Dasniya and I have had, separately and together, a plan for years to go to the Thaipark street food market. For which, we made firm plans to go on Sunday. Good to know we checked it was open on Sunday. Might have helped if we checked what months it was open. April to October for youse who want to turn up and eat. A couple of hours later, we ate pizza at Mastro Pizza, over the other side of Schöneberg as we lazily lost our way walking east back to Kreuzberg.
I bought my camera ’cos I am still learning it and now it’s sunny I have no excuse.
I planned to bike along Saatwinklerdamm like I used to do before cyclocross fun in Flughafen Wald. But, realistically, two days after getting booster vacced, 16km of riding and 2 hours of walking felt a little ambitious. So I biked 15 minutes to Plötzensee, walked the east side of that, through the park to Schwarzer Graben and along to the NFL field and Hall of Fame Wedding, back the way I came alongside the canal, back the other way again between the Kolonie Plötzensee, with its garden houses bigger than the places I grew up in on one side and the cemetary on the other, back along Schwarzer Graben and did some random loops of actual Volkspark Rehburg where I got myself lost / turned around and got to walk both of the “I really want to go that way,” paths, which was pretty clever of me, and got back to Uferhallen just as the sunset was lighting up the chimney. Blue sky and sun too, everyone standing around pointing their faces at it like they’d forgotten what it was.
I used to blast through Volkspark Rehburg on my way to doing cyclocross in what I always called Flughafen Wald — which is actually Jungfernheide Forst, but people confuse that with Volkspark Jungfernheide on the south side of the canal, and there’s a lake called Flughafen See at the eastern end of the Forst, so … Flughafen Wald. There’s an enclosure for wild boars at the western end of Rehburg, before the track goes through the Kleingarten (quite a few of which are bigger than my apartment and sitting on land bigger than the whole building I live in). I didn’t see any there, but the bare trees and drizzle and dim light were enough to feel I was out in the countryside and not a 15 minute walk to Müllerstraße.
I’m staying in Wedding for a few days, at Dasniya’s studio in Uferhallen, where I lived with her for five years. It’s nice being back (except for the upstairs neighbour, which is a whole other convo about why older white cishet German women are so much work), and the closest thing I’ll have to a holiday this pandemic. I planned to bike to get vaccinated, but it’s been raining and it’s easier to wash shoes than hose down and re-lube a bike. Walking then, the one thing I can still do four months into some weird round of chronic fatigue symptoms, which could be anything from a fucked neck to depression to just needing a month of getting fucked.
Yayoi Kusama’s A Bouquet of Love I Saw in the Universe retrospective at Gropius Bau. I think this is called Love Room and is a recreation of the installation from her 1966 Driving Image Show exhibition in Essen. Nice amount of eye-bleed and brain reset here. I like her crazy, feels like next town over from mine.
(ot technical note: I ditched Photoshop a while ago and have been using Affinity Photo, which is much nicer and not Adobe. But my workflow is still kinda hacky, especially with RAW processing and colour balancing. I think this is a better job than Infinity Net A, but equally might be over-saturated and over-processed amateur hour.)
Infinity Net A in Yayoi Kusama’s retrospective at Gropius Bau.Infinity Net A in Yayoi Kusama’s retrospective at Gropius Bau. Very good on my eyes and 10/10 would steal for my private art collection. This was the one that did the brain reset, vibrating physical reaction experience. Only a shadow of that transfers in the photo, but still, I can feel a sharp physiological reaction.
Heaps big thank you to everyone* at Corona-Impfzentrum Flughafen Tegel who made the whole process of having some mRNA stuck in my deltoid for the second time simple and fun. And again, especially to all the Brown and Black staff, young and old, who stepped up to do this job and were cheerful and helpful all the way through — even when you were bored and tired in the heat outside. I see you. I wish Berlin was you all the time.
Heaps big thank you again to Dasniya who messaged me mid–April and said, “Because reasons, I can have two people close to me vaccinated. Want some?” And like the druggie I am, I said “Duh! Yes!”
Bike ride and walking through Volkspark Rehberge and along Saatwinkler Damm with Dasniya the day after equinox and first day of spring. This was where I used to bike when I lived up in Wedding, all the way to the lakes and through the forest around Flughafen Tegel. We saw a wild boar and biked through the parks and streets back to Uferhallen and the Panke Kanal.
Dasniya had a residency at Ballhaus Ost the last couple of months, thanks to pandemic and pandemic arts funding. I got to see a private showing last weekend, with Tara (yup, Tara!) and Yui. Yeah I’m a long-time fan of her work and Glutamat confirms it.
An hour of prep, a couple of hours on the stove. All that garlic, ginger, shallots and green chillies, all those spices, vinegar and lemon and mustard oil, all the deer meat and tomatoes, basmati rice, coriander, yoghourt and flatbread. Dasniya and I eating the sunny afternoon away.
