Back Home?

My stint in Berlin is over and I've just returned to Rome, which oddly enough, feels a bit like home.

The minute that I entered the gate and heard the Italian passengers greeting each loudly, as if they were hosting a private party for all one hundred of their closest friends, I knew I was leaving silent, somber Germany behind. When I arrived in Rome and headed back to the Academy, I noticed how the scenery had a lovely coherence, instead of the urban jumble of Berlin. And speaking and understanding Italian felt much more comfortable than the rigors of the German language.

All that said, I enjoyed my time in Berlin. I met writers and artists, Berliners and American transplants. A striking number of the latter were Jewish. When I mentioned to a Berliner friend that I was thinking about writing an essay on how strange it must seem to some to love Berlin and be Jewish at the same time, she told me, "You'd better hurry. There are so many Jews coming to this city."

Why do I love Berlin? It's nowhere near as beautiful as Paris or Prague. The people, though often polite, are hardly as effusive as the Romans. In comparison with the lilt of Italian or French, the language grates the ear. Culturally, I'm much more an Anglophile than a Deutsch-ophile. And no, I don't have any bizarre Nazi fetishes (though I've met Jews who do).

What I like about the city is that it's always been a special case, the kind of place that always has an asterik next to it, a work in progress that never seems near completion. I read a history of the city that argued that Berlin has always had a kind of angst because it's always been trying and never quite succeeding to earn the international cosmopolitan reputation of a London or Paris. Maybe that explains why over the past hundred and fifty years it's been constantly remodeled and reconceived. Yet each "New Berlin" that emerges always bears marks of the old, from the imperialist hopes of the Kaisers to the classical aspirations of the Nazis to the competing utopian reconstruction projects of the West and East Berliners after the war, to the current euphoric city of glass and steel being built post-reunification.

Still, the real Berlin always seems to be a bit beneath the dreams of its ambitious architects. To me, the soaring beauty of Berlin's latest crop of buildings with their clean lines and immaculate facades has a sterility that belies the liveliness of the city. You can sense that liveliness watching artists lugging home organic groceries on their bicycles, the meaty steam of doner kebab stands and Chinese-Thai "Asia Snack" restaurants, punks leading their dogs down the sidewalks, smoky cafes, crowded discount stores seemingly every few steps, subway passengers selling the unused portions of their tickets on their way out of the station.

It's the kind of city where you'll stumble on a modest brass cobblestone set into the sidewalk indicating that the building you're walking by was once the residence of a Jew who was deported to Terezin. Or while riding your bike, you'll cross an ordinary-looking street and suddenly realize you've just passed from the former West Berlin to the former East (even though you're riding toward the west). The past, though not always very nice, is often startlingly present.

It's also one of the few European cities where you can easily find bagels, sushi, cheeseburgers (good cheeseburgers, in fact), pad thai, felafel, and quesadillas. Thanks to the reunification, there seems to be at least two of everything: art museums, bohemian neighborhoods, operas, and symphonies. And the nice thing for artists is that it's very cheap. Rent, for example, is barely a quarter of what you'd pay in New York City.

It's a city that's difficult to sum up or categorize, but one that bears revisiting, as you'll never have the same experience twice. This last time, as I watched the slow demolition of the Communist Palast der Republik, I thought of how stupid I was not to have gone into the place when I had the chance. Or when I went to see a movie at the Berlin Film Festival in Potsdamer Platz, I remembered when the place was a vast field of cranes and dirt. My most magical memory of Berlin was my first hour in the city, back in 1997, when I rode Bus 100 from West to East and we approached the famous Brandenburg Gate, and then suddenly headed right through it! Today the route has changed, but it's still worth getting on. Who knows which way it will go tomorrow?

Sounds of Silence

So I'm actually not reporting from Rome this time, but Berlin, where keyboards reverse the y's and z's, so I have to keep remembering not to hit the wrong key as I tzpe this, or rather, as I type this.

Besides keyboards, one of the things I notice most about the difference between Berlin and Rome is the silence. This is partially due to the frigid weather, which means fewer people out on the street, but even the ones who are out walk
fairly silently and avoid each other's eyes. You notice it on the subway too. On my way to this internet cafe, I was in a crowded car during rush hour, and all the passengers were either completely silent or talking in hushed tones.

The other major difference I've noticed is that the food tastes blander, even if you're in an Italian or Asian or Turkish restaurant. Even the produce has a milder taste. Which is not to say that the food is bad, because I've had some very good meals here, but you don't get the extremes or the richness of Italian cuisine.

What am I doing here? I'm trying to put an end to my novel before it puts an end to me, and absorbing details of atmosphere and culture that can only be gleaned, at least in my case, from lived experience. It's a great city, rich with history and culture, but also a sense of flux that comes from how diverse it is. Not only do you have the collapsing of East and West, which has produced a rich variety of cultural venues, but also there are immigrants from all over the world. Walking down the street, you're sure to see various skin tones and facial structures, and many many women with head-scarves.

So far what's been most helpful is the silence. The studio apartment where I'm staying, and indeed the city as a whole, is so quiet that it's allowed me to focus and retreat into my own head so deeply I sometimes feel as if I'm in a trance. As a permanent state of affairs, this might not be healthy, but for now, it works well, and I'm feeling quite rosy about this new book. I think it may not only be the finest thing I have written, but also the deepest and most honest. And if I stay disciplined enough, this book will help me realize my dream of writing a short, dense 200 page novel like The End of the Affair or On the Black Hill, small books that you can never forget.

For inspiration, I've turned to two different sources. The first is Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, which I loved when I first read it. Now that I'm rereading it closely, I'm astonished by it. I simply cannot understand how it's possible not to be bowled over by this book, which I still don't entirely comprehend, and for me, that's the point. The other book is Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame, whose life and work have been a longtime obssession of mine. Though the book is only about 160 pages, it's taken me a month to wade through its currents. The richness of Frame's language and her range of expressive tools reminds me more of poetry than prose. I also admire her dead-on feel for the meaningless rituals we give value to as children, adolescents, and then as adults. As with Coetzee, I have a hard time figuring out how her work hangs together as a coherent whole, but I don't mind either, when there are such rich rewards of langauge or insight on every page.

So that's what I'm hearing these days. And a little Joni Mitchell too. Not a bad life for now. I feel lucky to be able to have it while I can.