i woke up excited and ready.
i do not think much about how i look here. this morning i put a belt on over my nightie, added a cardigan and some dirty shoes, and walked out the door. i do not feel beautiful and do not worry if other people think i am. normally, i decorate myself to distract from me. i add ruffles and bows and mascara and bright nail polish. i layer myself with sarcasm and hair dye and too many words. though it's all a part of who i am, sometimes i feel i'm just deferring attention to some facade i've created rather than just letting people see me. sometimes i wonder if people like what is underneath all the noise or if they just like the show.
but that is a whole other story.
i am in berlin and everything is different and the same. but in this instance mostly different because no one knows me and thus does not await the show. if someone saw me walking down the street in pants, they would not be surprised or care. they would not know i always wear a dress and a bow. (okay. so i put on a bow this morning too. but being bow-less is practically being naked for me.) they would not be surprised if i didn't smile or if i were quiet. they would not be surprised about anything about me, because i am just another girl they probably do not notice. i am currently relishing this anonymity. i am just a girl. living in berlin. there is no expectation.
i took my disheveled self on some three trains and arrived at gneisenaustrasse. it was raining but i took my time walking through the streets, watching everyone eat plates of meat for breakfast under umbrellas. they smoke cigarettes and don't seem to notice it is raining. my nightgown became soggy, but i walked slowly still. i deliberately took the train a little outside my destination, just to see some new streets, to take my feet around berlin.
eventually i came to the jewish museum in kreuzberg. the jewish museum is perhaps the most amazing place i've ever been. it is shaped something like a lightning bolt and not at all symmetrical. it is not winding, but ricocheting. i felt like a pinball, bouncing in every direction, overstimulated by the amount of colors words textures stories around me. at first i just cried. not because it was sad. it is not a holocaust museum, though that's definitely addressed. it's a jewish museum. it celebrates all of the contributions jews have made to german society and the prejudices they've faced. at first i just looked at pictures and they were not sad, but i was overwhelmed because of how big the world is and how little of it i know. that there are cultures and people and places and histories and moments and centuries and rituals and religions and families and crises and futures and everything else that i am barely remotely aware of. and maybe it is that i have heard their names so many times in my life that i've never really bothered to find out who they really are. that, in this case specifically, i have obviously known that judaism existed my entire life but never learned any of its history. or its present. of the divisions there, of their struggles, of their contributions. i have "known" it certainly but i haven't known it. haven't looked at it. maybe like i think someone looks at me, at the surface, and they think they understand. think i am obvious. think they have it figured out. or do not bother to think at all, but just take one look and assume i'd never be a lonely girl in a wet, grey nightie. like that, we have all to some extent known but not known.
so i cried and i cried because there is so much happening in the world and i am so enthralled by own precious existence that i haven't really seen much of it. and even those tears were a moment, or many moments, of self-obsession, but it is slow, this rending of myself from my self.
now i am not making sense.
the point is i eventually got over myself and just absorbed and it was beautiful. there is every anything a person could want to see at the jewish museum. movies. documentaries. animation. painting. pictures. artifacts. interactive exhibits. sculptures. stories. it is tactile and sensuous and dizzying. it is intimate. it is like sifting through someone's personal box of secrets. holding each tiny item in your hand. smelling paper and maybe putting something small in your pocket just to see what it feels like to have it there. it is rich and layered and incredible. it is also vacant spaces, awkward jagged corners, free from any art. to let you think about what is not there, what has been lost. i can't even do it justice to describe it. i can only say, i learned a lot. it felt as though the museum embraced you, allowed you into judaism, instead of telling you things as an outsider. it said, feel how beautiful and how tortured our past has been. see how hopeful we are now.
i stayed for five hours.
i was glad i was alone. each person has their own cadence in a museum, has the exhibits that hold them- like the fermata in music. it's there above the note to tell you the note has a given time, but you should hold it as long as it feels right. some exhibits had those above them and i stayed and watched and hummed. others were staccato. just a passing moment. it was nice to just flow through, to not wait, to be alone. to be surrounded, but alone.
in the real world, it was still raining.
so i decided to walk. and i walked and i walked. and i walked another two hours home. suddenly all the pieces of the city i'd seen came together. instead of traveling underground from stop to stop, i just walked and was finally able to situate the parts of berlin that were previously fragmented in my mind. now it feels less enormous, less scary.
i am finding my way, one day at a time.
now it is night and i have not spoken to anyone all day. i believe the only words i've uttered this entire day were "nur ein, bitte," to ask for one ticket at the counter. regardless, the day has been full of noise, of activity, of movement.
i can't remember the last day i had alone. it feels awkward and lovely and new. it feels like something i could get used to.
