I’ve just decided, after reading this talk between Bhanu Kapil and Lisa Birman, to admit that indeed a whole day sometimes passes without me really thinking or writing. For example, today I didn’t really think much until I decided to write to you here. Or, what were my thoughts? Were they larvae?

At some point midday, I decided to track what I had done thus far since waking. I started with the moment of realizing that I wasn’t alone. Sherpa, my dear 8-year-old cat, was sleeping on my back. We have wondered together from Austin, through 3 years in Boulder, 1 year in Chicago, 1 year in Prague, and are approaching our first full year in Berlin. We cannot hope to arrive for many years.

After reading Bhanu and Lisa’s discussion, I fear I may never arrive. Bhanu, who I took a class with at Naropa and who changed my relationship with yellow, is an expert on arrival. She knows its challenges.

I have lived in 7 cities. Have I ever arrived? Sometimes I feel like I am developing a serious relationship with Berlin, but like with any new relationship, I wonder if it will work out. Will we be able to always see the good in one another, always know that in rough times, we will make it through? Is she worthy of my complete love or should I hold on a bit in fear of deportation?

I wonder if I will be an immigrant. I’ve never considered it. I recently heard someone describe expats who go to Prague for a year or two and then return as “living on the package.” The description hurt a little. Where was my package? I’m bigger than a package and every year is bigger than me. If there was something of me that was supposed to arrive in a package, it was certainly dispersed, and I hope some part of it is a toy boat about the size of a duck floating down the Vltava or on the Elbe near Ústí nad Labem.

At the same as this talk came to me via Merete Mueller, I received recommendation via fellow goon, Kevin Kilroy, to check out this: More architecture! Where is my border? I am a spectrum. I owe myself a map. Where will I find my door, my envelope?

Here is a poem, which I wrote in January, in thick goo of my non-arrival:

Transit: a traveler’s poem

Dry cyclone mocked its way

in a somnambulist forest

of strangers

crusty still from travel

figures good into a ditty

but what will she sing tonight

and old Aphrodite seasick

again on lamb’s muck

folding delicately up to my border

keeping vestiges clear of scares

_______________________________

Was ist fremd:

Some have sharp teeth

Some carry subways in their pockets