Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Fahrrad zum Tiergarten (bike to park)
For a week now I've been looking wistfully at all the bike riders in Berlin whizzing up and down the street, through the park, dodging the pedestrians, skirting the traffic with the wind in their hair and an ice cream cone in their hand. No kidding. I think it is the German national pastime to ride a bike and lick an ice cream cone simultaneously. And they look very cool and graceful doing it. I have made a pact with myself to try it at least once, and so . . . to that end, I have finally procured a bike. It makes me happy to fly around, up and down the canal and see Berlin on two wheels. My bike is beautiful. It is a very old, single speed women's bike with a cushioned seat and the requisite little bell on the handlebars to warn people you are about to run them over. But most people know I'm coming because the brakes squeal. I must get a little more graceful with my city riding. The bike is about one inch too high for me, so getting on and off requires a funny little jump and hop. This first day, it was humorous for onlookers, but a little angst-filled for me thinking I might fall over at every intersection. I had an ambitious and adventurous first ride all the way from my neighborhood (Kreuzberg) to Tiergarten (Mitte). I guess that would be the equivalent of going from Washington Square to Central Park. The bike rattles and clanks over the cobblestones, and my teeth clatter along with it. I rode past many small parks, and over several defaced iron statue/busts of communist leaders. I recognized Gorbachev. Also rode over a section of pavement with the red sickle and hammer painted every few feet. Usually an anarchy symbol is nearby. This post is rather rambling like my ride itself. I got lost and found myself in Mitte, the heart of the city (Times Square equivalent) but held my own as I rode past museums, the Judische Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie and the Sony Center. I will describe each in turn in a longer piece. Finally made it to Tiergarten and felt as if I'd stumbled into a forest straight out of Hansel and Gretel. In fact I expected to meet them there and considered leaving little scraps of paper out behind me to find my way out. Tier in german means animal, but I did not see any animals except for metal statues of horses and lions. I think there are more I haven't found. Also, German sunbathers, mostly naked or near naked. If there were live animals there, they might be a little alarmed (as I was, initially) but the metal ones seem quite stoic, as do the sunbathers. I found my way back to the flat, and rode through a busy Turkish market. I have not quite gotten graceful enough on the bike to attempt the icecream trick, but will be sure and tell the world when I arrive . . .!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Legend of the May Queen
[Note: She will probably see some edits, but here she is, for now, still in her curlers. Stay tuned for June: Hymn to the God of Summer Solstice. I met him the other day, I think.]
The Legend of the May Queen
She appeared once upon a time, on a beautiful day in May of course, because everyone knows that May has the most beautiful days. The mere mention of a beautiful day conjures traces of May in the imagination. All the months have their graces and their saints, but how did it come to be that Beauty falls to May? How is it that May gets a Queen? She’s a strange queen, it’s a rare time, the days of May, and rare times with strange queens inspire their own legends, so the story must begin: Once upon a time because the fairy-tale days of May do not last forever, by design.
Once upon a time, on a beautiful day in May, two strange fellows set out on a quest, the search for the May Queen. One was a self-proclaimed poet, with a small notebook and a good memory for detail. The other was an unemployed mathematician who also carried a small notebook full of geometric proofs and had an eye for patterns. Both spent the better part of their days working crossword puzzles at the neighborhood tavern, and both had a hunch they could do better than this, but both found themselves lacking inspiration.
“MayQueen” was the answer to 5 down in the daily puzzle: “calandar royalty.” All the poet knew about her amounted to a few random adjectives gleaned from poems he learned by heart, but out of the modifiers, he created a mystery which he told to his friend, and as he told it, the mathematician questioned him, and a dream was spun from profound nonsense and fantastic conjecture, laced with bits of poetry and mythology, with a noble lie thrown in here and there for good measure. In the dim beer-soaked light of the tavern their eyes shone and the mathematician began to feel a sort of hunger. It was the mathematician who suggested, under the influence of the story, that they try and find her, if she did exist.
The barkeep, who’d grown wise and skinny listening to foolish dreams pour out of bottles, spit on the floor and swabbed the counter. Of course the MayQueen exists, she said, and woe to you if you do catch a glimpse. The MayQueen will change you forever. Tell us how to find her, they pleaded. The barkeep laughed and looked a little less wrinkled, a little lighter and younger for an instant. You’re both fools, she said, so you have a fighting chance. But I can only tell you how to recognize her on the off-chance, the barkeep shrugged. The mathematician perked up at the mention of an off-chance, and the poet frowned and scratched his head.
The MayQueen was never created, the barkeep began. She was there all along, like a birthday, a numbered day with your name on it. She is a gift, a reason to celebrate, a secret held under the tongue, burning. Or an epiphany, the sudden memory of something you always knew. She is never who you expect her to be. And she is the one you’ve always been waiting for. She arrives on the scene like a birthday cake in full bloom. And confronts everyone who beholds her with the age old cake dilemma between seeing and eating. She’ll tear you up, drive you crazy and inspire you forever, especially if you’re like the fool who only wants beauty, but knows he is likely to ruin it, and it is likely to ruin him. And so he subsists on his hunger, and feeds thousands.
The barkeep poured herself a drink, swallowed and shook her head at the two friends who sat across from her, rapt and slack-jawed. The MayQueen is a revolution. She is both witness and ring leader. She has the kind of grace that sets stones on end, makes them stand and proclaim.
The May Queen is everyone’s sweetheart, she said, and always her own mistress. But there’s no better pursuit than the May Queen. To meet her is to run the risk of astonishment. Inspiration made permanent. She lets a love define your life.
Tell us more, they begged the girl. Have you seen her? Do you know where she lives? How do we find her? But their questions were useless. All the barkeep did was laugh and fill their cups. I’ve said enough, she told them. From now on, she depends on you.
And so the poet and the mathematician, both dizzy from the drink and the imagined perfume of the MayQueen, stumbled home, arm in arm. She is the graffiti artist of the sky, said the poet as he studied the sunset. The anarchist of spring, quipped the mathematician as he shuffled through fallen petals. And she lives in all those perfect little cataclysms like thunderstorms and falling stars, hiccups and waterfalls. And lovemaking, giggled the poet.
If this life exists to break our hearts up against, we may as well learn how to do it gracefully, said the poet, all serious but not sober. He gripped his friend’s arm. Where did you get that line from? asked the lover of patterns. I don’t know, said the lover of words, must’ve been the MayQueen.
The mathematician, unwilling to be outshone, said, beauty only lives in the tension between contrasts. Yes, cried the poet, and moreover, she is beauty without the idea of beauty. Her transparency is opaque. She is everywhere infinitely elusive, and if you are lucky enough to be loved by her, be grateful. Because to be loved by her is to be considered beautiful.
I hope she loves me, sighed the mathematician. And I hope she loves me, wished the poet. We must make it so, they agreed.
The poet and the mathematician never really found the MayQueen. But she became and remained the absent beloved for both. The poet dedicated all his poems to her and thought he found her at 4am in the morning once in the perfect weave of his own words, just as the moon was rising and the birds were singing in anticipation of morning. And the mathematician sought for her in infinite series and impossible proofs. And he thought he caught a glimpse of her in the mathematical expression of the whorls of a sea-shell. Both of them were moved to do things they never imagined themselves doing. The poet read his work on the steps of town hall and took to carrying around a tamborine, urging his listeners to rebel and be free. The mathematician decided to disprove gravity as a myth, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and he said if everyone suspended their disbelief, they would be capable of flight. They might even find themselves growing feathers in perfectly symmetrical patterns, well-suited for defying all the laws of physics.
And when both were arrested for revolutionary antics, they made a final appeal to the MayQueen as they stood before the firing squad, and she heard, found them faithful, and spirited them away to her kingdom where she worked as a barkeep and saw that they were well cared for as they approached an infinity of May days.
The Legend of the May Queen
She appeared once upon a time, on a beautiful day in May of course, because everyone knows that May has the most beautiful days. The mere mention of a beautiful day conjures traces of May in the imagination. All the months have their graces and their saints, but how did it come to be that Beauty falls to May? How is it that May gets a Queen? She’s a strange queen, it’s a rare time, the days of May, and rare times with strange queens inspire their own legends, so the story must begin: Once upon a time because the fairy-tale days of May do not last forever, by design.
Once upon a time, on a beautiful day in May, two strange fellows set out on a quest, the search for the May Queen. One was a self-proclaimed poet, with a small notebook and a good memory for detail. The other was an unemployed mathematician who also carried a small notebook full of geometric proofs and had an eye for patterns. Both spent the better part of their days working crossword puzzles at the neighborhood tavern, and both had a hunch they could do better than this, but both found themselves lacking inspiration.
“MayQueen” was the answer to 5 down in the daily puzzle: “calandar royalty.” All the poet knew about her amounted to a few random adjectives gleaned from poems he learned by heart, but out of the modifiers, he created a mystery which he told to his friend, and as he told it, the mathematician questioned him, and a dream was spun from profound nonsense and fantastic conjecture, laced with bits of poetry and mythology, with a noble lie thrown in here and there for good measure. In the dim beer-soaked light of the tavern their eyes shone and the mathematician began to feel a sort of hunger. It was the mathematician who suggested, under the influence of the story, that they try and find her, if she did exist.
The barkeep, who’d grown wise and skinny listening to foolish dreams pour out of bottles, spit on the floor and swabbed the counter. Of course the MayQueen exists, she said, and woe to you if you do catch a glimpse. The MayQueen will change you forever. Tell us how to find her, they pleaded. The barkeep laughed and looked a little less wrinkled, a little lighter and younger for an instant. You’re both fools, she said, so you have a fighting chance. But I can only tell you how to recognize her on the off-chance, the barkeep shrugged. The mathematician perked up at the mention of an off-chance, and the poet frowned and scratched his head.
The MayQueen was never created, the barkeep began. She was there all along, like a birthday, a numbered day with your name on it. She is a gift, a reason to celebrate, a secret held under the tongue, burning. Or an epiphany, the sudden memory of something you always knew. She is never who you expect her to be. And she is the one you’ve always been waiting for. She arrives on the scene like a birthday cake in full bloom. And confronts everyone who beholds her with the age old cake dilemma between seeing and eating. She’ll tear you up, drive you crazy and inspire you forever, especially if you’re like the fool who only wants beauty, but knows he is likely to ruin it, and it is likely to ruin him. And so he subsists on his hunger, and feeds thousands.
The barkeep poured herself a drink, swallowed and shook her head at the two friends who sat across from her, rapt and slack-jawed. The MayQueen is a revolution. She is both witness and ring leader. She has the kind of grace that sets stones on end, makes them stand and proclaim.
The May Queen is everyone’s sweetheart, she said, and always her own mistress. But there’s no better pursuit than the May Queen. To meet her is to run the risk of astonishment. Inspiration made permanent. She lets a love define your life.
Tell us more, they begged the girl. Have you seen her? Do you know where she lives? How do we find her? But their questions were useless. All the barkeep did was laugh and fill their cups. I’ve said enough, she told them. From now on, she depends on you.
And so the poet and the mathematician, both dizzy from the drink and the imagined perfume of the MayQueen, stumbled home, arm in arm. She is the graffiti artist of the sky, said the poet as he studied the sunset. The anarchist of spring, quipped the mathematician as he shuffled through fallen petals. And she lives in all those perfect little cataclysms like thunderstorms and falling stars, hiccups and waterfalls. And lovemaking, giggled the poet.
If this life exists to break our hearts up against, we may as well learn how to do it gracefully, said the poet, all serious but not sober. He gripped his friend’s arm. Where did you get that line from? asked the lover of patterns. I don’t know, said the lover of words, must’ve been the MayQueen.
The mathematician, unwilling to be outshone, said, beauty only lives in the tension between contrasts. Yes, cried the poet, and moreover, she is beauty without the idea of beauty. Her transparency is opaque. She is everywhere infinitely elusive, and if you are lucky enough to be loved by her, be grateful. Because to be loved by her is to be considered beautiful.
I hope she loves me, sighed the mathematician. And I hope she loves me, wished the poet. We must make it so, they agreed.
The poet and the mathematician never really found the MayQueen. But she became and remained the absent beloved for both. The poet dedicated all his poems to her and thought he found her at 4am in the morning once in the perfect weave of his own words, just as the moon was rising and the birds were singing in anticipation of morning. And the mathematician sought for her in infinite series and impossible proofs. And he thought he caught a glimpse of her in the mathematical expression of the whorls of a sea-shell. Both of them were moved to do things they never imagined themselves doing. The poet read his work on the steps of town hall and took to carrying around a tamborine, urging his listeners to rebel and be free. The mathematician decided to disprove gravity as a myth, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and he said if everyone suspended their disbelief, they would be capable of flight. They might even find themselves growing feathers in perfectly symmetrical patterns, well-suited for defying all the laws of physics.
And when both were arrested for revolutionary antics, they made a final appeal to the MayQueen as they stood before the firing squad, and she heard, found them faithful, and spirited them away to her kingdom where she worked as a barkeep and saw that they were well cared for as they approached an infinity of May days.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Wall Flowers - Tattooed City
At the playground next to the cafe where I get internet, I watched two children, a boy and a girl, climb up the chainlink fence as far as they could. The boy made it all the way to the top, about 12 feet off the ground, and the girl stayed a couple of feet lower and laughed up at him. The same day, I walked along the River Spree where one of the last remaining segments of the wall stands. I am in east Berlin here (I know because the little men on the Walk/Don't Walk signs wear hats). but as soon as the wall came down and the zone in between was cleared of sand, the people all came out with spray paint. The graffiti is astonishing. Phrases in every language, mostly appeals for Peace and Love rather than walls, a huge wrinkled face repeated over and over again in surrealist overlapping forms, eyes on eyes, for about 50 meters, a great rendering of Gargamel from the smurfs, a huge mandala with what looked like Native American symbols, and of all things, a stencil of Matt Damon's face. I haven't even begun to describe all I saw, and it would make a good book if someone where to simply catalogue all the images on the wall. But they must work fast because the plaster is peeling and flecks of the paint fly in the air. You could walk off with Gargamel's nose. The wall itslf is very tall and cold and rough to the touch. Along the sidewalk there is much broken glass and the air smelled of rain that evening and maybe sewage. The river is still lovely, flanked by willows and linden trees and it runs by unaware. There is a gap in the wall behind which they have built a makeshift beach, a covered pavilion and on either side a bar. We drank Erdinger on an old boat, still equipped with a rickety mast and a life-boat and watched the sun set into the river behind the East berlin skyline, which consists of a huge TV tower, the Berliner dome and the new town hall, a red-brick angular building that squats below the tower. The aesthetics of this city, especially East Berlin, are singularly austere and so I am coming to understand all the graffiti. Makes guerrilla poetry seem tame, but what better way to rebel than with color and broad strokes and surreal images. It is a tattooed city -- pain and art.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Long Days
The sky gets light at 4am and the sun hits the top of the plane tree outside my window at 5:30am. The sun sets after 9pm and twilight lasts until 10:20pm. The Turkish women sit in plastic chairs on the sidewalk and talk until past 11pm. Jet lag has some advantages . . . Smell of cigarette smoke and savory meat in the evening, bread and coffee in the morning. The children arrive early. My room gets morning light. Ran along the canal for an hour: Two swans, some kind of unidentified duck, green algae, lush lime trees in bloom, damp rank smells, a couple dogs -- strange big wolfish mutts both of them, a few bums still sleeping in the weedy park, ghetto graffiti and abandoned playgrounds, the metal jungle gyms bright in the early sunlight. Very flat here, but must be careful to gently dodge the Muslim women out for morning walks.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Window at Lubenerstrasse 27
Ok. So here's the phenomenological news from Berlin. The graffiti is some of the best art I've seen -- Kristalyn would be all eyes. I'm all eyes. I will do my best to get some photos up here, but if you can: imagine a five story mural of an unhappy looking face -- worry-wrinkles, scowl, yellow skinny hands, half-woman, half man, slumped shoulders, arms hanging straight down, all in colors of yellow and green except for the bloody nipples, the face frowns down on a busy corner full of weeds, a sandy playground and people speeding by on bicycles. Very fierce and a little sad.
Today, while taking a nap, I slipped into a dream inhabited by a dozens of half-naked children screaming and splashing and dancing around on a cobble-stone street underneath sycamore trees. And then I woke, looked out the window and saw it wasn't a dream at all. A little boy, about 18 months, butt-naked, sitting on a yellow toy truck careened down the sidewalk, getting in the way of the Turkish women on their bikes, their burkas (sp?) flying out behind them, who almost run over all the children, who lay on towels in the middle of the sidewalk and chant na-na-na-na-poppy! They leave small wet footprints all down the block.
This afternoon a thunderstorm settled the hot dust and all the sidewalk cafes pulled themselves in. The air smells like damp granite and the pigeons are drinking from the cracks in between the cobblestones.
In the flat I will call home, up four flights and overlooking the sycamore-lined street (Lubener Strasse) there is a collection of records and a turntable that will play Dylan, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, and Beethoven. The ceilings are high, the windows all open and there are daisies in the windowbox.
Outside this cafe where I'm writing a little girl in lime-green and pink with tangles in her hair chases pigeons.
More than traffic sounds, there is the click and spin of bicycle wheels.
My German is returning ein bissen. Aber meine vocabulieren ist schlect.
I will viele mehr spater schreiben. Until then, Tschuss and vielen Lieben!
Today, while taking a nap, I slipped into a dream inhabited by a dozens of half-naked children screaming and splashing and dancing around on a cobble-stone street underneath sycamore trees. And then I woke, looked out the window and saw it wasn't a dream at all. A little boy, about 18 months, butt-naked, sitting on a yellow toy truck careened down the sidewalk, getting in the way of the Turkish women on their bikes, their burkas (sp?) flying out behind them, who almost run over all the children, who lay on towels in the middle of the sidewalk and chant na-na-na-na-poppy! They leave small wet footprints all down the block.
This afternoon a thunderstorm settled the hot dust and all the sidewalk cafes pulled themselves in. The air smells like damp granite and the pigeons are drinking from the cracks in between the cobblestones.
In the flat I will call home, up four flights and overlooking the sycamore-lined street (Lubener Strasse) there is a collection of records and a turntable that will play Dylan, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, and Beethoven. The ceilings are high, the windows all open and there are daisies in the windowbox.
Outside this cafe where I'm writing a little girl in lime-green and pink with tangles in her hair chases pigeons.
More than traffic sounds, there is the click and spin of bicycle wheels.
My German is returning ein bissen. Aber meine vocabulieren ist schlect.
I will viele mehr spater schreiben. Until then, Tschuss and vielen Lieben!
The Pigeons of Berlin
The pigeons of Berlin must be fast of foot and quick of wing not to get hit by a bicycle. But secretly, it is the pigeons who are the graffiti artists, picking up paint from fragments of rocks, puddles, playgrounds, parks and brushing the blank faces of buildings with the expression that best suits a city like this - lovely, beleaguered, stoic and still giving birth to fairy tales.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
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