Category: LoveLetters

Third Sunday in Advent

I bought myself 1Euro Christmas lights, a short strand that hangs lopsided on the French doors in my bedroom. These kinds of little things make me happy, and turning on the radio and hearing Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. I want to say a million things to you and do not know where to start. I am not sure, even, why it seems of such grave importance to relate anything at all; I know that I send out these emails like crazy and I would probably delete them myself if I had anything better. Yet I write. Where to start? This is like my life lately, so many things in the works, so many ideas, so many plans, but this kind of paralysis that strikes me…having no idea where to start, starting no where. Manically writing lists of things, of projects, of ideas. The letter I will write to Sophie Calle, after seeing her exhibit today. The performance project Juan and I envisioned after being inspired by the work of Helmut Newton. Must ask Sophie for money and or power to bring the project to a gallery. The article with Jessica. The photo project. Finish the ‘zine. No—think of none of that now—prepare for the pieces you have to perform this week. You see, you see how it goes.

I’m preparing for three different performances in the next two weeks; I’m excited, nervous, manic. I’m an insomniac. Can’t sleep until 5 am. Then I can’t wake up. But I see more daylight than I used to. I’ve been reclusive, thrifty, alone. Very alone. Screws are loose in my brain. It’s working overtime, but not creating enough. Not finishing enough that it has started.

I just visited the coal cellar—I am a procrastinator, I waited until the sun was almost entirely down because I was relating these strange words to you—in any case, and the coal had to be brought up, we were completely out. I have to explain the coal cellar. There really is no better place to store a body. This is not a fear of basements kind of thing, I mean this place is entirely freaky and I really have to keep my wits and my sense of humor about me when I go down there, mostly because I have to go down there alone and there is no two ways abut it. First of all, it is underneath an old East Berlin apartment complex, and while there is a light down there, it only illuminates one of the hallways dimly, so there are always more, deeper, darker hallways leading elsewhere that you cannot see down and you certainly don’t want to venture down. Along the hallway are a series of wooden slated storage areas, slatted doors on each, one storage closet for each apartment. The slats block you from seeing in entirely, and yet the fact that you can see some of it, some of the blackness behind it, reminds us of the existence of space and the question of what fills it. Whereas, were you not to see behind those doors, they might simply be part of the wall and not remind us of all that space behind the wall. Behind each door, something is in there. Mostly presumably coal, but when the temperature is below freezing, doesn’t it serve as a refrigerator?

I saw the Sophie Calle Exhibit today. She inspires such fiery passion in me, both inspiration and frustration. She grasps and represents something that I have been trying to represent in Goodmorning Senor and other writings … but haven’t been able to do it nearly as well as she has. There is an installation called Exquisite Pain that documents the 89? days before her lover leaves her, over the phone. These days, during which she is traveling across Asia, are the “countdown to unhappiness” as she calls it. She documents each day with a photograph or letter and has stamped each piece with a “countdown” number—but of course, only after the events transpired, only after the countdown ended. Because during the countdown the events were events in themselves and not inextricably linked to some arbitrary date in the future. This is what she represents so beautifully, so perfectly, this arbitrariness of events, of days, of time. How no time appears to be happening as we live, until we attach some significance to it, learn to read it somehow. A day’s importance is only relative to the events we have chosen to shape our lives. The incredible trip is of little or no significance relative to the extreme pain of the loss of this lover. The days countdown … In the next room, she documents the subsequent 90 days of recovery, “90 days to happiness.” Each day, practically, though not exactly (if it had been I would have suspected a complete fabrication of the emotion, a complete objective control … and it is this which I am fascinated with, this is the link to the Fabrication Love Affair Art Project), she retells the events of that relationship as she remembers it: the story of the telegram that arrived telling her of some fake “operation.” The subsequent phone call, telling her he had found someone else, the empty hotel room, the red phone … Then, back, into the past, the circumstances of their love affair, her life prior to him, bent, in the retelling of it, to the inevitable existence of him. Etcetera … each time, with each retelling, a kind of catharsis happening, and a bending of the facts, or an inclusion or exclusion of certain facts … for instance, at times a dry edge, at times anger … until it dissipates into this feeling of unworthiness … my story is not worth telling, it is the same as any other. This is exactly what I found myself doing as I wrote out Goodmorning, Senor Alfabus. How I felt, by the end, how little right I had to talk about rape, how the story of sex was more or less the same as any other woman’s story, and yet … I could not deny, despite all that, that it was more painful than anything I had ever experienced. Calle does this so well, shows this so well … by actually making an entire piece of art (a huge photograph and scroll filling much of each wall) as a monument to each day … so that there is this physicality to the distance from the day of receiving the phone call … and we come to understand, visually, the idea of obsession, the (re)creation of narrative and the passage of the stages of grief …from the dry obsessive retelling to this sarcastic anger, to the acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of that pain.

And in the end Calle silences herself, as I did—though again, I did not achieve what she has, so clearly, so succinctly. She says ENOUGH. That is her final word on the subject of her obsession. Looking at that word enough I knew, I knew, that she had not necessarily taken 90 days to get over the lover, not necessarily reached acceptance, but rather she had reached self-disgust with the obsession. Because I know that telling ourselves enough is enough is not enough to stop the brain chatter.

For Sophie’s exhibit, therefore, I am grateful and frustrated … wanting to be more, do more. Calle on the one hand makes me feel that what I am seeking to express has validity, has profundity, if I can, indeed, express it. And yet I feel entirely frustrated that she has done it, and done it so well. Most especially, I want to bring my fabricated love affair art project to life in a way that it is not thus far.

Says the brochure: She sees her work as a means of survival. She invents her own games in order to “improve her life.” It is only in a second phase of their creation that her works enter the realm of art. For the viewers they are veritable mirrors in which they can recognize familiar emotions or even the realization of their fantasies.

With such obsessive observation of her own life (Calle has, for instance, hired private detectives to follow herself), she documents her life as it is happening; this art project … that … is occurring even as it is being fabricated.

That is the point of the fabricated love affair art project … that we not only shape our pasts with narratives based on choice, but we shape our presents as well. We create art pieces out of our lives as they are happening, these monuments to our fabricated identities that we are absolutely terrified of abandoning.

Second Sunday in Advent

I breathed a sigh of relief this morning when I started bleeding, I was nearly a month late and had starting to panic. I was thinking about all of the logistical nightmares that would have presented themselves to me if I had indeed been pregnant, in Germany, without healthcare. Thinking all this at the breakfast table, while both listening to this interview on BBC with the lawyer prosecuting Milosovich—fascinating—and reading Zembla magazine, not doing any of those things particularly well—writing, reading, listening, or drinking coffee.

Now, although I shouted for joy the minute I started bleeding this morning, I was undeniably sad, in fact, that I wasn’t pregnant, again. In fact, every month I am not pregnant again. Now if you have no desire to be pregnant at all now or any time in your life maybe this makes absolutely no sense to you, but really, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you, this is just my little reality, where the truth is, every single month, especially those times when I’m a little late or irregular and think for a split second, oh, maybe I’m pregnant, but it turns out I’m not, I have this strange experience of being simultaneously sad and elated.

I don’t normally talk about things being primal, I’m really a believer in nurture over nature about 99% of the time, but somehow this idea of having a child gets at this “inner desire” of mine to be a mother, an “inner desire” that truly disregards all of the practical ruminations that go on in my head about the idea of actually being pregnant. No, its not even the idea of being a mother, its about the idea of carrying something growing and alive inside my body, and the fact that I have the biological gift to do so. And wow what would that be like and how beautiful that is.

If you can pardon the metaphor (I’ll try to make the link as easy as I can; such is my challenge as a writer and I recognize it in this moment), this simultaneous sadness and elation made me think about the strange conflict in my head about losing my job at White Trash. Losing my job (because I have no legal status), in the scope of things, is “insignificant.” Right? Insignificant, insignificant like having a period and not being pregnant. And in some ways, profoundly wonderful, because in the past week I’ve been writing more, reading more, and getting performance gigs—three paid gigs in the next two weeks. A similar freedom that would be taken away by being pregnant.

But I also found that losing my job was especially hard, and it brought to the forefront my ongoing conflicts with waitressing. In some ways I think it is one of the jobs I do best, seriously. I’ve discovered that after years of doing it, nothing about it really stresses me out anymore, no customer, no messed up meal, no broken glass, nothing.

The conflict is that I have a strong identity as a waitress—though I have been told, specifically and indirectly, that I should not. That it’s not a job to lust after. Yet being told that I can’t do it, that I’m not allowed to do my job, I find myself sort of depressed. I realize that I want to move “on” (that’s the practical side of me saying that waitressing is not of professional value nor particularly lucrative) and that I should find another career that in more in line with what I actually “want” to “do.” Like getting paid to freelance—right, right, isn’t that what you’d rather do??? Or work in a nonprofit Right? Right? Isn’t that what you’d rather do? Or earn a living as a writer and a performer. Yea right.

I like waitressing culture. There’s definitely a camaraderie that develops among waitresses, for obvious reasons. There is a relationship that evolves between us and them, as is true with any profession. You do this, they do that, even if you’re (trying to) work to together. Some customers feel sorry for you—that you have this or that degree and you’re only waiting tables—and you combat that by feeling sorry for them, for living the 9 to 5 life, for not being able to stay out late, for having a screaming child that must be taken out of the restaurant so as not to disturb, for not being able to go to that restaurant at all anymore, etc … And some customers seem to feel this fascination with the service industry, like this one woman told me—here in Germany working as a curator—you know I’m so jealous of you; working at white trash is so glamorous.—Glamorous? I thought, mildly inflated. There are the men and women who hit on you, and that fills the ego, there are the shy ones that are afraid to talk to you. And then there are the people who don’t pay any attention at all and treat you like shit and then you commiserate with fellow wait-staff about what uptight losers they are, etcetera.

Here’s what else I like about waitressing culture: Waitresses generally have a sense of humor. They’re crude. They can’t hold a nine to five, or don’t want to. Most of them are artists. There is the exposure, there is this performance operating at all times, this idea of serving people while you pretend to be subservient. They know the double-edged sword I’m describing, of both hating it and loving it, of the people involved who tend to resist the office job, like physical instead of mental labor, generally have the “double” career because they spend most of the rest of their days making art or creating something else, their “real” career that they “actually” want to “do” for “real.” You get me.

Many of them are women, so there is this female culture, not only in how we relate to one another, but how we relate to customers, both using and abusing the power of their bodies. Some of us, I think after one begins to see how much initial interactions are based on appearance, use our bodies in a very intentional way; whether that means flaunting it or hiding it. My boobs touch a million people a night: What happens in the touch when my boobs touch the sleeve of a man? He feels ashamed or worried, or apologetic, or happy that I’m hitting on him … and yet none of these are true for me … I just want him to get the hell out of my way. But the power exchange, the second of contact, the idea of symbolism of the body, is fascinating.

The truth is, I got scared when I was laid off not only because of money but because I had developed such a strong identity around waitressing that I couldn’t really imagine actually doing something else and not waitress at all. And yet, to not waitress at all is what I’ve always been told is my goal.

And maybe this conflict of identity speaks to a larger truth about career and what it is that we do, who we are: We create reasons for staying in our identities, in our careers, because we can’t think of leaving them; to do so would be very difficult, even if what we do is not contributing in any way to the loving sustainability of our planet.

I mean, what if all the most seemingly “evil” business executives of the world suddenly became waitresses and all the waitresses suddenly became seemingly “evil” business executives; would the necessary identity follow?

We must create a kind of self-righteousness about what we do in order to move on with ourselves each day, whatever that profession is. I mean self-righteousness in the sense that we develop very good reasons for why it’s the best of all choices currently available in the world. Otherwise we wouldn’t stay, or we would be unhappy, very unhappy. Especially if we had formed such a strong identity and our set of choices really was so limited, that we really couldn’t get out. So, this identity, this identity gets formed, I am a waitress. I am a waitress. I am a waitress. It actually gets strengthened whenever anyone tells me “you’re not a waitress, Katie, you’re a writer, you’re an artist, you’re an intellectual.” I mean, am I anymore any of those things than I am a waitress? No, I don’t think so, really. And yet, yet! I believe them, there is some part of me that says, Katie, you’ve got to “be” something else … and get paid for it.

So to have my identity taken away presents an elation, the freedom of choice, the freedom to be anything. And yet it is terribly sad, to be ripped of an identity, and I wonder, is this really what I enjoy best? This conflict is related to being not pregnant every single month.

… Which is related to something larger that I’ve been thinking about. That is, being the master of my own universe, the masters of our own universes. And by this I am not talking about that old “the world is my oyster” or the American Dream thing, where we have the power to be whatever we want by working at it, step by step, day by day, carefully and diligently.

I’m talking about a mental moment. I’m talking about deciding that something be true and then creating it so in that moment. I’m talking about fabrication of “reality.” I’m talking about what I’ve been calling the fabricated love affair art project before I even knew what I was talking about. I’m talking about the decision to become an identity. I’m talking about the decision to create a story for ourselves out of the present. For example, to become an identity one has not been before, to be powerful, to become in love, to mourn, to not mourn, to love one’s family, to find one’s life partner, to have a great idea, to be cruel, to be terrible, to be empathetic, to be powerful, to be shy. To be an activist, to be an artist, to be an intellectual, to be a waitress. I’m talking about having authority over reality. I’m talking about the decision to “be” desirable, the decision to look someone in the eye, and choose what the relationship will be. Are you scared of them? Are they scared of you? Do they want you? Do they hate you? Is it possible merely to decide what the reality is whether or not the reality is that or not? Can you override all of the first clues and simply decide what the relationship will be? Can you create fictional stories using your present life and then make them so? I think so. We do it with the past. Can you start your life over? Can you start from the beginning and create an entirely new identity in the moment. I mean, can a business executive sit down and decide in a mental moment to become a waitress, in the sense of owning that identity.

“The fact is, I always felt like an outsider in school and in my town, a person who was, well, odd. I think this was both an inner and outer reality. Because I felt it, people sensed it and treated me accordingly.”

I guess what I’m saying is that not only do we create narratives about our past, looking at past events, sewing them together in a particular order and creating a particular story about them from the events given, but that we could have equally used those same events and told a different story, or chosen different events and told a different narrative. I think that we equally have the power to narrate our future, and I mean this very seriously, or our present. I think at times things “develop” into something we never thought they would be, but we also choose what they will be, what symbol they will represent to us. We categorize unfamiliar events and people and things the minute they enter our lives. We decide.

Some of us who are writing stories, I mean literally writing stories down, writers by profession, live lives that create great stories, and we live the stories in order to tell them, some of us to more or less extent. But honestly I don’t think its just “writers”—whoever they are—who do this. I think we all do. And what happens, when we really jump, when we really decide to forget all of the perceived or real boundaries stopping us from doing something? As Jrock so eloquently put it, what happens when we stop caring if our hair matches our outfit? What does that allow us to do? What happens when we allow ourselves to believe that its okay to have a tattoo running down the back of our legs even if we do want to wear stockings with a line down the back that will undoubtedly not be parallel with the one tattooed on our skin? Irrelevant, you say? Superficial?

Okay, then, what if we decide that material possessions no longer have meaning for us. I don’t mean arrive at that conclusion, after years of study. I mean, decide. I mean, give away all of our possessions and declare voluntary poverty and then work entirely in volunteer positions. Cut out of the system entirely. Squat in an abandoned house, dumpster dive for food, and …

In a sense I am talking about disconnecting entirely from our fears. Identifying what the fear is and then intentionally jumping into it. I mean little fears, like the fear of raising your hand to be a volunteer … and larger fears, like living in a house and having a husband and children and not being a waitress. Or really big fears, for instance recognizing that we are at once worthless and worthy. What happens when, in a mental moment we jump into the exact opposite philosophical position we once had. I’m not talking about linear or Hegelian development, I’m talking about the development that has no past other than the moment of its inception.

Choosing a life. Creating a life out of the choice, whatever it be. Is this possible for us? Fabricated art projects. The art project of life. Who’s in on it with me? Each of us are involved in the fabricated love affair art project called life, the love affair being with our identities and fears that to some extent we have chosen for ourselves, that can be learned and un learned, chosen and created. The fears involved with the identities we have chosen, with the identities we have not chosen but would like to own, with the identities that we are afraid to own. All of these complexities seem to belong in our art project.

What happens when we think of life as an art project, does it suddenly get less real? Or more so? I got started thinking about this standing up in front of all those people in white trash, naked. That was an interesting exercise in breaking through my personal taboo as well as social taboo. The exposure of my body was purposeful, was fabricated, and was created in a sense for the art project, the one where my body gets recreated, (re)presented in the moment for everyone’s personal art project. And my own. Each of our bodies gets created and recreated in the moment for each other’s personal art projects we’ve got going on, even if we don’t think of them as such.

Those “projects” could be the power of being taken over, of the power of desire, of attraction, of the power that the body symbolizes for us, perhaps some identification with the past, with a “fabricated” narrative of our past, of some story we have been told about those particular types of bodies, of their relevance to our lives. What about the male body, of the dick, or of the vagina, and the sexual significance each or either carries with it; all of the people we have fucked or not; our experiences of sexuality, looming or not. There is so much in the moment of body to body, of orb to orb, of art project to art project facing one another, the various fabrications each of us have designed for ourselves, our various universes you could say, colliding, as they always do.

I want to get divorced and then married and then be celibate and then have a baby and then get pregnant and then swear off men and then be a lesbian and then be a child and then die and then become religious and then be worshipped as religious and then become a writer and write about it all. There are so many different women I want to be. My fear is that I won’t get around to being all of them.

This morning I read about a little girl who placed an advertisement in her local paper at age 14 that declared, “I’m going to become an author when I grow up.”

So I might ask, is this a strange quality belonging only to writers, that they believe they are the masters of their own universes through the mere flick of their pen or the flick of a switch inside their brains? Is it only “authors” who so strongly believe that their futures can be fabricated and they will follow; only writers who not only create stories about the past but about the future? Who are these writers? Bring them out, let me see them. Which one of you is a writer? And which one of you is not? Why?

I know, I know, perhaps this is true for some people, but not for you. Some people like the author of this rambling text. Perhaps this is true for people unlike you, people who had either no direction or too much privilege. But for you, you achieved various things in your life step by step and were forced, more or less, into certain directions and there was no choosing about it.

First Sunday in Advent

It is the first Sunday in Advent and I have been meaning to write about the word sacred; another thing still left undone. I attempt to launch into it. So here I am, waiting for my laundry to dry, and it’s true that there is something about the word sacred that struck me to begin writing, something about what I consider to be its misuse. And I started writing, trying to get to the bottom of it, this word sacred, and why it’s been misused. Or, who really cares, Katie, about misuse, its unfair to use that word, that’s just blaming. I suppose I mean that I want to reclaim the word, let me put it like that.

I stare at my writing. Stop for a moment. Then I go back to reading Cubana, Contemporary Fiction by Cuban Women and low and behold there in the text is the example I am looking for, just staring up at me as though it had been divinely planted there. “Maybe, without knowing it, I had been looking for a reader. Maritza seemed so interested, she encouraged me so much, that I couldn’t resist the temptation to show her those entries in spite of the fact that, until then, I’d considered my diary sacred and inviolable. I kept it hidden under my pillow.”

This—sacred coupled with diary and secret and hidden and inviolable—is exactly the kind of meaning of sacred I want to undo. I mean, I want to find a reader for the diary, I encourage her to do it, though she is just a fictional character and I am just a reader of this reading of the diary. There’s a myth, I think, that what is sacred shouldn’t be touched … that it should be kept “clean” and “pure” and whatever those things have come to mean as a result of the invention of soap and Puritanism and the Victorian age.

I think sacred means we should engage; that’s what sacred means to me. Love is sacred; engage with it. Engage with your lover, above all communicate. Be direct. Take risks. Love isn’t clean or even-tempered. Let yourself go to the most vulnerable place, fight it out and then make up. Sex is sacred, engage with it. Try new positions, new people, push your limits, learn about your body, masturbate, fuck your boy/girl-friend in the ass. Let them fuck you in the ass. Have sex with your friends, make love to someone of your own gender, at least once. Forget everything you thought you knew about your sexuality and laws of attraction and then start over. At least once. Fear is sacred; engage with it. Go to the scariest places … pretend to be something “you are not” and then become it. Books are sacred…engage with them. I’ve had so many people tell me they would never think of writing on my manuscript. I know they think they are being reverent, but I secretly resent that. Writing is meant to be engaged with, because it is sacred. Write in books, underline them, share them. Give them away. Tell the author what you think. What you really think. School them when they’re wrong. School me when I’m wrong—please. God is sacred, engage with God—engage with the divine. Meditate, spend time with yourself and the divine, your own divine within you. Music is sacred; engage with it. Listen to it live, fucking rage off the hook dance to it. If it takes drugs to engage, fine. But if drugs make you disengage, stay away. Be honest about it. Obsess about a song. Play it until the CD scratches, learn all the lyrics and sing them at the top of your lungs on public transportation. That’s Katie’s Spontaneous Manifesto II written at the Laundromat in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, while waiting for the clothes to dry. Engage with me. Tell me I’m wrong.

So the problem is the same, it’s just (re)presented in various symbols over and over in my life. In Berlin, as of today, it looks like this: You’ve got the UDK, the University of Art in Berlin, where last night I attended my first class in “media and culture” taught by this amazing feminist art professor, katarina sieverding. And this is the “academy,” yet, in my mind, it is a little better than the “academy” as I traditionally think about it because katarina is trying to do something that I am continually seeking, that is, to combine theory into artistic practice, (i.e., her class reads Linda Williams and then they produce art that has a feminist theory backbone). This is what I sought at New College—writing with a critical theory base, political, feminist base—and got some, but not enough, of it. Okay, so that’s the academy. But the academy is inherently annoying. Its annoying because mostly privileged kids go there who dress like hipsters and say ironic things and produce political art about lives they have not lived. And things like “pornography” and “sex work”—I will use these as examples, though I could say “immigration” or “workers” or “terrorists”—are very en vogue, but no one has actually done it. For the most part. Sex workers are studied. Theorists are quoted. New theory is created. There is this divide.

Okay, then there is “Le’Space,” which is where art is practiced, shown, performed. By art I’m talking about Art and by performance I’m talking about Performance. This is where the artists, who are making political art, show their art to other privileged artists (though take “privilege” in relative terms, here, I mean, none of us there are fucking rich, we’re all technically the traditional “starving artist,” I mean if you saw my apartment in Berlin you would know what I mean, its pretty simple to say the least)—Okay. And they all speak English and German and French and Spanish. So that’s “le’Space.”

Then, there’s White Trash and Barbie Deinhoff’s and Dahlia Schweitzer and all the rest and the strippers and performance artists I’ve met there who are performers, I mean, performers, not with a capital p… strippers, prostitutes, pornstars; waitresses, even, if you think about it, working hard for the money and performing something at the same time. An image, a character. These are the “legitimate” ones, if legitimacy means contact with the “real world,” the “studied” … the “en vogue sex worker.” by saying all this I am saying this with a tone of skepticism and even cynicism, poking fun not at any of the participants, but at the entire structure, that grants legitimacy, various forms of legitimacy, and victimhood, and power struggles and all the rest, to these various rungs. And to those who choose, and to those who have no choice but find themselves at one place. And who knows who can choose? What is it “to be able to” choose? And among these people, there are those, many, in fact, who would like to move towards a more A with a capital A approach to their Artwork, that is; Performance, ironic, witty, intelligent Performance. One particular woman that I am thinking of, a friend of mine, she is interested in being subversive through performance art, and though her background is exotic dance, she no longer wants to strip. Is it that the grass always greener on the other side? I mean, prostitutes want to outlaw prostitution (this is a reference to a series of interviews with prostitutes that Jrock has been transcribing), academics want to be prostitutes …

And I want to create performance ART that centers around the question, What is the power in exposure/nonexposure. What is the allure of the body, what do we risk? What is subversive strip-tease? What would it look like? How do I create “Performance Art” out of this question? And I cross into this elitist world every night when I sit in front of my computer and ponder the question, what is subversive burlesque? These things are fascinating to me; these questions, do, in a way, feed me intellectually.

These are the symbols for me, these are the various realms of “legitimacy” in my conception of life, in the world, where, in a sense, all the world is a performance, all of life is this bizarrely relativistic place, where no one person stays along one trajectory, or even one pocket of legitimacy or class or educational background. It’s fascinating. And I waffle among it, within it, trying to create my own legitimacy, trying to put my own art out there, yearning for more legitimacy, yearning to access all of these different pockets, trying to figure out what my soul feels the most, what feeds my soul the most, rather. Billi, my friend to whom I was referring above is hiring me to do “performance art” for her night next Tuesday, and I am going to perform “my body is a performance art piece” (something I did in Oakland in March) it is based on the putting on of clothes, it is in essence the reverse strip tease, but without the tease part. All the while I sing out this poem I wrote. What I’m wondering is, how will this be received? Will it be too much, too academic, boring, too … heady?

And what’s especially interesting, and fundamental to this problem, is that I have the privilege of the mobility, to move somewhat among these worlds, in ways that at least not everyone can.

Today I teach a woman, 25 years old, how to make proper milk foam with an espresso machine. It is the one thing that she has given me any kind of respect about. The rest of the time she is yelling at me, literally, about all of the tiny tiny mistakes I have made while working with her breathing down my neck at the stupid little café that is, ironically, called, “The New York Bagel Café.” For example, today I got yelled out for bringing 2 napkins—not one—to a customer. Then I got yelled out for putting 6 mandarins, not 5, on the “California Chicken Sandwich,” which could never in a million years be sold in a “good” California sandwich shop. Then I got yelled at for accidentally putting butter on one piece of lame-o processed whole wheat bread when that sandwich was only supposed to have barbeque sauce on it. So when I asked, at the end of my shift, if I could eat something, she said that I had to make a sandwich using the piece of bread that I messed up on (No, of course we didn’t throw that piece of bread out immediately. Waste not, want not.) At least I am a German and I have some kind of internal understanding for this absolute abhorrence of waste. Okay, this in itself is performance art—is it not? But now consider the fact that this young woman, my exact age, has been living in East Berlin her entire life, most of which was while the wall was up, and now works for her mother in “The New York Bagel Café” and makes espresso drinks for the new generation of cosmopolitan East-Berliners, post-wall. That she is probably pissed as hell that some American girl can just waltz in and work alongside her and then waltz right out again back to California or where-ever else. And who knows what the hell she is going to do—perhaps work at the café, just like her mother, for the rest of her life? I have no idea.

Later this evening I went to a dance class, a modern dance class in a studio, and I find myself among a whole other set of young people, young people with artistic dreams, at least, 8 euros to spend on each class they take. They are going to create “legitimate” art out of their efforts—will they not? Are they going to create “good” art? Are they going to create “subversive art” are they going to create something that looks pretty? OR … is the girl at the café really creating more interesting art just by her very caricature? I throw up my hands in frustration. I have no idea, I search, seek, for some kind of answer to this, which is essentially a question of where do I belong. I listen to my dance instructor speaking German and I follow along as best I can and these modern dance moves I know fairly well and I think, somehow objectively, or trying to be, why am I complicating things by doing this all in German? (Katie, you lived down the street from Mission Dance Theater for two years and you never managed to spend the money to take classes there the entire time!) And then I think, but no, that’s the best thing about Berlin, “you”—meaning “you” Katie, not my employer who seems to have devoted her life to The New York Bagel Café—can live super cheap and then invest in your art. But what of ART and what of what I am creating? Is it anything?

So I decide not to go to this concert I was supposed to go to tonight, I decide to sit in my little room and listen to the trance music that is being played on the radio, surprisingly good for the radio, and I write. This is what I think of as investing in my art, even though my roommate is playing in one of the bands tonight and he’s opening for the “Vanishing” from San Francisco and they’re supposed to be really great and I “should” go see them because they are “cutting edge” and they are creating “experimental music” and this is the real underground, man, the real struggling artist musician world the edge edge edge …or … But.

I went to dance class and they played music that made me feel, that made me want to dance, that moved me, and it was classic, classic, tango. And then it was Ali Farkatouri from Mali, and it was even Nora Jones, and it was relaxing and maybe not experimental, but it was something that made me move across the floor in a way that this concert will not. And that is just one reason why I have decided not to go and instead I am typing furiously. Though this, I know, will never be published, and this, I know, is yet another component of my invisible one-woman show that is so frustratingly individualistic and “non-legitimate” and all the rest.

Thoughts?

Day of the Dead. I read Orlando when I wake up this morning—afternoon. I am overcome by the beauty of her words, of the construction of sentences, but also of the ideas represented. I am reminded how ahead of her time she is—or is that what I mean? She brings so much clarity to me, I read her slowly, drinking in each word, wanting it not to end, wanting to understand each sentence, sometimes struggling to. And then getting it, some strange nuance or reference and thinking once more how brilliant she is.

I needed something tonight, today, whatever time it was when I woke up. Someone’s arms around me, someone to snuggle with. I wanted to watch a movie and be a vegetable and I don’t have a TV or a DVD in my computer. I’m feeling sluggish and know that I need to write and read and keep working on my art—but I’ve been crippled by the amount that I worked this weekend. I panicked when I had no income, but as soon as I got a job, I realized how it only takes a few days of meaningless but hard work like waitressing to get in the way of the rest of your life! Plus, the drinking adds to it, which is difficult not to do when you work at a bar and all your fellow employees are offering you drinks every hour, at least. Granted, it was Halloween last night, but when you work for 13 hours, which I did, you can have like 10 shots, feel drunk but not too drunk, and kind of fuck with your head still at the same time. Today I feel like I’m coming down and my brain feels all dumb. It makes me want to quit drinking forever, like I’m gonna get real stupid soon.

My god, my job at White Trash! … it is an old Chinese restaurant on Tor Strasse in Mitte with all of the kitsch still there and now gourmet burgers and soups and teriyaki chicken salads. The boss gets drunk, I’m used to that, while he watches us work. But he encourages us to drink, takes shots with us, jokes around and trashes the place. Stays ‘til seven in the morning and smashes shot glasses on the floor laughing with glee. Employees get warnings not for drinking or even for doing coke, I know Wally is a coke addict and there’s the question have you done a line with Wally yet? … [No I haven’t, no I don’t really] but Tesh got a “warning” for offering ecstasy to other employees while at work. We’re not on a clock. There is no clock in the place, no computer, not even a cash register. Not a single receipt. We pay ourselves cash at the end of the night, right out of the drawer, 10 euros an hour. Last night the bar tender was a total bitch to me it made me want to walk up to her and just ask her straight out if there was something about me that she didn’t like. I know that White Trash has this “I can be a bitch and get away with it” kind of an image but all in all it’s a little weird, really, because I have no reason to be a bitch and it doesn’t really make me feel good to be a bitch or be bitched at. On the other hand I suppose I could do it if I had to—and I wonder how much it will take me just to snap and fucking yell at some of those girls. But you know, I’ve already done that in my life. I guess sometimes that kind of thing just makes me think, I spent the first 18 years of my life in a house where everyone yelled at each other all the time! I know how to do that! And I just don’t want to anymore. I don’t understand this kind of coldness I get from some Germans—I’ve gotten it more lately, and I wonder is it just about me not having the German skills to flirt my way out of it and be all charming? Are they pissed at me for not speaking more German? It got so frustrating last night that I really swore for about 5 hours that I was going to throw in the towel and move back to San Francisco. I figure, if I’m waiting tables anyway, I might as well do it where I love everyone. But then, I know that this experience is nothing like the one I would have in the united states. And then, miraculously, everyone I know and like in Berlin (with the exception of Samson and Athena) … Marco, Ayana, Brad, Krylon, Brandon, Mella, Tom, Noah, Wolfgang … came into White Trash and it ended up being a great dance party in the wee hours of the morning. It was so fucking crazy there all night I can’t even explain. At the beginning of the night Wally and friends dragged in Autumn leaves and scattered them all over the floor, a big Halloween mess with pumpkin guts, too, for us to wade through as we fought through the crowds to serve our burgers and fries and soups and salads. Berlin is so fucking irreverent and so fucking chaotic and so fucking out of control. And … and … Krylon superstar as the Halloween MC. Halloween in Berlin means scary, not that I’m a [ ], but a ho-[ ] thing that happens in the US. Halloween in Berlin is about gore and guts and grotesque costuming and makeup. And they do it and they do it well. Shit! Like this one guy, he came in with all these needles pierced through his skin and household tools stuck through his ears. I’m not talking fake, I’m talking seriously pierced through with long needles. And blood on his tanktop spelling out something I can no longer remember. Some private party for Redbull with photographers and cameramen and Brits asking for beers and people running relay races, literally relay races, while followed by cameramen through the bar and me with a tray of brown tequila shots on my arm trying not to spill them. Us drinking shots constantly until 7:30 in the morning, which was really like 8:30 because of daylight savings time. Some guy towards the end of the night how was dressed as one of the seven dwarves and had a huge fake penis stuck in his pants gave me this incredible necklace he had—it was a cat skull on a rope that he had dug out of a cat dead on the side of the road when he was 15 years old. It clearly had magical powers and I gave it back to him at the end of the night. He also gave me a crown of thorns, so by 7:30 in the morning, on top of my black veil I had this crown of thorns and my red and black makeup was dripping all down my face … I’m sure I looked like hell. I fell in the turquoise and red Chinese fountain with a golden angel up my ass (not literally but it was poking me hard) and leaned over and kissed Mella. Its nice to be able to begin to have friends again who I can count as friends. I grabbed Tom, one of the few people I actually really like at white trash, at the end and got him to dance with me saying turn me, turn me! And him not understanding my meaning ‘cause he’s learning English. That’s when the kid with the needles piercing him all over faked passing out and I really thought he was over and out but no! It was a joke. Funny. My friend Brandon dressed in the tallest spiked heels as Lucinda. [the night before I went to Barbie Deinhoffs to find Brandon and Mella and we ended up playing improvisational theatre games together until 7 in the morning, when two more customers came into the bar … one guy from Guatemala that I ended up talking to for about an hour just cause it felt so good to speak Spanish again. And he was telling me about racism and being present and being real and …] I cleaned off the tables with all the glass and the shit and just threw it right on the floor, me the last waitress to stay cause I needed the money and I didn’t mind exactly. Carved pumpkins with candles melting on the bar. My friend Brandon getting some guy who’s “straight” to suck his cock and … at the beginning of the night the makeup artist who had been hired by Wolfgang did incredible flesh wounds on all of us, mine a disgusting road rash all over my shoulder and blacked out teeth like they had all been knocked out. I told everyone it was a motorcycle accident and Brandon kissed me and made me feel like someone cared and loved me here in Berlin like I haven’t felt yet here. Brandon is a gay fashion designer from nyc and from the start we really connected, heart to heart, like for the first time someone here was interested in my life and how it was going for me, and how hard its been, and what its like to really not know anyone and have to be an outsider. So I thank my stars for him, seriously—and … I was leaning across the table, kissed him on the mouth and Ayana said I had nice tits—cause she had seen them at le’Space when Krylon Mella Brandon and I all got naked. Then 6:30 in the morning we’re just waiting for everyone to finish their party and Noah and I want to go the fuck home, but we can’t so we do shots of Jaiggermeister … The strange thing is that my boss is the one sort of holding us all up, cause its him and all his friends and maybe a few stragglers we don’t know but they refuse to kick anyone at all out and still he’s paying us to stay. And when I left I kissed wolfgang, the German two-cheek way, and the expression on his face, so happy to have been kissed by me, at least he seemed to be. I swear its bizarre-o world and I can’t even remember what normal life is like. Was it like this?

You know the best part about last night was riding home on my bike, alone. Seeing Berlin at 7:30 am all those school kids and mothers on the way to school. I stopped at a bakery and treated myself to a Danish, so fucking good, chocolate and vanilla creme. And the woman asked me, Was ist heute? (she was wondering why I had all this freaky makeup on and looked like I got hit by a truck and had blacked out teeth.) And being crazy and a little drunk I decided to just answer her in Spanish and I said Ich weiss nicht … el dia de los muertos.

I got home and fell asleep, woke still only like five hours later but that was 1:30 in the afternoon. I got an itch to rearrange my room so now the bed isn’t blocking the French doors, and I can open them wide and there is this little railing with a place for plants. I can open them in the morning and stand there and look out, for the last few days of the warm spell. I like it better now—feels like its mine now. Too bad I’m going to have to find another place in January or February.

Today I got a third job, I got a babysitting gig that I had interviewed for, and they took a while to get back to me. I can’t remember if I mentioned it, but I just go take care of these kids for about three hours and speak English with them so they’ll learn. They are so sweet and the mom is really nice too. They live in the suburbs of Berlin and I take the train for 45 minutes to get there. Its this perfectly nice neighbourhood with big houses, kind of like the size of those in Claremont area of College Avenue. Actually the whole neighbourhood kind of looks like that. And there was a real German family living there with kids who are in school and take piano lessons. And it was so funny cause when I asked the little girl what she wanted to be for Halloween, that was a week ago when I first met them, the mom answered for her and said, “she wants to be a princess but I told her she couldn’t, she should be a witch, because a princess isn’t scary.” (‘member cause Halloween in Germany has to be scary!)

For now I’m going to work all three jobs, since really none of them are hiring me for too many hours per week, but it might get to be too much and then I’ll probably quit the cafe, since that’s probably the least fun. However, it is actually the best place to learn German. Still, I guess I am picking up a fair amount at white trash too.

I bought myself a plant today—I had to venture out before my coffee cause I had no milk and no coffee and no orange juice left in the fridge. I bought the plant as a treat to myself since I’ve started to have an income and it only costs 2 euro. It is beautiful with small little red flowers and lots of leaves, it is kind of a Christmas plant, which is coming soon, and here they don’t do thanksgiving so there is nothing now between Halloween and Christmas. I am going to make myself an advent wreath, light the candles one by one, and meditate every Sunday with the lights out. I can’t remember, I think we’ve talked about it before, that I love advent and some of the traditions of Christianity, but I don’t believe in the creed and I can’t really call myself a Christian. On the other hand, I love the kind of introspection that the period of advent creates, and I celebrate it as a time of meditation every Sunday in December.

I sit here, now 2:40 in the morning, this is my new schedule. I feel like the writing has only just now started to flow. I figure that I may as well give into this entirely nocturnal lifestyle. It only makes me sad not to see much daylight. But I guess its worth it, just to see those very early morning hours sometimes on my bike—I swear the most beautiful time of the day. I noticed that they put a photobooth—the kind with a strip of four pictures—down on kastanianalle … just out on the sidewalk over there, for anyone to use coming home from the bars. It is the coolest thing ever, but I haven’t had anyone to do it with yet. I vacillate between pangs of loneliness and then genuine satisfaction, a sense of wholeness and purpose, to a sense of listlessness and lack of goals. My latest idea was to apply for a fullbright to stay here in Germany and write a book about sex and performance, and the way in which the tradition of sexual openness manifests itself in the culture of queer performance art here … how so many foreigners are drawn to it. And then again, how sex is still, despite the openness, a site of struggle and exploitation and controversy. This is also my pitch to the exberliner … if I can start an article about this very topic by interviewing performers who come to berlin from other places. And speaking of, I think I should write an article about the election, perhaps if I go to Potsdammer Platz tonight to watch the election on the big screen I can write up something. Sorry, at this point I’m just talking to myself. I’ll be watching the States tonight, hoping for the best.

Much love.

Everything appeared in its tenderest form, yet, just as it seemed on the point of dissolution, some drop of silver sharpened it to animation. Thus it was that talk should be, thought Orlando (indulging in foolish reverie); that society should be, that friendship should be, that love should be. For, Heaven knows why, just as we have lost faith in human intercourse some random collocation of barns and trees or a haystack and a wagon presents us with so perfect a symbol of what is attainable that we begin the search again. —Virginia Woolf

Reading Orlando puts me in a romantic frame of mind. Virginia Woolf’s manner of speaking tends to leak into my words so please excuse anything that sounds weepy. Incidentally, Orlando is brilliant and reading it makes me want to become a Virginia Woolf scholar. Which is funny because it’s the first novel of Woolf’s that I’ve enjoyed, though I thought both A Room of One’s Own and even more so, Three Guineas, were two of the most incredible books ever written. If you have no interest in Orlando or Virginia Woolf or photography, skip ahead to paragraph two, because though I have something funny to tell you about getting a job, I have to divert my attention for one moment to Orlando, to mention the following: Did you realize there are pictures? I mean, Virginia Woolf’s inclusion of photography and portrait paintings is fascinating to me because I have been doing so much thinking about the inclusion of photographs with a text … realizing that writing for me necessarily demands some other form of media, whether it be photography or performance and … also, been thinking about the “author” as disembodied and what happens when we disallow the disembodiment, as in, what I was attempting in the first version of my ms “Goodmorning, Senor Alfabus” where I included photographs of myself … and now that I think about it, in my work in Nicaragua I included a photographic aspect of what I was doing, along with the poem take your pictures with you…I mean to say that the inclusion of photographs is a deliberate destruction—a deliberate transgression, or a pointing out of the power dynamic that exists when one presents the body, and as in Nicaragua, the power dynamic between the photographer and the photographed … which was obvious enough in Nicaragua, the “researcher” and the “researched,” the problems with this idea in the first place, the problem with women researching each other—what does this mean? But then less obviously when the photographer and photographed and author are one and the same … These are the kinds of questions that swim around in my brain. In part the reason why it was important to include photographs of myself, my body, as opposed to any other body when writing about my body. This was not a theoretical body that would stand in place, as symbol. To get entirely tangential, or not at all, depending on how you look at it, this is why I’m putting together this photography project that I mentioned earlier—the idea of the researcher who researches, and exposes, sometimes literally, her subject, the “researched,” and the researcher who remains, in effect, unexposed. What is the value of the body in being exposed or unexposed? What does one risk in exposure and why? How has the value or devalue of the body, as sexualized, become, in some way, artificially inflated? I keep free-writing on this subject, I think I’ve written pages upon pages, trying to come to some kind of conclusion about the value of the body as exposed or unexposed and I keep thinking what is the third thing—how did Edie once put it?–the resolution, the thing that transgresses both, both exposed and unexposed … I mean, what renders the body neither exposed nor unexposed, neither valuable nor valueless? In any case, it is questions like this that brought me to notice Virginia Woolf’s inclusion of photographs and paintings in her book Orlando. I wonder what fueled her choice to put image to this “tender subject” (as she puts it) of a person living as one sex and then another. It clearly adds to the parody of the fake biography. And yet, ironically, she points out in the text that she writes specifically for readers who have no need of photographs: “For though these are not matters on which a biographer can profitably enlarge it is plain enough to those who have done a reader’s part in making up from bare hints dropped here and there the whole boundary and circumference of a living person; can hear in what we only whisper a living voice; can see, often when we say nothing about it, exactly what he looked like; know without a word to guide them precisely what he thought—and it is for readers such as these that we write—” (43). And who are these paintings and photographs of in reality? I’m sure one of you out there knows the answer to this, perhaps everyone knows and I am in ignorance of these basic Virginia Woolf facts, so please enlighten me.

Berlin at 7 am is beautiful. Coming back to my apartment in the dawn light was—I was—in a state of euphoria, what with the stress I had placed on my body, and I came up the hill slowly, my bike squeaking (the bottom bracket is loose, I don’t know why, I’m hoping it has to do with the amount I’ve been riding it and not because of the slight crash I got into with a parked car—another matter entirely, read on …) In any case, I made it up the hill slowly all the while listing to my ipod, I forgot to mention earlier that this is a significant feature in my life, I mean, an ipod full of songs in English places a different kind of significance on walking down the street in germany. Perhaps I should have left it behind, then again, its kind of beautiful, its appropriation, right? It creates the strange soundtrack to berlin life. Incidentally, I am on the U-Bahn just now—the seats are heated on the u-bahn—pleasant when its cold, unpleasant at the moment because it is remarkably warm outside, I ordered coal and a big hairy guy with an indecipherably thick berlin accent delivered it to my cellar and I haven’t needed to use it yet, which is good because my roommate still hasn’t shown up and he’s the only one of the two of us who really knows how to properly light a coal furnace. So, I am overdressed today, which is a good feeling. Warm the last three days, after the rain, which made it unfortunate that I had the flu and was confined to my little room.

This morning 7 am I got back to my apartment and noticed, for the first time really noticed, the two birch trees by the U-Bahn tracks that run at the side of my apartment complex, and a green soccer ball stuck on the tracks, the gold leaves on the birch, the houses on the other side of the tracks. I have an existential moment looking across the tracks through the chain-link fence. They do seem to serve as a divide because, I forgot to mention, at the end of my street is, oddly, a climbing wall, like one that you’d find at REI or whatever, but this one is just there, jutting out from seemingly no where, no sports complex, no REI, just there. And I’ve seen people climbing on it. Then, beyond that, as though that were the last reminder of civilization, or familiarity, and odd familiarity at that, there is this complete no man’s land. Like you look out and you see gray pedestrian bridges crossing the u-bahn tracks and beyond you say something like, ah … that’s the rest of east germany. So there it is.

I saw berlin at 7 am for the first time today. Now I’ll get to why, which is that I got called last night from wolfgang, the owner of white trash—I had asked him previously for a job and he said he had none for me. But he called me last night and said, can you come in at 9 (pm)? It was Saturday night and I was about to go somewhere else—to Wigstöckel at SO36—but I knew I would be stupid not to go and work so I said yes. So I showed up to work as a fill-in waitress at White Trash. They gave me my own section, it was Saturday night, gave me a white frilly apron, ala “white trash”—but these were new aprons, I was the only person sporting one and man it looked ridiculous, that is to say, ridiculously fabulous. The place was packed—packed until 5 am. What I didn’t realize was that my waitressing shift would be from 9pm to 7 am. Hah!

Luckily the place doesn’t have any clocks and I needed the money so I was in the perfect position to be exploited—I agreed, somewhat unwittingly, to take the “late shift”, that means to stay until the very end, and since they don’t kick anyone out, there are still people buying drinks at 6:30 in the morning. I served burgers and fries and soup and salad—yes, the question soup or salad with that, its included, lives on—until 3 am, was it? Or four? Then only fries until 5 am perhaps? Then the last two hours while the real troopers were still pulling themselves through the night. It was, needless to say, hilarious, fun, frustrating, embarrassing, horrible, lovely, all of these. I was a total dunce at the money—all the coins are the same color and I had to add up tabs in my head and then make change on the spot—that was funny. And of course that whole thing about speaking german. Well luckily I work in a place that people sort of expect to speak some English, so I kind of worked it half and half. I did understand what people said to me, but its hard to unlearn those waitressing things I say all the time in English, like how ya’ll doin’? what can I getcha? Ev’thing ok? I don’t know, maybe this Americana adds to the charm of the place, I tend to think so. In any case we walked with “good tips,” that is, by berlin standards—I got 34 Euros for the entire night, in tips. On the other hand, wolfgang paid me 10 Euros an hour—cash, right on the spot, at 7 am, for a ten hour shift. So I wasn’t exactly complaining; I paid my rent in one night and then some. Or, I paid for half a ton of coal (125 Euros), depending on how you look at it. He did so (Wolfgang paid me) saying that he normally pays people 7 euros an hour when they start out, but he was paying me the same as everyone else because I was “clearly a professional,” at which I felt this odd combination of pride and depression … being a professional waitress, and yet he was right, that those years of waitressing really did seem to cross over into this particular busy Saturday night and I survived.

It is interesting how quickly our realities become shaped by the simplest routine… As I was telling sami … I find myself choosing little routines, as a way of managing such unfamiliar territory, I guess. I think this is what we naturally do when we feel chaos or unfamiliar, we create systems to make order and sense. Even if they are not particularly orderly. But it is strange, I find myself taking a shower everyday here, even though at home in San Francisco sometimes I was just so chaotic and running around that I just wouldn’t feel like I had time for even a shower. And here, I take a shower every day and run the water in the exact same way, cause I don’t have much hot water and I can’t waste it. And I use the same towel, hung on the same hook. And I only wash my hair one day a week—and its not random, it’s Thursday. And I make coffee for myself in the morning, with the exact same spoon and I measure out 6 scoops into a brown filter in a brown cone, and I run the water in the pan while I’m counting the scoops, because the water is very very low pressure, so you have to do other things whilst waiting for it to run into the pan. I do not have a kettle, it’s just a pan. Then I light a match—first, light the match—then, I turn on the gas on the stove and light the gas, making sure that the match doesn’t go out. Then, while the water is heating, I take the milk out of the fridge and take the sugar bowl and set it on the table, which I’ve covered with a china blue saucer, and I rest the spoon on top of the saucer, so I know which spoon is the coffee spoon and I won’t have to wash it everyday—because, its important to save water, and doing dishes takes so much time since the water runs slow and thin and its cold, besides. There’s no hot water in the kitchen faucet. Then I cut bread and put it on a large china blue plate and I put cheese and jam on the table, sometimes also a piece of ham. Then my water is boiled and I pour it through the cone and the filter and into the glass pitcher—there is no other suitable container or pitcher. Then I pour my coffee, throw the filter and coffee grounds in the compost bucket, sit down. I sit down at the kitchen table—this alone is miraculous and unusual for me. Then I eat and drink and continue to listen to the BBC. When I’m done, which isn’t very much time later since I’m a compulsively fast eater, I wash the dishes immediately and wipe down the counter. Then I pour some juice into the glass pitcher (newly washed) and fill the rest with water (I like watered-down juice, or rather, juiced-up water). I pour myself some into a glass, take the pitcher with it, and then I go into my room, turn on my computer, and start to right on some topic, any topic.

Now I have to say, I really marvel at all this, because I am not like this is San Francisco. I cannot seem to get into the habit of anything at all there—and the result is sometimes total disaster! I mean I have absolutely no sense of these little sacred rituals. It is only here where I see to develop them and practice them.

And it is interesting how these little routines so quickly become adapted and part of one’s reality, for instance the BBC … has become such a staple part of my life that I’ve become acquainted with the daily programming. And I love the questions and the way they report and their accents and I often find myself parodying them afterwards, laughing aloud to myself—you talk aloud to yourself a lot when you live alone, so I’ve found whenever I’ve done it—like this morning, or this afternoon, rather, when I finally woke after falling asleep at 8 am—when the BBC lady was interviewing a Mongolian gentleman about the fact that the government has instated the requirement that all Mongolians have last names. And the commentator said something like, in a british accent which added to the humor, pardon me, but it did—“wasn’t it the communists who made you take away your surnames in the first place? (without letting him answer) … Wouldn’t you say, in effect, the communists destroyed your cultural identity?!” The questions were so leading, and there was clearly such a language barrier, that the man merely answered yes, and continued to speak about how last names were originally created out of the location of one’s house in relation to natural landmarks. And the disjunction between these two sets of realities was so clear, and funny, so the whole thing made me laugh …perhaps I haven’t explained myself well enough, but. I think it relates to what I was getting at before about researcher and researched and the projection of one reality onto another, how impossible it is and yet still we do it, attempt to “empower” by projecting our own language into some other reality.

I’ve been feeling emotional today, I’m sitting at the tiergarten (the golden gate park of berlin) writing this, since I exited the u-bahn and walked over here, to the side of the canal and sat down in the autumn air. It is so beautiful today, and so warm. So I’ve been feeling emotional today, really, crying at the littlest things. Like the fact that after lambasting the way American troops have little if no regard for Iraqi custom and manners, few skills at feeling people out with respect and silence and observation, and rather approach an unknown and scary situation with a macho and self-protective kind of a strut which actually does them more harm than good, though they do not realize this … (For example, when this reporter was riding in a tank with Americans Iraqis were shouting “protect us! Assist us! Work with us!” and yet the Americans rolled in with a self-righteous attitude, raising their rifles, acting like Rambo, with probably no one even translating what it was these people were saying, peacefully … I mean, I don’t have to be there to know the kind of attitude he’s talking about—to talk loudly, to take up space—even Americans in Germany are easily identified for this reason (and to top it off most of them are new Yorkers, excuse me new york friends) … In any case, after lambasting them, this BBC commentator had the courtesy to say, or the presence of mind, that though this may be an overall impression of American troops, “I do have to say that the fact is, however, after things had settled down, I got to talk to one young man, Mike, who didn’t fit that macho description at all, and showed me pictures of his wife and his son.” Which is the when I started to cry, being overly emotional today, and because as simplistic as it may sound, one of the things that makes this world so complicated is that I truly believe that most people believe what they do is for good, for someone’s betterment, in whatever way—that most of us love someone and show love, and have complex relationship and eagerness and a sense of adventure—I can see these young guys and girls who no doubt approach their mission with the same hope and expectation the way any of us would approach some huge new change in our lives, and that, even if they have to simply justify it to allay their own personal fears they must think, what we’re doing is right and we have these incredible bonds with our families and … yet! … this sense of goodness and righteousness can still manifest in such violence and poor decision making and moreover, I marvel that we can all disagree so wholeheartedly about what is right and what is good.

I would say, I know these people, I mean, I myself am these people, have engaged in things I thought were right but were not, was eager and curious and unknowing and later laughed at myself about it, or was ashamed. Unfortunately, no tragically, the stakes, in a war like in Iraq, are so high and people’s lives are being played with but essentially I think the human error that goes into creating these large scale disasters stem essentially from the same place.

And I think, and again it makes me cry to think, that I have the ability to sit here for hours and write and time and more than that the sheer desire to do so and that I have a little bit of euros in my pocket that I got from last night. And that for the first time of having traveled on my own, which I’ve done before for longer periods of time, I have more of a sense of the rightness of being alone and an appreciation as opposed to the question, how soon I need to get back, how soon I need to return to some place else and that the forward motion I desired to have is really there and not a myth or a fabrication in my mind. Just now I can hear the bells of the cathedral ringing, they are unusually beautiful and the tones darker than I remember cathedral bells being, I look up and realize that daylight is almost gone because I slept until 1:30 pm today and though I tried to rush out of the house I could not and there is this sense of urgency about me this afternoon that time would stand will and I could sort of … and again I want to cry thinking the line, “rage rage against the dying of the light” which are the words from Dylan Thomas that my father recited at his father’s funeral. And yet only the other day he said to me, when I said how much he had to live for and how he had at least thirty years of his life left, “katie, the last thirty years of your life are hell.” And then I think how it might finally be time, though I have always known that I would do so, to really sit down and right a good long letter to my father, and the thought of doing so makes tears come to my eyes again, because I think how many women have such damaged and complicated relationships with their fathers.

The change of schedule, sleeping during the daylight hours—makes me feel in a trancelike mood, three cups of coffee keep me writing vigorously though the strangeness of the light and the time maintains my trance as though jetlagged still. Boats pass on the canal and I think of Orlando and his strange beauty with a kind of painful yearning, like that I experienced as a child. That I believed I belonged in some other era and so yearned for it that is sometimes hurt and I remember writing this and the feeling of this autumn day like I have not experience since leaving the east coast.

Though I suppose one thing that is distinctly different about me now, katie as older, is that I no longer have the same anger towards the lack of time, or rather, the lack of reverence to time, that we spend so much time in absolute irreverence to what occurs around us, to some of the deepest things we love most, like the changing of the light … In fact I realize that I have an appreciation for irreverence. In fact I would say that I love absolute irreverence, masks, costumes and performance. Even as I still love those things that seem to lack all of those elements of artifice. To connect and then to disconnect, to be at constantly at battle between the desire to connect and to then escape those connections, this, today, does not feel at conflict but rather I have arrived at some kind of resolution about it.

Enough of the rambling.

I’ve found that the best way to paint my nails and actually let them dry is by painting them and then sitting down at my computer for a good hour. Typing keeps them upright and moving and basically unencumbered. If I don’t sit down at my computer after painting my nails, I am always trying to multitask … er, well, this is multitasking, but this is mutually beneficial … What I mean to say is, I appear to be unable not to multitask in general (okay, maybe with the exception of when I’m having sex, depending on how you think of multitasking and what kind of sex … anyway …) and so when I paint my nails I always ruin them soon after because I get too impatient and try to do some activity that will surely ruin them before they get a chance to dry … like cooking or dishwashing or showering or getting dressed or using the toilet or putting on a new CD.

Tonight I sit at my kitchen table listening to the jazz station—it’s really a very good station, the best station in Berlin next to the BBC, but I can’t listen to people reporting news while I’m trying to write. So jazz it is. I just spent about an hour singing and making myself after-dinner hot chocolate (notice the multi-tasking), trying to come up with some vocals to this beautiful music I got a hold of. I answered an advertisement placed by a composer/musician in need of a vocalist. We talked over the phone and then today we met in person and spent the morning listening to his music. It is really very beautiful, sort of tribal, Dead Can Dance-esque, but not overly cheesy. In a way I had this vision of me in some edgy girl rock band … but this will probably be more interesting vocally anyway. In any case, I’m developing a vocal track that goes with the music, and it is beautiful enough to inspire me to jam with it, you know, to just start singing over top of it without any specific direction from the composer. You know it reminds me of some of what I’ve heard at Hrair’s house, the use of some middle-eastern instruments, like the ude, for instance, or however you spell that. So I was sort of instantly transfixed this morning, listening, cause it brought me back to California—or rather, a spiritual home not necessarily in California, but in the location of hearts and people. Excuse the gushing.

So I made dinner for myself tonight, a real simple pasta, while listening to the BBC. I listen everyday; it’s interesting to hear how the rest of the world feels about the U.S. election (pretty grim). I feel fairly informed listening to the BBC, it’s better than NPR anyway, but the commentators are almost as smug. You know, incidentally, my parents and others are always asking me what kind of writing I do, or what I do in general, and I really write a lot everyday, always have, whether it be just in my notebook or on the computer, though its generally not edited and organized and packaged and product-ized, mostly rambling pieces like this one but in various formats and contexts. Anyway, if I sent everything and exposed you to everything it would overload your inbox but just let me know if you’re not interested in any of it, you know, things like this one, cause I can easily remedy that and take you off my email list and I won’t be offended. My life isn’t really any more or less interesting in San Francisco or Berlin or Iowa City, but being as Berlin is relatively so far away (though in our global post modern world is anything far away … sarcasm) it somehow seems more important to keep people informed as to what life is like, what I’m doing with myself (to legitimize why I’m so far away?? I’m not sure). Moreover, having no real friends yet, I have time to write about it and email you.

Right, well then (I learned that from the BBC). Since I last wrote a lot has happened here, though nothing big on the earning money front. I mean to say, I haven’t earned a cent. I’ve been on the prowl for something regular at a bar or restaurant, although that’s a bit sticky because of my lack of German skills. Still I feel confident that something will come my way. I do eat at home, or pack something, I’ve been good about that, or freeload off someone I meet. Okay, or spend like 1 Euro 50 on a dönner kebab. I’m trying to be a bit better about a normal writing schedule, waking up, making coffee and breakfast (hard roll and swiss cheese and ham) at home and then beginning to write, anything, distractedly, note-form, whatever, stream of consciousness. I’ve found that, like I’ve heard from so many writers, blocking out time to write and just writing actually does make the writing come. And even if it starts out disjointedly, I’ve been finding that I develop into a regular pattern by at maximum an hour. In the afternoon I bike over to Kreuzberg (an artsy, ethnically diverse district in East Berlin south of the area I live in), as of late, since I’ve been hanging out there a lot for various events or meetings with people or attempts to go to dance class.

I started hanging out with some people who run a performance space over in Kreuzberg. The first person I met was Krylon Superstar, a black drag queen dancer and performance artist who was performing at this crazy bar called White Trash located in Mitte (the “middle” district of Berlin). White Trash used to be a Chinese Restaurant but is now a bar and restaurant with rude tattooed bar tenders—all super hot women—and kitschy décor. Anyway, I started going over to Le’Space, as its called, to check out Krylon’s photography and was invited to come back the next Saturday to see this performance of a woman named Barbara Brockhouse, who was absolutely fabulous. She is a feminist performance artist who did something called the Secretary Show. It was basically about her life as a secretary, simple but complex, and it made me think of doing something similar about waitresses. Anyway, she sang, recited a script, I wouldn’t call it poetry exactly, but it rhymed, like Dylan’s Talking WWIII Blues—that’s a compliment on my part. That night, I met this woman Sylvia who is half Japanese and half German and speaks perfect American-English. Sylvia is working on a documentary about the making of a Japanese porn film here in Berlin, and the various “socio-political-feminist-identity-race” issues associated with that. I’m not trying to diminish her work or anyone else’s, I’m just trying to condense all this for you.

Sylvia is currently making a new film about three Japanese women in Berlin: one who believes in “true love,” one who is the owner of a brothel, and one who “lives sex”—the actress playing this part is the infamous performance artist living here in Berlin named Tokyo Rose (a Japanese knockout notorious for taking men out on dates, getting up on the table in the middle of the restaurant and doing a spontaneous table dance. Then eventually beginning to pee on her date). Tokyo Rose has apparently been kicked out of every club in Berlin and was banned permanently from one of the city’s most famous queer clubs, SO36. In any case, Sylvia and I started talking about the film and she asked me about whether or not I might be interested, as a writer, in helping her with the script, since writing is her weak point, and she wants the film to be, as she put it, sentient, complex. She and I got to talking about our mutual interest in gender and sexual politics and the creation of feminist art. It turns out that she has been working with an incredible professor here at the Berlin Art Institute named Katharina Sieverding, who apparently is one of the few professors there interested in gender-political art.

In any case, this Saturday I’m going to go back to Le’Space to see one of Sylvia’s films and a performance by Tokyo Rose, who I’ve heard has a very low sultry voice and I’m looking forward to meeting the legend though I’ve heard she’s settled down and lives in a nice apartment in Mitte now. Anyway, regarding Le’Space: So, the woman who runs the gallery/bar/performance space is named Ayana, and she runs it with her boyfriend Marco (both Americans who don’t speak a work of Deutsch). Ayana also attends classes with Katherina Sieverding as an honorary student. How does she do it? I asked Sylvia, since Ayana doesn’t speak any German. Well, apparently there are so many English speakers that many of the classes are just conducted in English. So I’m interested in attending one of her seminars if possible.

Meanwhile, Ayana and I began talking about the fact that she and her boyfriend are leaving the country to go work on this big artsy soap opera project. They are going to be located with the rest of their “team” to Togo … I know, don’t ask, I can’t remember all the details. But the point is, she asked if I had any interest in taking over the performance space. It is 680 Euros and month, in the heart of Kreuzberg, and she and her boyfriend live there and run the bar, show art, and host performing artists and writers three to four nights a week. She said that they are able to live and eat and pay rent off of the profits. So I said I was interested and low-and-behold the very next day the guy whose name is on the lease contacted me and we went out for coffee to talk business (this is what I mean by freeloading for food). So I sort of flipped out and thought, yea, I could do this, and actually for the past four to five days I began negotiating seriously. It didn’t look possible to do it alone until Juan said he would actually come run it with me. We talked it out over the phone in a series of expensive and crazy and static-filled conversations. So we were actually about to have this space in our name for an initial contract of three months. Then today, at the very last minute, another couple got chosen to do it who could just take over the entire lease indefinitely because they already have German citizenship, etc … They are going to run a record label out of there. So there were a few days of real excitement and hardly sleeping a wink, lots of phone calls everywhere and dropping cash like mad on all the expenses to communicate with people here in Berlin—cell phones are so not cheap here. And as I said I no longer have a landline available in my house.

In any case, the excitement is over, I sit here in gloves and a hat in my cold bohemian apartment in Prenzl.berg (the east berlin district I live in)—no matter, I only pay 75 euros on my room. And all in all, I have a great deal, and it may be just better in the long run if I take it one step at a time and make more contacts and just try to do my own performances at the places already available, which are many. In fact I’ve already talked to this woman at White Trash who organizes a performance art night there.

Since Juan and I negotiated about running Le’Space together, he started making plans to come out to Berlin, which haven’t been neglected, so he is actually going to come stay with me during the month of November. I am looking forward to this. I think he might find some interesting things to do musically in Berlin and perhaps I can convince him to come back. As for modern dance and contact improv classes, I’m still working on getting to my first class. I missed the first one I tried to go to ‘cause I got lost in Kreuzberg. Then yesterday when I tried to go again they had closed for a week break. This dance studio is called Tanzfabrik and it is actually adjacent to Victoria Park, which is the park my father used to go to as a child in Kreuzberg. It has this beautiful waterfall spilling down the hillside right at the very front of the part. Today I was over there and I hiked up to the top and it made me happy to be there knowing that my dad had so much history there.

Today I ordered coal—a half-ton of coal—to be delivered to my apartment so I can start lighting those coal fires and heating my house. I will be having a roommate soon too, so unfortunately that other super cheap room in my apartment is no longer available to YOU and I wish it were YOU and not “Paul from Dublin.” Just kidding, I’m sure he’s a great guy. That’s really all I know about him, except I think he’s a musician and/or a DJ. So no more strange photo-shoots at four in the morning in his empty room, ala the photos you just received and perhaps viewed. That painting, by the way—the orange and red one with the chains and me in the Brooklyn sweatshirt in front of it—is just here in my apartment and the placement of my body in relation to it was actually unintentional at the time. Sorry if that was too disturbing of a photo. In any case, a roommate also means no big room to dance in and I have to keep down the noise, especially as I sing along loudly to this music in the kitchen. Oh well, if I’m not bringing in any cash, this cheap rent is a saving grace.

The last three days really kicked my ass in terms of the cold, so then today I wore quadruple layers and of course it was much warmer, so I got all hot riding my bike around. I hate that. Tomorrow will apparently be even warmer; I figured out how to check the weather. I am getting smarter about things, though I don’t feel like my German is improving terribly, even though I have been studying a borrowed German Intro textbook. What else? I finally bought myself a map—I was very stubborn about not buying one—but I gave in. It has helped tremendously though now I’m finally starting to get this city, and I bike so much everyday, like 45 minutes to Kreuzberg. I would ideally like to live over there—it’s a mostly middle-eastern neighborhood but also lots of artists and crazy people over there—lots of great places to hang out, including famous old clubs like Wild at Heart and SO36, among others. But I have this place for awhile and if I can master this coal heating thing I may be okay through the winter. Though I have to say that it’s really frustrating not having any warm water in the kitchen sink to do dishes with. Thank god though I do have a hot shower and a toilet inside my apartment (unlike many others similar in price to mine).

[Brief diversion: I love jazz songs with really simple lyrics like: “I ask myself everyday … what’s the best thing for you … and I can see that the best thing for you is me.” Okay, and, I’m just putting this out there, but have you ever really listened to the lyrics from Fascinating Rhythm and do you get what Ella is talking about?]

I’m trying to cast nets in a lot of different directions artistically, mostly because I have no history here and it feels easier to try new things, or relatively new things. I’m working on a photography project called something like, Both Sides of the lens: the studied and the studier. It doesn’t really have to be titled but that gives you an idea as to the theme. As for writing, I applied for a position to be a book critic at the Ex-Berliner, which is the main English language magazine here in Berlin. Who knows if I can get that gig, but we’ll see. My big news regarding writing is that I had an epiphany about my next book, which I’ve already been writing—all these scraps of essays I’ve been starting and adding to probably for years. The epiphany was that I developed a title and a conceptual plan for the book as a whole. I’m going to write a series of essays called Sex Matters—Why Sexual Politics Should Matter to You. I want to talk about sexual language and communication, or lack there-of, and how our inability to talk about sex and treat sex has diverse effects, into issues that would seem to be wholly unrelated. I want it to be geared towards people who don’t think of themselves as feminists and/or don’t feel like feminism and sexual politics are relevant to their lives, etc … I believe that even among activists, politicized professionals, and other academics outside of gender studies, sexual and feminist politics are often viewed as secondary to issues of race and class. Definitely less important than foreign policy and the economy. I want to be able to relate sexual politics to a wide variety of issues, like immigration, to electoral politics, and to personal politics … interpersonal relations.

I started thinking about relating sexual politics to immigration specifically when I wrote an article this summer about how women have a hard time proving political asylum based on an experience with rape (rape used as a tactic of war) because they don’t have the vocabulary to describe in detail the kind of persecution—as it is referred to—that they experienced when they are attempting to articulate their asylum declaration to an immigration officer or lawyer. I got to thinking about how even women in my close circles would feel uncomfortable describing in detail a sexual experience—any sexual experience, good or bad—and if women who are from a supposedly “sexually liberated” country can’t do it, then what about women who come from countries that aren’t “sexually liberated.” And this reminded me of a story a friend told me about an advice nurse who couldn’t even use the word vagina when talking to her about a UTI … and so last night I had this big epiphany about how much I have to say on this topic. So I developed about 15 potential essays for the book, including an introduction and an element of creative nonfiction or lyrical essay. I want to try this project in sort of one big breath, writing more than editing and stopping. That will be new for me—I mean, look at me now, I’m sitting here describing it but not actually writing it—then if it’s a big bad mess I don’t much care. I realized how important and passionate I am about this subject and I want to be able to better articulate that. Oh, and then earlier today I was reading this great interview with director Simon McBurney: Rachel Weisz Talks With Simon McBurney (Zembla Magazine, Issue 5 Summer 2004)

So Rachel says: I think childhood is full of sexuality but it doesn’t know how to be sexual. Do you know what I mean? S: I do. I remember an encounter I had with a friend when we were nine or ten. He was describing to someone else how he masturbated. I didn’t know what they were talking about and he realized that, so he made fun of me. As a child I would say I was extremely uniformed. R: As you should be at ten. S: Well, I don’t know if you should or shouldn’t. My nephews and nieces know perfectly what all that means. But in terms of sexuality I can’t remember a time when I was not aware of it. I remember when I was eight or nine I found a naturist magazine. There were naked men and women and I found it absolutely fascinating the nakedness of the body. I folded it up and hid it in my shoe and I remember my mother finding it and not telling me until some time later, and laughing at me. The power of that, the shame, was enormous. In his writing, Bruno Schultz identifies specific moments in childhood that are extraordinarily powerful, that lay down the lines in permanent memory. R: I don’t know why we’re talking about sex—I suppose because of Measure for Measure. S: If you talk about love, you talk about sex. R: And who could be more sexual than a child? I would say children are the most sexual creatures. S: Yes, because there are no barriers.

—–

S: Maybe that’s partly what I feel about love—I’m pretty much persuaded that it’s not something you find, it is something that you make, step by step. It is a construct. R: And a collaboration? A work in progress? S: It is a kind of work of art in a way.

—–

S: That’s the great conundrum with sex. Because we know so much of love has nothing to do with sex. And yet we are constantly being invited to the idea that sex and love are the same thing. Of course they are sometimes, but mainly not.

So reading this interview I was reminded of two things: one is my essay called l-o-v-e and r-a-p-e, about the juxtaposition of (violent) sex and (true) love. I want that essay to be modified to be part of the book. The other is my childhood (and post- childhood) shame about sex … and this bizarre memory came to me. When I first started becoming aware of having sexual feelings I was terrified about the possibility that this sexuality—any sexuality—would be discovered by someone else, most specifically people who were close to me, like my parents. And the memory is of me standing at the piano singing Christmas Carols and how I was afraid that I was singing the line oh come let us adore Him too loudly, because to sing it to loudly could potentially put me at risk for exposure that I had a sexual mind. Chew on that. Hopefully not everyone had that same level of childhood shame about sexuality, but I think that many people can identify on some level.

Related to this book idea, I’m working on the fifth issue of my ‘zine, The Fabricated Love Affair Art Project. This one is going to be about the birth control pill and birth control in general, and incidentally, I’m looking for contributions. I know that there are a lot of stories out there about women’s experience with the pill, perhaps both good and bad. I want to expose more about it because I don’t think that doctors, even good female gynecologists are doing a very good job. In fact I know they’re not. So could I get some of your stories about the pill? Seriously. Please! It will only take a second, it doesn’t have to be the most polished beautiful piece of writing you’ve ever done—if you obsess over it you’ll never do it, I know how that goes. Anyway, I may just quote a section of what you write, or use a few words, or site some kind of statistic, but I want YOUR reactions to the pill—or other experience with birth control—whatever they may be, good or bad. Guys are welcome to contribute, by the way. What comes off the top of the head? I think eventually it would be important for this book as well.

The other night I finally wrote a book review of one of my most favorite books, Whores and Other Feminists as a sample book review for the Ex-Berliner. I may have shot myself in the foot but maybe I’m just what they’re looking for. In any case I thought it was important to risk it and write what I feel strongly about. The only section in the magazine, though it is politically lefty in general, that even mildly deals with gender politics is their sex column, and the columnist is a totally homophobic moron. So I would have written an angry letter in protest anyway so I decided why not try to be on the staff. Whatever.

I’m also reading, which is good. I didn’t do enough of it during the months of August and September even though I promised myself that I would. I just finished bell hooks essays called Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work. It is beautiful. I also read a short story by T.C. Boyle called “She Wasn’t Soft.” It’s about a rape and I wonder if anyone else has read it. I’m starting to read Malcolm Lowry’s, Under the Volcano. Much to do, much time, better to keep busy than not. I’m about to go dance in that big empty room, practice my turns, and do sit-ups. Then I’m going to fall asleep, I hope.

Lots of Love

katie, Kathryn, kate, kates, katesy-poo, katis, Katie M’lady, Agent q, katerinika-tika, frog