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.
