movement

the sun here is relentless

/ København

Nomad Cafe, Holmbladsgade

The sun here is relentless, and with my body disbelieving we are not still in Brooklyn, I barely slept in the five or so hours of paltry night.

Left the sour sheets and my first-night digs at 7 this morning, so ready to get to a better way of being, and trudged forty minutes to upscale Amagerbro, where I will wait out the hours until I may collect flat keys from an Inga who will trust me to care for her cats and sleep in her bed while she enjoys Paris for some days and nights.

A small cafe that is making the most of the light and was empty of people and manifest evidence of food service had that look like You’d better come in here, and a proprietor — bearded sweetly — appeared and welcomed me in English and said back that my mondo pack will be fine at my feet, that if the place fills up we’ll put it elsewhere.

Now I am having a latte that is the best and realest thing to pass my lips in two whole days, maybe longer. The sandwich board-advertised croissants and pains au chocolats have appeared in the pastry case, two of each, hot from his oven and exhaling fresh pastry smell, and now a lady with a baby has come in and bought and borne away one pain au chocolat like she knows something, and so I will ask for the other, quick quick, because I want to know something, too.

this episode was written...

into her journal
from Denmark
on cafe + coffee + food + movement + sleep + sun + waiting

the sun here is relentless Read More »

my voice is falling into disuse

/ Berlin

She said, 

Are you seeing people? Organizing your room? Sitting in a cafe? Sending emails? Exploring? Eating vegan currywurst? 

I said, 

I just got back to the apartment after fucking around in constructive, aid-while-abroad-seeking ways on Facebook for most of the day over two cappuccini and a salad and a piece the vegan bananenbrod with some kind of peanut butter frosting which was EXCELLENT btw at the yes same one not-really-vegan cafe 

Trying to make plans for either tonight or tomorrow with the guy who works there, but he is I think Syrian under his German and so his English is pretty confusing 

Nursing some confusion about What I Should Be Doing Instead 

Feeling almost breathless with loneliness or some other kind of emotional vertigo  

In going through my Facebook friends to see whom else I should tag in my latest plea post, I discovered that this guy I had a mad crush on over my years in Boston with whom things never really got off the ground died in a bike accident four years ago 

When I think about it I get cold all over

I included him on my get out the vote for Clinton email in November 2016 

He’d already been dead for two years

I just redownloaded Tinder, although Iʼm not sure if thatʼs a bad idea or a self-forgiving one 

My voice is falling into disuse 

She said, 

What a swarm of things you must be feeling

I said, 

How can you tell?

A guy who was my immediate bestie on our freshman orientation backpacking trip sixteen years ago just wrote back being like Oh yeah I got sick of New York so a friend and I started an investment bank in Bucharest and for sure you can come stay on my pull-out for a couple of weeks let me look at the calendar 

And Pavel just messaged that he found me a place to stay on Île d’Oléron, which is evidently an island off the Atlantic coast of France, so now this is thoroughly a fairy tale I am unready for

This is very exciting if I can just figure out how to be scared only a non-crippling amount of the time 

I need to go to bed so I can get up and keep trying to move forward in some way even if itʼs not in the BEST way 

She said, 

Get up and do 10 push-ups first thing 

I said, 

Okay I will 

First I will put on a bra because how I look is the most important thing about me 

And then I will do ten pushups 

Eleven, even 

Itʼs weird how I waited for this for so long and then all of a sudden it happened

WEʼRE ALIVE AND ITʼS SO TERRIBLE BUT THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE 

this episode was written...

into a text
with Jean
from Germany
on body + confusion + death + exercise + food + friendship + language + loneliness + motivation + movement + planning + social media

my voice is falling into disuse Read More »

watch battery on a sunday

/ Berlin

~ i wrote ~

Where here can I get a new watch battery on a Sunday, when in this Christian god-adhering nation things are all closed?

I’ve begun making my immediately-post-Berlin plans but they’re all wrong, topographically speaking — way, way too much overland shenanigans as I shuttle between Cologne or Stuttgart and back to Berlin again and Cracow and Vienna and/or Prague and Paris, from where I’ll go to Bucharest indefinitely — must cease shenaniganning, find water, and stars, and stay.

My watch stopped yesterday, which for someone who likes to know the time and gravitates toward the analog and lives for unsettling metaphors is almost too much to bear.

this episode was written...

into an email
with Manuel
from Germany
on business + commerce + geography + metaphor + movement + planning + religion + technology + time + travel

watch battery on a sunday Read More »

why shouldn’t I sleep until noon

/ Berlin

Northern Europe in May induces a certain extravagance, a profligacy with the day.

Why shouldn’t I sleep until noon?

The only reason to get up is to not waste the daylight, and what will I do with seventeen hours of it?

Et cetera.

I’m looking forward to moving toward the equator, to somewhere more reasonable about such things.

this episode was written...

into her journal
from Germany
on movement + sleep + sunlight + time

why shouldn’t I sleep until noon Read More »

I caught a ride to Cologne

/ Köln

I said,

I caught a ride to Cologne and indeed am not going back to Berlin tonight.

It just was starting to feel bad to me to be there — stagnant, a little depressive — which I didnʼt totally realize until I felt almost euphoric walking through a dark forest in the rain on Friday night, trying to find Cedar’s hotel by foot because I didnʼt want to wait for the bus or pay for a taxi.

I still donʼt know what Iʼm doing here, but I do know that I was kind of at a standstill there — not writing, not learning — and that to go backward would be the wrong thing for the momentum Iʼm trying to build.

If you still feel like sex clubbing without me, Kit Kat Club is open tonight and tomorrow.

But I don’t think theyʼll let you in with your flip flops.

this episode was written...

into a text
with Dirk
from Germany
on emotion + movement + planning + travel

I caught a ride to Cologne Read More »

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