2005-01-29 - 11:37 a.m.
“Hearts aren't made of glass, they’re made of muscle and blood and something else...”
-Defiance, Ohio
A week ago I sat in Heathrow airport reading in the Guardian about Bush’s inauguration speech and all the excessive events that went along with it. The articles hardly mentioned the protests that occurred around the inauguration (maybe they were too fragmented, or of course, even media like the Guardian is flawed) and analyzed Bush’s firey, evangelical, imperialist rhetoric about bringing democracy to the rest of the world and discussed how skeptical most Europeans are of his ideas. “People from the United States too!,” I thought, trying to remember that most people do not stand behind Bush (I hope, I hope...). But as the departure lounge filled up with “American” accents, I couldn’t help but sink into depression. How can the United States government get away with acting so isolated? Don’t people know “American exceptionalism” is dead and gone and never really existed anyway?
But I am home to a snowy, slushy city and a sleepy cat and so much love I can’t help be be intimidated by it. My insecurities ring in my ears as much as I try to shush them and just live, what did I do to deserve being involved with such amazing people? Is it selfish to try to something new while still keeping an existing relationship going? I hope not. But this is going to take a lot of energy and a lot of courage.
But if there is one this traveling gives me it’s courage and appreciation for my friends who are scattered across the map. In the Netherlands Wim and Annelies and I walked by picturesque canals and I tried not to get run over by bicycles and made up concept bands and they explained to me the concept of gezelligheid, an untranslatable phrase capturing Dutch conviviality and coziness. In Berlin my pen-pal Christian met me at the train and thus commenced four lovely days of conversations over tea and food about politics, history and the state of our lives. I stayed with his amazing friends Tabea and Katrin, two caring and studious girls and we spent morning and evenings talking about our academic work and decisions in our lives we were working through. I am so glad there are more people than just my US friends so involved with complicated theory and academic questions, yet looking to live and apply those questions to their lives and the work they do.
Berlin was a city I could picture myself staying in more than any other city I visited. It’s history is so raw, it is not yet monumentalized in some ways. I stumbled upon history just walking around- turn down a street and suddenly the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall, a long remaining section along the Spree River that artists have painted bright colors and with designs. Eating lunch in Mitte, Berlin’s trendy central district, I look at a little park, which hold a Jewish cemetery and a plaque discusses the thriving Jewish community that used to live in this area. All this history is raw, at the surface. And yet Berlin is not sure what it is in the present, which I found I could understand. Perhaps I can relate to this because more American individualism and frontier mentality flows in my blood (and by that I meant has been socialized into me) than I would like to recognize, but I can understand better not having a coherent narrative of the history of a place, like Amsterdam or Paris might. Berlin is a city that feels open to the challenge of future possibility and current responsibility to the past.
I visited the Kathe Kollwitz museum in Berlin, located in an old townhouse, and spent hours being transfixed by the power of her woodcuts, drawings and sculpture. Unabashedly radical, angry at the huge pain and suffering caused by war, she made series of prints that spoke out against it. I was taken by the power of her renderings- especially the way she captured peoples hands and made them speak for so much that is so hard to say about the hugeness and weight of injustice in the world.
From Berlin I took an overnight train to Paris. I was romanced by the idea of sleeping in a small bunk as we sped across Europe, but in truth I could hardly sleep at all as the train lurched and sped up and slowed down. My sister met me in the chilly morning at the Gare du Norde and we spent the next three days being lazy, reading, talking, and watching movies. My last night in France I hung out with Gael, a French anarchist librarian and friend of my friend Sarah. We walked around, gazing at the lights reflecting on the Seine and eating falafel and making our way through misty rain while he announced that Paris at night with an umbrella was decidedly romantic.
And then onto London, where I met up with Ariel, my best friend from high school and co-editor of Random, the first zine I ever made. She showed me the royal courts of justice and gave me a tour of legal London, which she knows about from her work, ducking in and out of walled gardens and centuries old Inns where barristers keep their offices. I love London, but I wish it wasn’t so expensive. I could imagine myself there under those close grey skies, taking the tube and getting to know that city inside out. I spent a whole morning in the British National Library gazing at old books, illuminated manuscripts and contemporary artist books, all displayed side by side in an exhibit called “The Writer in the Garden.” Even though some artist books can be decidedly cheesy, looking at those ancient pages I was absolutely reconvinced of the artistic form of the book and realized that anything we think we are making that is “new” was really already done centuries ago. It’s freeing, actually.
