"Invalidenpark!" the usual mechanical voice of the BVG tram announced on my way to Berlin Central Station. This was 5 AM in the morning. I had woken up early to embark upon another journey to Bremen. Perhaps because I was half asleep, or perhaps because of the startlingly cold weather, there was an element in the voice that somehow charmed me. My mind seemed to wander back to the winter mere months ago, when I was in every respect clueless about the happenings that I would eventually encounter.
My memory of that time was harshly diluted. But I still remembered when the conditions had been the direst, I would take one of those nightly walks around the small patch of green in front of the building. I framed in my writings of those walks in such a way so that they appear less miserable than they actually were. And when every once in a while, another person showed up and interrupted my monologue (those monologues were often vague and ceaseless thoughts that I verbalized for the reassurance of hearing a man's voice), I would let out a silent gasp of exasperation, yet at the same time walk by, seemingly unaffected. I would prefer that a stranger kept away from the truth of another stranger, and sometimes, away from me.
I was smart enough, or to put it more accurately, conscious enough since the word "smart" has a certain connotation I visibly lack, to understand deeply that I was trekking on a road unknown and unguided, that a certifiable portion of my future was largely dependent on coincidences and luck. But it didn't prevent me from temporarily acknowledging, that I was the freest when I put my feet onto the ground. And my days back then centered around those walks.
Events quickly turned, even disfigured in the coming weeks. Maybe I got lucky, maybe my merit had made the gradual transition between pretense and substance, I got interviews waiting ahead in a consecutive line. And I played as wildly and as exuberantly as I could in these selection processes, priding them as my window into a world that had hitherto been unseen. I disposed of my ragged t-shirts in favor of suit and tie, and washed away my weary smile to put on a professional smirk. The change took place drastically yet unnoticeably. And it appeared, upon retrospect, that whatever tricks I had previously prized to console myself, were no more than the false and futile attempt at resuscitating a man who's already doomed to a swift and imminent death.
I discovered, that philosophy and wit, while quite helpful in alleviating the sufferings when there is too much to endure, and in calming the fidgety spirits when things go well, aren't too conducive to delivering me the truth. They aren't something I could resort to when I found myself lost or mired, or overly jubilated. They are merely an enlargement of my own will, and of my own emotions. This is not a comforting fact for someone who believed firmly the virtue of wisdom and ingenuity. But life after all, has always been a sort of giant pain in the ass that isn't terribly easy to sort out.
This small detour to Bremen, bland and uneventful as it felt, wasn't entirely useless. It afforded me a scant opportunity of sitting down and letting loose, as I spent more than half a day on the train and another half on the bench in the hill by Am Wasser. In Berlin there's also a road called Unter den Linden, which though close to Am Wasser in grammar, is an entirely different place. Unter den Linden with all of its grand shops and theatrical venues, is but a part of my daily commute; yet Am Wasser is my refuge. In this alien place I was once superbly familiar with, I got to look towards the past with more compassion and gratefulness.
The sky with its blue, the tree with its green, and the rustles of the leaves, the combination of them all, added with a tinge of smell that was moist and sweet, struck me as supremely mesmerizing. In it there's a certain sense of destiny that went far beyond what the word beauty could capture; in it there's an outstanding stubbornness, that even when the planet itself has perished, the stubbornness would persist. I used to denounce my group of friends who disliked such stubbornness, or "vasanas" in one of their Buddhist terms. It was only by sitting on the bench did I realize that, indeed, the stubbornness they had despised has also been elusive to me.
Recently I came across a piece in one of the older issues of the LRB. Despite being heavily abridged by its author, there's a clip in it that profoundly moves me:
"At 7 a.m., 'in a square on the outskirts of Padua, New Zealand soldiers are shaving, their mirrors placed on the side of their tanks.' At 7.30 a.m. 'twenty-year-old German Lieutenant Claus Sellier, wearing only his underwear, is looking out of the window of the Hotel Gasthaus zum Brau in Lofer, Austria.' And so on for another 250 pages and forty-odd hours. We even find out what Alistair Cooke had for breakfast in San Francisco (not grilled mutton kidneys but 'two eggs over easy, sausages, pancakes and syrup'), and learn that 'the dour-looking Molotov has a softer side.'"
Even when times are the most wicked, shaving, underwear, breakfast, and a hidden soft chord of the human heart march on.
Wednesday, August 17
Sunday, August 7
8/7
Mine is a process of transforming, slowly, from an enthusiastic young man whose believes are often indefensible but unusually firm, to a slightly older chap who appears often dull with only occasional rejoices to seep through. I make more reasonable decisions, culture an instinct of deliberation, and have become a pupil of trade-off - in all, my lack of vivacity is a conscious decision.
Telltales I once lightly sneered at turned out to be true, and even inevitable, that a young man loses his vibe with age, however he might like to prefer the otherwise. Though my capitulation, so shall I say it, didn't come without a few attempts at resistance. One year ago I was hopelessly in love with a woman whose name I hardly recall, and after that I fell trap into an entrepreneurial venture with an equally laudable amount of zeal. Both of them have now faded into my own versions of the telltale, at which others could continue to sneer.
Since my dusts appear to have settled at the moment, I console myself with the fact that while many things might have changed, I am still here for my own company. Even though the "friends" I play Pokémon Go with are purely fictional, the "family" with whom I always keep in touch are merely a collection of distant figures with but a few loose threads of the filial strings connected to me, and the "cold-pressed juice" I bragged about is what I have only imagined to drink. It suddenly occurs to me that, quite frankly I have taken such a deviating path that I am the only person I know who's really on it. I am all alone here, choosing to neglect this fact not due to an absence of care, but due to an absence of power. I'm like a child at the kindergarten, delaying sleep to construct a blanket fort whose protection dissipates and ugly side revealed with every change in posture.
Sandra Mattke, whimsical as it is to enlist her name here, has also decided to leave. For all the polite exchanges between us, like the girl from Bavaria, she has left unannounced, taking the remnant of her vacation quota with her. I still remember a time when I would joyfully leap forth to her workplace, and ask her about her first aider training, and occasionally, her baby. In her look, there was a certain unwillingness that I caught but paid no attention to. I presume, that unwillingness had already foreboded my surprise. I feel the urge to mention her in this passage, for I'm adamant in the fact that if I don't take the opportunity to mention her now, I might as well never do. (Mysteriously, or rather not so mysteriously, Sandra has returned.)
It's hard to discern the state of the affairs for the adults. Someone once told me that maintaining relationships with other people is never for the folstering of human togetherness, but is rather for having fun, and for being able to continue to have fun even when a portion of the circle have left. There is also a slang from my country that is aptly wise: whoever is the first to take it seriously, would be the first to lose. Yet I have always failed to imagine either a circle incomplete or an attitude towards life giddy and unattending. But, when it comes to relationships, personal willfulness hardly ever matters.
It's… it's just like that, myriads of fragmented moments, of chatting under the linden tree with a gang of friends, of packing up under the yellow light to set off for another city, of an apprehension towards the unknown of the future, of a regret that fails to die with the past, of piano keys, of porns, of the orange juice, of the anonymous tunes sung at the shower head… everything seems sensible in their moments; yet when put together, all the frames, they are just beyond me, leaving me humbled by the grandeur and minusculity of an organism's journey.
Telltales I once lightly sneered at turned out to be true, and even inevitable, that a young man loses his vibe with age, however he might like to prefer the otherwise. Though my capitulation, so shall I say it, didn't come without a few attempts at resistance. One year ago I was hopelessly in love with a woman whose name I hardly recall, and after that I fell trap into an entrepreneurial venture with an equally laudable amount of zeal. Both of them have now faded into my own versions of the telltale, at which others could continue to sneer.
Since my dusts appear to have settled at the moment, I console myself with the fact that while many things might have changed, I am still here for my own company. Even though the "friends" I play Pokémon Go with are purely fictional, the "family" with whom I always keep in touch are merely a collection of distant figures with but a few loose threads of the filial strings connected to me, and the "cold-pressed juice" I bragged about is what I have only imagined to drink. It suddenly occurs to me that, quite frankly I have taken such a deviating path that I am the only person I know who's really on it. I am all alone here, choosing to neglect this fact not due to an absence of care, but due to an absence of power. I'm like a child at the kindergarten, delaying sleep to construct a blanket fort whose protection dissipates and ugly side revealed with every change in posture.
Sandra Mattke, whimsical as it is to enlist her name here, has also decided to leave. For all the polite exchanges between us, like the girl from Bavaria, she has left unannounced, taking the remnant of her vacation quota with her. I still remember a time when I would joyfully leap forth to her workplace, and ask her about her first aider training, and occasionally, her baby. In her look, there was a certain unwillingness that I caught but paid no attention to. I presume, that unwillingness had already foreboded my surprise. I feel the urge to mention her in this passage, for I'm adamant in the fact that if I don't take the opportunity to mention her now, I might as well never do. (Mysteriously, or rather not so mysteriously, Sandra has returned.)
It's hard to discern the state of the affairs for the adults. Someone once told me that maintaining relationships with other people is never for the folstering of human togetherness, but is rather for having fun, and for being able to continue to have fun even when a portion of the circle have left. There is also a slang from my country that is aptly wise: whoever is the first to take it seriously, would be the first to lose. Yet I have always failed to imagine either a circle incomplete or an attitude towards life giddy and unattending. But, when it comes to relationships, personal willfulness hardly ever matters.
It's… it's just like that, myriads of fragmented moments, of chatting under the linden tree with a gang of friends, of packing up under the yellow light to set off for another city, of an apprehension towards the unknown of the future, of a regret that fails to die with the past, of piano keys, of porns, of the orange juice, of the anonymous tunes sung at the shower head… everything seems sensible in their moments; yet when put together, all the frames, they are just beyond me, leaving me humbled by the grandeur and minusculity of an organism's journey.
Thursday, August 4
8/4
Today, while feeling formidably lost as usual, I decide to jot down a few things on the page. Actually it wasn't today when I made such a decision; I have been trying to come up with something for at least a few weeks. The environment, I suspect, simply has changed, leaving less and less room for acts like this one that won't put forth anything immediate, or anything at all. But whatever, though I deem writing an agonizing process, and my works mundane and borderline intolerable, from them, strangely I still indulge a fair amount of pleasure.
Recently my most noteworthy event has been the internship at E.ON. I had always thought that words like "career", "job", and "internship" are antidotes to my writerly pursuit. And indeed, in it I have thus far see nothing particularly penetrating nor inspiring. Corporations are just places where a large amount of ordinary people get to maintain their livelihoods, and a few elites, while unwavering in their own elevation, try to be at the same time cautious and respectful towards the things they don't necessarily cherish. However, I must admit, I have found the internship quite fulfilling, to such an extent that I detest calling it an internship. I prefer it be called a job, and I an employee. Only on the seventh floor of Jägerstraße have I seen a tangible glimmer of hope, of finally having an income to call my own, of taking responsibility, and of gaining, once again, the privilege of relaxing after work. I also see real people, with whom I have only acquainted, struggling in their respective forms to come in terms with life. They don't truly love their jobs - no one would genuinely do, but they don a level of professionalism that has gradually blended in with skin, with only a trace of fatigue in their smiles to remind me that they are human, and they are humane.
Recent developments didn't afford me a lighthearted mood. Since I realize, that what I have found fulfilling is only transient. What's not transient, are the conditions that have been engraved in me since I made the decision to set off for Germany. These are the conditions of indebtedness, of poverty, of the feeling of being naturally disadvantaged in many ways, and of having to pretend, imperfectly, that none has happened. The polarizing ideologies of the world, and the misfortune of finding no book that accords my taste, among many other things, further dampened my lowness.
Occasionally though, like a baby girl bursting into tears over a bar of candy, I would burst into humor simply to entertain the people at the lunch table. I mock stupidities and tell jokes that are objectively funny, and make everyone around me laugh. I tease about an Excel mistake and delight in it, wholeheartedly, committedly. It seems that, after all, I could still be an interesting person.
The girl from Bavaria, a third generation tenant to reside in my landlord's apartment, left yesterday. She borrowed the iron from me to prepare for her job interview on Monday, and went away unannounced. For a moment I still had the impression that, behind the locked doors she was still there - perhaps sitting on the bed where I used to sleep, behind the rack of laundry hung to dry. But she's indeed gone. Her door veiled open like an old wound, revealing the inside - no more clothes, computers or mugs, only an array of old furnitures, covered in a layer of dust that was once scattered amongst the air, remained. A profound emptiness suddenly struck me, once more, once more, I'm the only person standing to bear - I'm the immovable for I have nowhere else to move to; I'm the endurant for I have to endure; and I seem strong for if I'm weak, I'll most certainly perish in an unnoticeable way.
Inside my room and inside my office are two divergent worlds. If in them there is anything constant it must be a struggling soul, whose back is bent forward to gaze, to see and to hope, who was once interesting but became less interesting due to life's weight. He's exhausted, bleeding and in constant, mildly excruciating pain, but he's still fighting, he's still alive, his stance is still, as always, tall and upright.
Recently my most noteworthy event has been the internship at E.ON. I had always thought that words like "career", "job", and "internship" are antidotes to my writerly pursuit. And indeed, in it I have thus far see nothing particularly penetrating nor inspiring. Corporations are just places where a large amount of ordinary people get to maintain their livelihoods, and a few elites, while unwavering in their own elevation, try to be at the same time cautious and respectful towards the things they don't necessarily cherish. However, I must admit, I have found the internship quite fulfilling, to such an extent that I detest calling it an internship. I prefer it be called a job, and I an employee. Only on the seventh floor of Jägerstraße have I seen a tangible glimmer of hope, of finally having an income to call my own, of taking responsibility, and of gaining, once again, the privilege of relaxing after work. I also see real people, with whom I have only acquainted, struggling in their respective forms to come in terms with life. They don't truly love their jobs - no one would genuinely do, but they don a level of professionalism that has gradually blended in with skin, with only a trace of fatigue in their smiles to remind me that they are human, and they are humane.
Recent developments didn't afford me a lighthearted mood. Since I realize, that what I have found fulfilling is only transient. What's not transient, are the conditions that have been engraved in me since I made the decision to set off for Germany. These are the conditions of indebtedness, of poverty, of the feeling of being naturally disadvantaged in many ways, and of having to pretend, imperfectly, that none has happened. The polarizing ideologies of the world, and the misfortune of finding no book that accords my taste, among many other things, further dampened my lowness.
Occasionally though, like a baby girl bursting into tears over a bar of candy, I would burst into humor simply to entertain the people at the lunch table. I mock stupidities and tell jokes that are objectively funny, and make everyone around me laugh. I tease about an Excel mistake and delight in it, wholeheartedly, committedly. It seems that, after all, I could still be an interesting person.
The girl from Bavaria, a third generation tenant to reside in my landlord's apartment, left yesterday. She borrowed the iron from me to prepare for her job interview on Monday, and went away unannounced. For a moment I still had the impression that, behind the locked doors she was still there - perhaps sitting on the bed where I used to sleep, behind the rack of laundry hung to dry. But she's indeed gone. Her door veiled open like an old wound, revealing the inside - no more clothes, computers or mugs, only an array of old furnitures, covered in a layer of dust that was once scattered amongst the air, remained. A profound emptiness suddenly struck me, once more, once more, I'm the only person standing to bear - I'm the immovable for I have nowhere else to move to; I'm the endurant for I have to endure; and I seem strong for if I'm weak, I'll most certainly perish in an unnoticeable way.
Inside my room and inside my office are two divergent worlds. If in them there is anything constant it must be a struggling soul, whose back is bent forward to gaze, to see and to hope, who was once interesting but became less interesting due to life's weight. He's exhausted, bleeding and in constant, mildly excruciating pain, but he's still fighting, he's still alive, his stance is still, as always, tall and upright.