If you say so!

It was tiny, green, and pleasant. Its little explosions of chocolate burst like little festivals in my mouth, creating new holidays with their ingenuity and finesse. It was a mint chocolate chip muffin, and it was mine. It’s might be a little bit pathetic that its taste is the most concrete image I retain from my visit to Paris, but to hell with conventional appreciation of culture—I love fluffy goodness. I’d love to talk about all the wonderful things I saw in Paris. The architecture was curvy and ye olde, the streets were cobblestoned in the cobblestoney way I’ve so come to love, and the people weren’t nearly as haughty and anti-American as I had imagined they would be. Strangely though, Paris didn’t inspire me to write. It inspired to me to think about Berlin, and it inspired me to think about the meaning of art.

            Who the hell says what art is? Apparently, shooting arrows into the façade of a building is art. Whoops, I just spilled my jam on the carpet. Better not clean that up: IT’S ART. Is art just art when the right people say it is, or does art need to convey a message?  And furthermore, does the public need to understand that message, or can anyone just pee on a canvas and display it in a gallery? I went to the Pompidou center in Paris, and that was just about the coolest museum I’ve ever seen. I’ve never actually been able to stare at a painting before, and I was able to. I examined every stroke, every medium, every tiny scribble and bead of the artists’ sweat. And then I turned the corner and saw the bane of my existence: ‘art.’

            It was large, blue, and unpleasant. Monochrome in Blue, it was called. I could have painted it in eight minutes. With my left foot.  When I was eight. Yet, something told me I should respect it. I promptly asked this something: why? Something furrowed its brow, gestured towards the painting, and said, “because it’s in a museum.” Someone, somewhere, thought it was fantastic. But who the hell says who the hell says what art is? 

In Berlin I was met with even fewer answers. Art was arrows in a wall. Art was a stuffed fox attached to a car door. Art was a gold plated street sign. Excuse me as I go vomit in a hat and display it in a gallery. Still though, I hate to be an art snob. I understand that many of these pieces make statements, and that many of these things actually move people. What I can't seem to understand though is how art is defined. Maybe I'll never know, or maybe I've learned that art needs no definition. How profound. How artsy. 

Blisstanbul

I was a really weird kid. Countless stories (many of which involving crayons and dancing) could illustrate this, but one stands prominent in my memory as the most important. Outside of my first house in Baltimore stood a giant tree whose majestic, knotted branches encouraged play and roughhousing. All the kids in the neighborhood used to come every day to swing on its thick wooden arms, and I used to watch them out of the window. I don’t remember doing this, but my mom recounts this story at parties constantly (much to my chagrin). One particularly kid-filled afternoon, I crept out of my front door and walked over to the other children, wringing my hands and clearly uncomfortable in my own skin. My mom said she watched me as I stood, staring at the kids swinging on the branch. My brow furrowed and I crossed my arms. Then, I turned around and marched back into the house. Mom rushed after me to urge me to go back outside (Jesus Sally, find friends!) and, when she approached me, asked me what I was doing.
“Well mommy, I’m getting a pillow to place over the roots so that the other kids won’t hurt themselves.” My mom sent me back outside without giving me the pillow, determined to make me roughhouse and think only of myself. To this day, this side of me remains. For some reason I can’t help but constantly be concerned about others. Therefore, it’s difficult for me to be in Istanbul with friends and not constantly be thinking about whether or not they’re having a good time. I’m perpetually thinking of things to tell Katie and Kelsi about language, or things about fashion or culture to share with Cassie or Natalia, or ridiculous and terribly obnoxious Turkish sentences to teach John. I hardly think that this detracts from my own experience, but today something struck me.
During lunch, some people came with me to a Turkish place just off of where Orhan dropped us off. After eating, we all pulled out money to pay, and Joe said he would pay for me. I asked why, and he said it was because I had been doing so much for other people, and that he could tell I was a little bothered. I felt immediately both grateful and terrible. It terrified me to think that I could somehow be putting off an aura that implied I was bothered by others’ questions. I wasn’t at all. What bothers me is repeating things. Joe reminded me that repetition would have to occur in a group this big, and I agreed. What I need to do is stop being so concerned about whether or not others are having a good time, and concentrate on what an adventure this should be for me. This trip has been like a flashback of my life up until now—little tastes of everywhere I’ve lived. Images and smells have been smacking me in the face like dreams I had forgotten and now suddenly recall.
Walking along the water last night with Katie, I realized what smells remind me of Turkey: strawberry pipe smoke, clove cigarettes, and overwhelmingly flowery perfume. It’s just so strange having taken all those things for granted for all those years, then realizing how much I’ve missed them. I’ve missed the incredibly friendly people the most. I don’t think I’ve had to pay for food on the street once this trip. Nice old men just… give people things here. It’s just incredible to me how much people here live in the moment, constantly talking and smiling, not afraid to approach you or touch you or ask you questions. During the tour today when we were suddenly surrounded by the peanut gallery of local Turkish boys, I couldn’thelp but be more fascinated by their gathering than the information I was hearing.
Yet, as much as I love at here, and as at home as I feel, I am not a Turk. I’m not quite American either, nor am I German. I’m a strange, unbalanced mix of the three. Amergerturk. I can literally pick out elements of my character that stem directly from living in all of these places. American me loves barbeque sauce and refuses to pay for ketchup. German me hates it when things or people are late and prefers walking to driving. Turkish me doesn’t fear cars. Sometimes I wish that I were just one nationality, but really, I couldn’t be luckier. Taking this little taste test of my life has really helped me realize how important it is to be introspective and maybe even once in a while, just a little selfish.

Touche, Transient!

I always get the best ideas while riding buses. Usually, this is because for some reason, I attract the entire population of Seattle’s bus crazies. I recall taking the bus home one weekend next to what was essentially a crazy version of Samuel L. Jackson (which is actually probably just normal Samuel L. Jackson). He looked at me with his one cataract-free eye to say, “You know where the Safeway is?” If I hadn’t listened closely to his words, I would have assumed from his accusatory inflection that he had asked, “Did you just kill my goat, bitch?” But I replied politely nonetheless, “Actually no, I’m not from here.” His dreadlocks perked up with interest. “Where you from?” I hate that question—for me it bears too much explanation. So, I replied with my default hometown that I use for strangers (See also my default persona: Lily Blackwell, Canadian schoolteacher) “Savannah, Georgia.” “Georgia!” he exclaimed. “I heard it’s nice there!” I nodded and shifted uncomfortably. I really would rather have been listening to my iPod, as my fingers implied while fiddling with my headphone cords. “Yeah, it’s really sunny.” (I have zero idea of what Savannah is actually like). I began to turn away when he started to intrigue me. “Yeah, but people there gotta lotta AIDs.” I chuckled. “Really! I… I wasn’t aware of that!” He scoffed at me, “Yeah, girl! People there all got AIDs!” I shook my head. “I don’t think that I have AIDs.” “You probably do! You probably got all kinds of AIDs!”
Amused but still shifty, I turned away from him and escaped to musical funland. He morphed away to another seat like the impatient crazy that he was, and stepped in a newspaper that had evidently been placed over someone’s vomit to prevent people from stepping in it. Mr. Jackson slipped on the newspaper, revealing someone else’s stomach cornucopia, and, terrified, exclaimed, “AIDS!”
Excellent characters like these aren’t confined to Seattle. In Berlin, I apparently still possess my crazy-magnet. I was waiting for an U-bahn the other night when a man crumpled down in the seat next to me. He began to talk to me in English immediately, as if he were greeting an old friend rather than accosting a random teenager. “Where are you from?” He probably wouldn’t know Savannah. “Canada.” I replied automatically. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.” He dragged out that awful grating noise for about six minutes. It was difficult to pay attention to him because he spoke so slowly. Imagine a very small ent wearing suspenders. He then began a very long story about God knows what—it was too quiet and too slow to pay attention to or understand. He noticed. “Dur horst mir nicht zu.” “You’re not listening to me.” I was taken aback. He didn’t say it like he was upset, more like he was interested. Like, it was curious to him that someone wouldn’t find his story about some young Canadian gentleman terribly fascinating. Still, I have an overwhelming need to be polite always (thanks, mom), so I said “Nein! Ich hore dich zu!” He grabbed my hand, but the gesture didn’t make me uncomfortable. His eyes bore into mine and he said “Ich hore dir zu.” Touche, transient. Thanks for correcting my grammar.
He continued on with his grand tale of nothingness when a woman across from me started to babble in our direction. My vagrant put his hand up to her face and said, in English, “Excuse me, don’t interrupt our conversation.” I chuckled. Then, when he was mid-sentence (which was always), the train arrived. He simply said “My God.” And put his hand briefly on my knee, pushed off of it, and walked toward the train. And he never looked back.
Kelsi told me afterwards that I dealt with him very well. I considered this. For some reason this tiny little ent-man didn’t make me too uncomfortable. Even when he touched me, I didn’t feel threatened. We’ll probably get married. But in all honesty, I discovered that talking to strangers makes me more comfortable than talking to people that I know. First impressions are some of my favorite things in life, so to me, there’s nothing better than meeting new people every day. If I don’t have a reason to feel threatened, then I just don’t. I just can’t get over how interesting it is to hear other people’s stories.

Grinch?

I’ve always been more in touch with my emotions than most. I’m the girl who cries in movies like Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, sputtering helplessly about the poor little raccoon stuck on the log. I’ve never been ashamed of the fact that I cry more than most, and in fact have always believed it to be healthy to spill out emotions rather than keep them frustratingly un-spilled.
With the obvious exception of animals in plight, the only thing that makes me cry is people. I cry if people I love are upset, or in trouble, and I even cry if people I don’t even know are in horrendous situations. Therefore, when I heard that the week would be spent learning about German history, immigration, and the victims of the Nazi regime, I was prepared for the Sally Sputters. But when I arrived at the Topogrophie des Terrors, something strange happened: I felt absolutely nothing.
I stared at the images of soldiers, the images of books burning, and the heart-wrenching images of Kristallnacht, and thought about nothing but Christmas songs and what I was going to eat for dinner that night. I was so disgusted with myself that I started to seek out images that I knew should disturb me. In the middle of the timeline, there was a blown up image of Jews about to be hanged. I walked over to it, preferring masochism to blissful stoic ignorance. Specifically, I wanted to see the faces of the people about to be hanged. I hoped that by looking at their expressions, I would somehow understand how it feels to understand death. With my nose almost touching the fabric, I peered into the eyes of the victims. None of them looked sad. Perhaps, I thought, they were already dead. Perhaps they no longer had enough energy to care about living, to care about caring.
But observing their faces didn’t even make me cry. I scrutinized their expressions like a curious scientist rather than the weepy artist that I usually am. I thought about my upbringing: perhaps I’ve been jaded about WWII, having learned about it more than most children. Still, it continued to frustrate me that I couldn’t get upset about one of the most horrible travesties in history. Then I thought: is wanting to get upset over something like this just selfish? Do I want to be upset about this just so I don’t feel like a bad person, not because I actually feel sympathy? I decided then to abandon my quest for a heart-wrenching picture, only to stumble upon something that spoke to me.
On my mother’s car, there’s an upside-down rainbow triangle—a symbol of what makes her unique in the world. Today, the upside-down triangle is the symbol of homosexuality. I was interested to see that gays under the Nazi regime were forced to wear a pink upside-down triangle. I wondered: is this where the symbol stems from today? Is the symbol of homosexuality just sort of a “Fuck you, we’re proud!” to the Nazis? And then, as I continued to ponder, I realized that nothing else had spoken to me because I couldn’t relate the tragedy to anything that I’ve directly experienced in my life. Gay culture I’m familiar with, so it made sense that the one thing I would be interested in was homosexual Nazi-culture.
Then, as the days progressed and we began to learn more and more about the lives of the minorities under the Nazis, I became more and more immersed in my sadness. Certainly the culmination of this progressing sympathy was the visit to Sachsenhausen. The tour itself wasn’t tear jerking at first—I’ve always been morbidly fascinated by stories about concentration camps, and have visited several. Therefore, nothing our guide said surprised me at first. Again scientist-like in my observations, I listened to as many victims’ stories as I could, but even then I couldn’t connect with their plights. They still seemed so fictional. Watching someone tell a story on a television screen is hardly witnessing his life. And as a generation we’ve been so exposed to television as fictional entertainment that it’s often difficult to feel like anything we’re told is real. So, I listened to the stories, read the articles, learned as much as I possibly could and later reiterated the stories to my loved ones, fascinated by the how cruel people could be.
Later, when Adam took us down into Station Z, I had what I considered to be my first real contact with labor camp victims. Now, I have a problem with blood in general. I can’t look at my blood when it’s being drawn, I get woozy when I cut myself, and I can’t stand to see others bleeding. To see bloodstains of innocent victims was probably one of the most memorable images of my life so far. Finally, what I had been searching for: something tangible, something non-fiction, something incredibly jarring. I let myself stare at the stain, and was careful to not exaggerate my own feelings. I knew that the stain should upset me, but I didn’t let that thought make me upset. I wanted to feel my body reacting to this image. I just, looked at it. I felt like I wanted to vomit, and I felt like I wanted to cry. So I left.
I left. I felt sick when Adam gave us that appreciation speech at the end of the tour, talking about what wonderful people we are to come to a labor camp in our free time, and how the experience will surely live on with us. We won’t forget it, he says. But I think that I will. I think that as a defense mechanism, I’ll simply not think about it at all. And that made me feel about three inches tall. Stop it, I thought, when he kept thanking us, I don’t deserve to be thanked. The rest of the day, it felt insulting to smile. My lips didn’t really know what to do, and sort of hung there loosely on my face, painted into a lazy half crescent of forced detachment. I guess I’ll only know in time whether or not I’ll forget the experience, or choose to do so, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Ooo, Shiny! [Assignment 1]

Sometimes I get genuinely angry that my life isn’t truly remarkable. Don’t misunderstand—I am in no way saying that I’m unfortunate, or that my life so far hasn’t been an incredible adventure. No, I get upset that I don’t have superpowers, or that magic isn’t real, or that I’ll never be able to time travel. So when I get a little hint of the fantastic in a world that sometimes seems so Vanilla and Sham Wow, I reel with excitement.
In Berlin, I found this happiness in a disco ball at my first German poetry slam. Little did I know that as I walked into the room and was immediately freckled in light, my vision of the disco ball winking at the crowd was the most poetic thing I would experience that night.
I didn’t expect much from German Slam Poetry. I’ve always found Slam Poetry to be rather pretentious, and too depressing for my taste. I was more interested in the sort of people that attended these events in Germany. I wondered: would they also wear plaid and glasses sans glass? Would they also smell like incense and wear their shoes down to the nub? I also wondered about the audience dynamic. At the poetry slams I attended in Seattle, the crowd often made rather unique chants like “YES.” or “WHAT!” that always made me chuckle. But what I discovered was that German crowds, in addition to preferring cheerful, angst-less poetry, remained mostly silent en masse. Occasionally, they’d laugh at a performer’s witty story, but there were no cries of “TELL ‘EM GIRL” or “YOU KNOW,” which I had become so fond of back home. Additionally, I call it “poetry,” but what the performers were reading was far from verse. It seems that we attended some sort of amusing short story-reading gathering.
It was nice to practice my German and sort through the thicket of fast spoken word to pick out the humor that the performers tried so desperately to convey. Naturally, I picked up less than I expected, half because they were talking so quickly and half because I sure did fall asleep in my chair, and by chair I mean couch that we stole from the lobby. Fortunately I didn’t sleep too much because between performances a blinding and obnoxious light shone out on to the audience, and by audience, I mean just me and four or so people who surrounded me. So, every once in a while I was awoken by tiny beads of sweat dripping down my neck and a slight light-induced migraine. And so my first group experience in Berlin culminated in dizziness, curiosity about German youth culture, and a slight neck cramp from having rested my head on my shoulder for forty minutes. Still, I can’t justify ever complaining about anything in Berlin—I’m so fortunate to be here. Everything here is beautiful, efficient, and interesting, and I feel like as a group, we’ve lived this week to the fullest.