fall is here

i can tell that we are gonna be friends

safely walk to school without a sound

back to school...i'm in

anthropology of gender & sexuality
an anthropological perspective on human rights
physics with calculus


tonight i'll dream while i'm in bed
when silly thoughts run through my bed
about the bugs and alphabet
and when i wake tomorrow i'll bet
that you and i will walk together again
i can tell that we are gonna be friends

what would foucault do

"It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, that appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize and attack them in such a manner that political violence has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them." Foucault from a discussion between Foucault and Chomsky.

a scrap

i'm sitting by a cat that is attacking a pen which seems evenly matched in a battle of sharpness. i offered him my hand but he had a very mean glint in his eye--his name is baby--so i withdrew it quickly.

woah woah woah - mccain's chief of staff outed!

http://www.blogactive.com/2008/09/john-mccains-chief-of-staff-wins-roy.html

http://signorile2003.blogspot.com/2008/09/hypocrisy-bombshell-antigay-john-mccain.html

the chief of staff of John McCain, whose running mate's ascension to the presidential throne would be herald the most homophobic reign since homophobia was okay, was outed today. apparently Mark Buse was in a "glass closet"--open to his friends and close family, so McCain probably knew since they have been friends/worked together/made shady monetary deals together since Buse was in his 20s. a former partner of Buse's came forward after McCain's shift to the right and VP choice to shine some holy light on the tangled affair and the blatant hypocrisy...it must have been painful to watch it happen for so many years without saying a word, but now the camel's back has been seriously broken. in fact, the camel may just be dead.

Buse was awarded the Roy Cohn award for "working against the interests of the lesbian and gay community while living as a gay man" (blogactive post, link above). Mike Rogers and others went to McCain's office to deliver (and film) the award-giving.

as great as it is to have McCain's hypocritical choices, absurd political compromises and sacrifices, and Buse's own masochistic, stupid martyrdom "exposed," i can't help but shake my head and think that once again, the Republicans will twist this saddening spectacle into a shiny show of diversity. McCain is wrong to be homophobic and intentionally further campaigns and programs that oppress and damage people that are citizens of the country/world he wants to run (to say the very least). Buse shouldn't have participated or passively accepted McCain's antigay actions and I disagree with his decision to conceal his homosexuality but recognize that as his right...so I think that it wasn't entirely right for his former partner to come forward and it's too bad that he was outed as he is but on the other hand through his passivity he was helping to destroy peoples' lives.

"our campaign welcomes teenage mothers (as long as they DON'T choose abortion) and gay men (as long as they DON'T ask for rights or be too gay) and women (as long as they hate other women)."

i feel so, so sad. why is this so fucked up? everyone is getting hurt and the good guys never win. i think if mccain wins i might have to move...i hate this shit.

kudos to surgeon

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oberlin, ohio

dear oberlin,
thank you for being so green and so sunny. i came from berlin where it was already getting cold and you have filled my days with sun, weed, pbr, and hot girls and i appreciate it. i went to one of your classes -- "love, lust, and desire in renaissance and baroque art" -- and the people were down to earth and engaged and interested and smart. you do not wear a thick veil over your knowledge; it is given freely. your alternative newspaper, the grape, is reasonably funny but i disagreed with the survey column "what does pussy smell like?" you mentioned lemon chicken and cheeses and seafood and burgers and rusty screws but i think you're full of shit.

but i also love your dog festival and the tiny tiny baby kittens that you keep in the back of the gingko gallery. they were smaller than my hand. i melted and was reminded of how easily i fall in love with tiny furry things. you are dangerous but so so soft and you gave me a cute attack.

your people are interesting...interesting looking and they seem really nice and open. your women are beautiful and your trans/genderqueer community rocks. your music is ubiquitous, clever, unique, and good. thank you for david greenberg and jordan and maya's band, la loup, that sings in chinese about love bicycles, white guys in chinese bars, and rain. thanks for the cat and the stage and i'm so glad you have spaces for student performers and a freestore and the necessities of life in like 5 square blocks surrounded by ohio nothing. but i like your rural bent and your suppressed urban desire. it's cute.

thanks for your dining hall and the 50 state trees planted in that big square in the center. and i love your womb chairs! i spun around until i was dizzy.

i feel very comfortable around you...it's good to be here. soon i will return to chicago but beforehand i will definitely get drunk with you and stoned with you and wander around your green areas, your sunny sidewalks, and your fucking freezing ass student houses. maybe i will not play more twister (perhaps once was enough).

see you tomorrow (and today and the day after until tuesday),

a

bad dreams and late-burning candles.

the house has been really quiet...nearly everyone is on vacation or at shittown or the climate camp or anti-fa camp in hamburg so i´ve been drinking a lot of tea and smoking a lot of cigarettes and having bad dreams. the past two nights i´ve woken up to escape them; the night before, i was lying awake but had to finish the dream, this twisted swimming race through the sewer, and couldn´t get out of bed until i´d seen it to completion.

last night i dreamed that there was a flood. at first we thought it would only destroy the bit of xb which was on a separate island, seceded from the rest (the guest house?) but then suddenly the first floor of the house was filling up with water and everyone was trying to grab their things and wake their friends and get out before the water filled up the rest of the house.
i grabbed photos. i thought about taking my computer but it was too heavy. my room had bunk beds and i stood looking wistfully before i walkswam out.

later that night, last night, i was standing on the roof of the building and was working with a devil/skeleton to build an instrument. we had three or four recorders that we stuck together and put his head on the top. it was a competition or an attempt to save something. i blew into the skullrecorder and it cried; then i sucked in as deeply as i could and it sucked out all of my breath and strength and make this piercing screaming noise, somehow faustian.

sleeping is not so comforting anymore.

currently reading..."sabotage cafe" which i found in the kitchen.

flea fly flew flown fleet fled flayed fleeced flat flick

wednesday. went to school, h and jenna left for shittown.

thursday. no school. hung around house all day. ariel and i ate makkali sandwiches in xberg and then went to que pasa for mojitos and watermelon men. discussed language at length...lovely lovely lovely.

friday. last day of school, which i had to attend in order to pick up my certificate. deadly deadly boring. came home and took a nap and then woke up in time to go to vokü at fischladen (rina and lao made boller vegan pizza.) came home and ran into esther who was going over to 105 to eat so i went and ate again, indian food with chai and more cigarettes. ariel´s last night but fischladen and 94 and the xb bar were all boring so we went to the Other Side of friedrichshain and ate another pizza and drank on the stoop by escando until 3 or so.

saturday. woke up at 11 and took ariel to the ubahn. went to graffiti store and yo-yo´s (kvist burger??) with charlotte who´s off to leipzig. everyone is on vacation and the house is strangely quiet. cleaned up the kitchen and tried to disspell some of the army of fleas who have descended...made a fabulous amaranth salad with cucumbers and peppers and lemon juice. went over to fischladen with lao later but it was boring...headed over to köpi and stopped by cassiopeia, which was expensive and there was a hiphop party going on at one of the other venues in the complex that cost 12 euros! full of yuppies and tourists. köpi was also pretty dead but i congratulated laser and smoked cigarettes to the rhythm of the scissor sisters for about two hours before heading home. we went to fischladen first and there was this sweet band--trombone, bass, viola, pocket trumpet (SWEET), accordian, piano, sexy female voice--finishing up so we hung around for a while and finished our beers/turbovodka. crashed around 3.30.

sunday (today).

recount decount

whew the days have been WELDED together but hopefully i can teil them up a little to remember the passing. excuse my english. mannn this is hopeless.

yesterday/tuesday - really good vegan food in friedrichshain at yo-yo (gärtnerstraße)...i ate a giro and almost died. it took us forever to find it. ice cream afterwards and then back home for a nap (6-9). talked to angela about linguistics and philosophy and the new school in ny and this philosophy conference in april. really good seitan vokü at xb. hung out outside with cinnamon and arielle and h and arielle´s beautiful new silver pen...my future band will be called "the golden elbows" and we will play with "the silver kneecaps" as "the joints." there were fireworks but i´d already gone inside.

monday - h and jenna disappeared for the day...i did some internet stuff and tried to go to dinner at k9 but it was a false stressfaktor lead, so arielle and i ate dinner with cairus and cinnamon at 94: something delicious that looked like gluey potatoes or maybe strangely appealing wet bread. the conversation circled around piss and nipples. hung out outside the xb drinking sangria, then went to the scherni bar with h and jenna and karl marx. ("i only shit because i love you," a forgotten black out tag, "dutch me here," and the bathroom upstairs says "if you do not clean your shit we will put it in your breakfast...we know who you are." terrifying, no?) tried to play pool but i couldn´t get the balls out despite a lot of whispering to the table. jenna made a confession about her national identity. eventually went back home and slept in the Room At The End Of The Hall.

sunday - slept again for a long time. we tried to go to the punkrock flea market at kopi but it didn´t really exist...so we walked in the rain from hauptbahnhof and then ate vokü (hummushummushummus) and watched the rain in the köpi barbasement with angela and emma and jenna...h´s friend jan came from hannover for the day (i think that was today....) and we read pablo neruda poetry aloud. he was lovely and civilized and sarcastic as wonderful. ended up at fischladen, where the question of the night was "what is the opposite of porn?". this spurred much discussion. also discussed flash mobs, queerness/gayness, and other topics of interest. went to the playground at 3 or 4 with esther to swing on the swings and broke my glasses into about 3 or 4 pieces.

saturday - slept most of the day to recover. missed the fuckparade which was at 2 but decided to go to the fuckparade afterparty with jenna, h, arielle. ate pizza at escando? in friedrichshain and met sebastien, the loneliest little cabinetmaker from somewhere near frankfurt. drank sauer shots and bloody marys before the fuckparade party. at first we paid for the wrong entry (we paid 5 euro to get into a trance party) but then erased our stamps with spit, got our money back through the wonder of jenna´s dutchface, and went to the massssssive party. it sucked. left early.

friday - KOPI PARTY, a.k.a. "getting hit with the kopi stick." dressed up in bike tubes and electrical tape x´s (pictures are a possibility) and wore my harness on my back to work the bar from 10 to 1 and then danced till late. danced with the leader of the harness workshop. left with arielle at 4 or 5 and ate spinach pastries...arielle got a gash/rag pastry.

thursday - might have gone to school. harness workshop at k9, made a harness out of bike tubes and made some fabulous bike porn with the h-bomb. arielle gets in from ireland? possibly tal made vokü at fischladen and it was delicious? something broccoli-y and salad with almonds and creamy potatoes and something else unreasonably delicious.

wednesday- went to school. lad.i.y.fest begins...tried to pick up some fliers in kreuzberg but predictably enough got lost and annoyed and came home emptyhanded. ??????? this might have been the day that tal showed us her belts and such and i helped holly dye her hair pink...or maybe that was tuesday.

tuesday - went to school. ?????

monday - ?????

whew linearity is such a stresser.

days days days go bye

whew i´ve been spaced out about which day of the week it is...i was sure yesterday was saturday (it turned out to be sunday) and i slept in today...
so let me straighten it out for myself...and you...
sunday: woke up late; charlotte helped me/showed me how to change a tire and patch the inner tube on snail. dirty dirty dirty. the party at quälgeist was only letting people in between 3 and 4 but when the tire was back on, it turned out there was another slow leak and so i took the ubahn and got to mehringdamm at 4:45. i knocked unsucessfully and sat outside the door for 5 minutes smoking a cigarette until someone happened to come out and i went in. met a german girl and we spoke--in german--about hierarchies in anarchist scenes and how the gay/lesbian scene differs from the queer scene in berlin and s&m experiences...my german failed me often but it was still pretty sweet...then i flew. then we ate gummi bears. came back home, chilled out outside for some hours; met a guy who told me secrets of the world.
saturday: woke up late, went out with berry & jenna to follow the hanfparade along unter den linden and friedrichstraße and finally ran into it at potsdamer platz after eating thai food and gelato from the p.platz arkaden...grapefruit gelato is fucking delicious. looots of polizei in riot gear/with big bomb-like vests and lots of guns and sticks and radios. of course there was no weed. walked to brandenburger tor to see anna but no luck. i moved the rest of my stuff out of my alex apartment and got some rent money back. came back home and chilled outside for hours and hours...walked with charlotte to sherni (?) to get SNAIL my new sexy fast black bike. so i name it snail which kind of sounds like "schnell." interesting encounter with christian, my foozball buddy. walked into my room at 11 mid-"party" and lie down and went to bed.
friday: mmm...test at school, think i did okay. moved stuff from alex apartment, when i got home julia was in my room. she was on her way out and i guess had been staying there...was upset, we ate pesto and bread and smoked cigarettes and drank tea and then drew on the walls. the room is much better now. and the wall by my bed reads "in the bronze chamber, faced with the silent handkerchief of the strangler, hope is faithful to me; in the river of delights, panic has not failed me." borges gives me shivers. julia took off later, i chilled out at the xb with anna and berry and jenna and etc. and went to bed around 3 or so.

the day that skips the disappearing day

i feel the need to record closely what happens because otherwise i may miss a day, what with all of this sleeping and staying awake at all sorts of odd hours. today my teacher announced a test tomorrow and i was outraged--"but tomorrow´s wednesday! or thursday! and we have tests on friday!" she gave me a Look and informed me that tomorrow is indeed friday. so here i find myself.

i came back to alex after class and chilled, then went to the urban affairs exhibit at landsberger allee 54 which was AWESOME. 3 or 4 floors, works from alias and el boncho? and the little lucy guy and many many other phenomenal street artists and graffitists. there were some wheatpastes that said "BANKSY IS FRENCH"...pictures posted shortly. mmmm it was awesome.

headed over to the pergamon musem because today is thursday which is free museum day but it was NOT free because of the special exhibit. fuckers. it was already 9:15 and the museum closed at 10 and i have 5 euros in the small world so i wandered over to lustgarten and put my feet in the water. saw someone i knew from school/holland and we chilled and talked and ate candy. i stripped down to my underwear and went swimming in the fountain until it spontaneously shut off...i was fucking freezing. well worth it though, i think. then wandered my way back home and now i have to pack...

the end of july.

monday. ate my way around kreuzberg with holly...sleepy cheese and olives at simitdchi, goat cheese and bread from the kaiser, olives at that little olive place around the corner from simitdchi, something chocolate at a turkish bakery...discussed cryptospeak and livejournal and other intellectual stumbling blocks. I LOVE FOUCAULT. and gold.
question of the day: what would foucault do?
tuesday.
school, came home and chilled, went to the plenum at xb and found out that holly´s room has evil mushrooms growing in the walls so we found a room on the first floor complete with wardrobe and toy car sheets and chalky walls. stayed up late late late, went out to xberg around 1 or so and walked down köpenicker observing the reichlich signs. (GEIZ GEIZ GEIZ) then h caught her train to amsterdam (despite much stress and confusion about times and asshole taxi drivers) and i went back to xb and craaaaashed. the train was lonely and sleepy and video camera surveillance-d. it´s interesting which thoughts i summon for comfort.
wednesday.
slept late and missed class. chilled out in front of xb smoking fags with two kids from the hague (berry and a woman whose name i don´t remember) and then took the danish girls (atlanta and sophie) and the dutch kids to xberg to go to overkill and eat makkali sandwiches. my tour consisted mostly of pointing out street art. picked up the replacement expensive cologne for egbert (RRRRRRR fucking yves st laurent bulllllshit) and then came home and informed them i was moving...looks like i´ll get some rent money back, which is good. went back to the xb to help quasi move shit out of the basement; physical labour is a good feeling and i ended up fucking filthy. we had to find places to dump the random shit (dirt, wood, etc.) and dodge the police who came to rigaer 94 to question them about a bar. both xb and rig94 are fighting eviction. suckfest. there was a jam session at xb that i caught part of and played table fussball with some people...met a cool guy, christian, who bought me a beer who i almost understood but not enough to answer back which was frustrating. went to bed around 2.
today, thursday.
woke up late and rushed to class...got there around 11. we have a new teacher, a woman who wears these long sheer dress-shirts and has unreadable supergerman handwriting and had us fill out forms for a "singles urlaub match-up game" and then discuss our collective vacation fantasies and choose 9 objects (total) to take with us...we decided to go to cuba and south america and take guitar strings and surf boards and books. then we split up into groups to fight with each other (as instructed). post-class i bought some bread and fruit, ran into ben the cool london boy, had a cigarette with a turkish guy with a sweeeeet bike he built himself at the fruit stand...it´s gratifying to be able to mostly speak to people in german and i feel not so far from being able to actually converse about nonmundanities.

and now i´m off to check out the urban affairs graffiti event and maybe the pergamon or museum of fotographie later...so many options, so little time, no fucking money. woot woot woot.

sesame wonders.

being poor is hard and frustrating.
working would be really good but it seems impossible and illegal.
berlin is awesome and i don´t want to go home.
i have to replace my roommate´s cologne and it costs 70 euros.
uchicago seems ridiculously expensive and i don´t know if i can make it work for me.
i want to give it a chance though because there´s something about it i fucking love.
i feel like i make bad decisions.
maybe coming here without enough money was a bad decision.
it doesn´t seem so useful to decide that it was.
my roommates are angry because i haven´t replaced the cologne yet. dmitri yelled at me when i got home.
i don´t know if he knew he was yelling. maybe his german is always angry.
i can´t totally explain why i need to move but i don´t feel comfortable at home and i know this feeling well.
i don´t know what is going to happen to me.

i was thinking about the difference between changing and constructing a facade.
in the past i have been accused of changing too easily, of adapting to the people around me. i felt guilty and without rhetorical recourse. it strikes me as funny because i am constantly trying to become a better person, to act in a way that is truer to the way i want to be, and to learn from the people around me. all of these are good things for me. this is not to say that all change is entirely conscious or within my control. change must be navigated in different spaces and reinforced by certain elements of continuity.
one can change one´s body, one´s mind about an issue, one´s opinions, one´s mechanisms for dealing with people, one´s ways of handling stress or emotions or anger, or one´s identification. if a change creates an apparent conflict between the changed person and "what/who they REALLY are," it is revealed that the category of being is probably falsely binary. (for example, gender identification.)
a facade is a false front. it is often constructed out of feelings of desperation and the sense that there is no other way to survive. it creates a distance between the person behind the mask and other people. they may feel as if they become closer to the person without getting behind the facade; ultimately, i think this is a tragic loss for the person behind the wall. there is a shift from feeling as if they need their facade to survive to actually having their life inextricably linked to a charade which has its own autonomy and necessity.
there are likely contradictions between the nature of the facade and the nature of the mask-wearer. the mask-wearer may use elements of people that s/he hates or idolizes most. s/he may own opinions which she does not agree with in order to preserve the apparent continuity of the facade.
the mask-wearer may love the mask, or may hate it.
the person who changes may experience pain in changing; perhaps this is a similarity between him/her and the mask-wearer who fears the erosion or peeling away of the mask. they may have defense mechanisms, conversational habits, or behaviors through which they hold fast to the facade.
if the person who changes is not so different from the person who wears a mask, what does it mean to be a person who changes often? how do feelings of betrayal--self-betrayal or feelings of betrayal from the people close to the metamorph--fit in? are these feelings overcomable or rooted in important truth?
the important difference seems to be that the person who changes does so of their own accord, according to certain moral or ethical convictions, while the mask-wearer has less control over their internal self and heightened control over their external presentation.
however this theory has already been weakened.
perhaps the two are not so different....hm. the two states certainly feel different.

anyway, i´m at home and will probably head out to kreuzberg later, as per usual...recap of the past few days first...

monday.
on time for school: we discussed volunteer work, class divides, and welfare systems. went out to lunch with elena and her friend from school and the discussion turned to marriage since both of them are engaged. i considered gouging my eyes out over the kumpir (baked potato with less potato and more delicious salads of all colors inside.) met up with holly at simitdchi and we wandered around kreuzberg sampling its delights...sleepy cheese and olive sesame delights, goat cheese and peanut/wholegrain bread, olives and more bread, something chocolatey and two-layered. talked about facades and sex and cryptospeak and livejournal. headed back to xb and chilled out. smoked too many cigarettes. someone was having a birthday party and i met a new swedish girl and contemplated the tigress. developed a curriculum for a crusty punk deutsch class with holly that is BRILLIANT.
sunday.
slept until 3 or so at xb. wound up back in kreuzberg at simitdchi. the queer fruit grocery store was closed. ate fucking delicious goat cheese pizza. wound up at que pasa with a pina colada and a fucking delicious enchilada?
saturday.
slept all day. met french girl who was painting a banner (not a poster) calling for the freedom of a political prisoner. not sure what else happened.
friday.
slept in, missed class. went to kreuzberg and ate a halloumi sandwich by gorlitzer bahnhof. went to xb and met izze and some other xbers. went back to mi casa and got dressed. powder eyeliner is better than liquid. köpi party: highlights included...drawing on the table, talking to natxo from majorca (hola coca cola), dancing with boys from valencia when holly was blacked out, laser´s commitment to evil, dance battle on the stage with blonde girl until we were asked to step off for shaking it too much...then walked to the red rose with laser and ran into some cokedup sexy monsters on the way. the red rose is a 24-hr turkish bar in kreuzberg....holly and laser were engaged and a giant german man came and sat by me and i couldn´t understand what he was saying except that i definitely didn´t want to kiss him. took off a bit later and went back to xb?
thursday.
school, discussed health and ways to relieve stress and good and bad effects of stress. holly arrived. watched austin powers (goldmember).

being poor is hard and frustrating.
working would be really good but it seems impossible and illegal.
berlin is awesome and i don´t want to go home.
i have to replace my roommate´s cologne and it costs 70 euros.
uchicago seems ridiculously expensive and i don´t know if i can make it work for me.
i want to give it a chance though because there´s something about it i fucking love.
i feel like i make bad decisions.
maybe coming here without enough money was a bad decision.
it doesn´t seem so useful to decide that it was.
my roommates are angry because i haven´t replaced the cologne yet. dmitri yelled at me when i got home.
i don´t know if he knew he was yelling. maybe his german is always angry.
i can´t totally explain why i need to move but i don´t feel comfortable at home and i know this feeling well.
i don´t know what is going to happen to me.

batface!

batface!
Originally uploaded by hollychernobyl

pic from a few weeks ago when h was still in town...

today was a good day.
after class i got pizza with e and two swiss guys...one was either morose or spoke no english...a saddening convergence.
we wandered to kreuzberg after returning to the Hated Place at kleistpark to take care of e´s ticket...and i spent the afternoon eating eis and sitting by a park, speaking of culture and dreams and love. all good things.
headed back home around 10, met a potential tandem partner (who wants to learn english) and picked up a beer on the way...it´s becoming something of a habit. bad lemonade-beer. mmmm.

(i still love berlin on its bad days, though.)

eeeek

"Objective: To examine associations of midlife tofu consumption with brain function and structural changes in late life.

Methods: The design utilized surviving participants of a longitudinal study established in 1965 for research on heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Information on consumption of selected foods was available from standardized interviews conducted 1965–1967 and 1971–1974. A 4-level composite intake index defined "low-low" consumption as fewer than two servings of tofu per week in 1965 and no tofu in the prior week in 1971. Men who reported two or more servings per week at both interviews were defined as "high-high" consumers. Intermediate or less consistent "low" and "high" consumption levels were also defined. Cognitive functioning was tested at the 1991–1993 examination, when participants were aged 71 to 93 years (n=3734). Brain atrophy was assessed using neuroimage (n=574) and autopsy (n=290) information. Cognitive function data were also analyzed for wives of a sample of study participants (n=502) who had been living with the participants at the time of their dietary interviews.

Results: Poor cognitive test performance, enlargement of ventricles and low brain weight were each significantly and independently associated with higher midlife tofu consumption. A similar association of midlife tofu intake with poor late life cognitive test scores was also observed among wives of cohort members, using the husband’s answers to food frequency questions as proxy for the wife’s consumption. Statistically significant associations were consistently demonstrated in linear and logistic multivariate regression models. Odds ratios comparing endpoints among "high-high" with "low-low" consumers were mostly in the range of 1.6 to 2.0.

Conclusions: In this population, higher midlife tofu consumption was independently associated with indicators of cognitive impairment and brain atrophy in late life."

full abstract and text here: http://www.jacn.org/cgi/content/full/19/2/242
eeeeeeek. scary.
apparently fish is good for your brain...but not for me, i think. blech.
brain atrophy sucks. this report is crazy ridiculous though.

bodywearied

Berlin is tiring me out...I´m in one of those exhausted grooves...not sure whether I need more sleep or less sleep, less food and more living.
Today I´m erring on the side of sleep first, live a little later at night.

what have I been up to the past few days...
thursday: discussed women in leadership positions and more typical man/typical woman stuff in school, went to pay my ticket at kleistpark and it turned out that since i just have an umweltsmonatkarte and not a personalausweisekarte or whatever i´m supposed to pay 40 euros...fuck that. went to simitdchi for a few hours and asked about a job (maybe) and drank mint tea...ended up talking to a lebanese guy about email addresses. he offered to find me a cheaper one-bedroom apartment in kreuzberg but i really prefer having roommates, esp. while traveling. went over to mimi´s, got sick, came home.

friday: test in school (essay on women in leadership positions), then went out to lunch (REAL italian pizza...) with a bunch of people from school, then wandered through the bayrischer platz in schöneberg photographing an exhibit of street signs featuring oppressive rules about jewish people from the 40s. came home and then fell asleep before i was planning to go out...woke up at 3 a.m., then went back to sleep.

"it is forbidden for aryan and nonaryan children to play together." sadness.

saturday: tried to go to flea market at moritzplatz but it didn´t exist; walked over to gallery on lindenstraße (between kochstraße and moritzplatz) and kept boarding in the wrong direction...my sense of direction is almost unfailingly inaccurate. the gallery was tiny and i didn´t have enough energy to go to the berlinische gallerie nearby, so i came back to alexanderplatz and sat on a couch set up on the platz and listened to the german dyke rock...fell asleep for a while...and now i´m home for a nap before heading out to party, meet, mingle, drink, etc.

mmmmmmsleep.

notes for myself

zines in berlin...
Papier Tiger Archiv in Kreuzberg: Papier Tiger is open to the public two days a week (Monday & Thursday from 2:30-6 PM, and they have a women's day on Friday (every 4th Friday). They are located at 25 Cuvrystrasse in Kreuzberg.
Fleischerei: Torstrasse 116 (in the Mitte, right by the Rosenthaler Platz U-bahn stop)

sleepy
mixed
dirty
--dirty clothes, dirt under my nails, dirty teeth, dirty face, dirty feet, dirty hair--
scratches on my arms
bruises on my legs
need haircut.

it won´t stop graying.
i´m reading "querelle of brest" about gay sailors. it has this to say today:

"Too much trust, however, must not be put in the security of a smile, in its power to dissipate the gloom. A smile can induce fear, first on your teeth bared by receding lips, and give birth to a monster whose foul features will bear the exact imprint of the smile on your lips, but later the monster will continue to develop inside you, to cloth and inhabit you, till it ends up by becoming something far more dangerous than could ever be supposed from a phantom begotten of a smile in the dark." (82)

i lost my little black book and was very sad until i refound it today at school.
on my way home from alexanderplatz--coming home at 2 is a rarity--i ran out of lucky strikes and stopped to ask a woman if she had a cigarette. i didn´t realize i had a spiel until she glassed her eyes and shook her head quickly and my spiel ended mid-breath. just before i walked away, still holding out the 21 cents, she looked at me and didn´t look through me for a second. i was already turning away but i saw that she thought for a moment about it, in another context might´ve, anyway that automatic response that is so easily learned was momentarily disrupted.
i think that´s one of the saddest things that happens in cities, or maybe everywhere. people learn how to say no before the other person opens their mouth--the drunk man at the bus stop or the woman nursing a baby wearing tattered beautiful clothes who asks, "speak english?" in my first three days here, i learned to say no, "nein, nur deutsch. kein englisch."
i´m always a little surprised when people ask me for money. i see them, make eye contact, and they come up to ask for directions or some question and then there´s this buzz of german and a beseeching look and i´m startled into repeating my mantra: "kein geld, ich hab kein geld. es tut mir leid."
i have to imagine the glassy eyes and dismissal of a request without consideration affects the person more insidiously...that it creeps in and keeps them from looking around on the train or noticing someone at the bus stop. perhaps it is not a fear of being raped or killed. but maybe a fear of being asked is sad and awful too.

i think
i think
i think
(much.)
i´m always hungry.

today i had lunch (pizza with gorgonzola cheese and spinach cut into a deliciously uneven 8 pieces that i engulfed in 10 minutes) with an american, a girl from stanford. we commiserated about intensely academic university communities and discussed gender neutral bathrooms.
on my way home i wondered if i had talked about queerness incessantly...if i had fucked up.
i thought i might say, "sorry, am i being too gay? i´m not hitting on you or insulting you or something...i just end up talking about queerness a lot."
it struck me what a hilarious sort of excuse that is...to exist.
when i walked out of the jewish museum a few days ago, i had one massive question circling around my mind...how can a mainstream or majority culture fail to recognize itself as a way of life, as having the same generic characteristics or categories which exist in a subculture? kosher rules are not so strange when one considers that most people have tons of implicit rules about which parts of the meat are good, how much it should be cooked, when the appropriate time to eat is, what one should wear at the dinner table. on one of the panels in the museum it emphasized that judaism provides a way of life. this shared way of life leads communities to develop in particular ways, perhaps to be more or less insular or differently situated. yet comparing two different ways of life does not immediately create this hierarchy which is emphasized in comparing "mainstream" to "those other people."
the same idea-situation translates to a certain confusion about the situation of queer culture relative to heteronormative. homophobia allegedly arises frequently from fear and disgust about gay sex practices, which are rendered incomparable to heterosexual practices. this incomparability, which perhaps is what butler termed "unimaginability," suggests that queers are hateable simply because they HAVE sexual practices, just as jews are hateable because they HAVE a particular way of life incomparable to the invisible, unmarked norm. this is clearly a great fallacy, but its mechanisms are interesting in terms of community and human psychology.

so what this really relates to in my mind is this concept that when two gay people kiss on the street they are somehow "shoving something distasteful in the face" of the heteronormative world. actions become exaggerated. traditional jewish clothing are not simply clothing--they are endowed with difference which at first marks them and some people respond to this angrily, as if they have been personally insulted by this show of difference. is it because they feel their own invisibility? what is their relationship to this incomparable relation?

i think, i think, i think.

confusion, written

people...walls and boundaries...desire for closeness (sex? or not)...dealing with being/feeling alone...

language: german is okay enough sometimes and others it fails me, don´t know how to say simple things i need to say (that´s mine, can you fill my cup up with more hot water, how far away is that, how do you engage with a new place) but can talk about more complicated things which is annoying...can understand a lot but miss the punchlines, some nouns--difficulty that i guess is almost totally new. i don´t even think about that as a major difference between here and chicago but of course it´s one of the biggest changes i´m navigating.

(over)thinking relationship between experience and meaning, what kind of experiences can be sought out versus happened upon, how much to trust my instincts or feelings about people (primarily deciding that i don´t want to go out with someone or feeling like i don´t want to go out or talk to people at all, antisociality).

fucked up sleep schedule, wish i could wake up in the morning.

miss. miss everything. miss familiar--anything familiar, whatever familiar is. easy for things to become familiar but takes some energy to initiate and i just can´t think of anything to say, though theoretically it sounds really easy.

food. emotional eating, wanting to eat and eat and eat and not be seen (eat when not around someone i know), don´t actually eat that much but compared to the days where i don´t really eat like anything. on the other hand today i started drinking--beers, slowly--at 2 and drank straight until 12. it makes me quieter. less anxious, but also more blasé, less communicative, more reflective. time passes.

weird in-between period: on the edge of familiarity with the city but hindered by my lack of german; on the edge of being a berliner but totally not; conscious of what´s going on in chicago but it seems like a different world that i sometimes don´t want to have to go back to; between aloneness, homesickness and friendship. between recognition and...its opposite.

being alone is good too but i get so lost in my brain.

schwelle 7

today...
- discussed elias canetti (romanian/austrian author) and took a test in class.
- hung out for 2 hours at my favorite turkish cafe...had a ridiculous exchange with a turkish guy sitting across from me who spoke nether german nor english.
- walked wih spark back to his place and hung out with him and his roommate and her boy, phil. good food.
- schwelle 7.

more later...i´m fucking beat.

joachimstraße 4, the erotic museum

the erotic museum (joachimstr. 4, right in the middle of tourist life in berlin) was quite a sight to behold. lots of chinese roll/scroll paintings (which are traditionally kept rolled up and taken out for "special" occasions), indian statues and such...among my favorites were the actual french sheepskin intenstine condoms (multi-use with tape to hold them on), the bali phallus-worship status carved out of wood with really angry looking naked guys all over them, and the chinese aphrodisiac made out of snake penises soaked in deer schnapps. the explanatory card noted that only the schnapps were actually drunk but...i mean, i don´t think i knew that snakes had sizable penises until today.

other highlights included the extensive biography of beate uhle, the "old lady of sex" who basically founded an empire right after the harsh censorship (including access to info about birth control) of the ddr....and now she´s like 90 and flies airplanes and is ridiculously wealthy.

aaand some chastity belts from the middle ages! complete with locks and ornamental carving. poor fucking women. or not fucking, i guess.

it was an overwhelming amount of hetero coitus for me though...by the end of the 2nd floor (2 of 2) my head was spinning and i couldn´t seem to turn around without encountering a giant phallus...definitely more penises than i have ever seen or particularly wanted to see in my life. and there was a strange sense of voyeurism to the whole experience. there were a ton of people in the gift store but once i had bought my ticket and entered the museum, i encountered only straight couples holding each others´ hands and looking quickly at the pictures and statues--i lingered far longer than anyone else. even though a lot of the art, z.B. the chinese mass-produced porn which, as the card read, "was produced for the mass market and evolved to lack artistic merit"...?!, was generic insofar as the faces weren´t really telling or particular, each piece was still a peek into someone´s world and rituals and private life. the life of the artist or the life of a culture. the pictures of africans were noticeably decontextualized and the bali statues set in a diorama of fake sand and strange trees rankled of a certain cultural division maintained between "primitive" cultures and "advanced" cultures.

anyway, it was interesting.

when do you really live somewhere?

i´ve been here long enough that
- my room is a mess
- i really need to do laundry
- i know the neighborhoods and some of the streets
- i can talk to/befriend nonenglishspeakers

woot woot

fleeing desire, desire to flee...another day in the city.

the day: slept in until 12, then wandered out with mohammed to a vokü near kastanienallee (eberswalder ubahn stop) and we stumbled upon the mauerpark flea market, which was fabulous and overwhelming. i looked longingly at the DDR-esque captain/army hats but they were far out of my price range...alas. we were starving and when we eventually made it to the address of the squat we found only a modelling agency (??) so we came back to alexanderplatz and ate chinese food by the fountain. then i wandered, magnetically compelled, back to my favorite turkish cafe in kreuzberg and attempted to read my book but was interrupted by the fabulous peoplewatching to be had. first i met some siblings from friesland and then gheli (possibly italian)...we talked (in german) about building your own life and he took me to dinner at a nearby italian restaurant. about 2 hours into talking to him about this and that he clarified his "i love america" position to include "...and therefore i love george bush" and his freedom-war and so on. it was quite interesting. i have to admit that his meinung was instantly detestable to me but he continued to insist that america's world police status had made a very positive difference to the area which he was from, who had been struggling with oppressive arabic regimes for hundreds of years. hm. interesting insofar as i won't invalidate anyone's experience but the meanings and convictions that they derive from it i will readily discuss and disagree with...even when i don't have the vocabulary to do so...anyway, it was an interesting but occasionally frustrating conversation.

my space. the space to exist outside of how i appear? to not be foremost a woman? to not be attractive? to disappear tomorrow? to be rude and irrational and disagree and not be patted on the head and told, "well, this is my experience, and you can't really argue with that, now can you?" i am not seeking to invalidate but i don't want to be boxed or underestimated or even estimated based on my age or gender or appearance or words.

yet how can this be, when these are the only things which we have to go on.
when a man falls in love with a beautiful woman because she is as sweet as a doe and when he throws a rock at her back and she turns, startled, to see only an empty street, he falls deeper and deeper into love...and at the end of the story, you know this part?, of course he will finally leap out of the bushes and she will have loved him all along.

this is not my story.

aber ich bin ein cheerleader

woke up at 3 p.m., left the house at 5. went to the "linke buch tage" thing (got lost first...thought it was gneisenaustraße 29 instead of 2a) and "listened" to a talk on football and nationalismus before splitting for a talk on street art in berlin and elsewhere...also in german but i was able to understand much more. "gentrifiziung," for instance...this guy who had put together a beeaaaaaautiful book of photos of street art spoke of 3 general categories/purposes of graffiti: something about the area, communication/dialogue (tag party, anyone?), and something else. also he distinguished between street art and graffiti (heterosexual, lots of signatures) but i couldn´t really understand the specifics...

then decided to head home to pick up my phone in case govinda or pax called but on the way from heinrich-hesse straße ubahn to mi casa i ran into pax on a fuckbroken bike and we went to the schwarzer kanal party together. time fucking flew...i felt like i was there 20 minutes but we talked about class privilege and watched part of "but i´m a cheerleader" in german (i think i like it better in german actually) and hung out and then she took off to get the ubahn back to xb and i left a little after...bed is appealing.

thoughts: guilt vs. consciousness (of privilege)...i take my uchicago education and then i fucking use it, not just to enter academia but subversively and excitingly and however i want. i said to pax "you know...in art or in performance or in whereverthefuckelse" and she says "yeah but art isn´t everything, you know? like i felt guilty about not being a visual artist for so long but"
interesting. she called me a trust fund baby and i responded with a good solid "fuck you." at the same time i can´t totally deny my suburban white liberal middle class upbringing. i feel instilled with a solid consciousness of how much i´ve been given but is consciousness enough? and the "consciousness"--the activism--that i´ve experienced in hyde park is sometimes really dissatisfying. there´s still a distance, a Volunteerism...it is suddenly ridiculous that i have no hyde park friends, only a few black friends...

a little lonely, ratherquite drunk, kind of quiet. lots of words in me but i´m a quiet drunk...time flies, i watch and listen, when i speak i speak too loudly which contributes to not speaking at all. but to me it is okay, it is comfortable...but a realization.
i was whistling mendelssohn and dispatch all day after i got food (can´t whistle before there´s something in my stomach) and this lovely guy that i ran into 2ce but didn´t get to talk to (across the street und so was) just gave me this wonderful big smile. it totally made my day.

dear berlin,
ich liebe dich.
-a

lb crush.

on potentiality (lb´s blog, supervalent thought)

this woman is brilliant. today i woke up at 3 in the afternoon and read her blog entry on potentiality. her writing brings tears to my eyes while inspiring a hope for a better life or reaffirming the practices that have brought me to the happy life i find myself in now. it´s a good mix of emotional responses and the language is....swimmable. i swim in it, sometimes almost drowning, mostly slipping through and feeling it surround my body.

as i was reading some of her most recent blog entries i suddenly remembered something which may seem strange to suddenly remember: i have been miserable for a long time. rephrased: for much of my life i have been miserable. this thought brings a familiar feeling to mind, a very known taste and time of night and lack of breath. the way lb writes about trauma in another entry, "bound by the guarantee of the repetition of her impossibility," i think i know this feeling though i am not claiming trauma.

another aspect which i have developed, partially perhaps affected by being really unhappy for a long time, is the conviction that i don´t really know much about anything. i have begun to offer up common experiences in conversation but not authoritatively...it is rare that i would offer advice where instead i could struggle to clarify, to better understand, and through that conversation maybe to bring some light.

it is a strange, lonely place to find myself in though, to know a little about a lot, nothing about everything. when comes this changeover to adulthood, where people speak authoritatively instead of questioning? where observation is secondary to documentation? i am not sure that i want to become another version of myself, though i have a sense that i am storing up all of my observations and knowledge and conversations for some big BAM....a collage, an art project, a conversation, survival, the moment before my death.

this is the two-facedness of potentiality for me. i see potential everywhere and curse myself for being too lazy or busy or underqualified to bring the potential into being, to enact it. yet my mind discounts or overestimates the sweat and difficulty of the process.

i definitely need to take another class with lb this year....what a phenomenal opportunity. perhaps that is enough to keep me at uchicago.
off to a street fair in kreuzberg...bis später.

typical...?

8 p.m. head over to fischladen for vokü...i´m fucking starving. it turns out it´s not till 9 so i sit at the bar and drink a beer and talk to the bartender and take a shot of mexicaner...something with tomato juice and tabasco and mexican vodka? eventually i get up the nerve to go sit by this gorgeous hot blond girl who i assume is german and such but turns out to be from new york, living in xb, and friends with R who left this morning to my dismay. we discuss linguistics and australia and gender politics and what the fuck else.
10:30 p.m. pax and i walk two blocks to the pirate party at xb. after donning (insofar as one can don eyeliner) a pirate patch, moustasche and goatee we join the party. mad sexual tension and i meet a bunch of cool people, exploding my concept of xb as standoffish and intimidating. i also finally meet the girl i´ve seen at schwarzer kanal, making dinner at fischladen, and fucking everywhere else...turns out she´s from israel and her german sucks (i assumed she was a hardcore berliner punk). people are warm and lots of sailors get killed when cigarettes are lit. i get a "mum" tattoo in gold marker and pax gets a gold tooth. down a mate vodka. pax promises to call soon about going to a live music gig in berlin...she does minimal/electronic/techno and is super into sussing out good music. did i mention she has an australian accent? i´m a sucker.
12:30 p.m. after making out with pax i take off to catch the train to go see govinda play at this little russian bar by schlesisches tor. i get sort of lost after getting off a stop early at gorlitzer park but pick up some coffee and pommes from a little turkish place i actually recognize from being semilost there before...once with elena and once with holly. in typical govinda fashion he´s already surrounded by fabulous people, this time australians (claire, kai, scott) from the neighborhood. i down some kind of russian vodka that goes well with pickles and listen to stories about beautiful german girls and overattentive waiters that are really quite enjoyable. another shot on the way out.
2 a.m. we migrate about 10 meters to madame claude´s which is this fabulous underground (literally) bar with furniture and utensils upside down--literally on the ceiling--and i try a beer from the black forest but i´m already happily tipsy and drunk out. we chill forever, kai tells me about how useless eu legislation is and the recent history of german law and then claire and i discuss sexuality in berlin and smiling at people on the sidewalk. lovely lovely lovely.
5:00 a.m. i leave the bar and head home exhausted, first catching the ubahn and then the sbahn from warschauer and then wandering home from alexanderplatz. on the way i pick up a döner (ohne falafel und tomaten, mit sleepy cheese) from my favorite shop where i am by now very well known by everyone who works there...i´m short on change but it´s not a problem.
5:45 a.m. back home, tired but pleased. all is well.

sex drugs and sleepless nights

i sit on my windowsill smoking a cigarette.
thinking about tomorrow makes my head spin...tonight is all i can handle.
is it hunger? maybe,
all my y´s are z´s.

notes left out elsewhere.

friday night at lux...my first week in berlin coming to a close. Ended up going out to a "drag king femme show" at L.U.X. on Oranienstrasse with R and H, two awesome people I met at SK. Despite the fact that we were definitely in the right area it took us probably an hour and a half to find the place...we ran into Sandra from the Queer & Rebel days at SK on our lost way to the l.u.x. show (this is a city of coincidences and serendipitous meetings, I believe) and picked up this disgusting cherry liquor in little flask bottles from a grocery store. Somehow we made it and the show was pretty ridiculous...Louise (who I had almost joined a scene with the night before with Rei) did a lollipop number and there was a scene with a policeman and two strippers which descended into waving dildos and powerplay all over the bar counter. I was a little out of it but had a good time until I ended up smoking up and then was sick. Made it home late late late.

sex puke drunk fairy tales

thursday. slept in and missed class and headed over to schwarzer kanal but missed the sexpartyplanning meeting where it was decided that it would be outside and not in the asbestos factory so spent the rest of the day moving tents and mattresses and carpets and building fences and shit. good hard labor and met some sweet people. party was fabulous.

friday. made it to the second half of class...surprise test...went out to l.u.x. with r and h.

saturday. woke up late, time fucked up. watched 10th kingdom with h.

sunday. woke up really late, wandered out to kreuzberg and ended up at que pasa with a blue margerita. time flew. loved berlin. wandered back and left a trail of boos.

things of today

great things (a short list)
1. sunshine
2. caprese sandwiches
3. girls


how to write a paper
1. procrastinate until the last minute.
2. start with the text.
(optional: 3. return to the theory to figure out what to say about the text.)
4. tease, parse, observe. primarily: let things interest you.
5. focus interest.
6. if you haven't started, write. write and write and write until you have Something.
7. go back: problematize, criticize. let someone else read it and ask them what you said. it probably won't be what you thought you were saying. let all of this refocus you and edit/polish your writing. this may involve major structural changes. you may need to go back to the text.
8. tie up loose ends.
9. done.

starting a blog

some dec advice from tonypierce:

20. change your style. mimic people. write beautiful lies. dream in public. kiss and tell. finger and tell. cry scream fight sing fuck and dont be afraid to be funny. the easiest thing to do is whine when you write. dont be lazy. audblog at least once a week.

21. write open letters. make lists. call people out on their bullshit. lead by example. invent and reinvent yourself. start by writing about what happened to you today. for example today i told a hot girl how wonderfully hot she is.

22. when in doubt review something. theres not enough reviews on blogs. review a movie you just saw, a tv show, a cd, a kiss you just got, a restaurant, a hike you just took, anything.

23. constantly write about the town that you live in.

24. out yourself. tell your secrets. you can always delete them later.

---

ideas for blog projects:
- a day in pictures
- exploring hyde park


my expertise isn't at its flowiest right now.

---

highlights of yesterday:
. i fucking love it when being in class gets my heart racing. i could spend hours discussing levi-strauss with my sosc professor...we were talking about freud and femininity and breaking down all of the reasons that freud's negative definition of womanhood (i.e. defined as a lack) sucks/is problematic. ("problematic" usually means "retarded" sans the reference to retarded children.) but how would freud realize what he was doing in depriving femininity of its own set of characteristics? i bet there are a ton of negative definitions floating around...sometimes i think "queer" is a such a beautiful open-armed catchall that it can't help but lost any specific meaning (except an openness to possibility, which is basically my definition of both queer and kink. interesting coincidence?)

. sun makes chicago students appear so much happier. i NEVER see people tanning on benches on the quad in december. if only we had sun yearround...but then no one would get any work done and it simply wouldn't be uchicago. there are people i swear i've never seen before (like, hordes of them) playing frisbee and wandering around with books...either they were curled up by a heater for the past six months or in the reg (quite possible).

---

since this is my first post,
hi.
i'm ali. (the avenger)
q: what kind of avenger?
a: probably lesbian.
q: so what are you doing here?
a: one thing i hate about college right now is that i'm not producing anything...papers, yes, but i need the instant gratification of being able to see my actions translated into evidence of thought. even if it isn't the most exciting thought. i'm blogging as a female student linguist actor pro-sex meatphobic lesbian judophile (jew wannabe...i am ambivalent about judo) sexhappy apolitical nerd...mostly just the daily grind and maybe some ongoing projects. whatever springs to mind. i like to free-associate and i need some space to do it.
q: great books?
a: go read some italo calvino. i particularly recommend "if on a winter's night a traveler." i also read "never let me go" recently and enjoyed it...it brought me back to the days of 1984, brave new world, and middle school. much better, i think, than both though.