Author: sophiesills

 

Like Lorca said, “On the waters I have dreamed.”

I once left Los Angeles’ dry chaparrals and cracked creek beds to escape to blue capes, wade shin-deep in ice rivers, and bob in the black lagoon of the Sea of Crete under the moon light, while my family finished their glasses of rocky in the hotel on the hill. It looked not so unlike California on that hill, replace the chaparral for olive trees, coyote scat for goat droppings in the caves, and crickets for cicadas.

I was always going. I was always coming back.

Planning a trip now for Bavaria and Austria. Then, Berlin to see my beloveds. Paris and Provence with my mother and sister.

There is always water. Always a marble fountain, or park, hilltops, caves, ruins, ancient dwellings, or cathedrals.

I am always dreaming. Mountain sheep, thistle and wildflower, dust, lavender, roots, rocks, mist, mirror surfaced lakes, cobble stones, stone homes, pottery, perfume, royalty, revolution, thirsty rivers, canals the color of car coolant, carts and villages, clearings and castles.

In a conversation with Clare last night, she told me about a time in her life when she couldn’t walk past a body of water without wading into it. I know this feeling, the pull water has as an embodiment of vitality, a beacon of life, but also as the dark, still thing possessing secrets in its depths we long to know. We need water, are made of water, but how often when we’ve swam out past the waves and find ourselves bobbing and paddling through the sea does the urge to swim back to shore suddenly strike us?

There is something about water that speaks to a primordial desire. It is the desire to join something you cannot become no matter how wholly you immerse yourself in it.

How many times have I gathered friends together and drove to Nevada City to baptize myself in the crystalline waters of the Yuba River? When I see pictures of it, it makes me thirsty. I want to be naked in the sun on a boulder along the river’s shore.

My trip to Switzerland last week was as much a pilgrimage to dip my toes to the rivers and lakes as it could be for this time of the year when the waters are still as cold as the snow they came from. Every body of water I met, I stopped and slipped my sandals off.

 

 

 

 

I didn’t mind the time we lay sprawled on the canal’s grassy banks kissing and shielding each other from the sun, which on that day was—like the iteration of each slice from the panorama of happiness—so strong.

We are going to be free soon

No, I would not have minded if it lasted a little longer.

Then the aching, gray ended. What would have been spring decided to double-down, so that we jumped from winter to summer overnight. Now I sniff the air and the roses blooming like floral carpets hung over fences. I put my face in the sunlight and the sun holds it there as if it has hands.

The fantasy I had when I first dreamed up this German adventure was brought to fruition yesterday, because yesterday we went to the lake.

I emerged from a couple of low weeks (landlord selling the apartment, a romance coming to an end) the way I did from that cold lake water, revitalized, clean, and happy.

Cosmic threads, sweetheart

My very dear, old friend Evan passed through Berlin this past weekend. He’s on tour with the best, possibly only, all male choir dedicated to singing strictly Leonard Cohen songs, The Conspiracy of Beards. When I first met Evan over a decade ago, he was a member of the band, though he is more of their roadie now. He had once stood among the fedoras and suits singing lyrics like, You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me.

Evan and I are all grown up now and both better versions of our earlier selves, comfortable and crinkled around the eyes selves we could never have imagined. Nor could we have known how much all of this, and our lasting friendship, would both satisfy and excite us.

During the San Francisco years, we used to search out all all natural, idyllic, swimmable locations. It was called River Club, a nature-loving tribe composed of Evan, April, and I. I’m glad to see its comeback, albeit, this river was a lake. The lake smelled so cold and sweet and mossy. There were a million German lake-goes and so many blonde water babies.

All I thought all day long was, “it is so good to be alive.”

Tomorrow morning I’m flying to Switzerland to meet-up with my good friend from LA, Erika, in Lucerne. Summer is here; adventures abound…

May 17th

It’s 75 degrees out. People are eating iced-cream, some dude is kayaking on the canal, I’m wearing sandals AND drinking an iced beverage. I feel like the sun is melting the stress away. Hooray for the sun.

It’s been a minute! Since we last talked, I got my German visa (an artist visa), good for 2 years! And I started taking German lessons. The teacher doesn’t speak English, which is typical in a German class, that is, to only speak in the language you’re learning. However, she also doesn’t really know English, and is limited in her ability to explain things, often reverting to French. Between a Swedish guy and an American who’s been in Berlin for 2 years, the important stuff ends up roughly translated to the rest of us, but not without profound confusion.

I think I’m the oldest of the 8 students and least naturally adept at absorbing languages. Or maybe it’s just been awhile since I was on the student side of a lectern. It’s a frustrating blast though. I love walking home afterward, reading the building signs, sounding out words. I was complimented on my pronunciation and told it holds a lot of potential.

The teacher said we should practice everyday, then one morning we’ll wake up and it will all be there.

That is perfect advice, I realized, for enduring any transformation. You practice, you try, you mess up, you do it again. It’s always a little painful. Or unbearably painful. Then one day it’s not. Then you’re on the other side in the new morning and on to the next transformation.

Alles gut.

In domestic news: Jasmine and I went to Bauhaus yesterday, which sounds cool, but Bauhaus is the German Home Depot, so it was just orange and overwhelming and we walked away wondering if we bought the right grit sizes of sandpaper. We also bought black paint for a long awaited home improvement project. We’re going to black out one of the of bedrooms and turn it into a low key, techno sex club to earn some extra cash, or “dosh” as they call it here. No lines. Totally discrete.

Just kidding. We’re painting a table.

I’ve heard birds singing in the morning. I opened the window to hear them better and smell the morning air, then I noticed all the little buds on the branches. Spring is coming. Nature is waking up.

I held my friend’s baby yesterday. The sun came through their window and shined on my hair and he tried to grab the sun and laughed and laughed.

February 14th – Happy Valentine’s Day (if you celebrate)! It’s still unclear to me if Germans do and to what degree. We’ll file that under German dating customs I haven’t figured out. More on that soon!

On love: I’ve been thinking a lot the last week or so about the love we didn’t know existed until we knew it, that is, until we found it. Maybe it is a specific person who ignites a exact want that was always there, our heart unawares. People bring this type of love up often when talking about having a child. But it exists as much in romance, too, I think.

While reading this morning one of Keats’ letters to his beloved Fanny, he expresses this idea:

You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more – the pain would be too great – My Love is selfish – I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever
John Keats

Cannot breathe without you vibe
Photo courtesy of my girl, Nedelle @advicefromparadise

I was also reading the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine (for which there is a U-bahn stop named after) and came on the idea there too in his poems The Phoenix and Leaning Against the Mast. They appear below (Translated by Vernon Watkins) from an August, 1949 issue of Poetry magazine.

I could write and research and think only about love for the rest of my life. That is what I’m doing much of the time in my essay collection. Love — romantic, familiar, universal. I adore you and this world and this life!

I leave you with the sexiest song ever. Play it on repeat as you undress someone you love tonight.

I’ve discovered a Berlin treasure. It is also the best way to mitigate this gray-skied winter, which is great because it turns out I cannot stand winters in Berlin and will never again move to a foreign country when it’s on the cusp of plunging into one. This season has tried my spirit in unprecedented ways, but this post is about surviving. It is also about healing waters, frozen waters, and omens.

Berlin’s treasure is spa culture. I went Friday night with Clare and Mirta. They’d been before, but it was my first time at Vabali—a sprawling spa and sauna oasis in the style of “a small balinese village.” We stripped down and started with a swim in the indoor pool, followed by a eucalyptus infused Russian style steam room, then risked the cold outside to soak in a hot pool. Steam rising from bodies and the water and our breath made it feel cloaked in primordial magic. I ran tippy-toed through the freezing night back into the main hall in dipped into another sauna room. Stretching out in a sauna, submitting to the dry heat drives the cold from my bones like nothing else. We rested on heated waterbeds in a relaxation room perched on the second floor, overlooking the outdoor baths, old park, and tree-bones stark agains the black sky.

Also, everyone is naked, which is why I don’t have pictures. My initial thought of penises everywhere was unappetizing. Give me naked hippies by a river and I’m good, but I’m not experienced with crowding nude into various enclosed spaces. But upon arriving, the vibe was so relaxing and peaceful, I was fine.

People are beautiful, really, and mostly look the same naked, variations on a theme.

I came home feeling like a noodle (a happy one) and woke up the next morning still thinking about it.

This week, I’ll check out, on a friend’s recommendation, Liquidrom, which is also close to the coworking space I’ve been utilizing.

In other water related adventures—Last weekend Jasmine and I went to nearby Lake Schlachtensee. Clare says it’s a great swimming spot in the summer. This time of year it was frozen solid, but peopled none the less. Some ice-skated, numerous dogs scamped and slid playing fetch, couples pushed strollers and we even saw people jogging across it.

It snowed really hard here last Monday, unannounced. I got on the subway to meet a friend for dinner in Mitte when it started to sprinkle. When I got off on the other side, snowflakes the size of quarters tumbled out of the sky down. It lasted hours, burying the city in a foot of soft snow. I couldn’t get over the size of the snowflakes and stood there being very LA, snapping pictures in the frigid night of what looked to me like cotton ball shavings.

On a final note, I had trouble concentrating this weekend. When there’s no sunlight to guide me through the day, to help me see my location in time, I feel scattered and low-energy.

I get stuck in the details. For example, I wouldn’t walk out the door until I’d found the hair clip I wanted to use. The longer I looked for it, the more absurd the situation become and the more annoyed I was with the hair-clip and myself. It was so inconsequential. Months ago, a friend pointed out how much time I spent debating small decisions. That’s when I gave it up. First thought best thought. Yet here I was.

I found it after a few more minutes, clipped the thing in my hair, then walked to the door and put my shoes on. As I stood up, I hit my head so fucking hard on an electrical box that tears started gushing out while I held my head, swearing weakly.

Have you ever cried from hurting yourself as an adult? It’s pretty rare. You feel like a kid, but also like a human in undeniable, guileless pain. There’s comfort in the fact that it’s physical, not existential.

I checked in the bathroom mirror to see if it was bleeding, then stumbled into the living room, still crying, and sat down on the sofa. Why did this happen (besides the ill-placement of the electrical box)?  What is this sign or omen asking me to pay attention to? Is it reminding me to slow down? To speed up? To relax? To focus more?

I don’t know, but after I had cried really hard for two minutes I felt like I was being breathed by the universe, like something that seemed bottomless had been purged, and I felt better about EVERYTHING, including the lump of wet clay gray sky.

We celebrated this lovely creature’s birthday last night.

And earlier that day, we marched at Brandenburg Gate.

This morning, looking at the New York Times pictures of the Women’s Marches across the globe made me choked-up by the goodness of human beings.

This is unity and love beyond what I’ve ever witnessed in my life. A reminder that people do care about each other and about our planet, that we are resilient; we resist.

Every member of my family marched yesterday in one city or another, LA, SF, OC, Oakland, Berlin!

I come from resistance and revolution stock. Both my parents were political activists. Below is a picture of my dad participating in a student protest at SF State when then military were on campus recruiting young men for Vietnam.

I saw this on Instagram from the March in LA. I love it.

And this, because I love it too.

Jan. 11

I took this picture when my friend Debra and I went to Doug Aitken’s “Electric Earth” exhibit at MOCA when I was in LA. This piece, NOW, is made of wood, mirror, and glass. The description/explanation says, “…the term ‘now’ is slippery, unstable, and transient, as ‘now’ quickly becomes the immediate past. On one hand, by virtue of its mirror-clad surface, the viewer is fully integrated into and reflected in the sculpture’s present moment…On the other hand, linguistically NOW ensnares the viewer in an inexhaustibly repetitive, elusive tense.”

I’ve been thinking about this. Yes, time is experienced in contradictory ways. And it’s not just the “now” that’s slippery, but much of time can be broken down into now, never, and always, interchangeably. The more salient point I’m trying to make is, what is the purpose of now? I made a new year’s resolution to myself to do what is hard. I’ve noticed it usually manifests as making myself do something when I think of it, now, instead of putting it off. I also think about now in terms of forgiving myself, forgiveness generally and absolutely, and forgiveness as love and empathy across the world in the now.

A line from one of my favorite books, says “one is loved because one is loved.”*

Applying this to our existence and its relationship to time, it seems to touch on that idea of accepting who you are and where you are without qualifiers. Being you now is to be loved because you are loved.

It’s kind of like how the phrases, “don’t try” and “give it your all” seem conflicting, but aren’t. Time is slipping away or time is infinite. Both. What do you want to give and what do you want to get from the now, from this very moment? A sense of peace, perhaps?

I found the entire exhibit disturbing, which it’s intended to be, I guess. Images of LA traffic and apartment buildings, ubiquitous and disembodied. The film of feral animals in motel rooms made me SO sad. There’s a beaver in a bathtub (not what you’re thinking), rabbits on a bed, and a deer nosing through a refrigerator full of packaged drinks it can’t access because they’re sealed in plastic. That was the one that got me. How we’ve perverted and shut ourselves out of the natural world, and in these scenes, the natural world from itself.

But then Terry Riley played a couple of nights at the exhibit and my brother said it was beautiful. Electronic music fits the vibe, something from nature but slightly removed.

In Berlin news, it snowed a bunch today. I stood by the window watching it like a real Californian or a child. While rain is loud, snow is quiet. It makes me feel peaceful. Good things like coffee and blankets and hot showers are made even better.

Tomorrow I’m seeing Robert Wilson’s “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” performed by the Berlin Ensemble. Looking forward to it!

Good night. I love you.

From a few days ago

From today

Balboa Beach day after I arrived

Jan. 7th – I’ve never before lived in a city that snows. One of things I brought back from LA is my grandmother’s wool coat from the ’50s. She bought it when she moved to Detroit in her early 20s. It has a black, rabbit fur collar and feels like it weights about 30 pounds. They don’t make coats of that quality anymore. It’s in perfect condition. My mom held on to it all this time, probably thinking no one in our family would have use for it. When I tried it on for my 91-year-old grandmother, who had long forgotten about the coat, she said, “Well I’ll be darned. Does it smell like moth balls?” It does not.

I spent the 3 weeks between LA and Orange County with a quick trip down to San Diego. Somehow, I didn’t have time or the chance to see all the people I wanted to. And now I’m back in Berlin where I have like 5 friends, but it’s cozy and excellent weather for writing. Visiting home was grounding and invigorating alike. It rained off and on most of the trip, but when the sky cleared, the air was crystalline and everything sparked, washed of smog and city dust, it bounced with color. The sunshine was warm on my face, coming through the looping vines of the veranda, on those mornings when I sat on Emily’s back porch sipping my coffee, Clifford the cat beside me.

I stopped by my LA apartment to pick up a few books and things and realized that I miss nothing about it. What I miss are my dog and my cat, my friends and my yoga studio. But, driving around that first day back, I was overwhelmed by how beautiful it is in LA. By afternoon I was already tired of the same old neighborhood, the same old streets, the same views. They aren’t mine anymore. Newport Beach living, however, is easy to get used to (except for all the weird republicans and unfriendly wasps).

(We had fish tacos and beer then walked to the beach)

These exquisite cutie-pies

Here are a smattering of trip highlights

Miranda, Meadow and I dined at Taix. Our presence was graced by true LA royalty, Chong, of Cheech and Chong.

“Chrismaka”

Old Soul, Michael

James Meetze making dinner and the lovely La Jolla shoreline

I didn’t draw this, but I like it!

December 16th – My third night back in the States found me at a holiday party for Imprint Projects at my sister’s place. It was a very LA occasion what with the quesadilla lady, piñata, and tub full of La Croix, but the best part was being with my sibs (and the piñata).

 

 

 

Earlier in the day, Sarah picked me up from Union Station and we had lunch in Little Tokyo. Theo is getting big, looking so much like both his parents.

 

 

The air here is soft, sweet-smelling. I forgot what that was like. There are leaves on the trees and flowers still in bloom.

People at the party asked me what I’m doing in Berlin. I still don’t have a great elevator answer except that I came for the adventure, stayed for the lifestyle. And, that you only get one shot to be here now, for the long now, that is.

I’m grateful to travel back and forth between these worlds, that I get to be in love with two totally different cities, and in many ways live two distinct, but not dissimilar lives. Instead of one eclipsing the other, it feels like I’ve grown a second self or a branch reaching toward the light in a wild, new direction.

I’ll be in the States for 3 weeks, going between LA, Newport, and a brief NorCal stint. Friends and lovers, I want to see you! All of you.

 

December 10th – Things are coming together! I moved into my new apartment with Jasmine, a painter from New York who came to Berlin at the start of the summer. She visited for 2 weeks, went home, packed her clothes, sold her furniture and moved here permanently. Meeting her through our mutual friend Lizzy has been such a boon. Jasmine has excellent style and the best sense of humor. She believes in the magic of coconut oil and the joys of blathering about our days over a glass of wine in the evening. It’s a perfect fit.

(my bedroom, a portrait of minimalism)

(move-in day, construction zone kitchen)

Before moving in, I felt a little odd about having a roommate, but looking around at our giant apartment, with its high, moulded ceilings, two bathrooms, and sweet location in Neukolln (right upstairs from my friend Ariane), I couldn’t feel luckier. We’re looking forward to furnishing the place so we can host dinner parties, brunches — really any kind of food with friends situations that exist.

In other news, it is winter in Berlin. The daylight has been reduced to what feels like a few hours each day and all the trees look like twigs for kindling. The brightest sky is still a variation of gray, but there is a kind of quiet, hunkering down it provides. I hear that the light returns, in shades, starting in January. Jasmine says if she didn’t know what summer was like here, the phenomenon of practically existing only outdoors, by the canal, by a lake, on the streets in those long, warm days, she wouldn’t survive the winter. I’m looking forward to that, reminding myself that adventure contains not just chaos, but onerous bouts of waiting, and then refusing the idea of waiting, as if there were something better, as if difference suggests a hierarchy.

The layers of clothing, the quick descent down the basement stairs of winter, the folding up of nature, turning into itself for a long meditation, bones cold as I hurry down the street burying my nose in my scarf — I wouldn’t have known any of it without being here.

Oh, and I went to a Christmas market last weekend!

Finally, my neighborhood contains cafes like this, so really, you never have to feel the cold.

Days 90-106

For a couple of weeks, my mom and sister visited me in Europe and my heart was alight. Except, of course, there was the election and waking up on November 9th to the results.

The idea of going back to the States for love of my country, for the truths we hold (ostensibly) to be self-evident, and for the need to participate in protest and civil disobedience, has not left me. My family and I commemorated the day by visiting Dachau, where I cried with the kind of plunging, heaving breaths only that kind particular grief can evoke. I took pictures of the photographs in the museum at Dachau. From my heart, I sent that sorrow to the hearts of my countrymen, thinking, this is what it looks like. Don’t forget, this is what can happen.

When we’ve decided that you are you, that I am me, and that we’re not the same, we’ve become the monstrous version of ourselves, unrecognizable to the part of our true selves that could have chosen to see this world and its inhabitants otherwise.

Years ago, Frank and I visited Bosnia. Sarajevo is a city that still shows the damage from the genocide that happened there. I wrote a poem called, “What if God was One of Us,” in which I discuss a point Joseph Campbell makes in Masks of God. He notes that many Native American cultures see godliness in everything, in the trees and animals.

From my poem:

He would argue, it’s not what if god was one of us, but what if god was all of us. Forgetting this is what lets us go to war, Campbell says. It’s only possible to kill an “it.” I forget that I am also you.

Is othering a survival skill? …

All over the Balkans I saw the remains of othering. It litters the towns and cities with such visions: walls lying in heaps of bricks among the weeds and wild that years of weather have brought up in a home, so many homes without roofs, the broken red skeletons of walls shivering, exposed to the cold, to the sun, showing themselves like ghosts. I could see some of the contents inside a bedroom, the dresser pushed against a wall still papered pink. The two other walls blown away. Its vision gave itself to me. The breast of the house was blown open to expose its heart.

I am worried about the violence we need to commit against each other because of the violence committed against us. Once or never or always committed. Especially when there is no distinction between what is held inside my skin and what is held beyond it. I am also violence.

If “every water is the same water coming round, the same blood, the great circulation,” then every violence is the same violence coming round. Violence cannot be of different colors and versions and assignments, with different fates, cannot be different like the faces of the people who inhabit it. It is singular, with a singular purpose, to propagate and procreate. Like a burning hole that grows.

This is what I’ve been thinking about, haven’t stopped thinking about. Still, life rushes forward. So this becomes the question: What to do? More on that, another time…

After Berlin, we rented a car and drove to Prague. It is a dark and picturesque city. Perfect for lovers. It was a happy surprise to find it less touristy in the winter then when I’d seen it last so many summers ago. On the way, we stopped in Dresden.

(Emily in Dresden)

(Prague)

From Prague, we drove to this beautiful old town in southern Czech Republic called Cesky Kromlav. Our hotel was on the Vltava River beside a 13th century castle.

From there we drove to Munich where we drank giant beers and hung out with some LA friends who happened to be playing a show there.

(Emily, Kevin, and Cyrus)

(Mama, beautiful sis and I at the Hofbauhaus)

Our travels ended in Amsterdam, which is pretty close to being a perfect city.

I flew back to Berlin and moved into my friend Alexander’s place to stay for a little while until my apartment is ready at the end of the month. He lives in Prenzlauer Berg, a part of the city I’d not yet explored. The next day I had a birthday. Turning 36 in Berlin was magical. Alex had a brunch that morning where I made some new friends (including two very cute babies).

(pre-brunch)

(post-brunch chill)

(My kind host Alex and his friend, Lisa)

I rounded off the celebration that night with my friend and soon-to-be-roommate, Jasmine, at a gay bar in Neukolln called Roses. It was all sparkles and ’80s Madonna (plus a blonde photo-bomber).

Hooray for being alive.

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.

On sex and sultry moods, within 3 seconds of Angel Olsen’s show in Berlin last night, my friend squeezed my hand and said, “this is so romantic.” I was unprepared for it. Having not listened much to the new record, which is surprising rockin’ and sometimes electronic, in performance the sound was voluptuous. When she sang some lyrics, “I aint giving up tonight,” you agreed.

The air strobed, my beer was cold and bitter. The songs wended through my various selves like a demand or desire exaggerated, up close, the thing pulling back, the thing that makes a moaning.

In one of the most staggering songs, “Sister,” she says, “I want to live life, I want to die right,” which is juxtaposed with the jarring sentiment, “All my life I thought I’d change.” Consequence and the desire it was born of.

When I got home, I listened to the record in bed. I fell asleep and dreamed of eating a feast and also of being in love. For the past week, all of my dreams have followed this format. Different feasts, different men. I wake up satisfied. It wears off, of course.

I think challenges attract me now, though they rarely did before. I’ve noticed this with my body, in yoga, for example, I push myself past what I think I can do, then feel strong and capable when I’ve done it. Maybe this is why I’m allured by the difficulty of learning German, of going through the bureaucratic bullshit of trying to stay here, of finding an apartment so I can leave it in the spring and summer months to return to Italy, to Greece and Croatia, to see Scandinavia.

But I can’t deny this either: I want to be chased through a field with the summer light working through me.  

The baseline kills me (wait for it.)

Days 67-70

New cities are sexy. Sex appeal hinges on difficulty, on thwarting, on moving closer and falling back and moving closer. On being brave and free, ferried between the idea and being it.

Clara wrote me a note talking about how we put ourselves in places where we can’t go back. She said, “I love that art can only really be made in the space created by the absence of something profound.”

That something— the continents, a cosmic shelter, keys echoing through keyholes, hearts attending hearts, the hand that unhooks you?

I like Berlin fine, though it reminds me of San Francisco. Maybe I even like how I hate it. That old San Francisco and that me no longer exist, but for in ghosts and other dreams.

It is hard to live in a foreign country. It’s gray as fuck and cold and they don’t sell coats that fit me. But it’s cozy inside. The contrast of going from outside in is like a dozen homecomings a day, like slinking into a bath, like you’ve escaped something rough and met something better in the same breath.

It’s hard here. I want to stay.

Clara and I talked about the presence that exists in the empty. I said, “That potential, as you describe it, of pushing yourself or training, is a different sort of place to put your hopes, maybe one without expectations, the open space for potential to unfold.”

Living alone in a foreign country is hard, but making things here is easier. Writing is easier. Not a still moon sinking into midnight, but something swelled and awake, flushed with a language unpegged, relieved. It fetches me and for no reason I follow.

Day 63-66

Last night I dreamed that while swimming in a river, we saw a snake begin to wrap itself around a little skunk, who was too scared to move. So we rescued the skunk and took her home with us, only to find that the snake had followed. We couldn’t lose him. He was unwavering in his dedication to be close to the skunk and we realized he was actually in love with her. They got married. The skunk’s name was Prudence.

True story. Well, true dream story. Fucking Prudence. Look up the definition.

I woke up this morning laughing. I keep smiling when I think about it.

Days 50-62  – Last night at dinner, a new friend invited me to temple today, because today is Yom Kippur. Those Days of Awe, the past 10 days from Rosh Hashanah to today, really flew by. I know I started out by considering who I may have hurt in the past year, who’s forgiveness I should ask for, but I think I actually abhor the idea of doing so to save my soul, that is, to convince God to inscribe me in the Book of Life. Today we’re supposed to hope that all of our repenting has sealed a good fate for us, that God’s verdict will ascribe happiness and health in the coming year.

I’d prefer to believe that I have no fate, or rather, that fate is inherently dynamic.

And isn’t it? Doesn’t fate come from faith, in believing you’re inherently worthy, in coming to that certainty  from the daily practice of forgiving those you feel you’ve wronged and or have wronged you? Isn’t empathy and unconditional love born of that constant practice of humility, which engenders compassion and immerses us in the now?

Before I go to bed at night I tell the universe that I am grateful, I tell the universe how much love I have for it and every being within it. The practice has the effect of diminishing the distance between what I perceive as outside of myself and what is inside. It is both a relief and an embrace. It hurts and it forgives, as all beautiful things do.

In LA, the practice of mindfulness was nearly at the center of my life. It’s a lot easier when you speak the same language and share the same customs as everyone around you. Since I’ve been in Berlin, there are myriad centers and it feels as if they’re dots on a map in constant motion. What is close becomes far. Life grows in every direction, which it always does, of course, but this is most apparent when our internal compass is thrown off. I mean this literally. In new locations we can’t place ourselves amid unfamiliar surroundings. It takes a while to find orientation (especially if you can’t read maps or understand directions no matter how clear they are).

The argument for uncertainty is a solid one, I think, the idea of becoming lost in a place and/or losing oneself despite the place is why people travel the world or adventure inward on a monastic path. I came for both, forgetting that it’s also not easy. Conversely, I don’t think it’s hard if I let myself be lost without guilt or desperate fumbling for pieces of familiarity. That too is part of the now. The struggle, the not letting myself give in, seems to be the shitty part. The lostness is neither good nor bad, it just is.

I hope for a happy, healthy new year. I believe that all beings are worthy of this. I forgive myself for times I forget.

Days 46-49 – Oh! It’s raining. And the sounds, not just of the rain hitting the rooftops, but of the ground absorbing and digesting it, becoming soft. It sounds like the soil is breathing. Insects hum and hiss. The sky is light gray, both impenetrable and deep, like some mood or atmosphere ushered in from a location beyond today.

I am happy, cozy in my studio grading papers and commenting on poems. I can hear the church bells. The sounds of my neighbors preparing lunch. I just want to be here and I am here.

Last night I went to a little wine store with a bar and a few tables for eating dinner. I sat on old leather love-seat beside a new friend, sipping wine, talking about the ways words are made differently than art, a more tenuous translation from emotion to expression. He said, I’ve never wanted to miss my flight before and we laughed about that. Candles and rows of bottles filled the bar. A waiter leaning over us to take down a bottle for someone.

Today is the first of October.

I got the idea to read a novel that takes place in Berlin while I’m here, so I downloaded The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood.

I get lost in being here, that is, I get caught up in the city so that I become a part of it and forget where I am, that I’m away from home. Maybe I could be anywhere and feel that I’m alive. That sense of presence, for any reason, is a gift.

Day 45 – I took a train to the suburb of Potsdam yesterday. I went to a giant park, Sanssouci Park, that’s filled with palaces. I struggled trying to capture the immensity of them with iphone camera until I met someone also traveling alone, also not humiliating himself with a selfie stick, so we paired up for the day.

It’s impossible to relate the scale of these structures, including the natural ones, like the sweeping fields that reminded me a lot of Yosemite. And gardens with statues that remind me of giant chess pieces.

If you are down with OPP, other people’s palaces, here’s some pictures for you.