golden rule

This and thats.

Design 101:

-People need to feel safe.

and also from the movie Peanut Butter Falcon, a take-away to be recycled later:

"I don't have any money and I don't have any pockets."

On Fridays in Brooklyn, I walk down the street to Cat and Bri's house for co-working. Brian makes espressos in the mornings and we cut up fancy bagles. 

This is my favorite day because we are all together, but working independently.

The apartment is a perfectly curated space. Plants and neutral colors, with clean wooden floors, high ceilings and modulated light.

Lately, I have trouble sleeping. Sometimes my mind is just too full of noise and uncertainties. 

Berlin

Arrived to Berlin on the 3rd of February. I drove in on a night bus from the South of Germany, sleeping and reading intermittently as I sprawled across the back row of seats. I read the first few chapters of Pam Houstons 'Deep Creek,' autobiographical prose about a piece of land which changed her life. Farm land and the labors of rural life. She is decades older and a single woman too, save for her farm and her writing. The bus arrived late morning to Berlin central station, pulling into grey skys and drizzle.
I was greeted with the warmest of hugs and the most precious gift of smiling friends with glowing eyes. There laughter and my own blooming affection cheered me deeply. We took the trains back to their apartment, where we sat in the sun drenched living room munching on tangerines and trading stories fondly. They left for Leipzig shortly after and I've spent the two days since they've gone leaning into the solitude of there Neukolln apartment with Moose- a fluffy orange cat who eyes me with suspicion. 

Strange transition into this new city, after weeks of falling asleep in Timurs arms, to find myself suddenly in a different sort of extreme. In the evenings I have gone two seperate times for walks, Each time it has rained and each time I have ended up in grocery stores, mostly unconvinced about the draw of these new surroundings. I have yet to fall in love with Berlin.

testy

Yesterday left me raw and bruised. Dragged against my skin at moments like sandpaper over a half formed scab. There were also beautiful moments and great fun. T arrived home and I was sleepy and excited. We rolled around the bed laughing and playing and I took his cock in my mouth, which I wanted in that moment badly. We packed our things and walked down to a diner where we sat munching on soup and french fries. T took me to the boat ferry, he used to take it every day last year to and from art school. I've talked to him on the telephone as he rode that ferry, long distance from America. It was a treat to see this other life in person. From the boat I could see the swiss Alps, snow capped in the distance hovering over the lake bends. Beautiful, majestic things.
Inside the boat, we sat at wooden tables and I read a book on Joseph Conrad, an old favorite, while T sketched. It all felt rather peaceful. The weight shifted a bit as we approached shore, a little heavier now. This is where he must have sat at times with her just as we were. Did she used to sleep over his flat and ride with him to class this way? Did they watch the Alps over the railing passing by much in the same way we had moments prior? Truly none of that actually mattered but it must have because these were questions in that moment I felt that I couldn't ask and they were answers which he didn't freely offer. The cloud of silence that surronded that relationship, during which he stopped speaking to me entirely, keeps the sting alive long after it should have already run its course. leaves too much room for my mind to draw the missing lines.
We reached the shore and at first sight the place was lovely. Like a little abandoned christmas village/beach town which had been prepping for some festival but then suddenly had forgotten it mid swing and left up all the streamers. Closed up ice cream shops and narrow walkways by the water with low hanging winter branches curling overhead. We walked along the lake to his old school house. It was when we entered that it hit me hardest for the first time. That here I was. Here they were. All unintentionally intersected. I couldn't wait to leave but I said nothing, embarassed by the sudden rush of feeling. Embarassed by the sudden presense of this stranger in the mix. I didn't know what I could say. Which part of it held the stinger? It became hard to disentangle standing there at ground zero with the past in my face. This is where they kissed, this is where he ignored my messages while the kissed and played. The ones which i've more or less blocked from memory, messages that grew increasingly more frantic and ridiculous the longer that they went unanswered.

I suppose that if I were to break it down then it would mostly be the silence. It must have been back in Nov. 2018, when we'd still been speaking, that he'd told me about her. Said that there was a girl he sort of liked in class, that she'd never kissed a boy before, and that he didn't want to go there because he had been down this sort of road before. Shortly after he'd stopped speaking to me more or less entirely. It's hard to really disentangle memories of then. I was a different person to some extent, in the context of our relationship at least, truly that holds true. And prehaps so was he. Different how though? Less calm, More attached. Less careful, un-gentle, impatient. Unapreciative or unaccepting of our differences but maybe also more afraid.
It's been just two short years but so much has changed and grown and rearanged. I think if I were to disect it now to reach the heart of things it would be that he didn't tell me.
That he let me feel it happen for myself.
I do remember when I sort of knew. The winter of last year. I was still missing him, even when I knew, I kept on missing. I felt it so poignantly like I was still conneted to him against my will and I could feel the evolution of there whole relationship from all the way across an ocean and without a single word. What I also knew is that it wouldn't last. I say this not to express that it gave me comfort, though perhaps I did draw what I needed from that well, but rather to express that it was not something I felt to be threatening. It was always more a heart thing. T said it just exactly right, 'betrayed me in his heart.' I'd been cut off and labeled with some explanation that men give to their past lovers to excuse why they can't carry on. Relegated to mere explanation given in hindsight- oh and this one ya I loved her once, but she was just too- emotional, insecure, irrational, too- whatever it is I had been made into it. all the shared secrets and tender moments, that seeing and trusting and feeling and touching, to be told now just like this.

I was relieved when we got on the ferry back. Like the weight of that weird island-like mass lifted and my breath felt my own again. I could laugh again and play, the tenderness returned to natural. We took a bus down to the hot pools in Konstanz, played with each others bodies in the changing rooms and in the hot pools. I have always loved the water, it has always and will always feel like home. Even when I haven't got one there is this. It is the feel of childhood and of freedom, of being cleansed and payful, and of being just so small against the backdrop of our universe, of earth. A little part of this huge whole.

Back in the locker rooms after we'd showered I got on my knees and took his cock in his mouth. I dont think I have ever enjoyed a mans body quite so much in all my life. I playfully suggested we'd be having to finish off once we'd reached the restaurant. Then noted how it was quite lucky that the doors were long enough to cover up my naked bottom as I knelt there on the floor. He laughed and told me that he'd had a different sort of an experience once where it had not been long enough and someone knocked, while the girl sucked him off. That they could see her ass beneath the stalls. A pretty immediate rush of heat to my head again. Like here we were again back on the island that was not an island with the girl that didn't really matter. Any other story and it would have made me laugh, any other girl and i would have enjoyed the joke.
For the rest of the night I couldn't shake the image from my head. The changing rooms of the pool and her head around his cock, the door not long enough to cover her ass from the others and the two of them laughing when they'd been discovered.
I try to imgine a different scenario. If he had answered me immediately when i'd asked him where and whom? If he had said Ivana, or really anybody else how I would feel. This is the investigative process of trying to find the seed of things. Of locating the splinter. I imagine any other answer or even any answer at all and I feel immediately calmer. The scene loses its charge and all goes on as usual. But he doesn't answer, in much the same way that he didn't answer when I asked him who'd last cut his hair. This time I can't take a breather. and my heads spinning. Maybe it's that I'm still standing naked in a tiny changing room, vulnerable in the most primal of ways and with no place to hide to. The whole day with the ghost of it has sort of just been dripping on my heart and in that little room is the tipping point, where the glass is suddenly full and I feel I can't stand it any longer and I'm beside myself, or rather no longer inside myself. And my body is still there naked and small- is now screaming from the mouth attached to its head and I'm not sure what it's saying but its loud and it's heart is beating so fast and it's someone elses body really and its cold and its hot and it's got a chest that can't hold the steam. I got dressed and walked outside the building, breathing- waited for the fog to clear. returned back to my body with a little extra weight on my heart.

grass

Last night, laying in bed, I asked about the girl from last year. I said, Why do you feel uncomfortable talking to me about her when you've been able to freely speak to me of all your other past relationships?
He said there were two reasons. The first one was that perhaps because he felt he had betrayed me. Not with words so much, because he felt he'd been quite straight that way, but in his heart.
The second was that it had hurt him the way that it ended, that she didn't wish to speak to him anymore after he'd broken up.
The second reason was more or less fine for me to hear. The first stung far more then I'd expected. Somehow it felt like he'd finally said the very real thing that I'd already felt and known inside myself but had pushed back into some far off dusty corner in an effort to avoid disturbing my present sense of contentment or delusion.
In that year when he had started dating her I'd missed him terribly. I remember feeling so confused and hurt when he'd stopped answering my texts, unable to grasp why he wouldn't strive for even just a frienship after all the intimate and sincere moments we had shared. I remember when I realized that he had started seeing her. I think I'd known it in my heart more or less from the start. I'd also known it wouldn't last. It hurt me most that he just shut me out. He said so beautifully crisply true exactly how it was and how it felt.

dreams

I dreamt I met a man. He wasn't particularly attractive or remarkable. We walked back to my mothers house and went down to the basement where a large mattress filled up most of the room across from a television set. I lay down on the mattress as though we were going to watch a movie and then the scene changed to black and suddenly I was upstairs now in the lving room, lying on a hospital cot. My mother was hovering above me with a doctor in a long white coat. Timur was also in the room with us. I caught a glimpse of the man slinking away as I awoke. I felt drugged and sluggish as they told me I'd had sex with the man in the basement and that I had lost a lot of blood. It was then I looked down and saw the red stains all around my thighs, between my legs. They said they weren't sure what the problem was. My first thought was to feel ashamed that I had slept with this man. I saw Tim and wondered what he must think of me- of my questionable taste in partners. After the immediate shame came a sudden realization that I had no recollection of ever having slept with the man. In fact I could remember nothing beyond going downstairs to the basement and sitting down on the mattress. I struggled to piece it together and remembered that the man had brought me on some sort of silver platter cookies which I immediately ate. Between eating the cookies and waking up in the bloody cot everything was pitch black. It dawned on me that he had drugged me. That I had been unconcious. Oddly this gave me great relief, the knowing that I hadn't willingly slept with him. I wanted them to all know it hadn't been my choice. The room was oddly calm. The doctor explained that perhaps because I'd been unconscious and unabale to communicate during our intercourse my pain or discomfort, the man had unwittingly ruptured something, perhaps damaged some organs. He later suggested the possibility that perhaps I'd been pregnant and the intercourse had caused me to miscarry.

anx

Sometimes i get really concerned about things very suddenly like i’ll be chilling then all of a sudden be like, “O shit where’s my birth certificate”

Konstanz is quaint and pleasant. The main distinguishing feature seems to be a large(very large) lake which seperates the residential area from downtown. Over the lake runs a bridge and railroad tracks. Downtown there is a shopping mall called Lago, with uninspired name brand stores like Espirit and Natura. The most low key shops I could find inside were a Zara and an H&M. H&M seems to be a popular staple around these parts as I've already noted some two or three of them in what appears a 20m radius of one another. Now that I've seen the other options that young people have for shopping I can better understand why so many of the Europeans whom I meet abroad seem to go gaga for this pretty unimpressive brand. Affordable and somewhat less dated then this hoity-toity nonsense elsewhere. But that's not here nor there. It mostly serves to point out that it isn't easy for me to carve out some corner for myself during my stay here. Sometimes we are just on top of each other and I am self concious mostly that I am on top of everything. Sharing this room and little mini life together has had its most splendid moments but it's also been a little cramped at times for both of us. Perhaps even another bedroom/living room I could sneak out to for some hours would loosen up the air some. But for the most part we've been sweet and gentle and elegant in our dance with each others individualities and quirks. Tonight I'd like to find a coffee shop, or cafe' rather as the Europeans call them, to hole up in for a couple hours, perhaps with a notebook and a bit of tunes.

It's mostly at night lately that i get these bursts of overwhelming affection. My heart just gets so full and I feel myself overflowing. In those moments I feel like I want to talk for hours and share secrets and kiss, touch, ask about the hidden corners or to dream out loud. And in those moments I find myself struggling to contain myself, keep it inside and let him sleep. He is working early, I am not. I am old enough to grasp this, not to take it personal or wither in the silence.

There are certain things which I sometimes feel envious about. For instance siblings. That closeness, the fantasy of growing up together in a home which isnt built upon cold rules and dictatorships. The bonds that come from a shared youth and family. Sometimes also about the engagement to creating pictures. I see the fun it makes and am reminded of this thing I've felt at different times when I've become excited about learning/mastering some craft that I could sense for sure I could be good at. In my past, my parents were always quick to extinguish any such a fire, and now that i'm older I am struggling to light the flames again. Yet I crave it and I know it's in my reach and up to me to stoke that.

The choices are at times so plentiful that the mere fact of freedom becomes it's own prison. Yet, it is time, i sense, to blossom-

dregs of september

The dregs of september, air crisp and fresh. This time of year has always overwhelmed me with a certain sense of great nostalgia for my childhood. Not necessarily the early years so much as the 9’s,10’s, 11’s. Picking outfits in the morning before school, walking to the bus stop, playing out unspoken conversations in my mind, planning. When the open-endedness of life seemed like some sort of guarantee. As did I. And passing time was not yet pregnant with some tinge of pressure to arrive at any given destination. Any and all destinations still lay comfortably ahead, and it was understood both by myself and others, I was on my way. What do I want with #? A greater openness, trust. Sincerity. Can you be an equal partner, both the cared for and caretaker on any given day? A willingness to own your insecurities, affection, commitment. The ability to care, show up even if it’s not convenient timing for you, even if it doesn’t suit your mood.