And Now Berlin

Saturday morning in Prezlauer Berg, Berlin. Outside the window it's all green trees and sunflowers, and right downstairs a clean and shiny Farmer's Market where they sell bread, pickles, organic Turkish stuffed pita, and pomegranate juice.

What am I doing here? Outside the kitchen window there's a forest of a Jewish cemetery: when I drink my morning tea I can make out "Rivka" and "Yisrael" on the gravestones. A bee stung my hand while I was sleeping, and after I woke up and applied ice, my tall blond roommate searched the room for more bees (finding another under the blanket) clucking all the while at my lack of common sense -- haven't I ever lived in the country? Don't I know anything about dealing with insects?

My apartment is in a beautiful old remodelled building with high ceilings, lavish moldings, and a smell of history in the stairwell. Apparently the neighborhood had fallen into disrepair during GDR days, and after the fall of the Wall the hipsters moved in and yuppied it up. My roommate says that when she first moved in, in '94, the neighborhood wasn't connected to the phone lines. As I'm locking up one morning a fox tries to run up the tall window, scrambling at the stained glass, and I'm scared to get close enough to open the window for him. I finally manage to get by, but shut him in the building, too scared to get close enough to open a door or a window. He probably lives in the cemetery, or in the overgrown "Judengasse" - Jewish-Alley, where Jews had to walk instead of on the main street, that has been left a long swatch of overgrown grass and wildflowers in back of the house.

Drinks at a temporary Art Gallery at the edge of a huge hole left by the destruction of the "Palace of the Republic," an asbestos filled socialist beast of a building. It is going to be replaced by the replica of the Kaiser's castle that used to be on the spot, but meanwhile, there are artists spinning records and a beautiful open sunset. F., French author, on the run in Berlin from Proust, tells me he is writing a novel about remodeling an apartment. Memory and forgetfulness in microcosm. They need each other like the North and South Pole. F. has transparent skin, fine hands. R., my roommate, says, something about being "very German."
"Very German?" he echoes.
How I love those fucked up Jewish boys. They are the same all over the world, even when everything changes around you.

And for another menagerie of Berliners at an exhibition last night: a tall woman with tattoos all over her back and leg, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman's daughter in Synechdoche, New York, a woman wearing one black stocking and one white stocking, a woman in blue leiderhosen and elaborately arranged hair like an alien princess, and in the exhibit boys, boys, boys everywhere - famous paintings recreated by models with huge erections, an Asian Jesus with an erection inside a purple-sprayed frames, the English translations accompanying the exhibit like some weird abstract quasi German-art language. In the next room a system of giant disco balls in another room gesture toward a dance club and people aren't sure if they should dance or stand quietly in the corners and act artsy. I'm turned around in the darkness, the glimmering red lights, the tall people smoking and drinking -- all my longing has suddenly disappeared.

A note on housekeeping: I think I'll post once or twice more from Berlin, and once when I get back to Berkeley...so I envision the blog lasting till about September. I'm really curious to hear reader's reactions to the blog over the next few weeks, especially the imaginary cities you carry with you through your life, so please post me a post and keep me company through the last few weeks of my journey!