seamen

11 July 2016

home again

I wore the new dress I got in Stockholm to work today. I looked up the designer and he is based in LA.

Arriving in Philadelphia last night to the same life, same house seemed more than I can remember. Coming back from floating around places I don’t belong, I sensed the new sensation that I also may not belong in my own home. 

But this morning waking up to the warm summer sun to start a new day, I felt that my body within my home was accepting me back in again. Grateful to feel like I have a set place in the world. Privileged that I can choose to challenge that feeling at any time. Strange to be able to understand everything around me. Scared to open my mouth freely. Appreciative there are people who know my name and my story and choose to tell me theirs. Shocked that my life, untouched, was sitting patiently waiting for me to slip into my very own body again.

berlin part 2

Moving through the bright and unsettling gravity of the city, I wanted to appear uncrumbled. I wanted to justify the way I felt by saying I was from a different place, all the while knowing this city was just a physical representation of how the world always feels. Mentally adrift and physically present, I still needed to sustain myself by breathing in the heavy air. In the terrible lightness of the never-ending afternoon, I felt like I was walking down a street that would lead me on forever with a smile. I could probably walk down that street of uncertainty and its continuous “today” like tomorrow would never happen. And even though I would eventually become an unwanted party in the interaction, it would politely continue to guide me toward nowhere. Perhaps if I knew that each step I took was already too late, I would later look back to feel the peace of acceptance.

10 July 2016

berlin

Like the air of Berlin itself, I felt a detached sense of being. Being not in, but rather on top, of the city at all times. Like an insignificant drop of water sliding on the surface of a well-oiled sheet. At times I may have tried to engage with the built environment, but ended up lost in the starting point of my own mind. Like trying to swallow a cotton ball with a throat lined with a thick sheet of wool.

I didn’t even manage to gain a grip on the mind-blowing experience of the modernist architecture. Several times I intentionally sat on the gentle slopes of lawn areas, created to be ripe funnels for human consumption of the surrounding man-made post-war marvels. But I dared not consume the glazed visual spectacles not meant for me. However stagnate my physical body, something gently pushed me to keep the mental image of myself in motion. My eyes riding the curvilinear waves that crowned the shining yellow facades, perhaps between various planes hoping to catch a ray of sunlight. Reaching to shuffle apart the smooth black posts that only served to elongate the enclosed nature of the church next door. I imagined that when the rain hits these roofs it would sound like tiny metal studs hitting a plastic surface. Waking up from my daydream, I shook away the vague dialogue I had with the city, that the city had with me.

I stayed with a small woman with a small child. I remember flicking on and off the light switch in the bathroom as I got ready to jog off metaphorical cliffs. The child followed me around like a terrible hot water balloon. The woman’s energy was draining to the point that when I stepped foot in her flat, I felt like I was walking on a pool of dizzying mirrors that could crack and pinch me at any time.

01 July 2016

malmö



lingonberry and vegan protein spheres