Written 22.1.2009 Donnerstag

Today I met Jacquelyn, the creative writing teacher. Fuck, I can’t believe it’s my second day here and how good I am feeling. Jacquelyn has a nice apartment built by the jews in the 1800s, lived in by nazi wives after the war, college students more recently, and jacquelyn and her family for the past 20 (zweizig) years. We looked at the architecture and the deco and then she told us (the visual culture and German area studies students) what each room originally functioned as and we got a sense of how it had been appropriated by each character that inhabited the space. I am excited for the first two creative writing assignments which have us going to a flea market and a graveyard to write stories.

/I was just tapping on the floor and realized I’m in an apartment building. They can probably hear what I’m doing, because I could hear saxophone downstairs yesterday. I just got back from Joseph Roth with Matthias, his friend Tobias, and the flatmate/fellow student Ryan who are all here tonight; Tobias as a guest for the night, and Ryan until May. Matthias has been in this apartment for three, maybe four years, seven in Berlin total, and I don’t know where home is for him. He is my kind host, if you didn’t get that. He cooked risotto for dinner with his friend Tobias and myself while I was exploring the first German supermarket squandering over broccolis and spinach. I’ll cook some other day, and I bought porto wien and some spice strangely familiar as it comes to be (mugwort? Wtf). J.R was a charming bar down potsdamer strasse commemorating the famous author, where ransom quotes adorned the walls and sweet jazz adorned the airspace. I’m glad we went there tonight instead of the tranny bar around the corner. Some other night, okay?

I didn’t carry my camera with me today, instead lugging my computer for the free internet at the studio space. God forbid when I want to put this on the web tomorrow I will take both with me and be forever burdened by my strained shoulder. I must fix my posture and strengthen myself so I can carry my god damned electronics with me, since I can’t rely on my own processing. Barely. Hardly. I’m not as drunk as last night, I couldn’t even write, but still feeling goody goody because I’m loving this place and just so excited to be learning and developing and building. Much of the other students are in the architecture program so they are really building, but I am learning Visual Culture. Why is culture important? Why is art important? Why is art visual? When culture is visual it gives you something to look at as evidence of, in support of that culture. Germany strongly promotes its culture and therefore its art, spreading it around the world, and within the system providing funds for artists to create, to do what they do and do it well with resources they might not have on their own. But to have an idea, a vision, to make it visible for others is sought as important in this world. This country at least. My idea of the world at least. My idea of this country at least. Maybe I like this country, this city, because people share that idea that art is important, and maybe I just didn’t realize it back home, at Rutgers when I was so distracted by everything that fell into place, everything that I put into place and didn’t realize I was doing, everyone who saw a part of me and I let wonder who this boy is and could never tell. I could never tell. Myself, or anyone else. I never had the words, just thoughts and wonders. Great wonders of the world if only I could bring them into existence before forgetting them. Forgetting then forgiving myself because I am so brilliant, but so ignorant, no, stupid, that I could let go such great things as love and lust and beautiful women with so much care for the world and for me that I could just leave them for this. But I know they will do well for themselves and learn by my not being there, as I am learning myself to be without them is to see something in them I never saw because I was always so close, always touching its cheek, whichever one, and never asking for love and maybe never accepting it. I was open to love and lust and freedom and I was so confused and so disparate and with nothing to hold onto even though my hands were constantly grasping, for a fine buttocks or breast, a hand to hold, a mouth to kiss, and my eyes were intense, sometimes fleeting and closing because of some place as far from the digits, closer to the mouth, but still with regard to relations of space.

Who will understand this? But I’m glad I’m writing.

I love those who will understand this, but I won’t want to talk about it. This is just coming out of me like a fountain of blood from my fingers, cracked bones from my body which cause me to wither and shake and worry and destroy. Fierceness building in a weakened shell fighting itself from both sides with no middleground to coast on, like running from waves on the coastline. You want the water to take you over so you keep from the waves, not caring that the sand is yet wet, it is not water so you allow this game of chase, of temptress to the waves who want your eager feet but you don’t realize that. You only think about coldness, and it comes from within you.
Beauty and greatness come from within me and I am shy of it. No one can be amazed all the time. So I cannot amaze. I cannot inspire always and so often I am empty. All or nothing. Good or bad. Fuck or hope to someday find someone as beautiful and loving and amazing, and even then you still missed it. Anyone is capable of loving you so much as long as you are honest with them, so just be. JUST BE. Fuck. Just.. fuck. Just FUCKING BE.