Life near the Tempelhof Airfield

This huge airfield in the middle of the booming city has always been an oddity, and during the time of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989) even a symbol of the divided world. Thanks to the Airbridge, life wasn't that miserable in the enclave of West Berlin. After reunification, Tempelhof allowed politicians to move swiftly between Bonn and Berlin, indulging in the joy of life rather than the discomfort of overland travel.

That era has ended, too, and the field is up for grabs, waiting for project developers to erect shopping malls. Luckily, things are moving slow and the field is still an oasis of emptiness, where you can skate, fly a kite, grill, do organic gardening, and chill out watching the sun set over the City.
Next to the Tempelhof Airfield, on the east side, is Neukölln, origin of Berlin and the next place to be hip, after Kreuzberg, Prenzlberg and Friedrichshain are losing some of their glory to hipsters growing up and pushing prams.

So we lived in Neukölln in a sublet flat on the 4th floor, overlooking the Tempelhof field, for one month in July 2011. It was a beautiful time. We did indeed go walk on the Airfield, we did organize a vegetarian BBQ party with Couchsurfing, made a lot of new friends, and - we were part of the locally deplored gentrification of the "Gegend".

Life is good in this part of Berlin: the old slow atmosphere with the "Eckkneipen" remains intact while sparkling new street cafés are opening and offer good coffee and laid-back afternoons of newspaper reading and reflecting on life. As everywhere in Berlin, sourcing food is easy and cheap as a supermarket is never more than a few blocks away. We preferred the Turkish supermarkets with their flat breads that we used to scoop up various kinds of humus, tabouleh, and other mediterranian delicacies from our houselord's blender. Neukölln has movie theatre's, nice parks, canals, the bustling Karl Marx Strasse, the famed "Sonnenallee" (where I used to live between 2002 and 2006), and with the U6, U7 or U8 as well as a number of metrobuses at your doorstep it never takes long to travel to, say, the Museumsinsel, Berlin's famous nightclubs, Ku'Damm, or to whereever you think you need to go that is outside of Neukölln.

"Neukölln - Don't try to pronounce it, live it."

August 20. Decadence.

Berlin and getting organized. Perhaps I have developed a sharp nose for decadence, a term I have a hard time defining by the way. But let's give it a try, you have seen weirder things at this spot. So, what then, is decadence? A bundle of images comes to my mind. People critizising everybody else, making cynical remarks as they devour lamb chops with slimy green mint sauce dripping from their chubby chin. I want you to get the picture. People moaning and groaning about life, from behind their fat television set, their butts pushed deep into their crème-colored couch. People telling you the same plan over and over again and you know they'll never try to make it come true. People debating on the internet and insulting each other in a horrendously blunt ignorance of etiquette. No I won't stop. I am talking about real people and it can be painful but I don't care. See, I don't go ad personam, let me finish the list of images of decadence. People writing God knows what and tell you it's the most important thing in the world they won't laugh the Dionysian laugh about the little fancy vain theater in their heads and get over it. People pretending to be smart entrepreneurs but don't ask if their brainchild is a real contribution as long as they can pay their beers and cigarettes. People working on idle jobs making up a flawless battery of excuses why they don't stand up for their cause. People who want the best for somebody else but blend out the possibility that somebody else's voice conveys a truth that may enrich theirs. People who let you work for them for nothing and then never mention it. People who naturally dominate you without questioning this behavior let alone being playful about it. People who write hateful obituaries about other people, all well-fed individuals, pampered as they are and slurping slimy oysters. People who are working their asses off and flirt with the thought that it makes them morally superior to those who don't. People treating the defence of their academic essay as the defence of their life, degenerated epigons of self-importance who have never seen a gun or a death camp.

For me, the solution is simple: I have to go decadence out of the way. It would be great if you can help. I can sleep on your kitchen floor for instance, and keep the mice away. And I know how to handle a broom.

August 19. Getting organized #3.

Berlin and getting organized. I must be riding the metro today, going from meeting to meeting, frantically fighting the depression that is luring in every corner of this city. It is dangerous to be here! How exciting! Dangerous, despite all the friendly people that seem to care about you because you can program their computers. Dangerous, despite all the good friends that seem to care a lot about you because you can stay with them, despite all the smiles you get from far friends that are quite busy. Je regrette, et j'écris:

"schlanke finger näher den klängen als der luft."

Those tender fingers, that seem to be more close to the sounds than to the air, what does that mean? It means a lot of things and I leave that to the imagination of the reader. The fingers are playing a cello perhaps, and as they touch the strings they move through the air but they are already with the sounds that the instrument will produce. Or the fingers are playing a trumpet, and they are closer to the resulting sound than to the air that flows below them. Or the fingers belong to lovers who touch each other's lips while they whisper something. Or the fingers are dead and the person whose body lies there has gone to another dimension where sounds replace matter. The line is, by the way, written by the 18th-century German poet, L.E. KIMA (1779-1869).

August 18. Getting organized #2.

Berlin and getting organized. Welcome back to my depressing transmission. It will become juicy again I promise. Just have to get on the move again. What's wrong with running anyway? And your unabilities, you better understand that they have a function too. Aren't you a bundle of functional fiber? You have to understand the function of every cell of you, in order to master the "grand function".

The eighteenth of August, two thousand and nine. A day on death-row. Executed only a few days after, when the firesquads of angst will shoot it into oblivion. Is there beauty in this day? Most probably, yes. Black is not her face, nor does she smile morbidly. There are messengers of beauty in this day, they may be fruit flies with their microscopically small hairs, sitting on a green leaf, they may be some portrait images flipped over by the wind that visits the room, they may be old breadcrumbs left on the tablecloth. There are fond memories of this day but they are not in my head. I want to know why. The past, after all, is not an army attacking us from behind. Does anyone have memories of this day?

August 17. Getting organized #1.

Berlin and getting organized. Sometimes I think I can't have real interest in anything. As soon as I try to pursue who knows what, the history of the Roman Empire, a specific problem in quantum mechanics, Goethe's Farbenlehre, Hindi, elementary astrophysics, up-to-date fysiology of the brain, Baudelaire's poetry, an exotic class of differential equations, the problem of truth, ancient Hebrew, it all becomes a farce to me. I guess that's because I'm operating on a low power level. By the way that's interesting. Have you ever noticed that we all operate on our specific power level and we might or might not find people who share this? At first you start to collect symptoms of this power level thing. How often do you cut off each other? How well do you remember things? Do you walk next to each other? Who is waiting for whom? What kind of questions do you ask in everyday life? That kind of things. And the theory that fits those phenomena is the theory of power levels. If you're very lucky, you get to talk about it with your friend and you can try to analyze on which power level you are both operating and if that is compatible, just like electrical appliances have to be compatible. You can use a 230V plug with a 220V machine, but don't plug a 50V device. You know what I mean.

So, I spend this day in Berlin and it is only after two weeks that I come to write about it. I totally forgot by then what I have done. Did that happen to me "on the road"? No. And I know why, o yes, I know why.

August 16. And laziness strikes first...

Good breakfast... oh those lazy days. I try to write at least a bit, but feel dumb due to the lack of many factual knowledge that I once obtained. It is in some coffee house I work and spend my day. It is the same thing I always do, in Buenos Aires, in Seoul, in Moscow, Lissabon, Mexico City - and it works here too. This is how I conquer the depressing mantra echoing up from the prewar sewers of this place: continuing with what I'm working on, and hallelujah, it seems to work. Now I can stand every trial.

I see a random man, an older man of nongermanic ethnicity and his his movements are gentle, elegant. Here I am, in my "home" city and still the traveler, the eternal traveler. I do what I do, order a cup of coffee, review writings, create new pages. There is the feeling of liberation. I listen to modern Russian music, proud of the manifold cultural contexts I have been exposed to, and that have kept my mind open.

August 15. Back? Am I back?

Happily I arrive in Berlin, Michelsberg or something, a small village on the southern ring, from where a hypothetical train could lead me to the centre. I sleep on a park bench for several hours, step on the train that has become real dead-tired and go to my friends' place to surprise them. How warm a welcome they give me, I am very grateful for that. We have a lot to tell each other and we hug in admiration.

Now the first thing I do as an individual action is to walk around in Berlin, to see how it is. I go to a supermarket and buy a beer, clip open the bottle and pour the contents right down my throat. This is Berlin, ey Alter! De Olle Kamiel isch zurück. I enjoy it for a couple of seconds, and that's that. I must tell you, as I walk out of that supermarket, the one I went to every single day during my down-phase, I am in a good mood. I see a smiling woman at the checkout counter and she obviously belongs to the beautiful dog that lies unleashed at the flower stall. The guard has begun explaining her that the dog should be leashed. And there am I, seeing the law-abiding German that reminds me of the strangeness I felt and the depressions I went through, there stand I, and say "It is a beautiful and calm dog". A beautiful and calm dog won't do anything, and come on, he can be sleeping without a leash in front of the sunflower vases, CAN'T HE? The guard looks at me and takes me on. Within thirty seconds he has thrown a battery of legislative arguments of why he should insist on the dog's enleashment. If all dogs would be... and what if children get bitten... and it's just a rule... and my boss... and I am here to keep... and my boss... So I engage, and with humour. You know what I tell him? So your boss is not as calm as that dog? Always address a German's superior if you talk to him. Then I leave the supermarket, giving the guard an opportunity to criticize me buy attempting to but a cup of yoghurt in the pocket of my jeans. "I wouldn't do that if I were you" he says. On my way to my old apartment, where I want to pick up some post I do put the yoghurt in my pocket and it doesn't tear open. Then I go to my friends' place and when I try the key the yoghurt falls on the floor and splashes open leaving white stains on the mat. The guard has been right. So I guess the dog should be on a leash to. What have I to refer to? A yoghurt container that has splashed open on the floor. What does he have? Laws, epistles, paragraphs. This is me. And I won't change too much.

As for that evening, it is very nice. We have good talks and I admire Sebastian when he kicks off one of his brilliant monologues about the essential steps toward the development of writing in greater Babylon, the brainlike nerves in hymenopters, Ciaocescu's terror, the industrial history of Berlin and its housing, a foreign exchange rate wrapper, mildew, the banking crisis, scientific social websites, classification systems, and much more.

I work late on the computer, in a room freed from wasps by a skillful hand holding a folded magazine's brute force.

August 13. Hardcore Hitchin'

Hitchin' back to Berlin hardcore. I am a thirty-year-old man and her

e I am sticking out my thumb in need for a ride back to the city that depressed me so much. I have to get some stuff done, there is a lot of stuff to be done. Preparations. Rearmament. Make sure I'm good to go. Be a faithful jolly Jesus.

"dead is the letter

and the letter brings death

upon those who sold

their souls to the word

alive is the letter

and the letter brings life

upon those who kill and kill again

the soul they inflicted upon the word"

What I'm saying is that when we wake up as beasts every

day, the whole advent of language remains something LIVELY and animates us.

The truck driver is a nice guy I can tell though we can hardly understannd each other. We drive through heavy rain and his windshield wiper breaks. What he does is he pulls over his truck and repairs it with some toothpicks. I offer him a hair band for which he is grateful but it won't really help. Anyway, I like the improvising and it's quite interesting that the driver of such a mighty machine doesn't have a better option than toothpicks when he needs to repair his windshield wipers. The ride by the way, goes through all the Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia, Lituania, in that order, and I am dropped off at a Polish service station where I lie down on a row of blue chairs.