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rayj-drash · 4 years

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Berlin Sketches pt. 2

By T. Frank

On week three, I looked up two friends I know from Berkeley, Heidi and Asa, who’ve lived for six months in Berlin. They proposed a trip to Cologne to join the protests at Hambacher Forest, where coal companies were threatening to level the trees and mine for coal. We would take the six-hour train ride overnight, then head to Hambacher for a Sunday forest walk.

Green flags printed with the iconic Hambacher tree waved in the air over a dry dirt field. “Hambie Bleibt”--the Hambacher forest stays! Polizei allowed us to enter one area of the forest, but they blocked off the main path. We saw broken glass, ropes tied to beech trees. These woods were sparsely populated, so we re-entered Hambacher around the cops, and greeted the site anew. There was a central tree-sit atop a very tall tree and protesters everywhere hauled logs for a barricade. Heidi jumped right in, Asa went to rest, and I gathered a few branches before deciding, I'll paint instead. Several pairs of feet stopped to watch, and someone asked in German, "Can I take a photo of your palette?" With my head down, focused on my watercolors, I heard a brass band playing, "The Saints Go Marching In". The rest of the day was a mix of sun, shade, apples and communal efforts.

My two companions and I reached Hambacher's edge to emerge into a scene we dreaded. We climbed a mound of sand before the vast swath of barren land, the 'digger' machines looming like an invasive species. Security forces trotted in on horseback; a neon-vested journalist snapped dozens of shots. Soon, we heard an amplified voice, emphasizing that no one was to leave the limits of Hambacher. Asa remarked, that's just a display of power. And we are each reminded by the 'harsh' intonations of German, what a set of negative-sounding instructions can become.

~~~~~

Each week, the residency screened a film. The first was Tarnation (2003), featuring the documentarian who highlighted his mother's struggles with mental illness. The second was called A Film Unfinished (2010), a riveting, intense documentary in multiple languages, which we watched with malfunctioning subtitles. The Israeli director took found footage from Nazi propaganda stored underground for fifty years. When the footage was restored, it's shown to Jewish Holocaust survivors, who are filmed watching the horrific storylines, primarily depicting the wealthy at extreme odds with the hordes dying in controlled poverty, then corralled and dumped into open graves.

When the lights went up, my studiomates shared their reactions. One of the ladies expressed sympathy towards me as the only Jew in the room. Without thinking, I shrugged it off, refraining from the spotlight. After, I ran outside over a bridge and looked down at the river below. I ran until I felt my heart beating, and then I walked back in order to shake off the shock. Here I was, in Germany, a Jewish descendant of Eastern Europeans who immigrated to America thirty years before the unforgivable Holocaust. I saw the people of Berlin as similar to Americans, immigrants and settlers alike. I did not wish to blame a country's people for it's government's atrocities. Instead, I wanted to process. That would take time.

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About halfway through the residency, my hostess Amelia set me up with her friend Ivan, an American graduate student. Amelia meant well, but sometimes I felt like I gave her the wrong impression. She assumed that I was a traveling psychologist with a dark and troubled Jewish past, and she lamented her religious Christian upbringing often. She was overly hospitable, leaving money for groceries and even gave me her room for the majority of my visit; but the times that she came home, we talked from our mattresses about romance.

At dusk, Ivan and I started our tour at the iconic Brandenberg Gate, which divided West and East Germany through the Cold War. We then went inside three public memorials in the Tiergarten. First, a testament to the Roma Gypsies targeted during Hitler's regime. The space contained a shallow reflecting pool. Haunting string music played from secret speakers in the secluded square. Next, we viewed the Queer memorial, a pyramid with a small window through which we saw a looped video. Footage of gays and lesbians embraced, kissed, and held hands, spliced with shots of police tormenting lovers.

Finally, we went through the Holocaust Memorial, where tall, symmetrical granite planks rose higher and higher the farther in you walked, until you're completely enveloped in darkness and solid walls. I grew afraid in the middle of the labyrinth. Ivan’s solid grasp was there. We discussed the importance of history in this very place, where a few blocks away was a parking lot, the former bunker where Hitler spent his last moments with family and comrades before they all consumed poison. Ivan and I said goodbye, and boarded different trains as I reflect on the solemnity of the memorials.

~~~~~~

For the residency project, I wished to experiment with one of my favorite pastimes, origami or the art of Japanese paper folding. I asked Daniel, who displays his origami creations hung from tree branches by the Canal, for a quick tutorial. At the studio, I made a mockup of two round paper forms connected by a strip of felt rope. The forms hung next to each other, supported only by a strand of invisible plastic wire threaded through the base. With a stiff piece of construction paper, the result was about the size of a grapefruit. I tied four knots in the rope to represent the tumors found in Annika’s breast.

Concurrently, I play around with paper cutouts of words. I've had a vision inspired by a window display: a thick hardcover book, folded and carved as to resemble a woman. When I brought my drafts to my mentor, he latched onto the origami prototype, but discouraged my cut-outs. The work felt exciting, but without my mentor's approval, I grew dejected. We had one week left to finish our projects before the exhibition.

On Monday morning, I took a walk to Tempelhof Field, sitting in one of the community gardens to stress-out to my journal. I still felt stuck, but I walked to a new path amongst a grove of yellow-leafed trees. It was here, suddenly, that I recognized I had something. When I arrived in the studio, I constructed two remaining pairs of inflated paper-orbs. The first, with the knots, will represent the cancer invading; the second, at a larger size, will represent the breast implants; and the third, shown with red silk paper, will represent the final stage when the foreign breasts become aligned with her body.

~~~~~

Three pairs of paper orbs hung from the ceiling. In this room, Jasmine has pulled all-nighters to construct her powerful body of work with poetry, mirror fragments, and dance captured on video. Gwen’s paintings were layered with transcriptions of reflections on grief, and Linda sewed fabric in Victorian mourning colors over paving stones, emblematic of feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Sara’s installation covered the room with hospital visitor passes, recreating an experience she faced as a teenager when she lost her best friend. Sarah has a collection of satirical, solemn ruminations. At ten to six, we were still installing the show, and Aleksandar locked out potential guests. I ran over to the cafè for a bundle of sandwiches to save us. When I return, I’m able to take in the show as if I was a guest to the process. Are we processing a collective grief, or are we still locked in our own worlds?

~~~~~~

The residents and I go our separate ways shortly after the exhibition. I tried to hawk my bicycle by Hermannplatz station, but at the Canal I met Tash, who sold polymer-clay jewelry depicting vulvas. She was delightful to be around, taking pride and joy in her work with a loud belly laugh. Presently, her friends Jen and Ezra arrived. Ezra shares his sack of unshelled walnuts from the Turkish farmer’s market. Try as I might, I only crack one or two by the next morning. Jen realizes she needs a bike, and we arrange to meet at the gallery that weekend for the trade-off. I'm relieved, inspired, and happy to meet these lovely people.

I took the S-bahn to see Annika one last time. Over tea and cappuccino, I shared photos from the exhibition, which she missed because her friends threw her an end-of-radiation party. This is wonderful news, and Annika was as radiant as ever. She left me a good deal of wisdom for the subject matter I chose to study: “Grief is a thing inside of you. It doesn’t leave, but you find a place for it until you heal”.

When I walked back to Neukölln, I ran into the origami master by the Canal. He gave me a warm hug and mentioned he's flying to Mexico for the winter--migrating like the colorful parrots he folds. Presently, Ezra arrives for an origami lesson. While the master was called away, I sat down on the bench and taught Ezra what Daniel taught me. I made him a tiny blue crane, and he gave me his tiny red dragon in thanks.

"We're good friends already," Ezra remarked.

"It's called kinship,” I respond. “Relating to people who you feel warm about, like your family, your ‘kin’. Will I find people like you guys when I return home?"

"Wherever there are similar vibrations that you feel initially, you'll find them again."

~~~~~~

As I prepared my suitcase that night, I saw some horrifying news reach my inbox. Back in the States, a mass murder has just been committed at a Pittsburg synagogue. The shooter killed eleven senior citizens and wounded six Jewish congregants. I lowered myself onto the kitchen couch, and called everyone I knew from Pennsylvania; no one answered, but I called my brother in San Francisco. He heard the news, but sounds calm. Reaching my “kin” was reasurring in that heartbreaking time.

The next morning, I awoke early to make the connecting flight to France. I took in the boulevards of Paris from a chilly city park, with an endless parade of joggers in tight sportswear. I felt very different here, and I don’t speak the language--but I did know the language of bus transfers, and I rode a crowded shuttle back to the airport. When I reached San Francisco thirteen hours later, my father and brother were there to take me home. Looking out the window at the night, everything seemed familiar, yet I have already changed so much. My roots are strong, and the wanderlust has begun.

Talia Frank lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She contributes to the Donut Club, an East Bay writer’s group. Visiting Berlin in 2018 inspired a love of community gardens and allowed her to re-examine Judiasm within a global context.

Reach the author: [email protected]

Visual art: www.cargocollective.com/taliafrank

Blog: https://wanderlustblumen.wordpress.com

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