my walk home from the u-bahn takes a shortcut along a playground. in the morning, the root-broken path is shaded by a canopy of spiky pines. in the evenings, the light of the steetlamps filters down white through long needles. being especially tired tonight, i was especially zoned out on the home stretch. i was preparing a few phrases to describe my day to my host mother and sister, who would probably still be up. i wanted to ask about antonia´s first day of the 6th grade.
i looked up before the noise had really registered: a snort. a snort? there, along my side of the low fence, a family of boar froze, streaked with the shadows. the small ones were about 5 meters away, herding together. i felt a shock over my skin; the largest one was still trotting towards me. the mother, at four meters, three.
i clapped, loud. one of the piglets lunged sideways and shook the fence. the mother stopped and snorted again. the other large boar was still approaching from my left. i clapped again. hey! i couldn´t see any tusks, but the closer beast came up to my thigh. it would knock me down on the charge like any other animal. i was thinking about my friend emanuele´s garden in montegemoli, how boar had rooted it up and broken his tomato trellises. last year a 6-year-old boy was killed. i clapped again and we all held still.
i backed away, and the two adults watched me, scraping their hooves onto the broken asphalt. putting a little distance between myself and the young, everyone breathed easier, and i quickly counted their ridged backs. nine, tramping into the suburbs for the choice grass. rules of the wild still apply.
i fly back to the US on friday.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
global observations about germany part 4
4. yesterday while on the last leg of my run around the grünwaldsee, i passed two girls, each about 10 years old. they were chattering loudly from either side of the street, seated gingerly on unicycles. they got quiet as i approached. the one with the long blonde ponytail hopped to the ground. after i passed, i looked over my shoulder; she had again fitted the long seat under her wildly striped skirt, and was wobbling over the wet cobblestones toward her friend. she was also wearing a pair of outrageous tights. behind that whirl of color, i noticed that the unicycle was outfitted with a small fender that pointed back, straight and stiff like a shark´s fin. i love germany. it is a land where children ride unicyces, secure in the knowledge that no spray from the street will kick up onto their skirts.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
weimar
as part of the program i´m on, this weekend was a scheduled trip to weimar, an idyllic town southwest of berlin and the birthplace of ´the german classical period.´ goethe lived there for 50 years, and was later joined by schiller. there is a beautiful park that stretches along the ilm river, complete with ruins purposefully constructed as such - to add to the atmosphere. the town is full of perfect 16th century renaissance villas with their tastefully daring color schemes. my favorite had a smooth stucco exterior, grey with a hint of violet, set off perfectly by orange window frames, outlined in black.
we spent this morning at what remains of buchenwald, a nazi concentration camp 6km from weimar. we spent 3 hours milling around, listening to an audio tour on ipods hung around our necks. i walked along the railroad tracks until they mossed over in the encroaching forest. there, i found a series of simple aluminum poles planted in the ground at regular intervals. at the bottom of one i read ´unbekannt 893.´ unbekannt means unknown, nameless.
after walking around for an hour inside the camp proper, i chose at random one of the paths leading down the hill into the trees. signs pointed towards ´the little camp,´ where conditions were worst: many prisoners lived barely a few weeks. but i chose wrong at the fork, and arrived at a dead end. from there i could see the path i should have taken, and cut across a small orchard towards it.
but i had to turn around. looking down, i saw enormous plums, oozing out of their overripe skins, scattered everywhere. i felt them under my feet. one looked stretched out like a pear, as though while still on the branch its flesh had liquified and weighed down in the peel, like pennies in a sack. turned with my toe, its underside was all rotten, clinging to the grass.
i was very angry: no one had picked these plums when they were ripe on the branches, no one had put them in a basket to sit on their kitchen counter or to be made into preserves. why hadn´t someone gotten some sweet out of these plums? i picked one up and it went to mush in my hand. it was so heavy. i put it down carefully, afraid it would splatter if dropped, and watched my step along the way i had come.
we spent this morning at what remains of buchenwald, a nazi concentration camp 6km from weimar. we spent 3 hours milling around, listening to an audio tour on ipods hung around our necks. i walked along the railroad tracks until they mossed over in the encroaching forest. there, i found a series of simple aluminum poles planted in the ground at regular intervals. at the bottom of one i read ´unbekannt 893.´ unbekannt means unknown, nameless.
after walking around for an hour inside the camp proper, i chose at random one of the paths leading down the hill into the trees. signs pointed towards ´the little camp,´ where conditions were worst: many prisoners lived barely a few weeks. but i chose wrong at the fork, and arrived at a dead end. from there i could see the path i should have taken, and cut across a small orchard towards it.
but i had to turn around. looking down, i saw enormous plums, oozing out of their overripe skins, scattered everywhere. i felt them under my feet. one looked stretched out like a pear, as though while still on the branch its flesh had liquified and weighed down in the peel, like pennies in a sack. turned with my toe, its underside was all rotten, clinging to the grass.
i was very angry: no one had picked these plums when they were ripe on the branches, no one had put them in a basket to sit on their kitchen counter or to be made into preserves. why hadn´t someone gotten some sweet out of these plums? i picked one up and it went to mush in my hand. it was so heavy. i put it down carefully, afraid it would splatter if dropped, and watched my step along the way i had come.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
überwältigt
i. general
there is a lot going on in berlin. every site has a past. to your right, you´ll see a fragment of the wall. and here, this is where karl liebknecht was killed. behind me and to my left, one can see the brick foundation of the SS-headquarters, the ´topography of terror.´
i don´t know very much about architecture, but i have been thinking about it a lot here. space has a memory, a past that must be somehow confronted, dealt with, integrated into the present. what do we want to remember? what do we want to forget? are we going to put a sign up that says ´under this parking lot is the bunker where hitler committed suicide and where his body was burned´? are we going to put a sign on the side of the finance ministry that says ´this was the air force headquarters, where hermann göring had his office´? there is a monument for the murdered jews of europe. should there be one for the gays and lesbians that the third reich massacred with equally malicious intent?
in an anthology i brought along on this trip, the editor j.d. mcclatchy introduces the poet may swenson saying that ´she was aware that description is itself a moral commentary.´ so this is about the past, but specifically, it seems, about how to reprsent the past - how should a community describe its own memory - to visitors and to itself. architectural choices seem to be one of the ´practical´ facets of dealing with a past that speaks to us whether or not we want to hear.
ii. specific
»The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate ... Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from nostalgia ... We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present.« (Peter Eisenman, 1998)
in may 2005, berlin´s holocaust memorial was opened to the public. constructed according to peter eisenman´s design, the denkmal für die ermordeten juden europas is comprised of a visitor´s center underneath the 19.000 square meter ´field of stelae´ - 2711 concrete slabs of varying height, arranged in a grid. because of their different heights (from a few inches up to 4 or 5 meters) and because the are placed on an intentionally uneven surface, together the slabs create a the impression of a wave or ripples on a liquid surface. i learned on my walking tour wednesday that peter eisenman was inspired by wheat blowing in the wind. take it or leave it.
the monument is open day and night. one can walk along the axes of the grid, seeing the blocks rise up around, some leaning slightly away. one can sit on the low blocks around the edges. i went back thursday evening and jotted down a few notes about what i saw. this is what i wrote:
iii. this is history
yuuuu-lee! yuuu-leee! juuuu-leee!
a young couple murmuring in french emerge from the stone, then fade again into a valley. walking side by side is a tight fit between the slabs.
3 guys my age jump from block to block toward the center of the field. they have gotten the attention of some official, who holds his arms out and pushes his palms toward the ground. Down! the one wearing a visor and camoflage shorts is embarassed. that´s nice.
to my right, another group has climbed up. leaping to the next block, they look through the LCD screens on the back of their pocket cameras. a boy sprints by, chased by his older sister. the french couple reappears at the edge. beyond the crest of the wave i can see the umbrellas outside the café.
yuuu-leeee! juuuu-leeee!
a young woman in a tanktop and playfully short bangs is pacing along the edge of the monument, peering down the rows. her 7 year old son jogs ahead, helping. she whistles between her fingers and anxious calls out juuuu-leeee! juuuuu-leee! she has lost her julie in there.
there is a lot going on in berlin. every site has a past. to your right, you´ll see a fragment of the wall. and here, this is where karl liebknecht was killed. behind me and to my left, one can see the brick foundation of the SS-headquarters, the ´topography of terror.´
i don´t know very much about architecture, but i have been thinking about it a lot here. space has a memory, a past that must be somehow confronted, dealt with, integrated into the present. what do we want to remember? what do we want to forget? are we going to put a sign up that says ´under this parking lot is the bunker where hitler committed suicide and where his body was burned´? are we going to put a sign on the side of the finance ministry that says ´this was the air force headquarters, where hermann göring had his office´? there is a monument for the murdered jews of europe. should there be one for the gays and lesbians that the third reich massacred with equally malicious intent?
in an anthology i brought along on this trip, the editor j.d. mcclatchy introduces the poet may swenson saying that ´she was aware that description is itself a moral commentary.´ so this is about the past, but specifically, it seems, about how to reprsent the past - how should a community describe its own memory - to visitors and to itself. architectural choices seem to be one of the ´practical´ facets of dealing with a past that speaks to us whether or not we want to hear.
ii. specific
»The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate ... Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from nostalgia ... We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present.« (Peter Eisenman, 1998)
in may 2005, berlin´s holocaust memorial was opened to the public. constructed according to peter eisenman´s design, the denkmal für die ermordeten juden europas is comprised of a visitor´s center underneath the 19.000 square meter ´field of stelae´ - 2711 concrete slabs of varying height, arranged in a grid. because of their different heights (from a few inches up to 4 or 5 meters) and because the are placed on an intentionally uneven surface, together the slabs create a the impression of a wave or ripples on a liquid surface. i learned on my walking tour wednesday that peter eisenman was inspired by wheat blowing in the wind. take it or leave it.
the monument is open day and night. one can walk along the axes of the grid, seeing the blocks rise up around, some leaning slightly away. one can sit on the low blocks around the edges. i went back thursday evening and jotted down a few notes about what i saw. this is what i wrote:
iii. this is history
yuuuu-lee! yuuu-leee! juuuu-leee!
a young couple murmuring in french emerge from the stone, then fade again into a valley. walking side by side is a tight fit between the slabs.
3 guys my age jump from block to block toward the center of the field. they have gotten the attention of some official, who holds his arms out and pushes his palms toward the ground. Down! the one wearing a visor and camoflage shorts is embarassed. that´s nice.
to my right, another group has climbed up. leaping to the next block, they look through the LCD screens on the back of their pocket cameras. a boy sprints by, chased by his older sister. the french couple reappears at the edge. beyond the crest of the wave i can see the umbrellas outside the café.
yuuu-leeee! juuuu-leeee!
a young woman in a tanktop and playfully short bangs is pacing along the edge of the monument, peering down the rows. her 7 year old son jogs ahead, helping. she whistles between her fingers and anxious calls out juuuu-leeee! juuuuu-leee! she has lost her julie in there.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
there are trees in this city
guten abend, i#m in berlin, adjusting to zet another kezboard configuration. i've been here 24 hours, and i need to take care of some basic 'get settled' tasks before dinner, but i just wanted to say that i am safely arrived in northern europe, at a very welcoming homestay in the southwest neighborhood of zehlendorf. this morning i went to the market with my host mother daniela and her daughter antonia, and this afternoon we went on a boat tour of berlin. that was very nice. here are the differences i have noticed thus far between germany (here) and italy (there):
1. here you eat all your food on one plate. fork and knife are both placed to the right of the plate, and the spoon across the top. i was delighted to learn this.
2. here, wheat bread exists. it is almost black, and after eating it i feel capable of unifying a nation.
3. germans love trees, and like to have them around for company. even in the center of berlin, i am amazed by how green the landscape is, and i don't think a month will be nearly long enough to see all the branches hanging over a dark oak trellis or all the ivy climbing up a black lampost.
4. there are many more buildings here that have been built in the last 50 years, and a particular wealth of public buildings designed by the most prominent architects in the last 15.
i am here in berlin to pound grammar and vocabulary into my skull, and, departing from this last point, to be a part of a culture that has witnessed two moments of profound destruction. the allies bombed the city. a wall was built, then they tore it down.
1. here you eat all your food on one plate. fork and knife are both placed to the right of the plate, and the spoon across the top. i was delighted to learn this.
2. here, wheat bread exists. it is almost black, and after eating it i feel capable of unifying a nation.
3. germans love trees, and like to have them around for company. even in the center of berlin, i am amazed by how green the landscape is, and i don't think a month will be nearly long enough to see all the branches hanging over a dark oak trellis or all the ivy climbing up a black lampost.
4. there are many more buildings here that have been built in the last 50 years, and a particular wealth of public buildings designed by the most prominent architects in the last 15.
i am here in berlin to pound grammar and vocabulary into my skull, and, departing from this last point, to be a part of a culture that has witnessed two moments of profound destruction. the allies bombed the city. a wall was built, then they tore it down.
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