums from their prided real estate, turning their backs on that word in their mailing address which pin-points them on a map for they live in a place made by Escher, a futuristic stark-white simulated home of a world they don’t actually live in. White sterile tiles, white walls and glass dividers. Open air but you’re not outside. Eerie music bounces off the untouched walls on this in-home mall and Cineplex. She gets her Dior at home, of course. Two million Euro. We make fun of this place, we mock the people in it. I ask Orhan if this is a desired way to live, in this multi-plex, cinemax shopping world. Apartmall, they should call it. “It is the posh way to live,” he tells me, “the rich people of the city could purchase an old house on the outskirts of the city and fix it up. They could have a whole house! They could make it very nice after buying it for just a couple hundred Euro. But no, they choose to live here.”
And away we walk. I stand at a point where in one direction, about a hundred feet away, I see this Euro-topia, standing ambiguously proud and all-knowing. I turn just half way around and there, another hundred feet away, are the poor. Orhan points this out as well. I have a short discussion with Cassie about how picturesque the poor homes are and how I would love to live in this section rather than the other. Grey and red faded cobblestone, pink houses, yellow houses, red houses, blue. Children playing, clothes hanging. The danger lies in poor infrastructure and the risk of earthquakes but I’m okay with that, I’ve lived in fear of earthquakes my entire life. This seems so carefree. It just seems barefoot, if anything can seem like such. There are animals here. There’s suffering, but there’s laughter over the little things. Here, there is blistered hands and scraped knees. There’s dirt. The kind of stuff life should consist of. The Homo sapien did not know “stark-white.” What is that?
“But they’re trying to change exactly what ‘Istanbul’ means,” she says to me.
She’s right, and it pains me. What exactly does that mean for someone’s identity, though? We are defined so strongly by what we innately are. Kettle, stop being black. That doesn’t work. Is it still even a kettle? We know well that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, but whether or not this holds water in the question of identity, I am not sure. I’m quite skeptical, actually. It’s just not how things work. Might Istanbul’s redefinition reversely ruin its name, its icon, its content? It will absolutely change it. New Istanbul might be in order, for what else is left of its identity after all these things are washed away?
“They’re gathering to watch us,” Sally says as Turkish children, playful boys, address our group from the porch where they hang out. In Turkish, of course: “What are you doing?” “Very beautiful.” “We found an Asian!” Maybe the children of this neighborhood will preserve the name of Istanbul and thus maintain its essence.
I don’t know Turkish, but it’s okay: a smile spans all languages.
“You’re beautiful,” he says to me after teasing by placing the cowboy hat he’s trying to sell to tourists for a moment on my head. The cool breeze and his cool words refresh me. This lighthearted, loving community humbles, houses, and comforts me—its hands and my hands intertwine with meaning (I feel Turkey must give meaning to everyone. What it feels for me is not something miraculous or special, and I’m okay with that). The tight grasp between our fingers causes me to sweat and my heart to pound with honest provoked emotion. This doesn’t happen often.
Places like the bazaars of this city capture its essence perfectly: a diverse collection of Istanbul’s people, each one tumbling with excitement over a new person, who themselves are stumbling with elation of a new taste, smell, or sight. Patterns, patterns, patterns! The complex array of this scarf before me, resting in my hand, calms me: it looks to me like a mosque ceiling. Tangled swirls and flower shapes accented with brilliant colors, it registers as cashmere as I smear my fingerprint across it. “For you, thirty lira!”
Being in Turkey makes me think about money. How much we long for something that has such intense power to ruin our lives. Having it and not having it can prove to be the same; we feel the same emotions, sing the same songs, bitch about the same type of trivial things. The haves and the have nots are essentially divided by what they can attain, for they both feel a sense of I want what I want when I want it and it’s really just the ones who can get it who we may call “privileged.” I beg, however, to differ. The privileged ones are those who are surrounded by not a cushion of money but a cushion of love. Their nest egg is health and their net worth is measured by happiness. Ethics remarks that it is not a large wallet that we strive for, it is happiness that makes our life worth living. Money will come and go—and maybe I can sit here typing on my laptop as an American student in Germany saying these things because I have lived a life with money (mind you not a bottomless sum, but enough), and maybe my remarks and economic leftism would differ had I grown up in a different part of my fiscally diverse city, but I still maintain my viewpoint. Why should something so unimportant –seeming have the power to divide us when our common human experiences should be strong enough to bring us together? But it does. Money does divide us. And very few people share my borderless viewpoint.
Istanbul.
Here are the rich and here are the poorer. Three city blocks and one hill away from each other. There they sit, sipping their steaming Turkish tea in what I can only imagine are their stuffy lofts, overlooking a city they care not to venture through. Some can see the slums from their prided real estate, turning their backs on that word in their mailing address which pin-points them on a map for they live in a place made by Escher, a futuristic stark-white simulated home of a world they don’t actually live in. White sterile tiles, white walls and glass dividers. Open air but you’re not outside. Eerie music bounces off the untouched walls on this in-home mall and Cineplex. She gets her Dior at home, of course. Two million Euro. We make fun of this place, we mock the people in it. I ask Orhan if this is a desired way to live, in this multi-plex, cinemax shopping world. Apartmall, they should call it. “It is the posh way to live,” he tells me, “the rich people of the city could purchase an old house on the outskirts of the city and fix it up. They could have a whole house! They could make it very nice after buying it for just a couple hundred Euro. But no, they choose to live here.”
And away we walk. I stand at a point where in one direction, about a hundred feet away, I see this Euro-topia, standing ambiguously proud and all-knowing. I turn just half way around and there, another hundred feet away, are the poor. Orhan points this out as well. I have a short discussion with Cassie about how picturesque the poor homes are and how I would love to live in this section rather than the other. Grey and red faded cobblestone, pink houses, yellow houses, red houses, blue. Children playing, clothes hanging. The danger lies in poor infrastructure and the risk of earthquakes but I’m okay with that, I’ve lived in fear of earthquakes my entire life. This seems so carefree. It just seems barefoot, if anything can seem like such. There are animals here. There’s suffering, but there’s laughter over the little things. Here, there is blistered hands and scraped knees. There’s dirt. The kind of stuff life should consist of. The Homo sapien did not know “stark-white.” What is that?
“But they’re trying to change exactly what ‘Istanbul’ means,” she says to me.
She’s right, and it pains me. What exactly does that mean for someone’s identity, though? We are defined so strongly by what we innately are. Kettle, stop being black. That doesn’t work. Is it still even a kettle? We know well that a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, but whether or not this holds water in the question of identity, I am not sure. I’m quite skeptical, actually. It’s just not how things work. Might Istanbul’s redefinition reversely ruin its name, its icon, its content? It will absolutely change it. New Istanbul might be in order, for what else is left of its identity after all these things are washed away?
“They’re gathering to watch us,” Sally says as Turkish children, playful boys, address our group from the porch where they hang out. In Turkish, of course: “What are you doing?” “Very beautiful.” “We found an Asian!” Maybe the children of this neighborhood will preserve the name of Istanbul and thus maintain its essence.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
I Stumble in Istanbul
Istanbul. As it blows through my hair, the air continues to change its smell from bitter to sweet. It’s warm here: moving my feet up a hill, the tips of my blue jeans pass by each other with so much speed they make a flapping noise, and it promotes an honest sweat. Every person I pass returns my smile. Not seeming shocked, or uncomfortable, or even put on the spot, they just smile back. I actually love this city.
Caucasians used to be Turkish slaves. Oh, if only all of America knew about this. What a fascinating and different world high school would have been for me: the say-it-out-loud ebony Emerald may have seen me as a person and not as some dumb white girl obviously trying to ruin her day since she’s black and I must hate her. But that’s a different story.
I’m dying to see this city. Our tour guide looks like Robin Williams. I imagine that maybe some day this man, Orhan, will do something so noteworthy they’ll make a movie about his logical Istanbul adventures, climbing hills, trailing students throughout the miraculous parts of the city… and no one could play him better than Robin Williams. It’s a good thing the star of Flubber is so great with accents.
A Turkish fly crawls about everything I own: my hand, pants, purse, notebook…but has yet to touch anyone else. Minutes pass, many actually, and it still crawls about. I wonder why! If I close my eyes and focus on the tickling the dark grey and dull red insect is causing by stumbling its tiny little legs about the hairs on the back of my hand, I can imagine it’s drawing a picture on that flat light surface. It’s a classic puzzle piece. I consider the significance. How might I describe the buzzing of a fly? Zatta za nah za nah. It moves finally to another set of possessions, belonging to another student, listening to a different element of Istanbul than the sounds of the 6-legged flying critters.
The people in Turkey are absolutely dazzling. I think this is why I love it so much—they’re all so genuine and loving life. Everyone seems to be going somewhere, and whether it is for play or for work, it looks intriguing and exciting. I would follow one person an hour if I could, just to see where I might end up. I imagine I would be taken to the Bazaar and to the men lined up along one bridge, with their fishing rods in hand, hanging loosely, awaiting a tug. I might pet a kitten if I were following a child or wash my hands and feet in a Muslin footbath in the middle of the city if I found myself following on a Friday. I see twelve-year-old boys walking together, one with his hand on the other one’s shoulder, and wonder what they too are up to. What a loving community.
I want to come back here with my dad so badly. I want him to see the city as I see it: a blessed center of every person you’d ever want to watch. A hub of joy and laughter and suffering. Clean and dirty. Up-close, personal, and distant. Daddy, you’ll see it. We’ll make it here together someday soon.
There the sun goes: beating hard on me as if to make up for my intense feverous chills last night. My feet may throb in its heat but I’m enjoying the sensation for the sun and I have a lovely relationship. Here I am, eating tough, old rubber corn spiced with warm salt, I’m deciding how much I’m actually enjoying it or if I just enjoy out-standing experiences such as this one. Note-worthy ones, which are so intense in their horribleness, greatness, or rubberiness that just thinking about them you can’t help but laugh.
Caucasians used to be Turkish slaves. Oh, if only all of America knew about this. What a fascinating and different world high school would have been for me: the say-it-out-loud ebony Emerald may have seen me as a person and not as some dumb white girl obviously trying to ruin her day since she’s black and I must hate her. But that’s a different story.
I’m dying to see this city. Our tour guide looks like Robin Williams. I imagine that maybe some day this man, Orhan, will do something so noteworthy they’ll make a movie about his logical Istanbul adventures, climbing hills, trailing students throughout the miraculous parts of the city… and no one could play him better than Robin Williams. It’s a good thing the star of Flubber is so great with accents.
A Turkish fly crawls about everything I own: my hand, pants, purse, notebook…but has yet to touch anyone else. Minutes pass, many actually, and it still crawls about. I wonder why! If I close my eyes and focus on the tickling the dark grey and dull red insect is causing by stumbling its tiny little legs about the hairs on the back of my hand, I can imagine it’s drawing a picture on that flat light surface. It’s a classic puzzle piece. I consider the significance. How might I describe the buzzing of a fly? Zatta za nah za nah. It moves finally to another set of possessions, belonging to another student, listening to a different element of Istanbul than the sounds of the 6-legged flying critters.
The people in Turkey are absolutely dazzling. I think this is why I love it so much—they’re all so genuine and loving life. Everyone seems to be going somewhere, and whether it is for play or for work, it looks intriguing and exciting. I would follow one person an hour if I could, just to see where I might end up. I imagine I would be taken to the Bazaar and to the men lined up along one bridge, with their fishing rods in hand, hanging loosely, awaiting a tug. I might pet a kitten if I were following a child or wash my hands and feet in a Muslin footbath in the middle of the city if I found myself following on a Friday. I see twelve-year-old boys walking together, one with his hand on the other one’s shoulder, and wonder what they too are up to. What a loving community.
I want to come back here with my dad so badly. I want him to see the city as I see it: a blessed center of every person you’d ever want to watch. A hub of joy and laughter and suffering. Clean and dirty. Up-close, personal, and distant. Daddy, you’ll see it. We’ll make it here together someday soon.
There the sun goes: beating hard on me as if to make up for my intense feverous chills last night. My feet may throb in its heat but I’m enjoying the sensation for the sun and I have a lovely relationship. Here I am, eating tough, old rubber corn spiced with warm salt, I’m deciding how much I’m actually enjoying it or if I just enjoy out-standing experiences such as this one. Note-worthy ones, which are so intense in their horribleness, greatness, or rubberiness that just thinking about them you can’t help but laugh.
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