(a failed attempt to) focus on the content of consciousness

A mere excerpt from an exercise in Snow's Performance Studies seminar. By the way, thrilled to have him back. He is a real artist.

So I am imaging me back to Taiwan. It’s also winter but it’s 18 ºC. It’s not cold at all. My boots become way too warm and I can feel my feet sweating. I can smell the steaming food from the street vendors. It smells like noodle soup. People are talking rapidly in mandarin with Taiwanese accent, which I haven’t heard of for a really, really long time. I kept on strolling in the Royal Palm Avenue in my ala mater. The sunlight’s pleasant. I can feel my back warming up. And the greenness in the park cheers me up a little bit. There aren’t too many students on the way cause most of them are attending classes. I’m feeling like a tourist in such a familiar scene. I even tried to reach for my camera and realize I don’t have it with me. My finger feels the temperature. Not cold. Not cold at all. 


(The below is Carolina's feedback. I remember afterwards it was the first time I ever tried to strike a conversation with people from my program since the winter semester 2010. I was depressed and did not feel like getting to know new people, as if it were to banish the old memories of my year as an exchange student. After this exercise, somehow, I felt a connection between me and this Columbian girl.)

"Being a foreigner. Here, in Berlin, and there at home. You don’t belong anywhere anymore because now you are here and not there. And when you go back there, you will be from here. Not from there anymore. The Taiwanese accent won’t seem as familiar as the 41 Ring Bahn. This keyboard is making my fingers feel heavy, as your finger felt the temperature. They are heavy because there are too many characters in each keyboard.  I am a foreigner. Here. In you computer. There, at home. Once we have chosen to leave we can’t return anymore. Seeing snow for the first time. Writing on a Taiwanese computer. MacBook in Mandarin. There is no sunlight here and there’s nothing we can do about it. Our bodies will grow old waiting for it to come back. When it does, we will already have become foreigners for it. Foreigners of the Sun. By the way, what a soft keyboard!"