Up… down… up… down… walking, thinking, sitting on the s- or u-bahn, watching the world letting my thoughts drift, Berlin, between happiness and anxiety, so much I feel I need to do, so few minutes left until another train, bound for Vienna via I think, Prague, another train station to add to my collection, train stations I have passed through and the cities I only saw from the window.
By Tuesday I was fatigued. The weeks of preparation, packing, worrying, then the days of travel and airports, and finally arriving to be so completely taken by this city I barely slept, and dancing, sweating, and suddenly Tuesday I could no longer resist. Sleep. Hours of it, getting up to wander in a blur. I decided yesterday to entertain myself by riding the S41 around the city circle, maybe an hours journey through the points of the Kreuz, then west to east on the S9 or S7, I forget which, past the Zoologisher Garten, through the unspeakably narcissistic Alexanderplatz, I mean in an architectural way reminding me of parts of urban China, somewhat lost and then a return to Rosenthaler Platz, my centre, for me already the familiar, a home somewhat for this week because of café with free internet.
I’ve been thinking again of starting another blog, an anonymous one, to expurgate things I no longer want to here because of the confusion it causes, the inability to separate a very public anonymity here from my life in the daily world, and also to… I’ve found it difficult to be very personal here because initially that wasn’t the point, and it’s always felt conflicting. And I think I’d like to write on certain topics away from here, in a format and place better suited. I’m not sure, but…
I’ve been having lengthy arguments and conversations with myself about gender and queer and Judith Butler and mmm all that fun stuff that I know so well, and reading so much that has given me plenty to think about… though I’m suffering from the lack of books and paper, smell of ink and the roughness of pages, falling asleep cradling this…
This is just me thinking out loud.
I’m very happy in Berlin. I haven’t felt so content in a city for years. Adelaide was such a profound affect on me but because of my friends, the city itself is something largely ignored, and provided scant inspiration after a couple of weeks. Berlin by contrast, is a place where I have no close friends, and rather few acquaintances, so causes bouts of loneliness unrelieved by lack of books, but as a city, a place of navigation, something I learn through movement and cartography simultaneously, and of unknown people, mmm it is seductive.
No more time today, no internet at home and I have to trundle south to Kottbusser Tor. Peculiar to think here south is not to find the Antarctic, but to move towards warmth and the equator.
