memory

alone at last and also all of a sudden

/ Berlin

~ i wrote ~

Amazingly, alone at last and also all of a sudden, Dieter and I found we actually sort of liked each other in the particular bewitchment of Berlin at dawn. We spent a long time standing in front of an old synagogue that’s now a gallery of Judaica, and I made him read to me over and over the historical signage in German with all its bone-chilling verbs as punchline, and then he started trying to coach me through it — Diese synagogue ist 100 Jahre alt und wurde am 9. November 1938 (and yes saying the year was too difficult) IN DER KRISTALLNACHT von den Nazis in Brand gesteckt — and then to teach me to count in German, but I kept getting to nine and forgetting the word for ten, and he suggested some associative conditioning and began hitting and shoving me, shouting zehn! zehn! and it was very, very sexy, an excellent fulfillment of whatever has been incubating since the tender age when I was made to watch all those movies of fearsome square-jawed Prussians. Anyway, at the end of it all, I’m thinking Sieben is an excellent name for a child.

this episode was written...

into an email
with Birdie
from Germany
on all night long + cityscape + culture + history + Judaism + language + memory + men + war

alone at last and also all of a sudden Read More »

I have been carrying White Noise

/ Île d'Oléron

I said,

I have been carrying White Noise since Brooklyn

And Iʼm not sure if Iʼm not finishing it because I donʼt feel like reading it or because I donʼt feel like reading at all or because I do feel like reading, and badly, and Iʼm afraid of what will happen when I finish it

She said, 

Donʼt donʼt donʼt read it right now 

The world is falling apart 

I said,

But is it? 

I’m trying to imagine a future in which our capacity for happiness is less than it currently is

Are we standing in a bread line?

Am I dead of infection from a coat-hangering?

Lice?

Is everyone we know and don’t drowned in the rising sea?

It’s easy for me—with my sunburn and sack of discount bruised apricots and only a vague uneasiness at how the friendly fisherman affirm, to each other, “Juif” after I introduce myself—to be like, Everything is fiiiiine

But, like, everything is not fine

It’s terrible

It always will be, in various ways, and as things change, we will make changes, and we will go on

I don’t know what else to say

I’m not saying don’t care

But, like, run for office

OR find a way to keep enjoying the new and increasingly horrific world orders

As much as you’re capable of enjoying anything

I am the engineer of a small-scale sea snail Holocaust

My knapsack is soaked in their seawater, which leaked from the olive box while, presumably, I biked home, but my journal is dry

Yesterday Sylka told me that her mother — 90 or 95 years old, I guess — had a dream about telling me, Rachel, remember me

I guess I will

Anyway, I promised I would

this episode was written...

into a text
with Jean
from France
on agency + books + consciousness + death + dreams + existence + fear + future + memory + paradigm

I have been carrying White Noise Read More »

the wandering yaya

/ Apollonas

I said,

The wandering yaya in a housedress who is the only other person in the breakfast room here in Hotel Kouros and whose spinal cord — the top half of it, anyway — is LITERALLY parallel to the horizon just came over to give me a pillow because I guess she didn’t like how I was sitting in my chair.

And then she came back a minute later and gave me what I think is some kind of candy — a chocolate ball in blue foil? — and then put a finger to her lips, gesturing to the kitchen where the woman who is working breakfast is, and I’m fascinated, thinking about what the secret is.

Is it that I’m not supposed to have candy but she’s sneaking it to me anyway?

If that’s what it is, Brava, Yaya.

My other idea is that it’s actually like some medication she’s supposed to be taking and she’s like Shhhh, you take it instead, and don’t tell Euphrosyne.

(Euphrosyne is the fantasy daughter-in-law cooking in the kitchen in my mind. )

I wonder if I’m a surrogate in some memory she’s re-living.

Now she has just come back and given me a ribbon that matches the foil on the chocolate ball.

He said,

I like the stories you tell yourself.

I said,

And NOW

— get ready —

Yaya has brought me a clothes pin.

I thanked her in my limited Greek and clipped it to my knapsack.

She seemed satisfied and moved my bread basket and my salt shaker a centimeter each and went away again.

I think we’ve established something.

this episode was written...

into instagram
with Franny
from Greece
on agency + breakfast + communication + family + language + memory + narrative

the wandering yaya Read More »

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