In our Goethe reading group, we read a line from C. G. Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections that stuck with me:
"There is so much that fills me: plants, animals, clouds, day and night, and the eternal in man. The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things."
That kinship inspires me over and over again. It expands in countless directions.
I thought about it riding from Prenzlauerberg to Bartleby and Company, the Spanish Bookshop where we hold our talks on Sabina Spielrein every Wednesday night.
Four of us attended, a young British man studying psychoanalysis and two other Spanish students. Our reading was on the case of a schizophrenic patient that Spielrein saw1911.
What was she thinking, did she want. No one was sure.
But she screamed. She made it known something had happened.
Something horrible had happened.
Spielrein was trying to make sense of her story.
So were we.
One talked about Lacan and the knot, between the real, the symbolic, and the imaginary. What was real for her and how did it change with childbirth and postpartum?
We all face that question, what is it that becomes of us, the force that puts us in the world, leaving us to cope as best we can with what we have?
What is that force?
What of the kinship Jung saw?
What forces drive us?
After the group, i found myself listening Django style guitar at the Lyrik Cafe.
What is to become of us?
What of our friends?
Sitting there, I found myself myself thinking of Tim and Mel. both gone now. I would love to chat with Tim about all the goings on here, all the adventures. So great to just show up at a demo and see Tim there as he was in this demo from 2017/ 2018 for immigrants rights at Grand Central Station.
And then what was to become our ideas, our struggles, our hopes.
Some of us stay in movements.
Others move on.
Writing on Thursday, my friend Allessandra suggested I go to Oranienplatz, where Angela Davis, that's right, Angela Davis was speaking to a sea of refugee activists. That blurry person in the corner was Angela Davis, the leader who was imprisoned for her beliefs a half century ago, who spoke out for refugees here in Berlin ten years ago.
We rode our bikes down to the square, looking for the event.
And saw the crowd.
That was her, speaking for 45 minutes, in real time, still inspiring, still connecting the dots between the plight of refugees and legacies of colonialism and anti-capitalist struggle. "The refugee crisis is a consequence of capitalism," says Davis. "And climate change.... When you think of democracy, you think of Greece, France, and the USA. Democracy emerged as minority rights, based on exclusion, exclusion of slaves, of women, of the poor. Freedom is a constant struggle...." She recalled the million roses for Angela campaign to get her out of jail, with support from Germany. "You saved my life. Movements saved my life. So I see myself as standing in for movements.... Racism is not an individual defect.... It's a structural problem.... We are here ten years later in Oranienplatz where ten years ago people said no we will not capitulate....give hope to a collective future..." Angels reminded us, prisons are not the solution. People need something better. We all do. The world does. Reforming prison is not going to do it. There has to be something else. The crowd roared, chanting, "we are here. we are right. We will fight. Freedom of movement is everybody's right!". Wow. https://oplatz.net/programme-o-platz-wird-10/
I went down a few more times to see what was happening, celebrating freedom of movement here at Oranienplatz, an Occupy Wall Street vibe remaining me, pointing me forward.
Later that night, we watched films at an art show and grabbed a snack, sitting outside a fire at the Saloon Holtzmarkt 25. A maniacal night of German techno punk with and an Vegas Elvis impersonator, SEDLMEIR & BAUMARKT followed.... Dancing late. Going for 2am burgers and riding home. The first band's singer was like a gremlin of fun... With a cool synthesizer with a symphony of sounds pumping it up a mix between Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwork, New Order and Beethoven. The singer whirled around, dancing with the crowd. In the meantime, my friends in NYC were busy making a plaque for my hero's, an autonomous zone in Brooklyn, and grabbing a bike in LA. Love these fall days.
A few years ago Green Map System told me they had some clothes to give away from someone leaving town. I dropped by and picked up a few suits that I wore fir years. Wendy Brawer dropped a line just now saying he'd finally left.
Saturday, we chilled, watching Derry Girls, daydreams and trash tv with the teenager.
Sunday had our outing to an antique market, digging through old books, stamp collections, and remains from the GDR.
And finally back to our place for our second meeting of the Berlin Goethe reading group.
We’re going slow with it.
“Its like a dream,” says Sichy, “something to open between philosophy and psychology.
He seems to have had it all, yet remained discontented.
“Faust was the happiest man, paired with the opposite, Don Giovanni, he was never in the moment, while Don Giovanni was always there,” says Sean, referring to the old Bowie song.
“‘All I have is love and love is not loving,’” he paused. “It's the ultimate artifice, as a paradigm of consciousness. You have it all, yet still Thanatos drives you.
“Yet, Jung came out of it,” says Sichi “Writing gave him direction.”
Sean referred to the various pro and con Alternative for Deutschland rallies he saw on Saturday, rallies and counter rallies.
AFD is the rightwing party making political inroads right now in Germany.
Sean thought of a new chant for them.
“Fascists need vacations too!!!”
They need to relax, he laughed.
Still, their appeal is expanding, even out to Border towns with Poland.
It's kind of economic revenge.
There is such disparity in wealth and resources, turning to resentment. The mining towns are gone.
It all feels in flux.
Each week, more and more people are showing up for the Iran protests; each demo creates its own kind of crack. It's happening.
And back to Goethe.
It's a morality play that won’t go away, says Sean.
How many of us sell parts of ourselves for those 15 minutes of fame?
Like all of us, we take shape in relationship to others, in comparison to the greatest texts of all time. There is all that came before it, that shapes it, Skakespeare and tragedy.
And everything after his life, 1739-1832, Marx, Neitzche and on and on.
Faust finally saw the light of day some three and a half decades after Sorrows of Young Worther, in 1808, one year after the Phenomenology of the Spirit. The two seem to dance around each other and the same dialectic tensions, "amazed by thy finaltude"....
We read from a prologue in heaven:
“Storms continued in angry fuming
From sea to land, from land to sea,
A chain of raging force assuming,
In their tempestuous majesty.
The flame of brilliant devastation
Now lights the thunderbolt his way;
But angels, Lord, in adoration.
Hail sweet progress of the thy day.”
It seems to confront our limits, in a nod toward something else.
“New strengths have angels.”
Yet, the repetition, the eternal return.
“Chants the same song.”
“Nothing will please you.”
I find myself listening to the old Grateful Dead song, “Friend of the Devil,” wondering if Jerry also read Faust.
Conflict, if even inside of Faust, is visible throughout the text.
There is a lot to be said of confronting and breaking.
The devil wants a procession.
The repetition is ongoing.
We read to remember says Sichi, referring to her hero’s Jung and Rilke.
You know it and you forget it.
Both Sean and Sichi came to Berlin for their own reasons.
Sean came after a fire burned all of his stuff.
And Sechi came when they were cutting the trees in Gezi Park in Istanbul.
She was moved by the green spaces in Berlin.
When she was a kid, her parents took her on the grand tour from Istanbol to Venice, and around Europe, even to Berlin, her mother reminded her.
She had not remembered she’d been here before.
She didn’t feel as if she was in a new city.
We all find different meanings in our arrival heal.
Angela did.
So did Audre Lorde.
And so did Sechi and Sean and Caroline.
All of us looking for that kinship, finding it wherever we can.
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