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