The Jewish Elvis

It’s the first day of Rosh Hoshana and I’m thinking: Elvis.

Six Elvises, to be exact. Andy Warhol's silver Elvises all lined up in a row, six silver guns aimed at the viewer, point blank.

“Speak!”

That’s what those guns seem to say . . .. today. Speak your truth. It’s now or never. Well, at least until this time, more or less, next year.

According to Lisa Katz’s blog (a primer for understanding Judaism),

It is believed that on Rosh Hashanah, God inscribes us in “books.” God decides not only whether we will have a good or bad year, but also whether we will live or die in the upcoming year. Then on Yom Kippur, God seals these "books."

It follows that during the Ten Days of Repentance, the "books" are still open. God has judged, but not yet passed sentence. Repenting (as well as praying and giving charity) during the Ten Days of Repentance is the way to reconcile with God and change His inscription in the "books".

I love the idea of being inscribed in books. Not only does your fame last longer than fifteen minutes (if that’s something you care about), but you become part of another world, a parallel universe full of possibility. Even more, I love the idea of the book being re-writable for ten days, and then again for another ten days the following year, and so on, and so on. The book is never really closed then, is it? As long as you are alive, you have ten days every year in which to get the story right. And not only do you have a willing listener, but you have the most powerful listener in the universe. Getting your story down is none other than God. OK, so in the end you don’t get to decide your ultimate fate, but you do get to plead your case, which you are given ten days to reflect upon first, and ten days in which to perfect your story telling technique, a process you get to repeat for ten days every year until you die.

What I love most about the whole shebang is this: Repetition. Repetition exists in absolutely every part of our lives. It’s in the change of seasons, in the way we learn to play piano, in each attempt to reproduce Bubbie’s breaded chicken wings (which no one has successfully accomplished, but we all keep trying), in every relationship we work at in the hopes of getting it right this time, and so on. We repeat ourselves for many reasons: to hear ourselves think, to enjoy that cake again, to turn a wrong into a right, to learn a lesson we have not yet learned. Cliché as all this may sound, and even though I know you know what I mean, it still bears repeating.

Repetition often gets a bad rap – being called tedious, or boring, etc. – but a truth about repetition is that it is not only necessary for our ongoing survival (we learn as often through non-repetition as through repetition, the former being intimately tied to the latter), but we actually find repetition exciting because no two repetitions are alike, thus keeping repetition fresh! Summer is never the same as last summer. And next summer will inevitably be different again, giving us something to look forward to. When Gertrude Stein wrote a rose is a rose is a rose, what she really meant was a rose is not a rose is not a rose is not a rose because each one takes up a different position in time and space. You are not saying them at the same time, you are saying them (or reading them, or experiencing them ) in discrete moments. So each rose is either a painted rose, or a written-or-spoken-word rose, or a plastic facsimile, or a thorny reality, or a metaphor, or a cliché and so on . . .

Also, I must emphasize: repetition is not simply a copy, i.e. a poor substitute for the real thing, with a higher value placed on the latter. Within repletion lies the idea of a first instance, but we really don’t know when that happened. Far more poetic is this idea that repetition simultaneously contains the value of the singular moment and the potential of every other moment. For instance, take Andy Warhol’s approach to image making – churning out multiples as if they were widgets in a factory. The volume of output undermines the art-market value that gets assigned to one-of-a kind objects, imparting an accessibility (financially and otherwise) to art works hitherto denied the average person. Ironically (and this is the beautiful paradox of repetition), Andy Warhol’s renown, not to mention Elvis’s, ended up increasing the perceived value of the multiples, transforming them into rarified works that ultimately fetched the astronomical prices allocated to the aforementioned one-of-a-kinds. Similarly (but not the same), Andy Warhol’s multiples both reinforced and undermined Elivs's status. The proliferation of Elvis's image ensured he became a household celebrity, but also ensured no one Elvis was The Elvis: everyone could have their own Elvis. As such, he is both out of our reach and within our grasp.

If we count ourselves among those who believe singularity is the ticket to heaven, we may agree with Tori Amos who laments, “There’s too many stars and not enough sky.” But I see celebrity itself as a repetitive category into which any number of persons can be inserted at any time. In other words, the sky is endless, big enough for us all, and endlessly reproducing shooting stars, and endlessly letting them fall. Personally, I prefer falling stars, like wilting flowers, finding beauty in their dying. We all die, celebrity or not, but we don’t all die in quite the same way, do we? (Elvis died sitting on the toilet.)

As I said earlier, repeating a story gives us a chance to perfect it; Yet, as I am writing it again, I realize that repetition does not always strive towards perfection. Andy Warhol’s mechanical approach to image making deliberately undermined the concept of perfection (I was going to find another word for ‘undermine’ because I’ve used it already, but then I remembered I had not used it in this sentence yet). He made sure each print resulted in imperfect colour and image registration, (Andy Warhol’s process suggesting that even a machine cannot create a perfect copy). The results, which vary from print to print, also undermine the possibility for locating a static identity: Elvis is slightly different in each iteration. When you first stand in front of the six silver Elvises, you are hit with a wave of sameness. As you stand there a little longer, you begin to look for, and see, little licks of difference.

But what I loved the most about the silver Elvises at the Warhol museum in Pittsburg is this: a rabbi wrote the didactic panel. More to the point, Rabbi Mark N. Staitman discusses the silver Elvises in terms of repetition, which he says is a key strategy in the Torah:

It is not uncommon that Torah seemingly repeats itself. Often the seeming repetition has a slight variation, but always a variation in context. While some may see this as a redundancy, Judaism sees each statement as having different meaning. God would not be redundant.

I did not expect Andy Warhol’s Elvises to evoke thoughts of Judaism, but the good Rabbi’s panel sent me down a path towards further research.

According to John J. Parsons at www.hebrew4christians.com,

The Hebrew word for emet [truth] has a more concrete meaning than the English word for “truth” (the English word derives from the Greek/Western view of truth as a form of correspondence between language and reality, but invariably languished over epistemological questions that led, ultimately, to skepticism). . .

. . . Indeed, Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” is a category mistake, since truth is not about “what” but about “Who.” That is, truth is not something objective and static, a thing to be known and studied from a distance. No. Truth is essentially personal. It is a personal disclosure of the character of the subject. Understood in this way, truth is a way of living, a mode of existence, a relational truth.

In other words, truth is always my truth or your truth, not the truth. Since it is always tied to a person, it is necessarily filtered through that person’s experience, views, contexts and relations. Yet we cling to the idea of The Truth the way we grab hold of an anchor that seeks purchase on a shifting ocean floor. We believe The Truth will give us a point of reference: once we have located our true North, we will understand where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going. (Also, we think that if discover where we are, we will have a better idea of where you are.) This desire to find a singular truth is what sends us to our synagogues, our churches, our temples, our mosques, our meditation mats – we retrace our steps each day, each week, or at certain holidays to our particular Meccas and repeatedly offer up our prayers for some kind of answer. For me, our endless search for truth (or beauty or love or whatever it is we are after) is no less than our declaration and celebration of being alive, no less than the repetition of breath, or step. The process is the truth and the beauty.

For me, Andy Warhol’s Elvises are a kind of prayer. Like repeatedly fingering worry beads, I run my eyes over the silver Elvises, from first to last and back again. Each Elvis stands in relation to the last Elvis as well as to the next Elvis and to Elvis himself – to all the ideas of him: the sexy, young buck who made girls swoon; or the fat, wasted Las Vegas Elvis who barely fit into his white leather pants. And each of those Elvises carries within him kernels of truth: Andy Warhol’s truth – that Elvis was and is both a celebrity and a reproducible image; and Elvis’s truth – that he was famous and the sky was the limit and yet he must have known he shit like the rest of us; and our truths – that Elvis lives as an idea in everyone else’s head. We cannot locate one truth about Elvis, only all the truths we each carry in our Elvis-loving hearts.

On this day, the first day of Rosh Hoshana, as I pack my bags to conclude my one-month stay in Berlin, and reflect on the various and competing stories of my life, I realize that one thing seems to remain true about me: I love to tell a story. That’s why I have always felt painfully dismissed when my listener complains, “you told me that already.” While I understand, and have experienced myself, the frustration of hearing a story again for the umpteeth time, there’s usually a reason the story gets trotted out again. My desire to retell the story is almost always about the particular moment I’m in, and usually related to the particular listener I’m with, and more often than not, it has less to do with the story itself and more to do with the tossing of a rope, hoping that you’ll catch the line and let me pull you in.

A Reflection on Shopping

Traveling changes seeing . . .


Here in Berlin, I often feel as if I’m looking through three eyes -- the pair that Berlin squeegees clean on a daily basis, and my camera’s third eye, blinking away the rest of the dust.



I’ve been thinking lately about storefronts, about how you can see what’s inside their windows while simultaneously seeing your own face reflected on the surface. A shop window bounces back a more complex reflection than a mirror. While a mirror’s purpose is to show us how we look, as in what we look like, a shop window shows us how we look, as in how we see – i.e. with greed, with longing, with the despair of knowing we will never own that beautiful object, etc. But with a shop window, we only see our reflection if we choose to look at the window’s surface rather than through its transparent skin.


The other day, I was discussing one mutual friend with another mutual friend and we agreed that our mutual friend had perhaps stopped actively shopping for a relationship because this friend was looking for perfection. With that goal in mind, we mutually agreed (reflecting each other’s good sense), a perfect partner would never be available because perfection does not exist. And perhaps that’s the goal of our mutual friend: to live in a world of endless potential rather than risk what might appear to be settling for less. I realized during the conversation that I was critical of the mutual friend’s quest for perfection both because I felt victimized by it – I am not perfect, therefore, I will never be the chosen one – and because I am the same – always wondering if there will be something better around the corner. I have already sustained tremendous losses with this thinking. But it seems my head needs more glass banging before I see what’s in front of my eyes.



Window shopping: it’s what I do to satisfy my cravings without taking a risk; it’s how I trick myself into believing the next window will have what I want at not too high a cost. It’s an impoverished way to shop, never mind live. Sometimes, however, I can’t decide if shopping per se is the problem, or just the way I go about it. Because part of me also thinks that shopping is too complex to slip so easily into my “bad thing” category; shopping can also be an act of tremendous generosity towards others, as well as a gesture of love towards one’s self.



And that’s the essence of shopping, isn’t it – not the buying, but the act of being in the act: of looking, assessing, weighing, wondering if you’re getting a deal or being ripped off, imagining the object adorning your home or your person: what joys will it bring? Will I tire of it too soon to make the cost worthwhile? Will it fall out of fashion? Will it need an upgrade? Will I stop loving it and want something better? But also, would that thing in the window make this or that person happy? Is it the perfect gift? Is it about putting a smile on your beloved’s face that makes it so worthwhile, or is it about seeing yourself reflected as the smile giver?




None of this thinking is new, of course, but it does seem to come into sharper focus every time some poignant piece of adversity makes its way into my filed of vision.


Take the US bank failures, for instance: the reasons for the failures are complex, and I don’t pretend to understand most of them, but I have been told that senior bankers saw short-term gain in offering sub-prime loans to people who would not likely be able to pay them back, thus enabling those without to have, even if only for a moment. But this was not a gift giving. The bankers were shopping for themselves, looking for customers for their product, motivated by greed, while playing on the buy-now-pay-later addiction/ethos. They blithely ignored the inevitable consequences for the receiver, which they knew about but relegated to a problem for “down the road”, and, more selfishly, for “others”. Shopping on credit is like watching a horror film through your fingers. The only way to really stop the gore is to leave the theatre, but we can’t. We’re riveted. Is it because we are hoping against hope for a different ending?



One Christmas (though it could have been any Christmas), I went shopping with a friend, and had one of those CGI special-effects moments as we entered the cosmetic area of the department store – the tinsel strewn, floodlit room that offered row upon row of seductively-packaged cosmetics artfully displayed on glass shelves or in glass display cases suddenly dissolved into a dark ware-house-sized space filled to the rafters with sickening amounts of landfill. And this was just one department store among thousands in the city, never mind the thousands of department stores across the country and around the world. It was so clear to me at the time: shopping is garbage.




When I moved to Montreal, I shopped for men. I don’t mean I bought men clothes, I mean I trolled online dating sites to see who I could pick up.


What I noticed in myself was not an over consumption of product, but rather a summary dismissal of the pickings that appeared slim to me. I eventually became so disgusted with my superficial response that I forced myself to paint portraits of the men I did not find attractive based solely on their low-res digi pics (I hadn’t bothered to read their profiles).



When I had amassed about twenty of them, I mounted an exhibition, displaying what I came to think of as “my boys” – a single row of hopeful heads, expressive faces, risk takers (I tried not to think of deer heads or trophy kill).



While painting the boys, I had added pink to wan skin, and a few pounds to gaunt cheeks, thus modeling them into something I might want. When I exhibited them, I understood I had not so much painted portraits as I had created a series of mirrors.



Now I think what I created was a storefront window. But a store more like Monty Python’s cheese shop in which the owner claims to have an array of cheeses for sale . . .

but the cheese shopper is told that each cheese requested is not available for a variety of eccentric reasons.

In the end, my boys, like the cheeses, were not actually available, except as an ideal.



As expressions of my own longings, of my own prayer to the universe for someone to love me and someone to love, the boys’ value was incalculable. My desire to trade them for money, thus enabling me to purchase some bauble that might bring me momentary joy, was supplanted by a stronger and inexplicable desire to keep them close. No, I could not part with a single one of them. Simply put: they were not for sale.

There’s something about twins . . .

I can’t hear the word without hearing Austin Powers from Gold Member excitedly saying, “twins, Basil, twins!” (referring to two Japanese school girls, Fook Yu and Fook Mi, names that, when spoken, elicit this response from Mr. Powers, also a favourite of mine , “you’re going the right way for a smacked bottom!”)

But seriously, there really is something about twins . . .

Twins, alter egos, doppelgangers. While I can’t imagine being a twin, (for some reason it makes me feel claustrophobic), and doppelgangers, traditionally, foreshadow your death, which I’m not ready for quite yet, I do feel both loved and shadowed by my alter ego: Charlotte Rose – the country singer I wish I was, repository for all my unrealized dreams and the shape things to (be)come.



But that’s the story I’m writing while in Berlin. The one I want to tell you now is this one:

So, I’m walking down the a street near my flat and I see her:



and I do a double take, because in some strange way, she looks like me (prettier, thinner, and far more graceful, but, still, I recognize myself).

Same street, different day, same window, and who is this?!



This is what I love about Berlin. I am pretty sure this is a doctor’s or dentist’s office, but why not add a little life to the sitting room, and then switch it up every few days? An embodiment of woman, a presence that might entice the outside world in . . .

As a lover of representation, I can’t help but feel my own life mirrored in these two mannequins. I am the brunette, of course, and the blond represents a number of my friends. I have been twinned by my hair-colour opposite for most of my cognizant life. I have no idea what it means, but I know I have a soft spot for my blond sisters who have defied the stereotypes in every way: they are smart as whips and steel traps, funny as hell, and very sexy, not Swedish nurse-sexy, far sexier than that! (Who can't be sexy in a pair of zebra-striped Birkenstocks??)



When reviewing the pics I took while two of my friends visited (both blondish, a third arriving Saturday, also blond), I realized the endless regression of mirrored selves in store/gallery windows were mirroring the endless regression of mirrored selves in my friendships.




Not my twins, since we do not look alike and don’t have the same DNA, and not my alter ego, since she is really a version of me, my friends are my un-doppelgangers – Jacline, Tonya, Lilly –mirrors of the very best parts of me, endlessly and tirelessly pulling me from my black depressions, from darkness into light. British Jackie made me laugh 24/7 when she was here. I’m talking laughing so hard I now have a six-pack stomach.



Then Severinne arrived and showed me what it’s like to confidently walk through the world and own your spirit!


Sophie will arrive Saturday, and although I have not seen her since grade 7, she has written me the most crunchy e-mails detailing her life’s hardships and how she overcame them, always generously offering me her unconditional support for my own depressions.

Lest you think my brunette and red-head friends – Abi, Elizabeth, Sara, Ann, Kim, Marney, and, god, SO MANY – have been wrongly left out of the picture, let me assure you that each and every hair on their colour-box heads is a strand for which I am grateful, as these women have also been vital to my survival and well-being. There is no hierarchy here. And, clearly, not all metaphors are have straightforward correspondences. This blond/brunette mirroring thing is complex. The tones and shades are endless. Maybe it’s more about the blondies having inner brunettes and vice versa. At the end of the day, what I am trying to say is that I have an embarrassment of women friends, and they are always visible, just on that side of a window, waiting patiently for me to make it to the other side.

A Crime of Cake

On my way home from my Dinner-with-Jews event, I stopped at the café bar where I’d had coffee the previous morning.

I wanted cake.

Nothing was open except for this café bar. I parked my bike and strode purposefully past the smoke-enshrouded Berliners nursing drinks. It seemed childish to be asking for cake at this hour when everyone else was getting drunk. But it's what I craved. And it's what I came for. I put it to the strapping young bartender: I wanted a slice of the cherry cake . . . ahem, to go. He looked at me as if I had two heads. Then pointed to a little hand-written card sitting on top of the cake display. Apparently, it said in German, which he kindly translated for me, that cakes were not for to go-ing. (It could have said no cakes for Canadians and I would not have been the wiser).

Mystified, I looked at him like he had three heads and asked what possible difference it could make whether I ate my cake there or to go. He said, "if everyone asked for cake to go, we’d have to have three cake displays!!!!" As if to prove his point, he swept his arms across the room to show the space the other two cake displays would take up. Imagine that! With three cake displays and everyone getting cake to go, why they’d just end up making more money selling more cakes! That simply CAN'T be good for business!

But that's Berliners for you. No one cares about business. They care about atmosphere, experience, quality of life.

Still, I wanted my cake, and I wanted it to go.

I looked at him and smiled. Then I looked right through his faux-tattered sweater that was supposed to give him an air of grunge. He saw me seeing him and knew the jig was up. But, bless him, he did keep trying. He lilted his adorable German accent at me like a lasso and said, "you know, you could just sit down and enjoy your cake here." I must not have looked my age in the dim light. But he looked every inch of his. A mere boy. So I said, "yes, I could eat it here, but it's very smokey in here, which would affect my enjoyment of the cake." That seemed to do it. He agreed to let me have the cake to go, but there were conditions. He put his finger to his lips and moved so close I could practically lick the deliciously pink landscape of his impossibly unpored skin, and then he whispered that I was not to let anyone else in the bar see me take the cake. I looked around to see if the lesbians in the corner were watching me, or the guy glued to the TV above the bar was watching me, or the two pretty boys dressed in expensive leather jackets perched in the window were watching me, but it seemed pretty safe to say my activities were going unnoticed.

The rest was as quick as a drug transaction: he slipped into the kitchen to secretively pack up my cake. When he returned with an unmarked box, I slid him some cash under the counter making sure no one had seen. Then I slipped out the door without raising so much as an eyebrow from the lesbians, the TV watcher or the pretty leather boys. It was sad, really. I would have liked to have been noticed! But perhaps it's because I'm passing as just another crazy Berliner now . . .

Jews for Elizabeth

Whatever experience I am having in the moment, I always seem to have it twice, often simultaneously: once while it is happening, and again as I tell the story to a specific person in my head, while it's happening. For instance, when I was riding Abi’s bike through Mitte and Prenzlauerberg, I realized I was now finding my way as Berliners do, keeping the television tower at Alexanderplatz in my sights. I was so thrilled I found myself telling Abi the story (in my head) like a child who finally masters bike riding, squealing with delight, “Look at me! I'm doing it!”.

During dinner with the Berlin Jews last night, I was committing detail to memory so that I could tell the story to Elizabeth later (you are all welcome to listen, too, of course). Elizabeth, New York Jewess in whose class on 19th and 20th C women writers (at Queen's) I found my voice. She has remained one of my dearest friends.

My Berlin friend, Eric, connected me with the Jewish community (this particular piece of it anyway) through the website, NetJewsishBerlin. The dinner, called Schmoozeday, was arranged for an Indian restaurant, which I found confusing, because I thought traditional Jewish food was Chinese!

Typical me, I almost decided not to go when I realized that if it was at an Indian restaurant, it would mean sharing food, and that reality panicked me for two reasons: one, Indian food is fattening and Germany has already expanded my waistline; and, two, I’m ashamed to say, sharing food likely meant sharing a bill beyond my budget. In the end, thankfully, my shameful cheapness shamed me into going as I asked myself, like a good Jewish mother would, what are you waiting for to start living? Another fire??? Turns out, I needn’t have worried. Everyone had either eaten at home already (to save money?), so they were just ordering appetizers, or else they were getting main dishes for themselves and not sharing (to save money?) I should have known! A table of Jews!

(I make such a bold statement because, as a Jew, I can get away with it; and let me tell you, nothing feels better than to reclaim a stereotype with humour.)

So, last night I broke (naan) bread with such a range of people – Igor, Russian Jew who spoke no English (in his 50s), Jeremy and Lina who also spoke little English (in their 40s, from somewhere east of here), Johan – Berlin Jew born in Scotland but returned to Berlin in his youth, now in his 60s, with whom I spoke French, and whose grandfather also studied at the Bauhaus, like mine; Asaf, Isreali Jew, 34 years old, training for a marathon, moved to Berlin because he fell in love . . . with Berlin, but travels all over the world doing sustainable development stuff; Lewis, filmmaker in his 40s, Swiss who speaks like a street Londoner; Devora (late 30’s, early 40s?), Berliner encrusted with jewels, but tastefully, from the west part (“of course you think NeuKolln is exotic but you must come to my neighbourhood and go shopping!” yet she is nothing like the Westmount Jewesses I met in Montreal), she is a dancer; Raquel, young Connecticut/New York Jewess in her 20’s who is here working on American films and lamenting the fact that she can’t apply for a German passport because the US does not allow its citizens to hold two citizenships; and, last but not in the least, Irene, whose story I wanted to tell Elizabeth.

Irene’s parents fled Berlin in 1938, restarting their lives in New York where Irene was born, I believe. But after the war, being communists, the family returned to Berlin . . . to EAST Berlin . . . by choice! So, Irene grew up an east Berliner, committed to the socialist cause. Since all I know about east Berlin is a tangle of stereotypes and propaganda, I went straight into interviewer mode and asked as much as I could. Irene was more than obliging. Imagine a woman with all the speech mannerisms of a New York Jew, “you want I should tell you a story? Sure, I’ll tell you a story!” but now laced with a German accent. She told me that living in east Berlin had been wonderful, that she had fascinating jobs and freedom of movement (relatively speaking) with the ability to travel to other countries, but she had zero interest in going to west Berlin. She was a journalist of sorts, I'm still not clear on what that means. She told me about how she met rabbis in the US who told her to form Jewish groups in Berlin. As a socialist, she was not an especially observant Jew. But “the good rebbe in New York,” she explained, “predicted east and west would soon no longer be divided, and then the socialist Jews would go searching for their Jewish heritage, so I had to start an organization to help them find their roots.” Irene did not believe the wall would come down anytime soon, but she started her organization for Jews anyway. A year later, the wall came down, and Irene’s group – Judischer Kulterverein Berlin — thrived.

She told me the organization is in the process of winding down. When I asked why, she said its members, if alive, are now 120 years old! I asked about the next generations. I can’t remember what she said, to be honest, (must have been all the sag paneer pooling in my stomach, sapping the energy required for my synapses to fire) but I believe it's because my generation is active, and, therefore, does not need to be reconnected.

Irene also told me that she finds the orthodox Jews in Berlin the most welcoming and friendly. She said it’s because they think it’s more important that people reconnect to the Jewish heritage than how they do it. So, the orthodox synagogue turns a blind eye to reform behaviour and welcomes you. It helps that the rabbi is from New York, I think.

Irene tells me there will be a huge Rosh Hashanah celebration at a fancy hotel on September 29. Fifty euros to get in, but no cost for anyone who is poor. I am not poor. I realize this. And I want to go. To be able to celebrate Rosh Hashana, the first day of the Jewish New Year, marking the ten days of the year when God opens the Book of Life and gives mortals a chance to reflect on the past year, on the future as we would like to create it, and to atone for our sins – what a gift!

Irene asks me if I’ll be going to the event. I respond in the enthusiastic tones of my generation, and the generations after me, “I’m SO there!”

(p.s. This morning I e-mailed Irene to see if she wanted to have dinner with me on Friday night. This is the response I got:

Friday I will be at the film night against Neonazis – starts at 6 pm, ends at midnight. “Babylon” movie Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.

Of course you will be there, Irene, of course!!)

http://judaism.about.com/od/roshhashana/qt/when08rh.htm

Cure

(Photo: detail of work by Wayne Cahill Barker)

Sol leWitt to Eva Hesse:

You seem the same as always, and being you, hate it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse shitting, hair splitting, nit picking, piss trickling, nose sticking, ass gouging, eyeball poking, back scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO.

…try and tickle something inside you, your ‘weird’ humor. You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you—draw and paint your own fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end. You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO.

I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work. The worst you can think of and see what happens, but mainly relax and let everything go to hell. You are not responsible for the world—you are only responsible for your work, so do it. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working, then stop. Don’t punish yourself.

However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO.

On building bridges

I'm creating a special category of posts for my friends' amazing words (filed in Smart Words: Yours). . .




I remain convinced that a partnership is not an easy "finally I made it" kinda thing. Huge chasms of misunderstanding are the norm. The tossing of a line (and reciprocal catching of said line), to build a friggin bridge is where the beauty lies. Exploratory love is easy and BIG; but post-bridge-building love is where the action is. The lines can be quite heavy, at times. But, we humans are quite incredible in our ability to become adept for that which we really want.

On exchanging panic for process

So many of you have sent me insightful, thoughtful and soul-lifting messages. I'd like to share them (filed in Smart Words: Yours) . . .





From a friend advising on the process of creating (becoming):



Time: it takes more than a summer or a year to build a book or a body of work. Some people work fast, and you may at some point. Some don't. Don't say if I haven't done it by. . . . . .I can't do it. You've made the commitment, now follow the process. Just follow the process. You can make something that lasts; you can cut through time. I don't know about the world lavishing praise or money or a timeline, just don't look in the mirror too much, unless that is what you are writing about/painting, just let it happen. You can always revise. Just having the time to think and to take in art is a blessing. The work will come, maybe when you aren't looking!! Just leave time for it and allow the process.




From another friend who has saved my ass more than once, and always when I'm far away. He holds down a crazy busy job and yet he fired this off to me within five minutes of my cry for help.



A few things I would try...

1st - Breathe.
2nd - Do not ever decide to stay in for coffee, go out.
3rd - Go see live music, drink beers and meet people.
4th - As you'll be back here soon enough to figure out the work stuff, allow yourself 1 hour max of job search every day, and do it early in the morning.
5th - As interesting as your blog is (and it is, i've been reading, even the post you deleted a few hours later), do not place it as a priority. You can write about your berlin experience after. Now is time to gather...
6th - In down time, remember how many good friends you have here and there, and that none of those would ever let you down.

Chuck of Daisyville

Today, as I was photographing my Berlin café experience, I realized that my computer screen was cycling through my Chuck Close series. I was taking a break from writing my book in which Chuck Close figures prominently, and there he was, staring at me, and there I was, photographing him, and there were the flowers on my table, both the flowers I hate – roses – and the flowers I love – daisies – both of which figure prominently in my book.

So I thought perhaps it was a sign for me to excerpt a few lines from my book just as I have shared my photographs.


For instance, when Chase arrived with a dozen red roses, I lost our story. I hate roses. I hate red roses even more. They are such a cliché that even saying they are a cliché is a cliché. It was possible, however, that Chase meant well. Since he was not a mind reader, I thought I might help him understand my meaning. I told him I loved daisies. White daisies, I said. Like snow flakes twinkling in the dim light of a streetlamp.

Later, Chase left this message a cherry-red Post-It note, “The rose is a classic. Look it up.”

Had he been an accountant, or a lawyer, or anything other than what he was – a painter – I might have indulged his running to the convenient rose. But some messages are too painful to receive, so I took the roses to my studio, put them in an old turpentine container that I refused to fill with water, and called them vermillion.

And then I looked up the rose on the Internet, locating a site devoted to flower meanings. According to the site, a rose means beauty. No surprise there. Next, I looked up daisies. A single daisy means innocence while a double daisy means affection. And a wild daisy means, “Dost thou love me?” Had Chase and I communicated in the language of flowers, I might have given him a clutch of wild daisies in response to his dozen roses. If he’d had the courage to be honest, he might have replied with a single fig marigold, which means coldness of heart, to which I would have responded by filling every corner of the apartment with vases of southernwood, signifying pain. The problem was not that I had misread the signs, it was that I closed my eyes and wished I were illiterate.

A pretty perfect day

This is where my day ended, in Prezlauerberg . . .


But before we get there, let's go back to the beginning. I started my day with a run (after breakfast and coffee, of course), during which I realized a few things (as I often do on a run) :

1. I need to have my camera on me when I'm running.

2. During my run along the canal, I realized Berlin is the perfect place to be unemployed. At 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, the grassy slopes along canal were filled with people enjoying the sunshine, lying on the grass, making out, playing with babies, drinking (you can drink anywhere in public and at anytime), eating food bought at the kiosks installed at the bridges (very smart!) and generally not seeming to worry about work, coz, clearly, they weren't AT work and they looked happy!

3. It seems that 80% of German women between the ages of 20 and 35 in Berlin are either pregnant or have newborns.

4. Food is cheaper in the middle part of the Turkish market (which happens every Tuesday and Thursday, and spans a block along the canal at the end of my street). Smart strategy! Makes you wade right in.

Now for my day:

Breakfast (rye with feta and tomatoes. I love the German version of low-fat feta. In Canada low fat is 17% milk fat. The normal feta is 24% . Here, low fat is 35%!!!! Sure does taste good!) Typical breaky is taken on the balcony, and involves reading a friend's manuscript.



Then lunch: (I did run in between) Liz salad but with chickpeas instead of chicken.


Then, work. Writing stuff. This is the view outside the window in front of the desk. Most buildings have courtyards, as this one does. I love how the building frames the sky. I loved watching the clouds passing over over the tiled roof -- love how the orange tiles complement the blue sky.



Then: coffee break, of couse! Now back to the balcony, which is at the front of the flat.



There are no bad views!


In the kitchen, I'm re-heating my coffee when I realize how taken I am with another view:



Then: dressing up to go out. Wearing the boots I bought last time I was here. This is the first time I have worn them.


Oh, you can't really see the boots? Here they are . . . in Prenzlauerberg! I rode the bike here and did not get lost once!



Met my friend Eric in Prenzlauerberg to watch a film. Every Tuesday, there is an English movie night at this English bookstore, St. Geroge's. Saw a wonderful Polish film, funnily enough, with subtitles. An early film by Krzysztof Kieslowski who did Red, White and Blue. Imagine a tiny bookstore in which all the available space is taken up with folding chairs, with a screen hung from an archway, all of us crammed in together, speaking all manner of English (British, Australian, Canadian, American . . .) It was quite bonding to be an ex-pat with folks I did not know but felt I knew just because we all are in Berlin for our own reasons, yet needing to find others who speak our mother tongue, even if we are here to learn German . . .



But before the movie . . . dinner! Really yummy felafel (although they put the felafels balls on one side of the wrap and all the lettuce on the other, making it almost impossible to get both in a single bite.)



Prenzlauerberg is somewhat like Ronces. Known here, too, as breederville. It was once east Germany where the decrepit buildings were riddled with bullet holes, but all that's changed now, much in the same way everything along Queen west got gentrified. Except here you have cobblestone streets and beautiful old buildings and gorgeous cafés and restaurants and bookstores and clothing stores that make you wish you were so wealthy you could live here and never, ever move. Except in Berlin, wealth is relative. You don't actually need that much money to live really well . . .



This view shows the television tower that is a landmark at Alexanderplatz, one which helps me to navigate the city. And the other building beside it is an old water tower that people live in.


And, that, my friends, is another day . . . no deep thoughts, just some pretty views . . .

One of my days

I realize that some of you may not be checking my flickr site for pics. So, here are a few snapshots from Sunday. This is the view of the buildings across the street when I'm sitting on Abi and John's balcony.










And this is the lunch I served on the balcony to Abi's friend, Eva. And this is Eva eating the lunch.




And then she took me to an art fair near by, at which I photographed the pic below. It was the only piece I liked.


And then Eva took this picture of me as we parted ways.



Then I decided to reward myself for having gotten out to see art: apricot tart and a coffee that arrived with HEATED milk, without my even having to ask! Now THAT'S art!



Look how happy I look! Blue scarf bought at a small Turkish store near me: 2 euro! Scarfified!



But before I go . . . this was from my last trip, and it's something that also makes me very happy. Would you get a load of that . . . arm??!!!