A Labyrinth, Not a Maze
Somehow, I always wind up starting these updates on a train. I'm on my way back to Berlin via Kassel, the city of my grandfather's grandfather Albert Jüngst, who had to flee to Wisconsin after fighting on the losing side of Germany's 1848 Revolution. Though a lot of his Kassel was blown up in the Second World War, I'd still like to visit it for real sometime. I feel an odd pull there, some circle waiting for completion.
Today is the third leg of a week-long excursion, a triangle with points Waldfrieden, Munich, Berlin. Waldfrieden again, this time for their big yearly festival, Wonderland -- smaller and half as long as last month's Fullmoon Festival in Wittstock -- Alt-Daber, an abandoned Soviet airfield two hours out of Berlin --
-- oh yeah, I never wrote about that, because the last time I posted, I had one foot out the door to go there. Six days of camping in very strange, changeable, but mainly rather cold weather. (Unless it was smokin' hot.) YAY for spending the extra Euros on good camping gear. My pup tent made it through several torrential downpours without leaking. Once, I had just crawled in and zipped up when the rain bucketed down. Felt smug for the first five minutes, then wondered if it was ever going to stop.
It did. Mostly.
Hey, Man, I Was at Wittstock
Among the abandoned hangars, four separate areas were set up for different subgenres of psychedelic trance: so-called "full-on" -- fast and full of dramatic sounds and gestures; progressive/electro -- fewer bpm, more intricate rhythmic counterpoint against minimal melodic material; dark ("killer") psy -- the trance equivalent of thrash metal, machine-gun drums, sci-fi movie samples, and a running squeeze-toy sonic narrative; and the chill tent, ironically the warmest place in the encampment, playing a steady diet of calm(er) but equally weird ambient music. The hangars by-and-large separated the subgenres from one another acoustically, though if you wanted wind and cacophony, you could climb the grass-overgrown hangars. Down in the increasingly dusty Wild Wild East landscape, you'd see the roofs of trailers and plastic tarps harbouring all the gypsy caravans and last chance saloons against Wittstock's cruel and unusual weather.
Vendors lined the pathways to the music "tents." Only the chill tent was an actual Big Top. The rest were open to the sky, with nylon sails, lights, and neuron-deco strung up to simulate solidity, or at least thereness, Day-Glo carousels without wooden horses to ride.
For six days, the beat went on, round the clock. Every day, the program announced an official pause between 11am and 2pm, obviously intended for sleep (!), but as the festival went on, the pause went forgotten. I just slept whenever I felt like it. My tent was nearest the progressive area and I came to embrace the thundering earth as a sweet hypnotic lullaby.
I met five Sebastians of varying nicknames in one day, Kerensa Stephens playing with Terra Nine from Australia, a Dutch guy with a brass hash pipe that looked like a nautical instrument, and diverse freaks. I got addicted to the Supernova, a hot chocolate and chai drink in the Last Chance Café -- there was nothing like it especially at 3am when it was pitch-black and butt-cold and you knew there was no going on without it -- and I'm sorry I can't remember the real name of the place or where it was from (not Berlin... dammit) because I'd have moved in with them by now and become their dog. Maybe it's a good thing I can't remember.
Cosmosis played live, they were great, Peter Gun was great, I wanted to hear Sensifeel but I think rain gypped them out of their performance. After a while the program melted into a sonic continuum in the sun and rain and dust, and I gravitated to the beat I liked best, through Tibetan prayer flags, the blissful unwashed love children of Dr. Seuss and Tolkien in their pointy elfin hats and creatively seamed rags, Ganesha T-shirts, kaleidoscopic water bongs hanging off their belts, bicycles painted fluorescent green and covered in twirling corkscrew streamers, fire performers, some skilled, some unfortunate, and the whole post-apocalyptic circus of us, to whom Mad Max was a rank fuckin' amateur.
And on the last day I surprised myself by not wanting to go home, which was fine because at festival's end lurked the afterparty. Basically, this meant all the diehards cramming themselves into the chill tent and bouncing up and down in place. Because after a six-day party, we had forgotten how to do anything else. In any case, I stayed, I danced, I finally went to ground, missing the heartbeat of the progressive tent thumping me to sleep.
This was the first music festival I can remember where I didn't play music myself. I missed it, but found out I am not too bad at camping, even alone. An old friend of mine from New York once said she tried camping at the behest of her boyfriend, got to the forest and discovered she wasn't going to have an actual bed or roof or anything, so she called a cab to take her back to Brooklyn. It cost $150.
Now That's Urban
Back in Berlin, I realised why I was more into afterparty than aftermath: unfinished bidness. I'd planned to stay in Germany for three months, see whether it was working, then go back to NYC in late August, either to resume my New York life, or disassemble it and show up in Berlin in October again.
A few things had not occurred to me: (1) You can't see whether something is working in three months. Unless people are shooting at you, it's more about whether you see the point in staying or not, and taking it from there. Which requires faith. (2) The definition of "working" morphs as you go. Somewhere along the line, I'd unwittingly set the bar higher for myself: smooth out all logistics within three months!
I forgot: beginnings are hard. I made a beginning a long time ago in New York. Though I got a job on the first day, it was as a foot courier, and brought in $30 for a 10-hour day. A week later, I upgraded to seasonal worker at a whole $4.25 an hour. And so on. Point is, it took a while to move from "OK for now" to actually "OK." And that was in a city where I knew the language perfectly and was a citizen. On the other hand, I'd moved to New York with $1000 and immediately over half of that went to rent. Also, I had no work experience. I have quite a lot now, and I'm also a bit better financially padded, so theoretically, I don't have to run out and take the first unskilled labour away from some German kid who needs it more than me anyway.
Nonetheless, I like to do my panicking in advance, and so, in old-skool Kierkegaardian style I worked out my salvation in fear and trembling on the internet, looking for jobs and an apartment for October. The age of instant communication still requires quite a lot of waiting for answers, half of which never materialised, and my mistake consisted of too much vigil. Like everything else, the internet is a double-edged sword. It can connect you and it can cut you off. Live and learn: the best way to deal with it is to sow your seeds online, and then go away and let them grow. And when you go away, hopefully it's somewhere interesting that expands your mind, or feeds your dragon, or amuses you... or at least distracts you from pointlessly worrying.
Not to be too hard on myself, I did produce another chapter of my new novel in a week while I was sweating The Logistics. And after a week under open sky, maybe I felt like being under a roof for a bit. In fact, I found myself under many different roofs.
Apartment Soup
None of the ads I answered for jobs got back to me. A bit under half of the people I contacted about apartments for October answered: one that looked great on paper (or in pixels), a one-bedroom in a vibrant neighbourhood, in reality a depressing, bullet-hole-riddled little cave with a ripply cement floor and a postage-stamp-size kitchen, sunless bathroom, and tiny bedroom with a musty-smelling loft bed. Even the large sunny living room, plainly the selling point, had a stunning view of the building's garbage area. The skanky grey rug that looked like the dirty pelts of several Eeyores hastily flayed and sewn together didn't help.
Logistically, the place would have solved my housing issue -- no problem bringing Cricket, my cat -- but when I pictured myself returning to the place in October, my soul kind of shriveled.
Then there were the others: a beautiful penthouse in a dead neighbourhood which also would have accepted Cricket, but the common areas were Eurosmoke Central; a decent-sized room in a beautiful not-dead neighbourhood, but next to the playroom of the renter's 3-year-old son... eh-heh... who was also afraid of animals. The prize goes to the "medical doctor on assignment in West Africa" renting a two-bedroom place in Friedrichshain for 650€/month who called back, and when I asked to see the place, said: "I want you to go right now and send me 1150€ via Western Union."
Do people actually fall for this stuff?
Saw a movie in Potsdamer Platz, Die Welle, story adapted from Todd Strasser's The Wave. Afterward, I discovered that my mobile phone had cleverly kept secret a message from a potential employer two weeks earlier. Crap. I returned the message even then, but heard nothing further.
That Saturday, Ginger Bear texted, inviting me to an open-air techno party. We met, and the minute we got there he talked with other people the entire time. Puzzling, but whatever... I took matters into my own hands and met another female music producer, Laura. Later, I got a final guilty message from the Bear: "Sorry for not talking with you. Guess whoever wants my attention shouldn't go out with me to clubs." Haven't heard from him since.
The last apartment I visited was a six-month sublet in a small 2-bedroom in one of my favourite neighbourhoods. A bit squeezy, but nice enough. The roommate wouldn't have minded Cricket. But, as I found out the next morning by email, she felt she had too little in common with me. Thus, the one place I felt I could live with Cricket there fell through.
Hey, at least they answered. Quickly, even.
Cargo Jebus and the Final Fantasy
Videogame manufacturers try to program their creations to produce a 70% success rate. Too much win, and the game is boring. Too much lose, and it's frustrating.
There is a certain point at which Lose scrolls across the screen of your mind in bold capital letters. And if you are the kind of person that seeks "confirmation from the universe" in strokes of luck, you begin to wonder if you aren't being sent a message.
You could, of course, also regard it as a test. Or as nothing. If nobody's in charge of The Universe's broadcasting system, it's all just random, isn't it? I haven't completely decided this question. If there's a "higher power," does he/she/it help you get a parking space? Too insignificant? How about helping you win the Lotto, then? Someone who used to be close to me believes yes, though his theory's only been borne out on the parking space question -- he's still waiting to hear back about the Lotto. But if you're "doing the right thing," does The Universe reward you by mysteriously making things fall into place? Even people I know who don't consider themselves "religious" or superstitious talk this way: "Well, I threw him out and it must have been The Right Thing to Do, because the very next day a new roommate showed up on my doorstep!"
Thanks, Cargo Jebus!
So in addition to the actual difficulties, now you have to worry about what The Universe thinks of your plans. Which must make faith in yourself awfully earthly and secular: what you want to do is more important than some perceived Universal Opinion.
But I didn't have that kind of faith that week. Everything was unsettled, difficult, unfamiliar. 2007 had brought change after change: band breakup after ten years, layoff, divorce. Did I need to move to Europe, too? Was I nuts? What did I belong to anymore? I felt alone, not part of anything, unable to make contact, a mote of dust floating in outer space. Should I shelve this videogame? It's getting predictable: you lose. Who programmed this, anyway?
Anxiety robbed me of dreams, stung me awake, shortened my breath. Two of my best friends helped me through this, as did two quotes from Alex Grey, advising artists:
Keep going. Never give up. Your life is a labyrinth, not a maze. Dedicate your work to something higher than yourself...
...commit to what your imagined highest possibility is... listen very deeply and look to see what you are being guided towards. You can't always be super clear about these things. It can be very challenging. I mean, it is for me.
I found it oddly comforting that even Alex Grey admitted the difficulty of discernment. Many others seem to equate faith with Knowing and Not Questioning, whereas the more answers I get, the more questions I have.
The Breathing
You can live without answers for a while, but not without breath. I answered anxiety with a meditation: Confidence in, fear out.
At first not much happened; then gradually I found extra room in myself, filling my mind and my lungs with air and light, sweeping out dread. Inhale; exhale. Through my heart chakra, I drew confidence and peace from deep within the earth. Out of my crown chakra, I released everything I needed to let go, all the self-judgment and things I could not control.
Housekeeping, in a way. Removing the onus of self.
I am not singled out for punishment by The Universe because I am not perfectly together or "doing the right thing." I am a child of the earth like any other. I don't have to impress myself to earn the right to be alive. And I don't have to have all the answers. Life does not yield answers immediately, if ever. Certainty is an illusion. Everything changes.
Faith is not built on some eternal rock of ages. Faith is taking the next breath.
Confidence In, Fear Out
I pried myself off the internet and met with friends.
While I was out, a web company answered my inquiry, and set up an interview.
Wi. went out to a café with me. "If you don't get this job, you'll get another," she said. "You can do a lot of stuff. Here is how you get a job in Berlin. First, look up places you might like to work. Then put on nice clothes, and go to the places with your résumé, and say: 'Hi there! Hey, how's it looking here? Do you need anybody? Ich rocke diese Firma -- I'll rock this firm... I am supi-dupi!' Then give them your résumé. Someone will call you back. Then you go there and try it out for a week or two, and if it works, you have a job."
By day I explored Berlin by myself. You'd think interacting with architecture would be the easiest level of getting to know a city, but I realised I had forgotten to go inside a lot of places I saw. I started with churches. Not in hopes of tracking down Cargo Jebus, but because architects tend to put out their best stuff when the client is God.
By night I explored Berlin with Jenner. We went to Teufelssee one night with everything we needed for a safari adventure except a can of mace, which wouldn't have mattered so much if it weren't for the wild pigs.
Berlin is having a Wildschwein problem lately. Nature is reclaiming the city. There are more wild pigs than food for them these days, so they come a-foraging in the city. We heard skittering in the dark trees lining the road. I grabbed Jenner. "Are we stupid?" Jenner asked rhetorically. We took the risk and came out all right by the side of the lake, a skyful of stars shining down on us. In retrospect, it was worth a bit of stupid. But next time: mace.
I saw posters for meditation lessons, and went. Added some new exercises to my list. Also, it got me inside again, not just as an observer but a seeker finally among other seekers.
Got to know my current roommate Philipp. We talked about work and politics and life, and one night he did some spontaneous research on the internet to find out what social entitlements I can get as a non-citizen. Under certain conditions, the same as a citizen. Germany has the wacky idea that people shouldn't starve on the streets if the income thing isn't working out. I'm hoping never to have to ask, but still, realising Philipp was thinking about my survival here made me feel like I wasn't, after all, in outer space.
A Labyrinth, Not a Maze: Wonderland
Back to the beginning now -- the triangular excursion I was on when I realised I hadn't explained jolly anything about the last month. Waldfrieden, Munich, Berlin: music festival, music rehearsal, musical chairs.
Waldfrieden Wonderland: another open-air music festival. The online weather forecast a few days before in nearby Osnabrück wasn't promising: tiny graphics of raw grey clouds spewing dreariness. I also had a telltale sore point in my throat that made me consider blowing the whole thing off. Fortunately, I had already ordered my tickets, so I and my old buddy the Giant Camping Backpack were on the train again Friday morning.
Four hours and as many trains later I touched down in bucolic Lemförde. I shared a taxi with four other festivalgoers with whom I found common ground in several senses -- we set up our tents together. "You'll meet a lot of people here easily," said Nicki. "Nice atmosphere." Two of my companions, Ant and Linda, were at their first Waldfrieden. "You absolutely must see the forest, then," I told them. "It's beautiful. And there's magic there, too. Do you want to go with me?"
They were enthusiastic, so we went right away during daylight for a first look, getting our bearings, and then planned a sunset trip for the next day so we could stomp around to the music beforehand. Wandering into the festival area, we discovered Nicki was right; meeting people was easy -- good energy flowing between people, everyone friendly, open, looking forward to the music. In comparison, Fullmoon was larger, more impersonal; or was I in a better place myself? A virtuous circle was at work, sweeping me up, outward and forward without fear, my joy unguarded and drawing others in. Nobody was afraid to show their happiness.
The music and the dancing went on past time and weariness and any sense of normality, outside and inside, shod and barefoot, up grassy hillsides and in the midst of trees, kicking up wet sand, throwing down bales of straw so people didn't wind up wading hip-deep through mud. And all of us smiling at each other in the rain or moonlight or the rising sun...
In Motion, When Is Where
And on the second evening, Ant and Linda and Natalia came together at mountain's foot, and there we ate a very light supper.
Through root and fern and ivy we ascended to a dirt road on the mountain ridge leading to the summit. The friendly magic of old and young trees surrounded us. Spaces in the branches overhead opened to still-blue sky. Ant went along pointing out the eldest trees and the orphaned young saplings that entwined them, then climbing and jumping off piles of felled trunks. Distant and far below beat the insistent heart of our alien music. Elated and elevated, we found a crossroads when the magic of the woods was strongest (in motion, when is where), and there we waited.
Through my transparent eyelids, a path opened before me, paved in yellow ingots with black spines. Cities and temples of light spiraled up, a cluster of circles escaping higher into the darkening sky, emanating filigree lines like ripples in space. The Goddess entered her temple in the east. Face hidden, she wore robes of sunlight, her sleeves trailing into the lucid sea below, light dissolving to water.
Staircases expanded like accordions, morphing into unknown alphabets. A single black room flashed, its only furniture a table, a vase and the photograph of a laughing woman. The scriptural graffiti of all peoples formed, split, and tumbled over the walls of my eyelids. "If only I could paint this," I told Ant and Linda, who were interpreting the hand signals the trees made towards the sky.
We all linked arms and descended the mountain, a togetherness I have long craved, forged in the most exquisite weirdness. Liberté, étrangeté, fraternité! By now it was quite dark except for the stones in the path shining like stars. Gliding over the lambent stones, I felt like an airplane cruising far above a lamplit city. Magic glistened in the grass, in the dark between the trees, a tingling magenta energy. Plants with long ears reached out eagerly towards us. We swung laughing away. Man-made lights ahead caught the undersides of trees, painting them Day-Glo green. The music thickened at our approach. Treble shimmered; bass notes provided gravity, then suspended it.
We sat on the hillside above the outdoor dance floor. A caterpillar winking one googly eye rippled up to me and stuck out a tiny tongue. I was helpless with laughter.
It got cold on the hillside, so we went back to Ant and Linda's tent, lit candles and boiled water for tea. The camping stove in front of the candles threw the shadow of a silly-looking alien with a ridged helmet, à la Marvin the Martian, onto the tent wall. While we were laughing our asses off, an elf fresh off the dance floor, wearing a fuzzy, pointed orange cap, came by and saw the shadow too, since it had soaked through the canvas. He stuck his head into the tent. "Congratulations!" he shouted.
Ant managed to stop laughing long enough to say, "It's our new housepet!"
"You'll have to feed him cheese, and brush his tail!" said the elf, and galloped off, leaving us rolling on the floor crying laughter, gasping for breath.
To become serious again, I had to look into the candles. Light-flowers bloomed out of the flames, thick and patterned in tiny hexagons. When the candles finally sputtered out, Ant and Linda went to sleep. I was going to, myself, but the music was irresistible, so I wandered happily about until a bit before dawn, then crawled into my pup tent and slept.
Clean is Boring
There were other adventures, of course, fitting for this mass play-date of our inner children, dancing barefoot in the mud, launching spaceships, turning into cartoon characters, riding gryphons, time-traveling, kissing the sky, etc. After the inevitable afterparty, I had an early train to Munich for another three-day rehearsal.
I usually stay with Sarah, but she wasn't there, so I got to stay in the coolest place on earth (besides the forest in Waldfrieden), Michael Popp's music studio. Permit me a generalisation. Germany is all about closed doors opening up on excellently quirky rooms. The studio was one of these rooms, behind a closed door, up a spiral staircase and right underneath a roof, so the ceiling was nice and slanty. (I love that.) There were computers, lutes, flutes and guitars, audio equipment snarled in cables, closets full of musical scores, bows, a bagpipe, an overflowing desk, windows full of sunlight, and, tucked in a corner, a bed. If you brought pastries and coffee by, you'd have just about everything you'd need to survive. Except the bathtub, which was in the kitchen downstairs, behind another closed door or two.
After rehearsals during the day, Michael kept me company, dinner once at an Arabic place run by Turks, and spaghetti the next evening at his house, his little daughter Laetitia running around charming us. Some talk was bandied about doing some electronic music together. If it meant me coming to Munich for a while, I'd be down with it even though I'd miss Berlin's feral graffiti. Wherever I can make music is where I want to be. Michael himself had lived in Berlin once, when a grim wall ran through it. "Really," he confided, "Berlin is for students, or posing as a revolutionary or a punk rocker." I didn't bother telling him that many Berliners in turn seem to find Munich "bourgeois" and don't mind saying so. As a building in Berlin - Kreuzberg reads, "CLEAN is BORING." Guess there's a reason why the cities are located at opposite ends of the country...
And Now, Some Closure
Shelter: Jenner had a room free in her apartment, and offered it to me. The only wrinkle is, she's allergic to cats. Other than that, it's a resounding Hell Yeah. I'll need to find a place in the U.S. for Cricket for at least six months, but at least I'm living with a friend in a really nice place, for cheap.
Income: I interviewed at the web company job, but they wanted someone right away, not in October, so I didn't get it. But hey: I'm supi-dupi -- I'll rock some other firm.
New York: Coming back on Thursday for a month. Then it's back to Germany again, no idea how long. I'm playing it by ear. And not forgetting to breathe.
Today is the third leg of a week-long excursion, a triangle with points Waldfrieden, Munich, Berlin. Waldfrieden again, this time for their big yearly festival, Wonderland -- smaller and half as long as last month's Fullmoon Festival in Wittstock -- Alt-Daber, an abandoned Soviet airfield two hours out of Berlin --
-- oh yeah, I never wrote about that, because the last time I posted, I had one foot out the door to go there. Six days of camping in very strange, changeable, but mainly rather cold weather. (Unless it was smokin' hot.) YAY for spending the extra Euros on good camping gear. My pup tent made it through several torrential downpours without leaking. Once, I had just crawled in and zipped up when the rain bucketed down. Felt smug for the first five minutes, then wondered if it was ever going to stop.
It did. Mostly.
Hey, Man, I Was at Wittstock
Among the abandoned hangars, four separate areas were set up for different subgenres of psychedelic trance: so-called "full-on" -- fast and full of dramatic sounds and gestures; progressive/electro -- fewer bpm, more intricate rhythmic counterpoint against minimal melodic material; dark ("killer") psy -- the trance equivalent of thrash metal, machine-gun drums, sci-fi movie samples, and a running squeeze-toy sonic narrative; and the chill tent, ironically the warmest place in the encampment, playing a steady diet of calm(er) but equally weird ambient music. The hangars by-and-large separated the subgenres from one another acoustically, though if you wanted wind and cacophony, you could climb the grass-overgrown hangars. Down in the increasingly dusty Wild Wild East landscape, you'd see the roofs of trailers and plastic tarps harbouring all the gypsy caravans and last chance saloons against Wittstock's cruel and unusual weather.
Vendors lined the pathways to the music "tents." Only the chill tent was an actual Big Top. The rest were open to the sky, with nylon sails, lights, and neuron-deco strung up to simulate solidity, or at least thereness, Day-Glo carousels without wooden horses to ride.
For six days, the beat went on, round the clock. Every day, the program announced an official pause between 11am and 2pm, obviously intended for sleep (!), but as the festival went on, the pause went forgotten. I just slept whenever I felt like it. My tent was nearest the progressive area and I came to embrace the thundering earth as a sweet hypnotic lullaby.
I met five Sebastians of varying nicknames in one day, Kerensa Stephens playing with Terra Nine from Australia, a Dutch guy with a brass hash pipe that looked like a nautical instrument, and diverse freaks. I got addicted to the Supernova, a hot chocolate and chai drink in the Last Chance Café -- there was nothing like it especially at 3am when it was pitch-black and butt-cold and you knew there was no going on without it -- and I'm sorry I can't remember the real name of the place or where it was from (not Berlin... dammit) because I'd have moved in with them by now and become their dog. Maybe it's a good thing I can't remember.
Cosmosis played live, they were great, Peter Gun was great, I wanted to hear Sensifeel but I think rain gypped them out of their performance. After a while the program melted into a sonic continuum in the sun and rain and dust, and I gravitated to the beat I liked best, through Tibetan prayer flags, the blissful unwashed love children of Dr. Seuss and Tolkien in their pointy elfin hats and creatively seamed rags, Ganesha T-shirts, kaleidoscopic water bongs hanging off their belts, bicycles painted fluorescent green and covered in twirling corkscrew streamers, fire performers, some skilled, some unfortunate, and the whole post-apocalyptic circus of us, to whom Mad Max was a rank fuckin' amateur.
And on the last day I surprised myself by not wanting to go home, which was fine because at festival's end lurked the afterparty. Basically, this meant all the diehards cramming themselves into the chill tent and bouncing up and down in place. Because after a six-day party, we had forgotten how to do anything else. In any case, I stayed, I danced, I finally went to ground, missing the heartbeat of the progressive tent thumping me to sleep.
This was the first music festival I can remember where I didn't play music myself. I missed it, but found out I am not too bad at camping, even alone. An old friend of mine from New York once said she tried camping at the behest of her boyfriend, got to the forest and discovered she wasn't going to have an actual bed or roof or anything, so she called a cab to take her back to Brooklyn. It cost $150.
Now That's Urban
Back in Berlin, I realised why I was more into afterparty than aftermath: unfinished bidness. I'd planned to stay in Germany for three months, see whether it was working, then go back to NYC in late August, either to resume my New York life, or disassemble it and show up in Berlin in October again.
A few things had not occurred to me: (1) You can't see whether something is working in three months. Unless people are shooting at you, it's more about whether you see the point in staying or not, and taking it from there. Which requires faith. (2) The definition of "working" morphs as you go. Somewhere along the line, I'd unwittingly set the bar higher for myself: smooth out all logistics within three months!
I forgot: beginnings are hard. I made a beginning a long time ago in New York. Though I got a job on the first day, it was as a foot courier, and brought in $30 for a 10-hour day. A week later, I upgraded to seasonal worker at a whole $4.25 an hour. And so on. Point is, it took a while to move from "OK for now" to actually "OK." And that was in a city where I knew the language perfectly and was a citizen. On the other hand, I'd moved to New York with $1000 and immediately over half of that went to rent. Also, I had no work experience. I have quite a lot now, and I'm also a bit better financially padded, so theoretically, I don't have to run out and take the first unskilled labour away from some German kid who needs it more than me anyway.
Nonetheless, I like to do my panicking in advance, and so, in old-skool Kierkegaardian style I worked out my salvation in fear and trembling on the internet, looking for jobs and an apartment for October. The age of instant communication still requires quite a lot of waiting for answers, half of which never materialised, and my mistake consisted of too much vigil. Like everything else, the internet is a double-edged sword. It can connect you and it can cut you off. Live and learn: the best way to deal with it is to sow your seeds online, and then go away and let them grow. And when you go away, hopefully it's somewhere interesting that expands your mind, or feeds your dragon, or amuses you... or at least distracts you from pointlessly worrying.
Not to be too hard on myself, I did produce another chapter of my new novel in a week while I was sweating The Logistics. And after a week under open sky, maybe I felt like being under a roof for a bit. In fact, I found myself under many different roofs.
Apartment Soup
None of the ads I answered for jobs got back to me. A bit under half of the people I contacted about apartments for October answered: one that looked great on paper (or in pixels), a one-bedroom in a vibrant neighbourhood, in reality a depressing, bullet-hole-riddled little cave with a ripply cement floor and a postage-stamp-size kitchen, sunless bathroom, and tiny bedroom with a musty-smelling loft bed. Even the large sunny living room, plainly the selling point, had a stunning view of the building's garbage area. The skanky grey rug that looked like the dirty pelts of several Eeyores hastily flayed and sewn together didn't help.
Logistically, the place would have solved my housing issue -- no problem bringing Cricket, my cat -- but when I pictured myself returning to the place in October, my soul kind of shriveled.
Then there were the others: a beautiful penthouse in a dead neighbourhood which also would have accepted Cricket, but the common areas were Eurosmoke Central; a decent-sized room in a beautiful not-dead neighbourhood, but next to the playroom of the renter's 3-year-old son... eh-heh... who was also afraid of animals. The prize goes to the "medical doctor on assignment in West Africa" renting a two-bedroom place in Friedrichshain for 650€/month who called back, and when I asked to see the place, said: "I want you to go right now and send me 1150€ via Western Union."
Do people actually fall for this stuff?
Saw a movie in Potsdamer Platz, Die Welle, story adapted from Todd Strasser's The Wave. Afterward, I discovered that my mobile phone had cleverly kept secret a message from a potential employer two weeks earlier. Crap. I returned the message even then, but heard nothing further.
That Saturday, Ginger Bear texted, inviting me to an open-air techno party. We met, and the minute we got there he talked with other people the entire time. Puzzling, but whatever... I took matters into my own hands and met another female music producer, Laura. Later, I got a final guilty message from the Bear: "Sorry for not talking with you. Guess whoever wants my attention shouldn't go out with me to clubs." Haven't heard from him since.
The last apartment I visited was a six-month sublet in a small 2-bedroom in one of my favourite neighbourhoods. A bit squeezy, but nice enough. The roommate wouldn't have minded Cricket. But, as I found out the next morning by email, she felt she had too little in common with me. Thus, the one place I felt I could live with Cricket there fell through.
Hey, at least they answered. Quickly, even.
Cargo Jebus and the Final Fantasy
Videogame manufacturers try to program their creations to produce a 70% success rate. Too much win, and the game is boring. Too much lose, and it's frustrating.
There is a certain point at which Lose scrolls across the screen of your mind in bold capital letters. And if you are the kind of person that seeks "confirmation from the universe" in strokes of luck, you begin to wonder if you aren't being sent a message.
You could, of course, also regard it as a test. Or as nothing. If nobody's in charge of The Universe's broadcasting system, it's all just random, isn't it? I haven't completely decided this question. If there's a "higher power," does he/she/it help you get a parking space? Too insignificant? How about helping you win the Lotto, then? Someone who used to be close to me believes yes, though his theory's only been borne out on the parking space question -- he's still waiting to hear back about the Lotto. But if you're "doing the right thing," does The Universe reward you by mysteriously making things fall into place? Even people I know who don't consider themselves "religious" or superstitious talk this way: "Well, I threw him out and it must have been The Right Thing to Do, because the very next day a new roommate showed up on my doorstep!"
Thanks, Cargo Jebus!
So in addition to the actual difficulties, now you have to worry about what The Universe thinks of your plans. Which must make faith in yourself awfully earthly and secular: what you want to do is more important than some perceived Universal Opinion.
But I didn't have that kind of faith that week. Everything was unsettled, difficult, unfamiliar. 2007 had brought change after change: band breakup after ten years, layoff, divorce. Did I need to move to Europe, too? Was I nuts? What did I belong to anymore? I felt alone, not part of anything, unable to make contact, a mote of dust floating in outer space. Should I shelve this videogame? It's getting predictable: you lose. Who programmed this, anyway?
Anxiety robbed me of dreams, stung me awake, shortened my breath. Two of my best friends helped me through this, as did two quotes from Alex Grey, advising artists:
Keep going. Never give up. Your life is a labyrinth, not a maze. Dedicate your work to something higher than yourself...
...commit to what your imagined highest possibility is... listen very deeply and look to see what you are being guided towards. You can't always be super clear about these things. It can be very challenging. I mean, it is for me.
I found it oddly comforting that even Alex Grey admitted the difficulty of discernment. Many others seem to equate faith with Knowing and Not Questioning, whereas the more answers I get, the more questions I have.
The Breathing
You can live without answers for a while, but not without breath. I answered anxiety with a meditation: Confidence in, fear out.
At first not much happened; then gradually I found extra room in myself, filling my mind and my lungs with air and light, sweeping out dread. Inhale; exhale. Through my heart chakra, I drew confidence and peace from deep within the earth. Out of my crown chakra, I released everything I needed to let go, all the self-judgment and things I could not control.
Housekeeping, in a way. Removing the onus of self.
I am not singled out for punishment by The Universe because I am not perfectly together or "doing the right thing." I am a child of the earth like any other. I don't have to impress myself to earn the right to be alive. And I don't have to have all the answers. Life does not yield answers immediately, if ever. Certainty is an illusion. Everything changes.
Faith is not built on some eternal rock of ages. Faith is taking the next breath.
Confidence In, Fear Out
I pried myself off the internet and met with friends.
While I was out, a web company answered my inquiry, and set up an interview.
Wi. went out to a café with me. "If you don't get this job, you'll get another," she said. "You can do a lot of stuff. Here is how you get a job in Berlin. First, look up places you might like to work. Then put on nice clothes, and go to the places with your résumé, and say: 'Hi there! Hey, how's it looking here? Do you need anybody? Ich rocke diese Firma -- I'll rock this firm... I am supi-dupi!' Then give them your résumé. Someone will call you back. Then you go there and try it out for a week or two, and if it works, you have a job."
By day I explored Berlin by myself. You'd think interacting with architecture would be the easiest level of getting to know a city, but I realised I had forgotten to go inside a lot of places I saw. I started with churches. Not in hopes of tracking down Cargo Jebus, but because architects tend to put out their best stuff when the client is God.
By night I explored Berlin with Jenner. We went to Teufelssee one night with everything we needed for a safari adventure except a can of mace, which wouldn't have mattered so much if it weren't for the wild pigs.
Berlin is having a Wildschwein problem lately. Nature is reclaiming the city. There are more wild pigs than food for them these days, so they come a-foraging in the city. We heard skittering in the dark trees lining the road. I grabbed Jenner. "Are we stupid?" Jenner asked rhetorically. We took the risk and came out all right by the side of the lake, a skyful of stars shining down on us. In retrospect, it was worth a bit of stupid. But next time: mace.
I saw posters for meditation lessons, and went. Added some new exercises to my list. Also, it got me inside again, not just as an observer but a seeker finally among other seekers.
Got to know my current roommate Philipp. We talked about work and politics and life, and one night he did some spontaneous research on the internet to find out what social entitlements I can get as a non-citizen. Under certain conditions, the same as a citizen. Germany has the wacky idea that people shouldn't starve on the streets if the income thing isn't working out. I'm hoping never to have to ask, but still, realising Philipp was thinking about my survival here made me feel like I wasn't, after all, in outer space.
A Labyrinth, Not a Maze: Wonderland
Back to the beginning now -- the triangular excursion I was on when I realised I hadn't explained jolly anything about the last month. Waldfrieden, Munich, Berlin: music festival, music rehearsal, musical chairs.
Waldfrieden Wonderland: another open-air music festival. The online weather forecast a few days before in nearby Osnabrück wasn't promising: tiny graphics of raw grey clouds spewing dreariness. I also had a telltale sore point in my throat that made me consider blowing the whole thing off. Fortunately, I had already ordered my tickets, so I and my old buddy the Giant Camping Backpack were on the train again Friday morning.
Four hours and as many trains later I touched down in bucolic Lemförde. I shared a taxi with four other festivalgoers with whom I found common ground in several senses -- we set up our tents together. "You'll meet a lot of people here easily," said Nicki. "Nice atmosphere." Two of my companions, Ant and Linda, were at their first Waldfrieden. "You absolutely must see the forest, then," I told them. "It's beautiful. And there's magic there, too. Do you want to go with me?"
They were enthusiastic, so we went right away during daylight for a first look, getting our bearings, and then planned a sunset trip for the next day so we could stomp around to the music beforehand. Wandering into the festival area, we discovered Nicki was right; meeting people was easy -- good energy flowing between people, everyone friendly, open, looking forward to the music. In comparison, Fullmoon was larger, more impersonal; or was I in a better place myself? A virtuous circle was at work, sweeping me up, outward and forward without fear, my joy unguarded and drawing others in. Nobody was afraid to show their happiness.
The music and the dancing went on past time and weariness and any sense of normality, outside and inside, shod and barefoot, up grassy hillsides and in the midst of trees, kicking up wet sand, throwing down bales of straw so people didn't wind up wading hip-deep through mud. And all of us smiling at each other in the rain or moonlight or the rising sun...
In Motion, When Is Where
And on the second evening, Ant and Linda and Natalia came together at mountain's foot, and there we ate a very light supper.
Through root and fern and ivy we ascended to a dirt road on the mountain ridge leading to the summit. The friendly magic of old and young trees surrounded us. Spaces in the branches overhead opened to still-blue sky. Ant went along pointing out the eldest trees and the orphaned young saplings that entwined them, then climbing and jumping off piles of felled trunks. Distant and far below beat the insistent heart of our alien music. Elated and elevated, we found a crossroads when the magic of the woods was strongest (in motion, when is where), and there we waited.
Through my transparent eyelids, a path opened before me, paved in yellow ingots with black spines. Cities and temples of light spiraled up, a cluster of circles escaping higher into the darkening sky, emanating filigree lines like ripples in space. The Goddess entered her temple in the east. Face hidden, she wore robes of sunlight, her sleeves trailing into the lucid sea below, light dissolving to water.
Staircases expanded like accordions, morphing into unknown alphabets. A single black room flashed, its only furniture a table, a vase and the photograph of a laughing woman. The scriptural graffiti of all peoples formed, split, and tumbled over the walls of my eyelids. "If only I could paint this," I told Ant and Linda, who were interpreting the hand signals the trees made towards the sky.
We all linked arms and descended the mountain, a togetherness I have long craved, forged in the most exquisite weirdness. Liberté, étrangeté, fraternité! By now it was quite dark except for the stones in the path shining like stars. Gliding over the lambent stones, I felt like an airplane cruising far above a lamplit city. Magic glistened in the grass, in the dark between the trees, a tingling magenta energy. Plants with long ears reached out eagerly towards us. We swung laughing away. Man-made lights ahead caught the undersides of trees, painting them Day-Glo green. The music thickened at our approach. Treble shimmered; bass notes provided gravity, then suspended it.
We sat on the hillside above the outdoor dance floor. A caterpillar winking one googly eye rippled up to me and stuck out a tiny tongue. I was helpless with laughter.
It got cold on the hillside, so we went back to Ant and Linda's tent, lit candles and boiled water for tea. The camping stove in front of the candles threw the shadow of a silly-looking alien with a ridged helmet, à la Marvin the Martian, onto the tent wall. While we were laughing our asses off, an elf fresh off the dance floor, wearing a fuzzy, pointed orange cap, came by and saw the shadow too, since it had soaked through the canvas. He stuck his head into the tent. "Congratulations!" he shouted.
Ant managed to stop laughing long enough to say, "It's our new housepet!"
"You'll have to feed him cheese, and brush his tail!" said the elf, and galloped off, leaving us rolling on the floor crying laughter, gasping for breath.
To become serious again, I had to look into the candles. Light-flowers bloomed out of the flames, thick and patterned in tiny hexagons. When the candles finally sputtered out, Ant and Linda went to sleep. I was going to, myself, but the music was irresistible, so I wandered happily about until a bit before dawn, then crawled into my pup tent and slept.
Clean is Boring
There were other adventures, of course, fitting for this mass play-date of our inner children, dancing barefoot in the mud, launching spaceships, turning into cartoon characters, riding gryphons, time-traveling, kissing the sky, etc. After the inevitable afterparty, I had an early train to Munich for another three-day rehearsal.
I usually stay with Sarah, but she wasn't there, so I got to stay in the coolest place on earth (besides the forest in Waldfrieden), Michael Popp's music studio. Permit me a generalisation. Germany is all about closed doors opening up on excellently quirky rooms. The studio was one of these rooms, behind a closed door, up a spiral staircase and right underneath a roof, so the ceiling was nice and slanty. (I love that.) There were computers, lutes, flutes and guitars, audio equipment snarled in cables, closets full of musical scores, bows, a bagpipe, an overflowing desk, windows full of sunlight, and, tucked in a corner, a bed. If you brought pastries and coffee by, you'd have just about everything you'd need to survive. Except the bathtub, which was in the kitchen downstairs, behind another closed door or two.
After rehearsals during the day, Michael kept me company, dinner once at an Arabic place run by Turks, and spaghetti the next evening at his house, his little daughter Laetitia running around charming us. Some talk was bandied about doing some electronic music together. If it meant me coming to Munich for a while, I'd be down with it even though I'd miss Berlin's feral graffiti. Wherever I can make music is where I want to be. Michael himself had lived in Berlin once, when a grim wall ran through it. "Really," he confided, "Berlin is for students, or posing as a revolutionary or a punk rocker." I didn't bother telling him that many Berliners in turn seem to find Munich "bourgeois" and don't mind saying so. As a building in Berlin - Kreuzberg reads, "CLEAN is BORING." Guess there's a reason why the cities are located at opposite ends of the country...
And Now, Some Closure
Shelter: Jenner had a room free in her apartment, and offered it to me. The only wrinkle is, she's allergic to cats. Other than that, it's a resounding Hell Yeah. I'll need to find a place in the U.S. for Cricket for at least six months, but at least I'm living with a friend in a really nice place, for cheap.
Income: I interviewed at the web company job, but they wanted someone right away, not in October, so I didn't get it. But hey: I'm supi-dupi -- I'll rock some other firm.
New York: Coming back on Thursday for a month. Then it's back to Germany again, no idea how long. I'm playing it by ear. And not forgetting to breathe.