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.

PICT0204

the best things that have happened today are:
coffee and super yummy apple cake at surprisingly unsmokey wohnzimmer
savorying the pre-christmas new yorker (maybe i should get a subscription)
finding my house, bike and mailbox keys after having lost them for two days on my desk

the saddest thing that has happened is:
finishing "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" and missing christopher

Denver airport. 4 something p.m. A few hours ago in the Aspen airport I listened to a mid-20's woman whine to her middle aged male companion about the inadequacy of their hotel room.
"But, I spent 5 G's on that room!"
"Yeah, but you go to bed so early and you know that me and Melissa are party girls. You could have at least got one of those suites with a separate living room."
"It woulda cost over $800 a night or been 30 minutes away. Then you would have had to walk. We had the best location, right downtown. You can't get a better location. That's why everbody wanted to come over all the time. They couldn't afford a room like ours."
"I'm just saying it could've been... Now I lost my water. I'm gonna buy another one."
She comes back.
"I hate it when you compare me to Amy. It is sooo insulting."
"I'm not comparing you."
"Like when I threw water on that guy. You said it was just like Amy. I mean that is like so insulting when you compare me to her."

Waiting to get off the plane a teenage daughter asks her dad.
"Are there legends of people surfing tsunamis?"
"No, people don't surf tsunamis."
"Yeah, but I think I heard about people like a long time ago. There was a legend about somebody surfing a tsunami."

I should've had more than one beer at the airport bar...

I was reading the New Yorker from the week of Christmas. One of the writers wrote about his childhood in Slovakia and his image of Germany. How, every time he was in Stuttgart he could only think of the World War II atrocities that had taken place even though the city was completely rebuilt. These atrocities seemed much more real for him than the current disasters occurring in the Middle East and Africa. It made me think about my feelings about WWII and living in Berlin. Somehow I have a morbid curiosity about the war and that history. It doesn't seem so long ago when you can see bullet holes in many of the buildings in Berlin. On the other hand, I wasn't born then. My parents weren't born then. My Jewish relatives identify with the Jews killed in WWII. I don't. Is that bad? Am I excusing people who are responsible for the horrible things done during the war? I feel guilty for not being angry or sad. I really don't feel anything about the war itself. Current politics are another story. I feel angry, guilty, sad and ashamed in regard to the "war" in Iraq, the over-consumption and mindless consumerism in the USA, the dominance of America in world politics and, and, and...
Yet, my life goes on as always. I am not affected by the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in a tsunami in Southeast Asia. Besides a few minutes when I worried that my father might be there, I haven't even thought about it that much. How can one comprehend a disaster and mass death like that? I have only known six dead people in my whole life. I didn't really feel anything about their deaths either. One is my grandpa. It just seemed like my grandpa hadn't come to visit for longer than usual. Another is my 4-H leader from when I was about 8 years old. I was afraid she would sit up in her coffin during the funeral and I was worried about my clothes because they weren't black. Then I saw someone else from the 4-H club in a magenta dress. The third dead person I know is an old man who used to lead my family on hikes in the mountains when we first moved to Colorado. They did a really bad make-up job on him for the wake. He looked purplish-pink.

for the second time i was hit on the head by an icicle! then i stomped the snow off my flip-flops.
dreading the middle seat for 10 hours between screaming kids. dreading the security searches and the immigration lines. dreading the dry air on the plane and dreading the grayness of berlin. dreading also-work tomorrow.
emma's travelling clothes are like library books that she uses for awhile and then puts back into circulation. why am i so attached to my stuff? this time i have a huge suitcase and a bag of books. it's always the books i can't separate myself from.

This morning my head hurts, as it has every morning since I've been here. I am sipping lemon ginger tea while watching the snow, dark mountains, bare trees, and sky change from rose colored to a full range of yellows. I am pleased with myself because I managed to cut off my dreams of past lives at 7 a.m., that is three and a half more hours later than yesterday. If I continue at this rate, I will wake up at 10:30 tomorrow, which will be 18:30 at my home in Berlin.

home?

Cornstarch squeaks and crunches under my feet. I feel like I am in a movie set for "Fargo". Surreal. No cars, no trains, no subway, no cobblestones or pavement, no cell phones, no street signs or public trash cans, no buildings, houses or shops. Well, there is one house, and that is where my mother lives. I am struggling to reconcile the knowledge that I grew up in a place similar to this, and the overwhelming feeling that I am an alien on a foreign planet.

I am a cliche.