Berlin Finds Me

THE EXPERT POSITION

My last days in Vienna were housed in the apartment of another dancer in my ProSeries, Nici (Nicole) Rutrecht. Nici is the one who, when working together on an improvisation assuming "The Expert Position" (that is, on anything, tying shoelaces, baking cakes, nuclear physics -- the point is just to assume the confidence of the position of expertise and apply it somewhere, relevant or not), gave an authentic lecture-demonstration of the expertise of getting lost. No, wait, pause a second--yes, that's funny. And sometimes tragic. But funny.

Not so much in her honor as for that expertise and propensity which we inherently share, I busied myself by (some would say, "lost myself in") burning the full "Twin Peaks" Season I from her collection (which also included full seasons of "Married With Children" and "The Golden Girls", proudly shown to me through squinted eyes at odd hours pre-bedtime !??!), working, cooking fishball dumpling noodle soup for my new Austrian friends, and getting myself lost in the Vienna woods.

BIS BALD IM WEINERWALD: See you soon in the Vienna Woods ...

At some point scaling a steep, non-marked patch of hill so dry it was like digging my toes and desperate hands into an endless vat of fine sand, I found myself thinking, "This is how random tourists end up on the front-page of the local paper, as they slide to their death on a random patch of non-marked hillside." I also thought that this is why they ALWAYS tell you NOT to go off the beaten path, and told myself as such non-too-infrequently as I made vertical sprints between trees and fallen trees that served as holds for my climb (yes, I bet they made a sound, and it probably went something like AAHHHHHH as they fell). End of story is that no bear ate me, I did not slip, and I only scared one Australian tourist at the church viewing platform atop the hill as I emerged from the bracken like a lost baby goat in a yellow t-shirt. Ja. Inventory for the lost includes many treasures, including a glorious Danube panorama from within privately owned vineyards, evidence of a yet unfinished house emblazoned with the title (JU)STill MARRIED (JU crossed out), hours of fun with weeds I still consider flowers (dandelions, those purple ones, those white ones, the little ones, you know), a brush with poison ivy or similar rash-plant, and many, many, many, many trees all by my lonesome. Dirt and rock beneath my feet, I couldn't have been more content.

(pictures pending)

WIEN-BERLIN LINIEN: 20:30-06:30 (with a drop-off in Dresden, 03:30)

Having agreed over the phone to sublet an empty room from a law student here by arriving at her doorstep off my 6:30 am overnight bus from Vienna, she sweetly and very, very apologetically tells me at a bleary-eyed 7:30am that a friend needed the extra room. Rather than being fully out of luck, however, I'm full of it-- she found me another room, this time in a 5-person converted warehouse loft wohnung (shared apartment). Although not completely finished (concrete floors in the shared space), it's totally cool (refurbished bathroom and a full-on bar countertop) and in a young, artsy area. And with a flexible exit date. My plans being so haphazard, that amount of flexibility is important ... I'd actually like to stay in the city longer, seeing as how impressed I am by it, and hopefully pick up a decent amount of German. As McDonald's would unfortunately say: "I'm lovin' it".

So I am here, trying to make some money-recoop working for Jeff (still, the health magazine) and getting recovered from the pure hedonism of the end-of-festival partying in Vienna in time for an audition starting Saturday. 6 hours a day for 8 days, I am really hoping to survive to the end, if not for work (but really, yes, please, for work) then for a decent workshop experience. The choreographer is young and upcoming but blazing on the scene -- American, educated in Amsterdam, and up till now based in New York, he's looking for 4-5 performers for a new piece contracted (for creation, I don't know about performances) here in Berlin from November to April 2008. I imagine he's now starting to get a lot of funding and commissions from European sources, hence the shift of base. Would I move? I hear your motherly worry (some of you). I don't know -- the audition is a two-way process.

But Berlin is nice. Very, very nice. A fresh mozzarella and tomato sandwich on a sunflower seed roll with a Segafredo cappuccino for 3.30 EU. Very high syllable-per-description to money ratio, which is, in terms of Quality Of Justification rather than Quality-Absolute (is there? is it not all perception?), a respectable ranking. These are the economics of budget travel.

The room I am in is lined with intelligent books, by authors the likes of which I have kept at the distance of at least a 7-foot pole since college days to protect me from my own hunger for obtuseness. Going to order an Englisch guidebook from the bookstore across from "Trendy Army Store" (I cannot help but wonder, and think I am right in wondering, if this crassly-named store is run by Chinese importers), I discover that B-Books is actually a relaxed and inviting storehouse for public and hobby intellectuals alike, with titles on every -tic and -ology and debate you can imagine. I'm in heaven!

The man I'm renting from is a German who looks and speaks like a Brit, has many leather-cased notebooks and 1950s paraphenalia to make him appear as such, and walked in on me by accident with no clothes on and broke the door handle doing so (the door handle often breaks, sometimes of its own accord, but not of its own will, rather like in response to world events or to the fluttering of a schmetterling's wings in Kyoto, for example. Schmetterling was one my first German words. It means "butterfly".) His name is Marian Kaiser; Kaiser's is the name of the local grocery store; I have never before thought to question the cultural origin of the 'Kaiser roll' before now; I am staying in his room; Marian Kaiser told me how to get to B-Books and also mentioned the 1 Euro Bookstore I found on my own where I found one thing worth buying, from which I will now quote in sign-off:

"If I am not mistaken, and if all the signs which are piling up are indications of a fresh upheaval in my life, well then, I am frightened. It isn't that my life is rich or weighty or precious, but I'm afraid of what is going to be born and take hold of me and carry me off -- I wonder where? Shall I have to go away again, leaving everything behind -- my research, my book? Shall I awake in a few months, a few years, exhausted, disappointed, in the midst of fresh ruins? I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late. ... if I had an iota of self-knowledge, now is the time when I ought to use it."
Sartre, Nausea, entry dated Monday, 29 January 1932