fresh and alive on engeldamm
Author: jules (Page 1 of 2)
I’m in a new city with a small group of peers and we go on tours together and it slightly tears at me.
The tear: tourist vs. visitor
I dislike the thought of being a tourist. But I am one, of course. I’m here and I’m surrounded by my brilliant classmates and having people show me around and teach me. I enjoy that. But the thought of being a stereotypical tourist (fanny-packed, passive, wide-eyed, sheep-like) makes me uncomfortable. Why? There’s a certain irrational shame in being an obvious unknowing stranger I guess. I prefer to see myself as the anonymous and shadowy visitor, completely unremarkable, taking everything in silently. Maybe it’s just a jaded city girl thing, though.
Our first group outing brought us from the Brandenberg Tor through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Finance building with it’s spooky Nazi doorknobs and cheery Eastern bloc mural, ending at the site of Hitler’s bunker, where he and his wife killed themselves for their honeymoon.
I ended up going on that exact same route maybe a week later, with three other people.
Now it’s time to go alone, I think. Be the invisible visitor.
What stuck to me immediately was the beauty of The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The levels of planes, perfect lines, grays, light glints, all in perfect harmony…
I will return for it, and fill giant pages with it, so that I won’t forget.
I’m staying here in Berlin. Something won’t let me leave. I found a room in an apartment only meters East of where the most dangerous part of the Wall used to be. Its all park now, completely absent except for some plaques here and there. A Leviathan erased by its keeper; I may not ever have known.
Some of the Wall still exists, as we know, and is feed for tourists and history lovers (and our group). Curated, museum-like visual aids accompany the space–a small offering to visitors of this palpable memory. I know this is here.
Together, the small presence and massive absence of an important part of Berlin can make the air electric; tense, like the revulsion between the same sides of each magnet. Something is somewhere, and I need to find it.
This vague something is what I will now unwrap for you.
There is a space winding all throughout my head that is completely absent. Memories my own mind hid from me; forgetting as a means of protection, with a few solid pieces as proof to myself that what happened in my life did, indeed, happen.
When latent BPD II reared its ugly head this past fall, I found myself stuck in a torrent of memories. They would strike me down and flee from me in large groups, everyday, and I wanted so badly to keep them somehow, but I was unable to. But being here, in a place in a very complicated relationship with memory, makes me able to, for the first time in my adult life. Already I’ve been gathering the pieces that fly by, scrawling them down in an old notebook. I’d like to turn them into short, more polished pieces, and somehow map them out. Like the U-bahn map, which is linear but curving and moving in every direction constantly. The subway is an important symbol in my life, and it belongs in my project.
Active Memory: finding a museum in each part of Berlin, taking the train there, and spending time in them. Objects hold memories just as much as repeated, familiar actions. Even if you haven’t seen them. I will gently knock on everything I can to see what crawls out and helps me remember.
Daily train-riding and wandering in and out of different stops–I can’t count on the internet to tell me what Berlin is. I have to go there and make it up for myself, search for nothing and everything, drifting through the space in between.
Weekly posts will be made with each piece of writing, as well as drawings of maps of those memories. Psychic maps.
Active Present: To offset the outcome of existing constantly in the past, I will create handmade postcards with found objects–as many as possible–addressed, but not sent, to capture a sliver of the present, destined to become part of the past as well…
Reading list edit shortly
I drew a picture of Adorno from the cover of the Reader at some point with a thin Sharpie and then early one morning I fused this man to my self.
Philosophy is a bit hard. To me, studying it can be compared to the experience of holding too many marbles in your hands. Some of them slip out, and as you’re reaching down to scoop them back up, another few fall, and so on and so forth. Which is not a static quality–it’s a matter of honing fine motor skills.
There is something to be said about that, though. In the spaces where the “-ists” and “-isms” should go are spaces that I bridge with other things–more personal ideas, I guess. Whatever that means. But. This weekend is Berlin’s Gallery Weekend. I’ve already spent one day meandering, and will continue to do so today. But I’ve been thinking about the experience of the gallery.
One walks in and finds a dense informative blurb about the artist and their work, serving as a guide of sorts. These blurbs are so dense because they are packed with dense terminology. I have mixed feelings about them. I don’t like being told what to see from the very beginning in heavy academic language, yet I also feel I need to be. More marbles are added to my pockets, and I don’t usually want that. I have plenty already.
All of this is difficult for me to articulate.
This isn’t a new idea, but contemporary art is borne of the countless “-isms” floating around in our atmosphere, a child of philosophy. One could argue that all art is the fruit of that wordy womb.
But galleries. Galleries are a site of intellectual activity, oftentimes, simultaneously self-conscious and ignorant of this fact. Self-conscious insofor as it employs these dense ideas; unconscious because it is also the mere act of experiencing artwork. And of course, museums are like this–however, they are built for the masses and depend on tourists and visitors. The gallery is exclusive, painstaking, and nit-picky. The gallery is not built for a group of bumbling tourists, but for the intellects to gather with wine and one another to exchange their philosophical marbles. I’m not sure if this is a criticism, an us/them situation, because I also partake in the activity (albeit without the plastic cup wine) for the joy of discussing art as it is, in the moment, with a pal. It’s good brain exercise. I get to play with my favorite marbles and listen to the others jangle in the background and on the floor.
I guess my issue is the delineation between the exclusive, intellectual, boujie qualities of the gallery, and the understanding and non-judgmental museum. The former (aggressively?) insists upon its hand-picked artists and their philosophical abstractions and expressions, the latter merely offers a name and date. A clash of direction, of space. And of course, time. It’s funny, the museum makes me want to stay and think hard, and the gallery makes me want to scan and leave. Why is that? All of these ideas will be kept in mind when I go today to more.
I’d love your feedback, and maybe help with molding these ideas a bit more! Bitte 
To be continued, with pictures….
PsychischBahn
I challenge you to, at some point on this entire trip, from here to Istanbul, take a few moments for a few days to practice a bit of mindfulness regarding memories. We are currently in a place that most of us have never been, yet any spot in Berlin, big or small, can hold a small memory we thought was lost.
This is important to me//has taken a while for me to flesh out because it’s taken my own memory mindfulness to create. I have a lot of repressed memories–a lot of my childhood is absent. For some, remembering is the reconstruction of past selves, ghostly layers we can superimpose upon ourselves. For others, it’s a source of pain, a visceral rush of a completely inexplicable feeling that transports us elsewhere, all in the context of a big, beautiful, old, confusing city.
I challenge you to trace the faint impressions that return to you as you, for example, sit on a bench in Kreuzberg, or stand on the U7, or walk by the canal. Look out for the things that wash up, and jot them down.
When you are ready, sit down with your notebook and your computer and put them up, and then accept the ride it offers you. Take a trip through your own Psychic Self, in this dear Psychic City.
I know it’s overdue and I know there’s a chance that nobody will do it, but you can count on me to do so.
We carry inside ourselves more than we know at any given moment. We carry inside ourselves liminal tunnels to places unknown to anyone else. Can you crawl through them?
Its early early early, and my sweet bedroom is almost as blue as this one particular scene from Eyes Wide Shut; a scene that made me realize that such haunting blue air can even exist. I hear a…mourning dove? I should go to bed. But Berlin is a night city, and I take that seriously. The best things happen at night. My owlself comes out here and I can’t help it.
I really love this place. I’m a true city girl, littered parks and peeling stickers and the smell of subway exhaust are familiar to me. I think about this everyday. I’m happy here.
I’ve been thinking a lot about myself, and about how everyone thinks about themselves. My Psychic City project thoughts are funneling into a Psychic Self sort of deal. That segue started off with a joke between my best friend and I; we both grew up and “came of age” in Boston, taking the trains and such, and we swear that we’ve left our marbles on the Red Line or the 136 bus. Anywhere, really. Shiny little balls of some part of some of our selves rolling and rolling, forever rolling, through the trains, falling into peoples’ bags, being transported every which way. I think some of my marbles have landed here.
I wish I could disclose the events of the day here, but I cannot at this time. However, my thoughts around the situation were a comparison between this here Jules, and the self-destructive 17 year old Jules with seaweed green hair and too-torn skirts. I kept thinking, Am I her right now? Is it possible?
Of course it’s not possible. But, as I was sitting on the U1 and thinking about that, I realized that she is still there–though she is an extremely transparent and elusive ghost–and I am merely superimposed over this girl. I didn’t know what to make of that. Furthermore, it occurred to me that current BerlinJules is superimposed over all these other Juleses and Julias and whatnot, but, the true ghost that my threads curl back into is that of my mother, whom I know nothing about. But that’s another post.
This trip, for me, is about memories. A lot of mine are locked up far far away, and something as simple as a crowd of people crossing the street can trigger some image. I think it might be important, this fledgling ability to see. Especially in a strange place. A strange place that could possibly have my marbles.
I’m thinking a lot more about my PsychicCity proj ect, which I will write more about…most likely later today I think. I believe in our first trip meeting, we read a small excerpt of Freud that I think might be relevant, does anyone remember? Dr. Eamon, help me out?
Anyways, the true point of this post was to engage my sweet peers as they roam around Berlin thinking about themselves. I have a list of theoretical questions to ask you all–to ask you all to ask yourself, that is.
Honestly, how are you doing?
Do you hate it here, or do you love it?
Are you homesick?
Are things getting hard?
What is your temporal experience at this point? (For example: I don’t operate on dates or days of the week)
Are you remembering things? Can you access images and feelings and emotions at any point in this city?
Are you unable to?
Are your habits changing?
What is scaring you?
How do you handle being alone?
What could you possibly do in a strange place to truly calm down? (For example: when things get bad, I go into antique shops to assuage my anxiety)
Is class stressful?
What kind of thoughts are you thinking? There’s usually a pattern there.
Do you miss anyone (it’s ok to not)
Think about the marbles. More about the marbles soon. I should sleep now.
from riga to Vilnius. then from vilnius to berlin. the trees are white and skinny. i’m doin okay.
i liked riga. it’s a small city, but not oly small. not even an hour ago, i was at the train station (i should have been at the bus station) looking for help and sure enough, i saw a sweet angelic face, and it smiled at me. i do not remember his name. i only know that i met him at riga’s only gay bar (the golden) and i was being gay with his boyfriend, artur. artur told me sweetface was sad. i hope artur treats him well.
he helped me and probably missed the bus and i gave him a little box of matches from the art nouveau district that ii was unable to send to my bestie because latvian postwomen are odd and stubborn.
i love a sweet boy. i do not love loud british men.
riga is where my blood is from, it felt familiar to me. it was fantastic to be alone. here i was, in a place untainted by memories and feelings, where i could be free. i operated on no time. i haven’t slept in a long time, let me tell you. but now i’m gone and i’ve gathered a few feelings (like eating shit from the cobblestones) and what it was like to go to the depeche mode and request “blasphemous rumors” and sing along to it alone in the back.
but the loose ends, they get me. i’m trying to get my ducks in a row, i hope jasmine will ask the cards for me.
i got a tattoo from vlad, it says “alone” in hangul. 혼자 혼자 혼자 혼자 혼자
i’ve taken on the persona of the “weird american girl”.
28.03
traveling totally brings out the aquarius, NO TIME FOR PISCES, though I will have mein schon freundin send me the special hanky she bought me (for when the pisces wiggles its way out) for crying.
pisces: you wont catch me on the hostel pub crawl//all alone//i will get a tattoo here that says: 혼자
riga is cool. i am in Old Town and I’ve eaten shit twice now because of all the damned cobblestones
highlight: i went to a bar that ONLY played depeche mode. nothing else. depeche mode.
all is well. i love it here.
see you soon Berlin!!