Here and Now, Berlin Diary, July Days, Last Month
Last weekend, Caroline and I took a day trip out to
Pfaueninsel, otherwise known as Peacock Island,a nature reserve on the Havel River....chatting about trees and David Casper Friedrichs, the Transcendentalists and Max Lieberman and reading the Art of Loving. “His house is right here,” says Falco, before we catch a ferry to the island "The passengers quickly spread out over the beautiful green island in the southwest of Berlin. A stately peacock crosses the way. In the distance, the silhouette of a white castle gleams in the sun... Peacock Island in the Havel River is a popular destination for Berliners and tourists. It is a protected nature reserve and a Unesco World Heritage Site."
A simple journey into an old world, we talked about the city and it's migrants, art and our lives. I hadn’t remembered seeing the Liebermans. It's hard to connect it all, yet I try. The pieces come together in countless directions. Yet it's not easy to see or make sense of our year of trips that could go on forever. Just when I feel like I am getting a grip on it, this city of cities, transplants and refugees surprises, offering a new wrinkle. Some of the scenes from our walk, the old fountain, created 1824 by Martin Friedrich, could have been from an old Fritz Lang movie. Maybe Walter Benjamin walked here I wonder. We stop for a wurst and beer. The conversion continues. We pass through Wannsee, the suburb where the Nazi’s hatched plans for the Final Solution in 1942. And stop at Zwiebelfisch, a Pub in ‧Charlottenberg..“There is a Nazi in all of our closets,” says Caroline. The point echos by my friend Falco, who grew up in East Germany most of his life, referring to his country as well as Americans who owned slaves or who harbored animosities to Chinese or Mexican immigrants. Its a messy, but accurate point, best acknowledged. He recognizes the resentment those feel in the East after Western models moved Eastward, transporting neoliberalism, replacing a social safety net from cradle to grave with a jobless future. Such sentiment inspires voters to support the Alternative for Deuchland, fearing for their jobs. On the other hand, refugees encounter welcomes from German who understand what Herman Hessee understood: “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn’t a part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us,” he writes. This is the context, refugees face enterring Germany.
Chatting with Falco and Caroline, my mind races back to the openning words at Earlier in the week VerWalterhause:
“HERE AND NOW, histories of our places, ROGER ALSO AND FRIENDS from Melbourne and Berlin Spoken word, video, visual images, sound art, interactive art, performances , Wednesday July 12th.”
As we walked out for the show, it started to drizzle and poetry at the old cemetery.
“Germany has dealth with its past,” says the Australian man, after Niels’ introduction, openning the show. A few in the audience roll their eyes. Maybe thats my point of view as a tourist, he continues. A trans person reads a poem about their fears, the ascent of the religious right, the wars over gender, the attacks again, the echos, the AFD on the move. History never quiet absent. They say they are scared. Maybe we all should be.
All weekend, we took in as much as we could:
Punk shows the previous Friday, cultures colliding and intersecting, mixing and blending traditions in a pulsing night of music, women's bands, Chinese hardcore,
“All Female Bands Nite…, Friday, July 14, 2023 at 9:00 p.m. The lineup:
By Saturday, the teenager was into roller derby again. We all made our way out for the show.
No longer Bernie Slammers, Kathy Smacker on the move. In and out of the penalty box. Still jumping and jamming...!!! Go Babe Ruthless!! Go Kathy!
Brilliant skies tonight, friends out in the city, dancing, playing roller derby, drinking ouzo on Rachels roof in Friedrichshain, chatting late into the evening about civil wars in Yugoslavia and the US, the lessons we never quite learn.
That Sunday,
And go out to Sysophus for dancing into the night. It's impossible to capture the sense of being with sooo many people just shaking away the week, late into the night almost every night here. On the way to Sisyphos Nightclub,I heard noise outside //about blank, an
Industrial-style nightclub featuring techno & house DJ sets, plus a leafy garden, that Falco told me about. Went inside for even more shaking into Monday morning.
And say goodby to a friend:
RIP Milan Kunder. ... Thank you. Off to join Tommas and Theresa....Mr. Kundera told The Paris Review in 1983: “My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form. The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas (those that occur in our beds as well as those that we play out on the great stage of History) and their awful insignificance. We experience the unbearable lightness of being.”
Strange last day at class here. Talked about cleavages and crises. Questions about continuity Vs change as the legacies. From the great financial crisis to climate to migration to COVID, are we entering a new era of crises or are we just seeing them more? Lots to unpack here.
Amazing night of conversations after last presentation....talking with Nicolas about intruders in the dust, Berlin, Faulkner and lost cities, over drinks in a spade in Neukölln.
And made my way out of town with Caroline.
End of school, off on a trip with Caroline and back. Pride weekend in Berlin, Christopher Liberation Day
## Two days before Pride / Christopher Street Day, Revolutionary Tours Berlin lead a tour, “to look back at 150 years of struggles for queer liberation in Berlin. Berlin has been known as a queer capital for more than a century. In the 1920s, in the 1970s, and today, nowhere has been gayer than the Rainbow Neighborhood around Nollendorfplatz. The queer liberation movement took off in Germany at the end of the 19th century. But persecution under the infamous Paragraph 175 continued for more than a century. In this Kiez, queer people established cafés, nightclubs, bookstores, and youth centers — and occupied buildings as well. We will visit the homes of Audre Lorde, Christopher Isherwood, Rosa von Praunheim, August Bebel, the Homosexual Action West Berlin, and more.”
The teenager attended the dyke march while we were out of town.
We arrived just in time for the Christopher Street Liberation Day, at Brandenberg Tour.
It felt like everyone was there, some half a million people, converging, dancing, celebrating tolerance. My favorite sign from the march was simple, "you are loved." In a world in which politicos go to Harvard and Yale to learn to play hate for votes, I see you Florida, the simple message resonated on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, rejecting stigma, connecting with friends, rejecting hate, finding a more abundant city.
The demands for the march were simple:
DEMANDS FROM 2023:
“Topic: Basic Law for All
Since 2022, we have been demanding that people from the queer community in
be protected in their entirety by Article 3 of the Basic Law!”
With kids and parents, and lots of lots of free bodies, the rally was really a street party, full of music and beer. As usual, Berlin provided a pop, a bit of energy, enthusiasm, music, kinkiness, intoxication... All afternoon long. The afternoon rally ended at the Victory Monument.
We’d spend the evening at the KitKat Club. With funky music,a maze of rooms and DJs, as well as a funky, cosmopolitan crowd, it's one of a kind every weekend, for pride weekend🌈, this was another game. Queer bodies dancing, greeting, playing, meeting, connecting till six am. I love the smell of the air, between hot bodies and pot smoke, cheap perfume and sweat, fog and cigarettes, with little ventilation. As I was leaving at 615 am, my friends were arriving. Riding home in the morning, the view of the Spree after a night out at the KitKat Club is quite a space.
And it would only continue Sunday at Sisyphus, open and egalitarian, my favorite club in
Berlin. Its nice not to worry about getting in. I can’t imagine how much time i’ve put into worrying about getting in or not getting into clubs here. Emilio and Caroline and new friends dance away the afternoon before I ride home. Past About Blank and Ostkreuz Station, over the bridge, past Renate and Berghain, up Warschauer, I ride looking at the city, thinking about all we’ve seen. I almost don’t need a map, recalling entering all these places for the first time, in a city that feels like home. Pick up some pommes and meet the family, chatting about travels, to Prague and Pula and X files, and back to sleep.
In the meantime, the climate clock ticks down to five years. Join climate activists today in Union Square, artists in Berlin July 27,#TreesTruthTrust.
We’d sprint the week getting ready for the show.
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