Posts with subject matter about or referring to Berlin, Germany, where I currently live and occasionally work, its history, politics, art, culture.
Okay, 4th draft on top of whatever I was calling assembling it before it was drafts, and 18 months to get it to this. But done in the sense it goes start to finish and got heaps of pages (which is what makes it a novel yah?) and when I finished this read-through which I’ve been on since late last week, it felt … something sparked in my guts, like this, yeah, I wrote a novel. Brought some big offering into the universe. Alhamdulillah.
Up late a few nights ago and the sound outside changed, went that quiet-loud it does when everything’s blanketed with snow and all the tiny sounds get heard. Snow that’s survived a couple of days now. Haven’t had snow like that or a winter this cold for a few years. I’m still sleeping with the balcony door open, letting in that crisp -6° air. I love how the snow forms soft rime up the bricks of the apartment block opposite, reminds me of mixed ice and rock mountain climbing and how long it’s been since I was hanging onto rock with fingers and toes.
All that talk with Vass about Veneno reminded me I had a photo or two from way back then.
Young teen transsexual meet old auntie trans femme. Thirty-ish years between these two photos. Sometimes I need reminding.
That me back then … she survived.
Long time ago when I washed dishes for cash, the lunch chef was getting fancy with this beautiful knife, steel handle with black dimples and very sexy curves. She told me it was a Global knife, from Japan, and was cheaper than the usual pro kitchen knives and just as good.
Some years later, in one of those rare I have cash student moments, I bought my first one, I think a G2 cook’s knife, with which I’ve been slicing and dicing for probably twenty years, and occasionally adding chunks of finger and fingernail to whatever I’m mincing. I had some unexpected cash to finish 2020 (thanks pandemic?), and have been going down my list of necessary shit I haven’t had coin for in the last decade, and arrived at, “Buy some new Global knives.” Which I did.
I always wanted a proper blocky vegetable knife for bouncing alongside my safely clawed knuckles over a head of garlic. And having a sleek as little peeling knife to match. And here we are, doubling my collection of those dimple-handled knives. Number four is a 15cm utility knife I bought maybe mid-’00s, which is currently primarily on bread and cheese duty, though I’m very tempted to buy a couple more just for that. Along with one of them magnetic knife racks and a couple of tree stumps worth of chopping boards.
Oh fuck, Vass. Crunchy peanut butter halva?
Waking up at midday after an evening of biking to northern Berlin and back and going on a 3-hour walk. Not celebrating Christmas, just impromptu hangout and wandering the empty dark streets of Pankow, Heinersdorf and Weißensee. Waking up to flurries of fat snow and the air feeling that proper winter way it does when it’s got that cold. Snow melted and gone in minutes.
And no blogging for six weeks? Longest ever? Like I gave up my life project? Thanks pandemic amping up transphobia and racism and Islamophobia and general shittier behaviour from the str8s.
Damn. Turns out I’ve been pronouncing and spelling “demonstrably” wrong for a very long time. It’s not “demonstratably”, chica, couple too many t’s and a’s there.
Some time later realised I missed an oppo to make a joke about me loving T&A getting in the way of spelling 🤦🏻♀️
My favourite orange hexagonal airport is closing this week, almost a decade after the original date, making way for the highly blah, much delayed, extremely suss new airport south of the old Flughafen Schönefeld which opened in the middle of a pandemic.
Leaving Naarm / Melbourne after a month working with Onyx / S.J Norman on my first trip back to Australia after ten years. Flying back through Hong Kong at night and wishing I could take the bus to Hung Hom, spend a couple of hours in Tsim Sha Tsui then get the train up to Guangzhou for a week. Instead, finding a quiet place and stretching for the couple of hours stopover, then on to Helsinki and from there back down to Berlin, coming to land in lightless damp grey like it was closer to winter than spring.
I realised as I was blogging my favourite TXL flights that this was my last one arriving or departing at Flughafen Berlin-Tegel. Two and an half years ago. I haven’t flown much since then and it’s all been at Flughafen Schönefeld. Which is a crusty old airport no one has love for.
Remembering my favourite airport this week as it comes to a close.
My favourite orange hexagonal airport is closing this week, almost a decade after the original date, making way for the highly blah, much delayed, extremely suss new airport south of the old Flughafen Schönefeld which opened in the middle of a pandemic.
This time flying back to Australia for the first time in ten years to work with Onyx (S.J Norman) at FOLA (all of March 2018 and some of April). Early flight from TXL up to Helsinki, seeing the ocean iced over as we came in to land, me running to make the connection, suitcase and panda not making it. Stopover in Hong Kong and the last half all the way south into late-summer night heat.
Pretty much no snow at all that year, the normal now for Berlin. It was so sunny and blue departing, seeing Berlin and Germany laid out flat below. This, and the return flight were my last departure and arrival at Flughafen Berlin-Tegel.
Remembering my favourite airport this week as it comes to a close.
