Days 80-89

Days 80-89

I went to one the many galleries on Potsdamer Strasse with Clare and Mirta last weekend to experience this instillation. It’s hard to understand the scale from the photos, but it was a huge room filled with sort of catacombs of red rope, sinewy and spiderweb-like at the same time. If felt like being an idea itself or a memory in a maundering brain. A sense of the expansive and befuddling qualities of potentiality.

The red ropes were harnessed from below to these black, skeletal boats, giving the illusion of a fog of spirit escaping, rising, or like the boat resting on the “upside down” (if you’ve seen Stranger Things, you know what I mean), so the rising spirit is maybe actually sinking, diluting itself into the greater body of red webbing.

There was something terrible about it, though it was beautiful. Parts of the webbing were thick, ornate with enmeshed-ness, while the caverns they created rose high up to the ceiling.

It took me 4 or 5 weeks to not feel completely disoriented in Berlin, to not feel like a fucking nerd, or obvious foreigner, to not feel as though I don’t belong. Finding a winter coat had a lot to do with wanting to leave my apartment more, too. Expanding my social circle and finding an apartment with my new friend Jasmine makes me feel more connected to this place. The apartment is being renovated, but we move in on Dec. 1st. A lovely, empty apartment with high ceilings and lots of light. An entire apartment to furnish. Daunting and exciting. Something like a relief in walking away from LA.

I see expectations dissolving, reassembling themselves, dissolving again as the moments and days act like rain plashing down and folding into a pool.

Another new friend mentioned how it’s too easy to get lost in the boredom of routine. He said this as we walked along the canal. These friends of friends are becoming my friends too and I feel less lonely.

This week all the leaves on the trees that line the streets turned yellow and covered the sidewalks. I took this picture on the way to my friend Emily’s baby shower, where all the women in attendance were smart and interesting.

Then, the other night, I sat in a nearly empty bar reading a book. My brain was swimmy from writing all day and I had gone on a walk to clear it, when I stumbled on a warm, cozy looking spot to stop in. I had been reading for several minutes, looked up and out the window where my stare locked with a man passing on the street, a man I know, but have not seen in a while. We held each other’s gaze for a few seconds, he without stopping, me without moving. Then the moment passed.