N'IMPORTE OÙ HORS DU MONDE

I have missed the seasons. I have missed my scarf, my trench coat; I have missed crushing fallen leaves with leather shoes and warming up my cold hands with a hot cup of coffee. My first few months at Hasenheide were inspiring and yet the joy was short-lived. Surely I have not missed the grey sky, the dreary walks in the graveyard, the winter depression and the sleet that soaked my snow boots.

Berlin has started making its apparition in my equatorial dreams these days. The other day I was taking a stroll in Hackesche Markt, en route to a birthday celebration of an almost famous Berlin blogger. I have always been reluctant to call Berlin my home. But what better word describes this yearning than Heimweh? For a whole decade I had my yearning for Asia, and as the years went by the memory became fragmented and contrived. I did not foresee that as I re-connect with Asia I am doomed to experience my yearning for Berlin or Europe- soon to be contrived as well as fragmented.

I guess we are always happier elsewhere.

N’importe où ! n’importe où ! pourvu que ce soit hors de ce monde !

le chat fantôme à père lachaise

So be the post-modern german interpretation of the black cat phantom at père lachaise. Tomb stone and garden deco. Work of "art," duplicates in the age of modern reproduction. I had a walk along Lake Constance, pondering on life and philosophy. Pondering on Baudelaire, and then Benjamin. Pondering on the Erlösung, as the mundanity has been so deafening and I'm not sure if I've missed the calling. Where shall the flaneuse be looking for the aura? If we are indeed endowed with the little messianic power, where should we be turning our heads to?

The Berlin Stories: post script

I had written (and lived in) drama and poetry, experienced ardent passion and hopeless dissociation, embarked on adventures and misadventures, squandered youth and assets and finally, undergone countless chatharsis in this area where Rilke and Isherwood had left their footprints. If Tempelhof had taken my nihilistic mid 20s in, Schöneberg had showered a creative soul in her early 20s with all she asked/cared for: an artsy, art nouvelle Altbau apartment with giant stairs and a huge balcony; a kitchen painted pastel blue by an aging artist, and the walking distance to the bourgeoise Akazienkiez. Thank you Schöneberg, for appeasing my tempestuous early 20s.

130817, revisiting Nollendorfstr

Obituary

“She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever.” 

–Alice Munro

Das unumgängliche– that cannot be tackled. Not by talking about it, not by writing about it in a foreign language, albeit the emotion might be somehow mitigated during mediation.

On the 20th of May 2015, my mother had been officially discharged from the role of a daughter. We had a lengthy conversation, though 80 percent of which were mere repetition and paraphrasing.

“She had reached her time. It was just a natural process. It was a good death.”

“Do not dwell too much upon this. Cry if you want to. Write about it if it helps.”

I still cannot write about this. Caught up by job interviews a continent away, I could not even have left a rose for her– and I have left roses for people I was way less connected to.

I still refer to her in present tense when I talk about her in front of people.

Amsterdam is only 22 hours ahead and packing could be a fitting metaphor for exhumation. And thus I thought about closure. I thought about death. I thought about how saying goodbye is dying a little. I’ve exhumed the memory that could not be tackled. And then I thought, it’s about time for the feeble attempt.

She was a remarkable woman who had given up her chance of being happy for her family. She was Japanese, and then Taiwanese, but never Chinese– she did not speak a word of Mandarin. And thus on the day of her cremation I stood by the window and bade goodbye to her in Taiwanese. My waning first language, and I was surprised that I was still able to say what I meant to say.

I wish I had conveyed.

270615, Berlin

The Berlin Stories

I want to go back to summer 2012. Melancholia had not yet seized us. The world was not yet out of joint. We were free spirits-- aspiring, and inspired.

Lengthy walks in various Berlin districts in summer dresses and flip flops. Carrying a lomography 4 lens camera around, trying to capture the fluctuating feelings and momentum. Developed the pictures, pinned them onto the wall. I used to stay in a hundred year old Altbau with a magnificent entrance and a dramatic staircase. Every step up was a stride. I stayed on the top floor. Day and night, striding upwards like a triumphant warrior.

It was a house much like the one Christopher Isherwood stayed in the movie Cabaret. Fiction 101, I learned about Isherwood and Sally Bowles--my first literary impression on Berlin, and it was in its golden times.

I did not know if my Altbau was occupied by wanton writers or cabaret singers. But for sure it used to be a brothel, was mildly burned during the war, briefly the studio of a certain rock star, and decorated by my artist landlord.

As if to go with the artsy atmosphere of my apartment, I once carried a bulky typewriter all the way from Mauerpark to Schöneberg, secretly planing to type a letter addressing to an obscure French poet. I never found the matching ribbons, and the young Turk who sold me the typewriter lied about its condition. So there it stands now, out of place, adjacent to two nutcracker soldiers, alienated on the windowsill of a newer apartment.

The alienation of the typewriter is almost a fitting metaphor. As the initial addressee, now a high school teacher, does not write poetry anymore; and the owner of the typewriter, having abandoned her pen and paper, writes only on Apple devices now.

I still revisit the neighborhood sometimes. Not for lengthy strolling intending to appease ennui, but for dining in nearby restaurants or visiting vintage shops. I have lost my status as a Kiez resident, resident of this neighborhood once inhabited by Isherwood and Rilke. This neighborhood where the angel of history was asked for direction in Der Himmel über Berlin, where some of the street signs are still in pre-war script.

I no longer loiter in Kleistpark, trying to recite the lines of Ophelia. I no longer sit on the bench in the very same park on a chilly Sunday morning, reading The Tempest. I have moved from parks to cafes,  from cafes to the State Library, and finally from the library to an office located in a deserted suburbs of Berlin.

I do not take lengthy walks anymore, and only have enough time to conjure up haikus during my commuting time.

I want to go back to summer 2012. When Melancholia had not yet seized us. When aspiration and inspiration were still within our grasps.

Tropical Sun

Nothing, not even
Homesickness solidified
Beats tropical sun

Dead Letters

In such silence I

Revisited dead letters;

Re-lived, not relieved

A Thousand Plateaus

In this forgotten region of the colossal country, the landscape was nothing but flatness. No mountains, no valleys, not even trees. It was a neverending vastness and barrenness: rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds. The only being of significant height stood in the far east, known to the inhabitants as A Thousand Plateaus.

A Thousand Plateaus was an artificial landmark, composed of a thousand graves, under each buried a baby. A Thousand Plateaus was constructed overnight, in the wake of a thousand casualities. A thousand casualties of the firstborns. 

In the juvescence of the year, a traveling merchant arrived, unloading a thousand metal jars from fifty camels.

Never encountered a visitor their entire life, the inhabitants gathered around, curious.

"I would meet you upon this honestly," said the merchant disarmingly, starting distributing a thousand metal jars.  "I've come here for the future kings and queens, leaders of our generation. With this magic formula, your firstborns shall be blessed with wisdom and health. Mix the formula with boiling water, for our future kings and queens." 

And so the inhabitants brought the metal jars home, with the formula ivory silky liquid was fed to the blessed firstborns.

The merchant was patient. He sat himself under a Judas tree and waited, until the first burst of howling broke out in the night. "I have not made this show purposelessly." The merchant left with a complacent smile, the camels lined up after him mechanically.

All the trees were cut down overnight, for the sake of building a thousand baby coffins. Dogwoods or chestnut, all eradicated. No exception.

And so were A Thousand Plateaus erected. Each plateau claimed by a baby, a baby who could have gone against the time, who could have achieved something great yet failed to meet his time. Leaving the bereaved inhabitants to a sleepy corner among windy spaces.

Indebted to: 

Gerontion, T. S. Eliot (1920)

Haiku: The Leviathan

The Leviathan

Fought, lost a battle against

The hubris of men

illustration by f.

--

In memory of Ahe (1982-2014), a hippo who jumped from a truck out of horror while being transported to a farm in Taichung, Taiwan. Having broken his leg, Ahe was lying stranded on the side of the road in pain for hours, with tears oozing from his eyes. The farm staff dropped Ahe again from 2 meter high while transporting him back to his pond with a container. Ahe died within 24 hours.

Rhapsody On a Cloudy Night

03:56

The flight to Madrid was at 6:30 in the morning, departing from an airport on the far southeast side of the city. When I headed out from the house, the night was still deep, my roommate just went home from partying and I was still sick from a flu I caught a couple of days ago.

04:12

It was surprisingly happening in the S Bahn station of my usually not very happening neighborhood. We were all travelers, each of us carrying our luggage or backpack. Weariness was permeable and pervasive, and a distant fatigue was written on everyone's face. None of us found it necessary to speak to each other. The platform on which the airport express arrived was filled with people, yet disproportionately silent. It was a rhapsody of a lonesome walk on a windy night for each of us, on a cloudy windy night. The only being that spoke to me was not the moon, for the moon was clad in thick autumn clouds. It was the almost dazzling lights in Berlin Südkreuz, the hissing sound of the arriving trains across the platforms, and my own footsteps that kept me company.

Egg Cracking Day

In my early teen-hood it was briefly fashionable to refer to one's birthday as the egg-cracking day. Little as we were aware of it, the reference was deeply rooted in mythology, or history.

Mythology and history are akin. From one of the very first books I owned I heard about the Chinese genesis. Mother read it to me in her sleepy dreamy voice--the world used to be an egg of Chaos. Pangu, deep asleep in the Chaos for tens of thousands of years, woke up one day, cracked open the egg and separated the heaven from the earth. Chaos was cleared. The world was defined. History was accorded.

Apart from the Chinese egg of  history, I learned, a couple of decades after, about the Greek egg of history. It was about carrying, about mourning. I read about it at a time when I was desperate for closure. Closure for a blood relative that silently passed away when I was an Eurasian continent apart. I read and mourned, as the phoenix mourned for his father. 

Hekataios narrated: "A phoenix makes out of myrrh an egg as big as he can carry. Then he tests to see if he can carry it. After that he hollows out the egg and lays his father inside and plugs up the hollow. With father inside the egg weighs the same before. Having plugged it up he carries the egg to Egypt to the temple of the sun."  

The phoenix's flight must be feeble. Feeble in a way, I imagined, like the flight of the Angel of History. The Angel of History, attempting to make whole what has been smashed, was irresistibly propelled into the future by a storm, with the pile of debris before him growing skyward. Benjamin calls this storm the progress. I identify the pile of debris as the cracked egg shell.

The phoenix breaks open the egg and carries, flies and mourns. We alike are all incarnates of The Angel of History, each of us endowed with the weak messianic power of carrying and cracking open the egg. The egg of chaos, of hollowness, of broken relations, of the past, wronged or justified, of our palimpsest of history. 

In my early teen-hood I wrote down on a certain yearbook, egg cracking day, 7th of August. Don't forget to send flowers.

More than a decade from then, the exact same date called for egg cracking. My share of history, my share of personal genesis. 

On this day, it was Ophelia herself who left a rose in her egg-shaped grave. For Hamlet had already departed, carrying his egg to crack.

Polish, half-concealed, foliage

Polish, half-concealed, foliage, short story, 15 minutes, a prosecco writing session

A woman walked inside her Kiezcafe in a sunny, yet chilly afternoon. It was an autumn day. Summer, albeit so grand, was already gone. The trees turned from amber to brown. The hue of autumn had usurped the city, soon to be followed by the foliage.

“What can I get for you, madam?” asked the waiter in front of the bar. It was one of those cafes where one had to come to the bar to order. With minimum wages came the minimum service.

“Do you have bigos?” The woman looked a bit insecure. Bigos was not what you always get in a Berliner Café after all.

“Do I have what?” The waiter looked puzzled.

“Bigos, like the Polish Sauerkraut.” As if to justify herself, the woman added frantically, “’cause it says Polishe Spezialitäten on your window, you know.”

“We don’t have what you’re asking for. But we do have pierogi. It’s homemade.” “And you don’t even look remotely Polish,” added the waiter in his interior monologue. Indeed, this woman, though hard to tell her nationality, was ethnically Asian.

“Never mind. I’ll have a chicken pasta then.” The woman quickly altered her mind. Her first experience with pierogi was in a small town on the border of Germany and Poland. The fattiness was not meant for the drinking carousel of a certain heavy metal music festival she was taking part in. Pierogi itself brought back not necessarily bad, yet a bit awkward memory. “Pierogi,” she laughed at herself. This showed how mundane and puny she was compared with other writers. “Not madeleine or macarons, but pierogi, my trigger to involuntary memory.”

“Chicken pasta it is, then.” Shrugged the waiter, nonchalant to the woman’s tiny theater in her brain. When one works in Berlin, one has the privilege of encountering people bizarre in their own ways. It could be a metropolitan problem, or simply a Berlin problem.

The woman picked a table next to the giant glass window. She was sitting deep in the sofa, half-concealed, which granted her the position to observe the passersby outside without exposing herself to the risk of being observed.

The summer was already gone. A hot plate of creamy chicken pasta was fitting for such weather after all. It might be mundane, but would be enough to warm up a commonplace mind.

"society" "revealing" "studio"

Jackson was sitting by the desk of his studio when the church bell tolled for sixteen times. It was a gloomy Tuesday afternoon, the rain was pouring outside, the raindrops dancing upon the windowsill, much resembling the spinning, frantic ballerinas, jumping, landing, only in preparation for another leap. The TV was on, yet the volume was set very low. After all, Jackson was not at all that interested in the revealing of celebrity lives, he just could not tolerate the dead silence of the room.

Yet vulgarity of modern society seemed to crawl its way to his life anyhow; he took another spoonful from his cereal and almost choked as he heard the low purring of honey boo boo. “I think I am a fish.” He looked up, appalled to see the toddler and her heavily painted face, fake eyelashes and her double chins, which vibrated with every word she uttered. He frowned, reached for the remote control, deciding to switch channel. Yet it was too late, in the split second after, the obese, trashy mother of the toddler started rambling on the TV screen.

That was the final straw. Feeling nauseous, Jackson did not even bother to turn off the TV, rather stormed out into the pouring rain. As he shivered he remembered that it was already November, and that he did not even think of grabbing a jacket. But he did not even mind anymore. He just needed to go to somewhere, anywhere, anywhere out of his crappy studio, out of reach of trashy TV shows, anywhere out of this vulgar society, anywhere out of the world.

“Well, fuck you too!” He shouted to the sky, oblivious to the rain. The passersby, in their raincoats or holding umbrellas, just hastened up and rushed by, thinking that he might have been out of his mind. “Arghhhhhhhhhhhh!” Jackson kept on screaming, until his cry was drowned in the relentless rain.

That was actually the happiest day of his life.

joining hands in the danse macabre

in the end they will all join hands in the danse macabre.

It has not been a summer of good news. A friend wrote me yesterday, saying that she needed to look for a flight back immediately: "my sister passed away, all of a sudden."

My friend just turned an aunt the day before. How did this happen? "She was just talking to my parents and suddenly couldn't catch her breath. And then..."

"I really don't know what to say. I'm very, very sorry for your loss."

"She only saw her new born baby for a split second. Didn't even get a chance to hold it."

The conversation was cut short. I did not know what to say or do to make her feel better; she said she felt alright, just very, very surreal.

Surreal? Must be, but it could have happened to anyone. It could have been my sister, who also just gave birth to a baby girl. We are also family of two daughters, which, according to the discourse, is "a family without descendants. A family doomed to lose its family name."

One daughter stayed in the hometown, got married there, stayed close to the parents as discourse dictates; the other, the wandering one, indefinitely relocated to Europe.

Her sister was my sister's age. I've always been seized by the fear of losing an aging family member when I am abroad, but who would have imagined that it could be the younger one. Two generations younger. Our generation. Our sibling.

What will become of her? them? the baby? Will they subconsciously put the blame on the baby? The baby will never get to know her mother. Will she grow up with the sense of guilt that her mother died because of her? How does it feel like to suddenly lose a sibling, no matter close or distant? Losing my quasi genetic copy, with almost the same flesh and blood. It would be as if a part of me is eternally lost. Life would never be complete. It wouldn't be.

"Farewell, Europe," said my friend. She does not know if she is ever coming back. She has to mend the missing part; her family needs her, the discourse instructs a homecoming-- no longer in the form of yearning, but obligation.

It has not been a summer of good news. My grandfather passed away early last month. In the meantime, a close friend's grandfather was terminally ill and eventually left her last week. Her roommate, also a common friend, lost her aunt around the same time. And finally, this friend's loss of her sister that rendered me sleepless last night, restlessly imagining all the possibilities.

I tried to distract myself by reading commentaries on Loïe Fuller's dance and came across the term danse macabre.

The idea was not macabre, I found it soothing.

In the end, they will all join hands in the danse macabre.

The yearnings were almost painful in Barcelona

The Mediterranean sea was actually rather greenish, not the azure blue I had always imagined. The sky, despite the mellow weather, was not as blue either. How was it possible that this almost falsified representation of home only triggered more homesickness? Diaspora and wanderlust. Heimweh and Fernweh. The yearnings were almost painful, and when they mingled, the prodigal daughter ended up in Barcelona. By the seashore of Barceloneta.

"The sky almost looks like it's veiled." I was talking to Cat, a girl from London. Almost random, but once you traveled alone for a while, even complete strangers looked like worth a conversation.

I ran into the sea with Cat and Roxy, only meant to paddle. I was actually in my knickers, not seeing myself ending up on the seashore when I headed out for a gaudi pilgrimage that morning. But the waves were giant, almost formidable. A huge wave came and I was already soaking wet.

Salt. Salt. I could taste the salt as I opened up my mouth attempting to speak, but only silenced by an unexpected choke of salty water. I did not know how much I missed the sea until I finally had the luxury to be on a proper seashore. I forgot the smell of mussels, the balmy wind, and the forcefulness of a wave. I forgot how it felt to be wet from top to toe, hair dripping, completely knocked down by waves with the futile attempt to hold on to my underwear. I forgot how I could be all screaming and laughing, holding hands to other girls to stabilize ourselves awaiting another wave.

The last real "seashore" I went to was the Rose Sea in wales, whose serenity had a certain beauty in itself, but the grayish color almost translated as insipid. It  was a windy afternoon in June, which in northern UK equaled to never ending drizzles, scarfs and jacket. It was nothing like this, being able to sunbathe till seven o'clock at night, soaked and dried myself with the help of the gentle afternoon sun; it was nothing like just lying on the seashore, completely rid of all anxieties and existential crisis that plagued only too often. It was at least remarkable for someone whose anxieties even have anxieties.

I was on the flight back to Berlin, as the aircraft took off I looked down at the green green Mediterranean sea.

Its beauty was almost hurting. Like Heimweh. Like Fernweh.

Berlin, hipster, weather and co.

An afternoon in Salon Schmück. I ordered, and, out of reflex, asked for the password for wifi, even though I knew in this cafe, the wifi was not locked.

"Unfortunately the wifi is not working," answered the waitress apologetically; "do you still want to order?"

"Sure."

Hipster cafe at Kreuzberg, so used to the customers molesting wifi that the waitress would immediately assume that when there's no wifi, no customers would like to stay. And maybe the assumption is valid after all, as I walked in, I was wondering why it was so empty inside-- Salon Schmück has or used to have a reputation of high MacBook density, perhaps only second to the notorious Oberholz.

Here I was, sitting in the empty Salon Schmück, trying to decipher modernist poetry. The metro passed by once a little while, each time I would almost think it was thundering, and that it was going to rain-- pouring rain, gorgeous sun, drizzles, and another five minutes of pouring rain, the weather of Berlin has been rather schizophrenic lately, though I prefer the term capricious.

"Like women during menopause." I described to Mida, my couch surfer from Montreal, as we were stuck in S Bahn Oranienburgerstr, threatened by the sudden pouring rain. (Mida: When did this happen?)

"Or like women during period." added Mida. We were sitting by the Spree near the East Side Gallery. The sky looked almost as if it had two faces. Azure blue on the one side, whereas on the other, thick scary clouds ominously pressing over the tourists walking by the wall.

"Or like women in general," we laughed.

On our way to the metro station, we were again caught up by the tempestuous wind and pouring rain, during which umbrellas almost seemed like useless accessories.

Passersby braved the wind and the rain with the typical Berlin poker face (perhaps looking even scarier with the crankiness enhanced by the weather).

Today is actually a warm afternoon with decent amount of sunshine. The waitress even smiled at me when I walked into the cafe. I hope it's not going to rain.