i'm sad. sad for me. sad for my ex-lover. for how he's changed. for how frightened i've become. the mischievousness i loved so much hardly ever flickers in his eyes now. my belly is burning inside. he's as beautiful as ever, but i don't love him. i don't even know who he is. maybe he has changed that much, or maybe I just didn't see who he was because i was so blinded by my lust for him. it's like having intense and real feelings in a dream and then waking up and realizing the situation was all an invention of my own.
i'm sad because i've lost him, not as a lover, but part of him is gone forever. part of my innocence is also lost. most of the time i am happy to see the way i am developing as i get older, but then i am sad when i see how naive i once was and how much i don't do now in order to keep from getting hurt. before i had ever been hurt i didn't even know what to be afraid of. now i am petrified by my fear.

after the first day of sunbathing on the balcony (complete with tanning oil and swimming togs!) i mistakenly thought it was warm enough to wear flip-flops and a summer skirt to a birthday get-together, a decision i regretted all afternoon and evening as my legs a toes froze. what a disappointment!
occassionally i feel settled here, and even think my german is pretty good. today's kaffee und kuchen party reminded me of the opposite. my semi-joke explaining a cat's erratic behavior as a symptom of menopause was lost when i didn't know the german word for menopause and said menopowza, germanizing the english word (it usually works with medical vocab). no one understood and i ended up explaining what menopause is to the whole group of people who i don't know well. yep, my face was bright red. now i know it's- die Wechseljahre. don't think i'll forget that one soon.

soon there will be a new mostly english magazine in berlin! we're aiming for a free happy to be here village onion feel, with mostly berlin-centric content. satirical, serious, funny: interviews, reviews, essays, practical info about living in berlin, cartoons, photos, and classifieds are all welcome. please send submissions in english or german to ourmagazine@gmail.com.

i keep checking my blog hoping that there will be something new posted and there never is. strange.

the weather is too nice for blogging. :-)

survived the camp and had some fun. went straight to kindergarten teaching followed by business english on monday and tuesday. somehow managed to forget my coat, with house keys in the pocket, on the bus. also managed to show up to a class on the wrong day. i never carry my pda, but now i guess i have to. it such a nerdy thing and mine is sooo uncool too. the other crap thing about it is that everytime the bateries run out it deletes everything. talk about a pain in the ass! most of the time i'd rather have an old-fashioned paper agenda, but i can't bring myself to buy one.
i'm really tired. this weekend i'm throwing a party like it's my 30th, even though it's my 27th. i hate that i get myself so tired and stressed about parties that i'm too tired to enjoy them. last time i said that this time it was going to be drinks only but now i've got a whole list of finger food to make, besides a cake to bake, apartment to rearrange and clean, beer to buy and schlepp up 5 flights, a trip to the farmers' market for fruit, veg, olives and cheese...

off to camp for the week. have a good feeling about this one. bag's not yet packed and it's late, but these things take care of themselves because they don't have a choice. i am armed against the camp's newsprint toilet paper with my own fluffy stuff. also prepared with brie, banana and lettuce-scarcities in the gdr. keeping chin up, friends have promised text messages and phone calls, may even get a chance to check email while i'm there...

I'm happy! :-)
Getting up early on Saturday to a freshly cleaned apartment bodes well for the day.

It's my dad's 50th today!

It's school break! Yea! Been working like crazy to save up for a studio. Tonight I taught a private class with a woman who trains project managers for Bosch. She asked if I'd had experience with project management. I was like, um... Anyway, she seemed satisfied after I gave her a lot of suggestions on how to better her presentation. I don't even remember the last time I gave a presentation. Must've been freshman English. Guess all those meetings and presentations at the old job were good for something.
Next week off to camp. :(

in my apartment hall there lives a fart ghost. why does ghost have an h in it? couldn't it be gost? or goest? or gosed? anyway, my roommate and i discovered this ghost a few months ago. first i thought it was her. then she was away, and the smell stayed. and i don't fart, so it definitely couldn't be me. i aired out the apartment and left for the day. when i came back the smell was stronger than ever. i really thought that my roommie ran into the hall and let one go every time she had the chance, but how could she do it when she wasn't even in town? i know, maybe she plants timed fart bombs to go off while she's not there. that must be it! she is a terrorist! i should've guessed...

ok. i can't help it if i drive fast. how else am i gonna deal with the inferiority complex i'm developing from driving a Smart car? besides, driving fast gets out my contained frustration after a day of not getting angry with assholey kids. i never had a speeding ticket before i came here (ok there was that one time in canada), but somehow the big-eyed look of surprised guilt doesn't work as effectively on "blitz" radar machines as it does on cops.

omyfuckinggod! another fucking speeding ticket. it seems like this job costs me more money than it brings in. fuck fuck fuck and fucking fuck! that's 2x35euro+25euro parking ticket+181euro towing fee=way too fucking much. goddamit!
newest idea is not to choose between having a desk job and being an artist. just do it all! get a studio, apply for web design jobs, give art classes for kids on the weekends, get job, save money, quit job, make art, get another job, save money, quit job, make art, save money, make art, save money, make art, make money, make art...

there i was happily surfin' the web, oblivious to the rest of the world and then i found out about tracking devices.
not only can site owners see my IP address, they know how long i was on the site, at what time and on what day i was there, where i was before that, if i've been there before, how many times i came back, what country and time zone i'm in, exactly which pages on their site i visited, my monitor res, if i've accepted their cookies, which operating system i use, which javascript version i have...
how could i have been so naive! it's like i hadn't noticed that i'm a guinea pig in a glass box. now i suddenly see that there are thousands of eyeballs documenting ever move i make.

check out the current next blog link from mine.

right. people are still killing each other all over the world. now, i've had my news fix for the day and i can escape into my hippie world with Cat Stevens. i mean, i've got a tough stomach, but hearing about bodies being exhumed, while crunching toast and brie, is a bit much.
i remembered why i started a blog- i hate mass emails and i want to keep in touch with my friends in 28 different cities and 10 different countries. now that i have defined my purpose, maybe my writing will be more focused.
said good-bye (again) to a man on a street corner (again). a street corner i pass often, but will now remind me of him. a man so cold, so square. me so warm, so fluid, or maybe so jelly. or was i cucumber and he baked alaska?
i've dreamt myself without skin. am i that much more sensitive than most people, or is everyone else just better at
pretending?
have you ever noticed how incredible the inside of a pepper is? i want to live in one. and no, i'm not on hallucinogens, just coffee.

this is what my friend, anna, says and she rocks!
"it's not fair they have artists write about
their work. Words just get in the way of what I am
truly trying to say with my art. Besides poets don't
have to draw pictures of their poetry and explain it
to the world that way. UghHHHHHHh!"

it turns out i actually made 54 euros, not 60, that day. my pay raise doesn't take effect until AFTER the 6th month of employment. logisch! figures my contract would adhere to standards and not to my desires. what would a contract be like if it adhered to my desires? i just got this horrible image of paper, scotch taped to pieces of cotton that are floating around like kitschy clouds. oooo.
blogging is my first experience writing for an unknown audience. up til now i've only written class papers, letters, and in my journal. is it possible to write without thinking about who will read it? somedays i think about one friend as an audience when I write, sometime about another. i think my blog is like a censored journal. it's not so censored that i want my parents to read it, but censored enough that i'm not blabbing about my friends intimate details. and, i don't want my intimate details on the web either. maybe it's too late. who knows if someone else writes about me on their blabby blog. ok, i really doubt it.
so today, i've realized that the MBA idea is crap. who cares about money anyway. what i really need to do is keep working on my portfolio and keep sending it out. yeah, and here i am blogging about it and not doing it.

A hot shower, flannel pyjamas, three glasses of Rioja, some Nat King Cole...
I worked 11 hours 15 minutes today (not including class prep and paperwork) for 60 euro. Fucking bullshit! That's what I say. And yesterday, I was thinking of signing on for another year. No fucking way! I guess it sort of balances out 'cause on Thursday I'll make 100 euro for 6 hours work (not including class prep and travel time), assuming no one cancels (a likely possiblity). Well, it's still not enough. Is it every gonna be enough? Maybe I should just bail out, get an MBA and a real job. Probably wouldn't be enough then either. sigh. Besides, I hate real jobs and cubicles make me wanna puke (or kill somebody).

Two new experiences I've had this week are:
1- scraping ice off a bike seat and,
2- riding through the woods on snowy trail in 0 degree (C) weather!
Getting out of the city and my apartment was so refreshing. It cleared my mind funk a bit after losing sleep over boy issues, worries about what I'm doing here and why I'm here, what my next project/Big Step will be, but mostly the boy... I am so happy that I can get away for and be in nature for 4 euros and a 1 hour round trip. I'll definitely be going again in the springtime, or maybe sooner. It was quite ________ riding through the pristine whiteness and saying, "Oh, Birkenwerder. I think there was a concentration camp near here." Then we found a Gasthaus on a lake, where we got warm and had Kaffee und Kuchen. Mmm. Often I forget that I come from "the country", but when I am in the wilderness I let out a big sigh and feel completely relaxed. It seems like I must have been holding my breath the whole time until I let out that sigh.

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