Berlin: a narrative?
In general, Western thought has tended to be either linear or cyclical. Life and history are viewed as cyclical, as people are born, live, die. Individual existences, in contrast, tend to be perceived as linear. When people think of their lives, they remember them as narratives with cause and effect, not as discrete days or random events.
And so, to be suddenly uprooted, teleported from London to Berlin, leaves me longing to stitch up my lives again, into one whole. The Easyjet flight really did feel like a Tardis trip. Ditching my baggage at the checkout, I closed my eyes and woke up with a jolt at Schoenefeld airport, confused and disoriented, baggage reappearing by my side some minutes later. Who am I? Where am I? In another life, in another world...
It is so difficult to assess where I'm at, here in this sparkly Berlin bubble. I'm preoccupied with the floating sensation that this latest journey has lent my life. This Berlin bubble, from which I can only dimly see back out into my London life, is deceptive indeed. Where does it begin and end?
It's hard to take stock of 'my life' from here. For this is hardly a smooth continuation of the narrative. Displaced from home, from family and friends, language and location, I am left with some strange perception of myself as a hologram, flickering from world to world, never quite permanent enough to take shape. Not fully fledged. I can be whoever I want to be, I can reform and reshape, and yet there's something tying the boundaries of my self to my soul, some digging edge of time warning me not to change too much, for soon I'll have to go home, and who knows how I'll do when I'm there?
Building a life in this city takes time, and forging friendly terms with the city very much involves starting from scratch. Perhaps that's why my life here feels like an escape - it's discrete, it doesn't build on my London existence, which I am more than a little reluctant to return to.
In general, Western thought has tended to be either linear or cyclical. Life and history are viewed as cyclical, as people are born, live, die. Individual existences, in contrast, tend to be perceived as linear. When people think of their lives, they remember them as narratives with cause and effect, not as discrete days or random events.
And so, to be suddenly uprooted, teleported from London to Berlin, leaves me longing to stitch up my lives again, into one whole. The Easyjet flight really did feel like a Tardis trip. Ditching my baggage at the checkout, I closed my eyes and woke up with a jolt at Schoenefeld airport, confused and disoriented, baggage reappearing by my side some minutes later. Who am I? Where am I? In another life, in another world...
It is so difficult to assess where I'm at, here in this sparkly Berlin bubble. I'm preoccupied with the floating sensation that this latest journey has lent my life. This Berlin bubble, from which I can only dimly see back out into my London life, is deceptive indeed. Where does it begin and end?
It's hard to take stock of 'my life' from here. For this is hardly a smooth continuation of the narrative. Displaced from home, from family and friends, language and location, I am left with some strange perception of myself as a hologram, flickering from world to world, never quite permanent enough to take shape. Not fully fledged. I can be whoever I want to be, I can reform and reshape, and yet there's something tying the boundaries of my self to my soul, some digging edge of time warning me not to change too much, for soon I'll have to go home, and who knows how I'll do when I'm there?
Building a life in this city takes time, and forging friendly terms with the city very much involves starting from scratch. Perhaps that's why my life here feels like an escape - it's discrete, it doesn't build on my London existence, which I am more than a little reluctant to return to.
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