pretty dress

painting with a cheap watercolor set

neon nudes

hair alive

she sleeps in the forest

she sleeps on the floor of the forest with the flower in her arms

soon her lover will come for her, come for her

he told her to wait and that's what she'll do

kreuzberg flohmarkt

Children for sale? The stands are rickety raggedy just like Mad Max and there is a telling picture of what life would really be like after a nuclear explosion. Lots of strange bits of industrial waste and spare metal parts and junked up mechanics held together with masking tape. Each stand economizes on space, or rather, crams as much stuff possible through ingenious methods; strings tied to rafters in the ceiling, dangling with paintings and guitars and even little girls on the end (girl for sale? who knows!) There is the cacophany of so many old radios playing at once, although quite a majority are tuned into the Turkish language radio station. And there is a famous gay Turkish pop star right now naked kuyum asid. Or ayum kasid. He's whipping out a song that I can tell is about losing everything and gaining it back and then losing it again, although to a tinny techno beat with lots of smiles. all these conservative Muslim Turkish men stranded in Germany listening to him might make him grin in amusement. But it's not the men that are the toughest; their women bark sharply and are surprisingly active despite the heat. They are head to toe in polyester gowns and veils, rectangle shaped with stronge beefy capable hands. The women haggle ruthlessly with scrawny punk boys, talking them down and not budging 20 pfennigs. Everywhere is the sharp bark, "Billig! Billig! Billig!" Cheap! Cheap! Cheap! and the clatter of people bumping into things, knocking things down.
der Kreuzbergflohmarkt
	There is an emperor here! A man in old tattered clothes walked around with a peacock fan and an umbrella. He dashes inbetween all the stands talking to people he knows or is it just people being indulgent? They smile at him and want to pat him on the head. They do pat him on the head. Another random crazy person runs up to him and puts holographic three dimensional sunglasses on his face so that the umbrella man turns around and everybody screams! His bewildered girlfriend follows him around carrying a large handbag full of books and clothes. When he stops she stands respectfully a few feeet behind, absorbing the conversation before her but not participating, saving every bit of information for future use. She is dressed like him in road warrior fashion, a tank top and old blue jeans and a head of billowy sandy hair. They rejoin their circle of friends outside by the bridge, four crazy men living in a van and selling odds and ends on blankets on the street. A portable flea market. They talk about something very important and make huge gestures with their arms. Where has that van been? Where have they lived? I bet all over Europe. They are leathery people, skin sundamaged and hair wild and free. They have a strength I envy, these old travelling people. When you're young this kind of life is easy and romantic, and you always look good rolling up in the morning, but at this age, how do you get through the days? How do you keep from settling down and nesting? Maybe the van is the nest and since everything here looks post nuclear, that is how we will all be in the future. Living in vans, sunburned, careless and almost carefree.
On the canal is a rickety old house converted to a biergarten. The water is mucky and has a light smattering of flies but it's the water and there's always something festive about the water. It can be forgiven for its fault because it is the water. On plastic seventies chairs we sit and sip capirinhas, watching the other houseboats on the river. Tattooed families and old gentlemen pass and gather and dissolve. Women holding babies with their backs turned to us, exhausted women with arms in bags of babie junk. The people around us are incredibly hip. They are lanky butterflies in tight designer clothing and unconventional but properly fashionable haircuts. They sit smoking and nursing cocktails and making witty jabs at each other, eyes blank. Or their eyes are hidden by trendy sunglasses, revealing even less. We sit and stare with our capirinhas at the lone woman on the other side of the pier. Her hair is bushy, out of control, and she wears black even on this rare warm Berlin day. She knots her eyebrows together, dissatisfied with something, and reads a blue book, every once in a while looking up at people to judge them. I wilt under her eyes and draw her undercover, hoping she never discovers how closely I watch her. She looks like a heavier Frieda Kahlo--wasn't Frieda half German?
The end of the day and there are Turkish families snacking on the grass on blankets. People wander away from the Flohmarkt with treasures in hand. Stained paintings, old blankets, used bicycles. Children wave goodbye to each other and I wonder where the little Turkish girl is who sat in the swing for sale. One day I find out the truth and I'll discover that she has some connection with the Frieda Kahlo woman and even the man in the umbrella. Through acquaintances and coworkers and relatives and family, they all somehow know each other and have dinner at times, and fight and kiss and bond together in a place other than the Flohmarkt.

kreuzberg 36

Gorlitzer Park is pure Kreuzberg, really the very best part of Berlin that I want for myself. See, Kreuzberg is not really all of Berlin and it certainly doesn't represent Germany itself, but it is the part that I take a real liking to and makes up for all the other unpleasantness I have to deal with every day. I want to have my cake and eat it too; and if I can't do that, I want to at least eat the yummy parts first.

I have to climb up a steep trashy wooded path to the top of a hill, not knowing what is where and where is what. I can't see anything, so it is a pleasure to take friends here for their first time and lead them up through the weeds and thickets until we are suddenly at the top of the highest point. and we see everything and it takes their breath away.

In the distance is the twisted wrought iron M probably 4 or 5 stories high, insanely ugly and rusted and pointless. It's the gateway to the deep crater. On the closest two sides is the Greek hippie stage and the remains of Gorlitzer train station, or rather, the last 2 buildings left standing. They are both dirty and covered with graffiti and on the aluminum roof is spray painted something. "Anti facism" in German. or "Free Mumia"

The park is not a beautiful park; There are no grand monuments, no statues of powerful dead German men, at Gorlitzer Park. Well, there is a ruined hippie playground and something that could be some kind of greek stage, with terraced white steppes and sixties style hippie figures carved into white rock. But it's so falling apart that most of it is fenced off to protect people from hurting themselves. Lanky boys try their hardest to hurt themselves anyway; they hang off the sculptures by the skin of their teeth to show off to their friends and dangle the dance of death.

In the crater, which was a huge bomb from World War II, and this is a city littered with ruinations of bombs and new shiny buildings filling in spaces where bombs have fallen, there are people on blankets and the people with the most attention are usually young and attractive and lay in the center of the crater, the deepest tip of the pit. The girls wear g strings and are shiny and red on their towels, while a boy does cartwheels. or what is the beginnings of capoeira. He's cocky, laying by two pretty half-naked girls, and he urges one of them to do a cartwheel for him. She self consciously puts on her running bottoms so that she's not cartwheeling in a thong through the park (she is more modest than she thought) and makes attempts at it, but is too unconfident and shy to go through a full turn. This only encourages the boy to try to help her. He becomes reckless, crashes and collapses on the ground. Her friend watches them both with a smile. Do they share him? Which one's head was he stroking?

A veiled Turkish girl in long sleeves and long pants does a cartwheel perfectly across the hill. Her little brothers and children she is watching do perfect cartwheels also, staring at the teenagers in deep fascination. She demonstrates for the children, doing a long handstand, her scarf dangling onto the ground.

observations in the park

observations in the park

It's the first sunny day in a month or two during the second straight coldest winter in a century or something like that. which means: instead of bright cafes and streetlife in June there are people hurrying around in coats and hooded jackets and shivering from the rain. But finally a day hits and everything magically transforms and suddenly the girls are allowed to wear their new miniskirts and the boys are strutting around in tank tops.

there is a couple that is uncontrollably kissing and groping at each other on the grass. not making out, they look like they are trying to bite each other's faces off. they both have long blonde hair and the same long gangly bodies so it's impossible to tell where one face beings and the other ends. The cling to one another for dear life and everyone else holds their breath expecting to see blood spilling somewhere... maybe it is! sex looks like that to nonparticipants.

two fresh girlies in black are playing ping pong. one of them wears a heavy metal t shirt, the kind with bloody gothic font and roses and dragons and things like that. next to them is a matching set of two scrawny red faced men in heavy metal t shirts also playing ping pong. ping pong is a really big thing here; there are tables scattered throughout the city, a testament to the Soviets, as Kirill told me. It's even more intense in Eastern Europe, where even all the factories had a ping pong table on every floor. There is something wonderfully proletarian about ping pong, something attainable and jolly that doesn't exist in tennis.

four boys play hackey sack. they all wear baggy jeans and smart, trendy clothes just like most hackey sack players at home do. I'm not enough of a hackey sack connoiseur to tell if they are good or not; who cares? they are having fun!

two tall, ultrahandsome men are talking intimately on the grass, arms slung carelessly over one another. they are both incredibly handsome and I want to befriend them and eat dinner with them and be coddled. I miss my buzzing group of melodramatic gay friends and all their crazy sex stories. I miss getting advice on my hair and nails.

there are the men that hiss at me through their teeth. Hayden told me that's how men flirt with you in Egypt. I've always wondered if it works. In Germany? in Egypt? Hsssss. An abbreviated form of "Hey Baby what's your sign?" or "Let's have a roll in the hay?" Are there deeply lonely men out there hissing at me thinking in the back of their minds, "This is a girl I want to take home to my mother." or "She could be the one who bears my children!"

Do I look pathetically or romantically lonely or just plain alone. I always had crushes on strange lonely boys yet here I am the one alone, a small, strange and lonely girl. I wonder what people think, because I'm curious, and if someone had some romantic notions of me, like I was a madwoman in trouble with the law or a visiting sushi artist from Indonesia that would make my day. I spend so much time staring and observing, and it'd be nice for someone to do the same thing to me (but not in a creepy way)

sketch scribbles