heartbeat, pacing, am I in sync?

On arrival, the airport is the buffer zone. where everyone pauses for no apparent reason. Pauses, asking questions, figuring out maps, taking painfully long to buy train tickets. This is the first and last time the city will allow you this. The airport is not the city, is nowhere near the city. As you make your journey closer and cross city limits, the real rhythm of a place comes.

Pick three cities. Draw lines between the points of them.


Here is your triangle: berlin- paris – london.


Which is the head? Which is on the right and left? Beware, these points can move sometimes. They can move when you think that they're assigned. You can't assign cities after all. You definitely can't claim them. A true metropolis, belongs to no one. It belongs to you as much as to them. They move and cross it, with or without you.

The joy of a big city is anonymity, the sadness is, the loneliness that anonymity can bring. Leaving town is not necessary. I used to always say, if the city gets you down, there is always a new side to discover, there is always a borough unfamiliar. You can start over easily enough if you want, leave your village, cross town. Get a new job, hang out in new places, get new friends. If you like you can even change your name. Give birth to yourself again. As long as you avoid those from your past, your history can be erased.


Can it?

I am no one here, I have no history. I don't need a name. The language confuses, creates more distance, takes me away, prepares me for the next journey. Going to london used to feel like homecoming, but now it has been displaced. I do not have a place there. My ties have loosened. It is another home yes, but only transitional. For now homecoming is saved for berlin.

What is this place you are in now? Who is it? You wonder, if a city is a person what does it wear, how does it walk? If a city is a person, how do you know them? How familiar are you? Do you sit together, walk together, do you feel an attraction or repulsion? Your opinion can change with time but really, you know in those first minutes. What is the sound of its footsteps?

What is the sound of its heartbeat?

I think of sleeping with someone, only sleeping. How do you sleep with someone? I think of lying on my side, their arm, their body curled around me. Or maybe you rest your head on their chest, feeling the rise and fall of their breath, listening to their heartbeat. sometimes your breathing follows their pattern naturally. somtimes you allow your self to sense the tempo, slipping into peaceful . But sometimes you can't. sometimes you can't even sleep..

When you arrive its always a little like swimming upstream. You can't keep up. You don't belong. You don't have anywhere to go particularly, any reason to rush. Those that live here, they have plans and schedules. They are moving to schedule, along paths and routes familiar to them. They do it without thinking, they do it automatically. They don't think of looking up at the buildings, of studying the shade of blue of the sky.

You you are also like this in your city,. Although berlin is a funny kind of city, because in your kiez, even those who live there, seem to breeze around, reject the a frenetic insistance of pacing, a sense of it all being pressing. You have more time. You take your time.

Every day here i go out for a walk. Walk for the sake of walking. Every day I pace myself a little differently, slip closer into a collective rhythm. play with this idea, even as an outsider, of walking in sync.