ashley rennt: an adaptation of the german heimat

ASHLEY RENNT: AN ADAPTATION OF THE GERMAN HEIMAT 1

Abstract

Following my two semesters abroad in Berlin, I found myself struggling with a sense of

disillusionment with my American identity as I had come to understand it as an African-American

female growing up in the southern United States. In this project, I present a phenomenological

argument for cultural hybridity through the use of theory, literature, and experimental

autobiography. Using recollection of experience, observations based on my time within the German

cultural space, and relevant theoretical work, I am able to draw a connection between my moment of

insecurity and a wider global calling for the reevaluation of cultural essentialism. The project will

make use of both American, German, and other European writers such as Toni Morrison, Walter

Benjamin, Frantz Fanon, and will draw heavily on the theoretical framework for cultural hybridity as

outlined by Homi K. Bhabha.

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Ashley Rennt: An Adaptation of the German Heimat

Ashley Washington

New York University, Global Liberal Studies

This thesis has been submitted on this day of April 15th, 2014 in partial fulfillment of the degree

requirements for the NYU Global Liberal Studies Bachelor of Arts degree.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction: Departure4

Chapter One: Vergangenheitsbewltigung..17

Chapter Two: The Heimat37

Chapter Three: The Hybrid..57

References.67

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Introduction: Departure

I flew to Berlin alone over a week early and I was not afraid. It was raining and it made me feel

comfortable. Everything was stony and gray and it made me feel at peace. I could not understand

the space but this was not an unfamiliar sensation. We filed off of the plane in a long, winding line.

Slow and tired but patient in the haze of the strange bond passengers form with each other after

flying, a commodified near-death experience. Someone was right on my back. They kept stepping

on my shoes. One came off. I just held onto it. Everyone was quiet. It was no different than any

other disembarking plane in any other place Id been before. For a moment, I thought that I could

be going home, but I saw the stand for customs processing and the distance set in wrapping itself

around my heart and squeezing. There is this thing that I do on roller coasters, on the way up the

first incline, where I measure the distance from my exit (the ladders up the side of the structure,

distance from the ground). I always cry once we pass the last ladder. The customs officer assumed

that I could not speak German and asked me for my passport. I squinted a bit. Thats what I do

when I dont approve. I thought of ten different reasons why he did that. Then I took a deep breath.

Probably the first one in a while. Thats what I do when I (can) remember (to do it breathing).

!The baggage claim was immediately behind the customs officer. I sat on the farthest edge of the

room so that I could see everything. I looked for faces that were happy to be home and faces that

were confused. Twice I had to stop myself from staring blankly into the distance. I had been there

for over forty five minutes before I realized that I had not seen my bag. It had been lost somewhere

in the flight process. The panic never hit me the way that I expected it to. I made a note of this to

myself the moment I realized that the reality failed to set in. I strolled out of the gate, hugging my

coat to my chest. No, I walked slower than that. I thought about each step that I took. That is the


closest anyone can ever get to having an empty mind; reducing oneself to mechanics. This is easy to

do in a German airport at 7 oclock in the morning. Everything I needed was in that bag because I

am stupid. I had my computer, with no charger, my passport, wallet, and my medications. I had

never lost a bag before and I had no idea what to do. I found this laughable. My mother would not

find it very funny. I would wait until after I found my bag to tell her about this.

!My bag arrived later that day at the hotel. Once I received it, I immediately realised that nothing

inside of it was really so important. It stayed closed for another two days. I stayed in bed for

another seven. I had jet lag, I hadnt had enough water to drink, and my migraine never went away.

I slept all day and stayed up all night. I could only find an Aldi so all I ate was cereal and pretzels.

The salt didnt help with the dehydration. I let myself become trapped in a cloud of German with

only the news on television. I watched Marilyn Monroe movies when I couldnt take it anymore. I

never let housekeeping clean my room and I spoke only to my mother. The day I opened my eyes

(and the curtains) and let the sunlight force them closed again, I knew that I could never leave. This

feeling stayed with me throughout my time in Berlin and, though I lacked the words to explain it, I

understood that it was something that I had never experienced before. After years of planning my

escape from every place that I lived in for more than a few weeks, I had finally entered a place that

felt eerily right. I dug my toes deep into the soil and simply left myself there.

!The moment at which I successfully found the words to describe my love for the swamp city came

much later months after leaving the city and a year after my initial swooning. That process began


with my own Vergangenheitsbewltigung of sorts. My family, headed by two people who had lived 1

the textbook definition of the (African-)American Dream (and its reality), was as comfortable as it

gets. I never doubted my disposition. I was taught that I was very fortunate and that hard work and

big dreams would get me exactly where I needed to be; that I was lucky to be where I was and that

no other place would offer me this beautiful wealth of opportunity. In other words, I believed that

my failures would have everything to do with me if I wasnt capable of taking advantage of this

magical silver platter of imminent success. The moment I recognized this for the farce that it was

proved to be the best moment of my life. It was the same moment that I decided that I would go out

of my way to learn a language and its culture long before I knew with confidence that I would ever

set foot on its soil. I would not wait for the American Dream to repay my efforts. I would get the

flowers myself.

!Realizing the futilities of reductive nationalist attachments is, in many cases, nothing short of

traumatic. In my experience, it manifested as a progressive disillusionment that gave way to a

systematic deconstruction of my own previously rigid cultural identity. It was a slow process that

often left me feeling largely unsatisfied with my surroundings. While in the States, I found solace in

my visits with magical realism, spirituality foreign to my own, and cultural staples previously

unknown to me. Reconstructing my belief system with pieces of these new worlds made more

sense to me than the rituals that I made up most of my childhood experience. Trying to fit these

new and beautiful ideas into the ideological mold I had cultivated up until this point was a painful

and somber practice. I do not know many things about myself but I do know that I dont know is

This word is most accurately translated as a mastering of the past as written by Caroline Wiedmer in The Claims 1of Memory: representations of the Holocaust in contemporary Germany and France


never enough. Understanding that I had the capacity to place words with this sensation was all that

I needed to set out on this journey.

!Hybridity is a valuable strategy for those of us struggling with the question, What happens when

the culture one has been given isnt enough? It can ease the sense that one is an anxiety waiting to

be cured because it replaces a demand for a stable identity with a a sense of plasticity. Yet although

hybridity is a perfect state for a body in flux, it still leaves me with questions of origin, namely: what

is the fundamental basis for my desire for hybrid identity? What problem does hybridity set out to

solve?

!The work of Homi K. Bhabha provides an approach that attacks the question at its stem, taking off

directly from the multicultural attitude of the liberal West. It deconstructs the essentialist attitudes

towards cultural openness and replaces it with the more thoughtful practice of cultural hybridity.

This post-structuralist theoretical work is something that will lay the groundwork for my own

theoretical exploration but stops short of a phenomenological viewpoint which is something that

my project provides. Post-colonial perspectives can appear to be distance and difficult to detach

from the Western mindset; a phenomenological presentation could use first-person perspective to

minimize some of that distance through experience-based exploration of hybridity. Perhaps of

specific interest is his concept of an ambivalent and contradictory Third Space, one in which all

cultural statements and systems are constructed. I argue that within this construction, the hybrid

development takes place. The second question manifesting itself as a problem posed by the

institution of cultural hybridity is that of its active application-- what happens when the Western


world exerts itself with these things in mind? What are the products of such multicultural

thinking and what is the product?

!Salman Rushdies work in his essay collection, Imaginary Homelands, complements Bhabhas work

with the Third Space with his exploration and criticism of the modern day remnants of colonialism

in contemporary culture and the subtlety of the irony through which these remnants manifests

themselves in film, day-to-day life, and politics. While not directly influential from the theoretical

perspective, the Rushdie writings, a collection of his work from 1980-1991, provide insight to the

moments in Western culture where a disruption in the smooth transition from other to us occurs.

In other words, Rushdie shows us where colonialism and ideas of dominance bleed through, even

in attempts to broaden Western perspective. While my work with cultural hybridity is not meant to

remain within the realm of post-colonialist criticism, work with the concept of the other is

essential to creating a framework for the exploration of why my solely American cultural

upbringing was not one that I could sustain without question.

! We could do worse than beginning with the nature of the term homeland. Wie viel Heimat

braucht der Mensch? or how much homeland does one need? I explore homeland in terms of the

German concept of Heimat, which is similarly defined but generally weightier due to post-WWII

connotations about the Jewish diaspora. The idea of questioning that space is one that raises

treasonous implications in the literal sense but also lends itself to the individual experience of

ambivalence and emotional dissonance as a result of analyzing the inevitably disappointing reality

of such a relationship. This disappointment only becomes amplified when seen from the hybrid

perspective that begins to unfold beneath this questioning spirit. In my writing, the act of


questioning national affiliation is a productive act that enabled me to view my past in a critical light

as opposed to a resentful one. These are only the first steps in this complicated process.

!One of the first issues is most easily stated as the title of the first piece of literature I use: Wie viel

Heimat braucht der Mensch? (How much homeland does humanity need?) (1967) This is a

question posed by a Jewish man following his time in Auschwitz and throughout his experience

leading up to his suicide. In this essay, Jean Amry attempts to discover whether or not a heimat is

a necessity. At the surface, it would seem that it is not; that moving from homeland to homeland is

as simple as changing ones name to seem less Jewish. However, deeply woven throughout Amrys

writing we see that the disillusionment with the German reality is something that he cannot come

to terms with. That the answer to the question is viel (a lot) and that he has none. In 1978, he kills

himself. While functioning as both a question and as a reference, this essay is deeply informed by

his experience and its relationship to trauma induced by the same country in which he was born

(in this case Austria). There are parallels here between slavery, a minimized tragedy, and the

American black population which are very important to the underlying discomfort that comes

with submitting wholeheartedly to the constitutional ideals that were not written for you, and the

institutionalized rejection, genocide, and diaspora that Amry is speaking to through his own

investigations. I am interested in this connection because it expands the lens of my criticisms and

creates a historical bridge that appeals to a wider audience and reduces alienation. Absent from this

perspective is only a direct link to the black American discourse. This is to be addressed through

the use of Toni Morrison.

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Toni Morrisons book, Playing in the Dark (1992), tackles some of the aforementioned

disillusionment head on. While the relevance is not readily obvious, Morrisons identification of

some of the principles held to be most dear to the American identity and their dependence on

the existence of black peopleis something that can be described as an answer to the issue of what

can be done with the despair of that disillusionment. The reconceptualization of the ideological

national identity is something that I am performing through my own process (generating hybridity,

identifying ambivalence, etc) and is more eloquently brought to light through her own language.

The conversation she raises between the white-dominated resources Ive accumulated to populate

my research and her own realizations is undeniably valuable to vocalizing my perspective.

!Ultimately, this is not a story about how I went to Berlin and never wanted to come back. This story

is about the willful deconstruction of that disillusion through appropriation. While highly personal

in many ways, my process is one that reappears in various facets of cultural discourse. In the

beginning, my feelings about Berlin were something like the anvil-shaped cloud that forms over the

ocean before a hurricane. I could only express them through gestures. With time and theoretical

exploration, the feelings became clearer and I managed to conceptualize the major reactions at

work in my mind. These themes are cultural hybridity, homeland, and self-discovery through

spatial immersion.

!At the core of my personal progress is the wealth of epistemological information that I gained

through deliberate immersion in the city of Berlin. When it comes to the relationship between the

person and the city, notions of space transcend that of a simple habitating relationship. Of course,

people differ in the degree to which they allow the city to define themselves or a phase in their


personal development. In the most extraordinary cases, the moment in which they take part in this

involvement coincides with a similar moment in the city. For Berlin, this transformative aspect was

particularly important. I am not alone in feeling this way about Berlin: there is much literature to

be found engaging with this topic. The thoughtful personification of the city places it on the same

level with the inhabitant as an individual. The relationship evolves and becomes one much like any

other between friends, or between lovers. In his book, Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin

Childhood Around 1900), Walter Benjamin uses thoughtful vignettes of upper middle-class life in

Berlin through the eyes of a child in an unconventional approach to flaneurism. Through the

account of Berlin an image of Berlins timeless essences is painted and presented. The approach to

the city in this observational manner is one that has heavily influenced my own. Much of the

inferences I have drawn about the nature of Berlin have taken this form. Berlin is a space in flux

that manages to keep its heart in the same place.

!First and foremost, this section is concerned with how we can breathe life into the city in a way that

aligns it with a living and breathing individual. How can we personify the city of Berlin?

Interestingly enough, Walter Benjamins semi-biographical book Berliner Kindheit um 1900 (Berlin

Childhood Around 1900) does this through thoughtful vignettes of upper middle-class life in

Berlin through the eyes of a child-- an unconventional approach to flaneurism. Through this

account of Berlin, an image of Berlins distinctively timeless essence is painted and presented. The

approach to the city in this observational manner is one that has heavily influenced my own.

!Also addressed within this framework is the fragility of subjective experience and how narrative

devices can be used to paint a more objective and therefore supportive picture. Here I am


employing WG Sebald and his book The Rings of Saturn (1998). While this book does not take

place in Berlin, it is written by a German and is characteristically aware of what the self can project

onto the environment and the beneficial understanding of what can come from this activity. The

nameless narrator of the book explores the city in memory and fragments, vocalizing the

observations of a person that has lived quietly through a period of adversity. Throughout much of

the novel a repositioning of otherwise ordinary elements of urban life occurs and allows the author

to discover things that would otherwise not have seemed apparent. This systematic repositioning

appears within my own observations and reduces the desensitization that may have occurred as a

result of the banality of day-to-day routine.

!My love of Berlin is that of one presented from a subversive perspective but stating that alone is not

enough. A naked claim of subversiveness only serves to generate the same reductive claims that

have plagued attempts to gain a deeper understanding of the hybrid identity. Having dedicated my

time here to the nurturing of a global identity, I believe it is only fitting that I am able to illuminate

the necessity of deconstruction; deconstruction of Heimat and (temporary) deconstruction of self

in order to facilitate personal development in the most fulfilling and effective way possible.

!Methodology

One of my greatest concerns is and always has been the difficulty of objectifying the most pertinent

conclusory thoughts that I happen to develop as a result of phenomenological (and otherwise

subjective) experience. Some of my most memorable experiences and (arguably) brilliant

epiphanies fall victim to the inexpressible, tragically wordless abyss that is my mind. The words that

I manage to create for these glimmering sprites never do them justice. I learn to let them go in


anticipation of the disaster. They become gut feelings, they becomes doubts, they become a passing

suggestion, and I forget. But Berlin was large and I never learned to abandon it because the minute

I left, I struggled to find satisfaction in a separate space. When a student leaves for study abroad,

the advisors teach them that they will be upset when they come home. There will be no one for

them to talk to about their travels because they will grow tired of hearing it. Their own culture will

shock them. This was not true for me. All of my friends were there with me and they came back

with me and my culture did not shock me because it began to disgust me. The deeply rooted

connection that I had worked so hard to generate throughout my childhood was beginning to fall

apart. The sensation was distinctive and it was not meant to be ignored. As a result, I have elected

to employ the phenomenological method throughout my academic memoir but are supplemented

by photographic snapshots from my own collection, archives, and relevant film. The snapshots

function as visual representation for my mental processes and serve as a more relatable point of

reference for you, my reader, amongst an otherwise difficult to relate to slew of recollections.

!Chapters

My pi l g r i m age of s e l f - a c tu a l i z at i on w i l l b e org an i z e d i n t h re e c h apt e rs :

Vergangenheitsbewltigung, The Heimat, and The Hybrid. These are, not temporally consecutive,

but thematically chronological chapters that will describe my explorations and prevent the deeply

personal phenomenological method from becoming characteristically distant.

!Vergangenheitsbewltigung

This chapter is about my darkest days (literally and figuratively) and my first discoveries about the

realities of my upbringing in the southern United States presented in parallel with the eye-opening


conclusions I developed in the first semester of my time in at NYU Berlin. It is my problem and the

resulting questions in a neatly packaged winter crisis.

!The Heimat

Following the confrontation of my past that occurs in the first chapter, is a chapter that discusses

the nature and value of home and the deep connection developed within a space as a result of

conventional identity development. It sounds almost scientific but is, in actuality, far from it due to

my use of fictional and semi-autobiographical narrative as a resource. Here I place my process

during the second semester of class at NYU Berlin in parallel with the processes of similar lost

minds before me. My search for an answer is contextualized as I work with the pieces left behind

following the deconstruction.

!The Hybrid

The Hybrid is where all of the deconstruction and rebuilding come together in careful synthesis

of the answer that I reverses the disasters of epistemological questions. My work with hybridity

comes to the theoretical forefront and is paired with the conclusory results of my identity

experiment. This section also coincides with my return to the United States and addresses my

culture disgust and attempted solutions.

!As with most tales like this, it makes sense to start at the beginning. Im not going to do that. Im

going to start where this journey made the least amount of sense and where it was most


overwhelming; it was precisely the point at which I had realized that I could no longer properly

define my existence.

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1 - Vergangenheitsbewltigung

Winter in Berlin is one of the most marvelous forms of natural cruelty in that it is a systemic

introduction to a life void of natural light. It is easy to make oneself believe that a well-lit life at

home could ever aid in the accumulation of some sort of resistance for the dark months to come,

but the reality of the situation sets in much faster than anyone might expect. It took a week for

things to change and maybe another week for me to notice that I was a victim of my

environment. But of course I was not the only one. Every morning, I'd open my eyes to more

darkness and stare at the ceiling for as long as I could-- until strange shapes danced into my

vision, until my eyes began to water, and until I remembered that I was already late. That was

always a slow process no matter how many different alarms I tried to create.

!At home, the sun wakes me up. It pours through my windows and makes the room so hot that I

can't stay in bed anymore. The light bounces off of everything in my room. Light blue and white.

I always found myself sleeping in rooms with white walls. It's a color that will keep you awake at

night. I can vouch for that. In Berlin, everything in my room is white but no light bounces off of

anything. I have large windows but nothing comes through them except for ladybugs. There are

crushed, spotted shells under my pillow and my back. Every day, I tell them to avoid the bed at

night. The maintenance man says that they will only be there until it gets warmer outside. I

seriously considered (and resented) my rejection of the delicate little things while I ja'ed him out

of the room. Mornings at home are busy, warm, and bugless. But when I wake up in Berlin, I just

stare at the ceiling...and roll over in my bed of corpses to see that I am a murderer.

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Isnt that just such a stupid thing? To put that kind of weight on the life of an insect? Maybe. But

these are the things that happened inside of me when I could no longer tell anyone when it was

that I last saw sunlight. And it was this moment, the moment after waking up; a moment that

repeated itself in similar fashion everyday for four months of my life, that I feel myself going back

to whenever I wonder where this gloriously painful adventure began. After about three weeks of

this bug killing, I wanted to go home.

!Okay, maybe this is too large of a leap. The act of killing ladybugs in my sleep was not enough to

push me to return to what was, arguably, a worse condition by itself. It was simply the clearest of

symptoms in this developing illness. These peculiar mornings were accompanied by silent crying

fits, general irritability, and a desire to burrow into my bedsheets and never come out again. Not

for food and not for water. I wanted to go back into the hole that I came from. It would never be

enough for my mother to hold me. I needed to be back inside of her, to start over or die.

Whichever happened. The result was of no interest to me. This was one of the more convoluted

versions of not wanting to live anymore that I had ever been exposed to and I considered it with

great seriousness. Burying myself in my bed was just the next best thing. Darkness was only a

catalyst.

!I catch myself wondering if, under other circumstances, I could have been so violently drawn to

any other city in the world. It feels like a normal person would want to go to places like Paris or

an exotic location like Bali or some place in Morocco. These kinds of places never occurred to

me. Coming to Berlin, was something that I had been waiting to do since I was fourteen years

old, long before I knew even the first thing about the city itself. People used to either laugh or


scoff. They would laugh at my reason for taking German (because I didnt want to take Spanish)

or they would scoff at my apparent disregard for the Germans place in history. After all, there is

only one. History is written by the victor, and everyone knows that we won. Says a friend. At the

time, I had not yet come to see my German classes as more than an excruciating lesson in

fulfilling-program-requirements-earlier-next-time; but I did understand, in a very small sense,

that I could not stay in North Carolina for any longer than absolutely necessary. It was also in my

fourteenth year that I developed an affinity for Friedrich Nietzsche and The Gay Science. I began

to carry it with me like a little bible and his lessons in plasticity began to pop into my brain like

the voice of God. At the age of fourteen these were just pretty words but they stuck like glue and

followed me into my young adulthood taking the shape of epiphanies when my years allowed it.

The willingness to embrace intellectual and emotional fluidity was instilled in me from my first

moments in this new world. Falling into this new abyss, however, often left me feeling as though I

would be forever thrown into Kafkaesque situations of discomfort, that I would always be pushed

beyond my limits, that I would never feel content. Stasis, in all of its forms, became an omen.

Before I left home, I never really wanted to be home. Each sunset felt like the end of the world,

passing clouds, grains of sand filtering into the bottom half of an hourglass.

!Yet it was wanting to return home from another country, and not being able to, that inspired my

comparative thinking on the matter. Why did I want to go home? Because there was sun. Because

I could understand things there. Being surrounded by a language that requires incredible

amounts of brain power to even begin to understand was stressful in a way that caused me

physical pain. Whenever I watched German television, I felt a cloud of warm air develop on my

insides and it felt like someone was firmly resting their elbow on my throat. It was suffocating. I


couldnt tell if I was more afraid or anxious but my fear of stress, of making mistakes, was so

incredible that I found it nearly impossible to face this language barrier head on. I wanted to go

home because I knew that my mother would take care of me. I believed that I would have friends

that would understand me. I had my games and my books and my movies and my shows. It

would be warmer and it would be clearer. It would be better until I understood that it wouldnt.

Eventually I would return to this moment of suffocation in all of its glory, its unheimlichkeit.

!The idea of home functions at least partially on the assumption that a space can belong to a

person, at least in a spiritual sense. When you do that quirky thing that youve always done and

never paid attention to and the person in the elevator notices, tells you that theyve seen someone

do that before, they ask you where you from this is validating. Your birthplace, your address,

your drivers license validating. You have a homewhen you move, you know came from

somewhere. Were so sure, and thats so safe and its all based on a place. This space becomes a

source of comfort as well as a reflective surface for identity that lends itself to the reinforcement

of the values and believes held by the inhabitants of the space. Going home, I return to a space in

which I share a history, set of beliefs, and language with the people that surround me. When I

think about home, not the place, but the thinga very real string pulls at my heart and I could

almost cry. Almost. This is beautiful and comfortable and everything I could have ever wanted

except for the fact that this love affair had ended years before when I stopped reciting the pledge

and became critical of all that is patriot and wholesome. I had already moved into the space in-

between but I was set on denying it.

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This would have been simpler if I had grown up anywhere other than the progressive south. I

am the reason why progressive has to be in quotations. Everything else makes sense without

them. The yellow grass, the red dirt, the lack of shade on the playground, the Chik-Fil-A on every

corner and the bible in every drawer of every home. In the south, you dont make a hobby out of

questioning anything other than what has already been questioned and successfully refuted with

a bible verse or gentle word from an elder. If it hasnt been answered, if the answer hasnt been

found, or if the answer has simply been rejected, the question will only bring confusion. It will be

met with the familiar subtly of Hows your mother been?, I saw your sister the other day.

Every time it happens, every time Im stopped and told (with a loving giggle) that Ive become

opinionated, my brain takes on a heaviness, my eyes close like they always want to, and I drop

my head, shake it once in silence, in disbelief, in pity, in the hopelessness of never being heard,

and I smile. In the harder moments, I throw my head back and look at the ceiling as if I believed

in what they believed and someone would hear me wish for open ears and open minds. But like

the other things that I stopped doing when I was in high school, talking to the sky or into the

darkness before sleep was something that I stopped doing too.

!I was born in California and moved across the country where we settled in Buffalo during my

formative years. I lived in a small village in Buffalo called East Aurora where my family formed

the entirety of the black population. This drew a lot of attention but, at the same time, my father

played for the citys football team and was a sort of town celebrity. As a child, I didnt think much

of the attention. I knew that my whole family had a lot of friends and that a lot of good things

tended to happen because of it. Things were very easy because I was a kid, because my family was

doing well, and because it was the 90s. My best friend was like a sister to me, she was white, and


she lived in the house behind ours. I wore my hair in small plaits with obnoxiously colored bows

and my outfit usually matched my sisters. Mom was always at the forefront of the Black History

Month celebrations of my school but I never really thought about why. I was a dorky girl that

loved having my mom around the school all day and it seemed like everyone else loved her too.

Sometimes African dancers would come to the school and Id get to meet them because my

mother brought them there. When we were meant to dress up as historical figures, I was always

the most extravagant Harriet Tubman and everyone loved it. I felt like a star. My fathers success

at the time was really the glue that kept everything together as far as our social life went. At heart,

we were a family of introverts and it would only be a matter of time before we figured that out.

!In the year of 2001, my family and I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. By then, wed gained

two new children and had become a family of seven. None of us were ready to leave the people


that we had come to know and love, but we followed my father faithfully because thats just what

people do when they have a family like this one. The transition was difficult in a number of ways.

Having been seen as a celebrity family in my old town, we were in many ways isolated from the

realities of racial prejudice that would exist in a space like this had it been anyone else. To this day

my mother and I talk about how there were never any other black people around. I think that it

becomes a little less funny every time.

!It was both a blessing and a curse that moving to the good Carolina illuminated the realities of

race for me. Everyone always joked about how much worse South Carolina was than North

Carolina. They talked about it being full of hicks and only good for cheaper gas. In South

Carolina, the streets were paved with weird whitish gray cement and it was hard to see the yellow

lines without squinting. In North Carolina, the streets were nearly black, the paint was neat and

bright. Nicer. Richer. I was lucky enough to be in the more forward thinking of the two. I was so

proud of my family for this. We moved to an area where the people were similarly wealthy and

once again became the only black people in the area save for one or two other wealthy families

that conveniently elected to homeschool their children. Here, having a father that played football

was something to make fun of. I drew attention for a lot of the wrong reasons. Most of my

friends were people that were nice to me in hopes that they would eventually get something out

of it and the rest of the people interacted with me were sure enough that I was going to be a snob

that they either ignored me all together or made sure to make the rudest comments that could in

passing. Walls went up in my heart and mind, growing higher and thicker with time.

!


Their comments were never overtly racist, they never really are. At least not in my mind and, at

this point, my mind was still very lenient. When my friends told me that I was not like the other

black people, I took that as a compliment. I was happy to be accepted. And I was happy to chime

in when criticisms were thrown at the others. A large part of me sought craved that

validation, the opportunity to cover my black skin with a white mask.

!I eventually came to the understanding that I needed to leave that school and it was because the

friends that I thought I had began to fall away towards the end of my fathers career. I anticipated

this and moved on. A new school had just opened for students interested in theater and

technology. I was interested in acting so I took this as a divine sign and was officially a student at

Central Academy of Technology and Arts for my entire high school career and we all lived

happily ever after for the ten minutes of bliss that was the summer before I began attending the

school.

!Up until this moment, when I joined my new school, my mothers plans for Black History Month

never seemed to be a necessity. I truly believed that she was there to make these days more

interesting. There is something very interesting about attending a white school where everyone

has accepted you as white; that thing lies in your lessons. We would take social studies classes that

were mysteriously estranged from the society that housed them. It would see as though a group

of foreigners settled in the United States for a time with slaves, found out it was bad and then

moved along. Then, another group of strange modern settlers came along and decided that the

races needed to be separated in order for the country to lead productive day-to-day lives. I

assumed that they left too after the civil rights act disturbed their stasis because the Charlotte that


I lived in was suspiciously devoid of the descendants of these people. I genuinely believed that

racism in its larger conceptual form had been weeded out of todays world and that only a select

few still held these beliefs. A real select few. Like three families in all of the south. Or Just

Matthew-from-English-Class grandpa who is still in the KKK. Okay then, maybe just the KKK

in Monroe. The family with the confederate flag in their window off of the highway? No one else

could believe in the existence of these things because, for most of the people I knew, the end of

segregation was the end of racism. And maybe, in the legal sense, it wasbut this was a

convoluted history. It made me long for the African dance groups teaching us moves in the

cafeteria, like in the fourth grade, when my mother was always around to make things safe and

sensible. But I stayed here in this whitespace, mentally and physically, in all of my naivety,

because it was easiest and most comfortable.

!


When youre white enough, no one bothers you about being black. You let them touch your hair

and ask roundabout questions about what its like when its out. I believed that braids really were

mysterious and that these questions had nothing to do with prejudice. They seemed to be

innocent curiosities.

!I broke up with a number of boys in high school because they refused to reveal me to their

parents. A Haitian girl and a guy from around town started dating and students threw shoes at

them. In the limo, on the way to prom, I was asked by the boyfriend of my best friend to refrain

from playing black music in the car on the way to the prom. My teachers in class used to

ignore me whenever we were meant to have a political debate under the assumption that I was a

democrat and therefore would have nothing to contribute to the conversation.

!This doesnt seem to be about Berlin and I but these are the moments I think about when I

wonder how I could have spent so much time anywhere else. I dont know what Ive been doing

my whole life without you.

!In class, wed have to read these strange patriotic pamphlets that informed us about triumphant

moments in American history. At the end of them there would be some real world story to help

reinforce our belief in American principles like freedom and liberty. It was all very simple and it

always made sense. Sometimes there were war stories that taught us about these principles in

action and told us about all of the wonderful things we did for the world. In middle school this

was a wonderful thing and I always looked forward to it. I think it was the war stories that we

were told in high school in the AP US History class that didnt strike the same chords with me.


As a matter of fact, they always rubbed me the wrong way and left me questioning what the true

value of assimilation and integration could have been if I was always going to be taught about the

world and about my country as if the things that minorities dealt with were not happening at the

same time.

!I became fascinated with the wild contradictions of viewpoint that resulted from discussions

about Japanese Internment camps and how much they differed from the discussions about Jewish

ghettos. I felt like the only human being on Earth when my tiny history class remained silent

without interjection after the atomic bombs in Japan were described to us as a successful war

tactic and nothing else. The half-minded follow-up comments about ongoing nuclear illness were

like punchlines. Later, at lunch, I would mention this to my friends, and they would look at me

like I was some kind of ideological terrorist. An American speaking against the weightiest

decisions of the American government was something that was and never seems to be tolerated.

But when it came to feeding me the ways of our country, the successes of Manifest destiny, the

colonies, the wars, it didnt matter if I could wrap my head around it or not. We always had

February for that. For noticing. This was just not something we needed to do year-round. But

after years of being taught to appreciate those who fought for the country, and served in the

government to protect my freedom, I wasnt so sure that the repetitive recitations of Martin

Luther King Jr.s history every February were enough. And if I was really thinking about those

people, in the 1700s, in the 1800s, in the 20s, 30s, or 50s, I could not believe that they would have

been doing anything for me. So, I decided that this history didnt belong to me. And belonging is

a funny thing. Funny in that it can always be argued, or simply taken away. This is when I began

to hate my home.


!I didnt really understand where the notion that home was meant to provide a sense of belonging

had come from. With the growing detachment from Charlotte, I felt as though my belonging had

limits that I was not aware of, that I did not want to believe existed. I felt strange for having these

feelings and, because of this, never found a way to vocalize them. In that way, they were never

validated. I was a parasite, soaking in all of the benefits of being home without offering so much

as a sliver of devotion in return. Sometime in the middle of this past winter, we were assigned a

piece from James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village. In the essay, he writes about the time he spends

in a secluded Swiss village doing work. Before he visits for the first time, he is told that he will

probably be a sight for the people in the village. And he, like me, made the assumption that the

warning could not have possibly meant that there could be people anywhere who had never

seen a Negro. He attributes this to his Americanness. He visits many times and always stays in

the same place. Everyone in the village comes to know his name but they scarcely ever use it. 2

Regardless of the amount of time he spends there, he remains a stranger, the Neger that the

children shout at in the streets. Baldwins immediate reaction to this attention and treatment was

one of extreme pleasantness, a form of appeasement. He relates it to the necessity of assimilation

in the American Negros education, one that he receives long before he goes to school; the

American Negro must make people like him. This familiar routine, that in America, would have 3

generated a pain different and almost forgotten, inspired a boldness on the part of the villagers

that made it clear to Baldwin that, to some extent, their questions and amusement were rooted in

genuine wonder. However, missing from this wonder, was acknowledge of James Baldwin the

Baldwin, James, and James Baldwin. Notes of a native son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Print.2

Baldwin, 123


man as just that a human being and in this failure of recognition, he was brought back to

the mental state of home. Everything around him served as a reminder that he would never have

a place in the same world as these people who could trace their lineage back to kings, queens,

worshipped prodigies, and painters. His majesty would only ever be his mother, a negro. People

are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. 4

!What is integral here, and something Id like to return to later, is the ability for the Swiss village to

form a mirror, one that challenged Baldwin to actively view his perception of himself in three

different contexts, in mind, Swizterland, and America. He did not stop at the fear, at the

confusion, or at the hurt. He turned to his insides, took them apart, and worked his way out.

!So much of this piece resonated with me, from the curious attention of the villagers to the pure

resentment in Baldwins heart. What became clear to me, in reading this essay, was the fact that

my disillusionment was part of a larger mindset, one that had been set up within me, piece by

piece, by my previous and current circumstances. It was something that happened within me

from the beginning, throughout my assimilative efforts (conscious and unconscious). So much of

what I had come to understand as being a given, normal quality of life, was framed in this essay

as a detriment to my well-being, my past had been problematized. Suddenly I was awake and full

of rage.

!

Baldwin, 124


In high school, my classmates hated Toni Morrison. In the AP level English classes we

usually at least one of her books a semester. The first one was The Bluest Eye. I dont

remember much of that book anymore, mostly because I chose to push it, and my

experience reading it, out of my head once I jumped through the usual hoops with my

newfound knowledge. After we finished reading a book we always had socratic seminars

in lieu of papers. These were easy days for me. Our only grade was participation and

expressing confusion in eloquent ways always made these engagements effortless. Id

wear my most comfortable clothes with a slew of notes in my pocket and relax during

the simplest of moments in the day. They were not always beautiful, sometimes not

enough of us would have the book finished by the time the seminar came around, and

wed all have to deal with the uncomfortable grilling sessions that would ensue. Pathetic

utterances about the most surface of topics or barely relevant personal anecdotes would

cloud the air for ten minutes before a more pertinent question would be posed.

Sometimes, the more talkative would be pulled aside and asked to refrain from speaking

for the bulk of the socratic so that the wits of the others could be tested. Like I said,

these days were easy.

!But we read The Bluest Eye in junior year as a joint-socratic project with the senior class.

A lot of my friends were in that group of seniors, most of them maybe. I was filled with

an unfamiliar sense of nervousness at the prospect of being at academic odds with them.

Maybe it should not have been so surprising how disappointing the experience ended up

being once it was all over. No one liked this book, and they made it clear from the start.

!


Before the socratic began, we were all asked how we felt about the reading. Each student

would muster an opinion dotted with their discussion point of interest. This was a boring

moment when no one would really hear anyone except for themselves. In psychology, I

learned that conceit is a developmental crux around the age of six, but I guess the book

never really mentioned an end. Today, everyone was angry.

It doesnt seem like she wants to do anything except paint white people as the bad

guys.

You can really tell that she thinks highly of herself.

Shes a great writerand she knows it.

Most of her characters are disgusting, and I didnt find any of them likable.

The subject matter was perverse.

There was one girl who loves to be the devils advocate and I think she might have

mumbled something about the necessity of perversion but, like I said, I could only hear

myself. I had earplugs and they were made of anger.

!Like the best memories, the poeticism of this one works itself out. I was the last to give

my opinion. I said nothing. This is typical of my dissenting behaviors in high school

silence, post-racial submissiveness. I resolved to maintain this composure throughout the

discussion. I told myself to take a deep breath, and I think I took half of one. I closed my

eyes, heard the whirring of unnecessary air conditioning, a soundtrack to the south. We

sat in nice chairs because the office gave us the conference room. There was a projector

on the ceiling, through the windows you could see the libraryI would take my AP


German exam here at the end of the year alone. I would mess up the audio section and

the counselor would yell at me, spit flying everywhere, from a halo of dry, fried hair and

the smell of weeks of Chinese takeout for lunch hovering hotly in the air. The ringleader

of the senior class got to start the discussion and she began with something boring.

!By the end of the socratic, I would be in tears, and much of the class would giggle

behind me and gloat about their win over lunch. The only thing I wanted after that was

to rediscover silence and never let it leave me again. Negative associations would keep

me at a distance from Toni Morrison for the rest of high school and the beginning of

college. So, the most natural of resources would be the last person that I would ever

imagine reuniting with in writing this story. In rediscovering resonance with the words of

Toni Morrison, I felt vindicated.

!Experiences like this would come to define my educational development from that point

on. I found myself rarely reading the work of any type of minority save for Chinua

Achebes Things Fall Apart which we were coached to criticize as a somewhat primitive

take on the male journey and we would never read any work from a black woman other

than Toni Morrison. Slowly all of my literary influence was populated by old and dead

white men. I became accustomed to this and learned to see it as less of a problem and

more of a consequence of circumstance. In this way, I was a bit fatalistic when it came to

educating myself and expanding my horizons, but the requirements seemed to shift

after I moved to New York.


A short time ago, I began to read Toni Morrisons Playing in the Dark aptly subtitled

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. In a chapter called Romancing the Shadow,

Morrison examines the objectification on of African presence as a darkness that is

subsequently used as a means of introspective evaluation by white American writers:

Black slavery enriched the countrys creative possibilities. For in that construction of

blackness and enslavement could be found not only the not-free but also, with the

dramatic polarity created by skin color, the rejection of the not-me. (pp 38)

It is the not-me that I find most striking in this thesis for it is the introspection of white

artists forms much the background of my own research. There is a unique level of

introspection that is afforded to us by the confrontation of the not-me, the black, the

unknown. We see ourselves clearest in what we perceive to be our opposite, and for a

long time, for the great white writers that was the African presence. For me, it was my

own presence, my real presence. After spending my entire childhood and grade school life

hiding this part of myself from myself, I came understand that I had been living in a

white mist, one that kept me safe from the dark but would never embrace me.

Impenetrable whiteness is the idea that comes to me now and impenetrable, it was. 5

Unintentionally (subconsciously intentionally) inhabiting some delusional post-racial era

served only to hinder my capacity for the development of an identity that I could truly

call my own.

!

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 5University Press, 1992. Print.


So there I was in my white, white bed staring at a white, white ceiling, in a white, white,

city in a white, white Europe, tears falling in perfect lines, down the sides of my face into

my hair and on the bed, and all I wanted in these moments was to evaporate, return to

the womb, or at the very least, to renounce my citizenship and run off in the jungle

where all little monkeys go. But, therein lies the problem.

!Rejection could never have been the answer. Vergangenheitsbewltigung was never about getting

over the past as much as it was about coming to terms with it and somehow absorbing it into the

present entity in a productive way. From the very beginning, I understood how immature it

would have been for me to simply renounce my American roots simply because I was disturbed

by its historical and literary history regardless of the scale of the failure. What I knew was that the

rift between my present self and my historical self was becoming clearer and more prominent. If I

turned back then, if I had given up and gone home, it would never heal. Home was a beacon of

pain; pain that had become so deeply engrained that I had no longer recognized it as such.

!I realized not only that I could not go home, but that I did not want to. Home would never be

able to fix me. Home was broken for me and I had taken it apart. I felt powerful and I felt at

peace. But the questions were still there. Where was this fixation on the connection between self

and space coming from?

!Ver-gang-en-heights-beh-vell-tih-goong, I said to myself.

Doneish.


!!!!

!!!!!!!


2 - The Heimat !There is often something beautiful, there is always something awful, in the spectacle of a person who has lost one of his faculties, a faculty he never questioned until it was gone, and who struggles to recover it. - James Baldwin in Stranger in the Village !Sometimes people fall in love with a place. It happens all of the time and it is just as authentic as

the emotion that is shared with another person. Much like real love, it can be difficult to

articulate the reasoning behind the affinity. Unlike real love, putting these reasons into words

isnt always psychologically devastating to the fragile entity that is the love itself. Of course I

met my current boyfriend, Ren (a person), towards the end of my first semester in Berlin. My

professor told me very early on, as soon as she learned of Ren, that I was not to let this

become a love story. But I do believe that, at the heart of every great transformation, lies a love

story; born first as a speck of intuition that slowly and deliberately spreads its spindly limbs like

veins pumping purposefully, full of new blood. Its reinvigorating, frightening, and melancholy

all at once. Think of the moment and the skin tightens into goosebumps returning the mind

to the edge of reality in what will continue to be an exercise in liminalitykeeping my feet just

above the ground, letting my toes graze the dirt every so often. It always feels like I might sink

lower but, returning to this space in-between, bearing the soul with which I first entered it,

could almost make me forget that a fall might be possible. Almost. Its the moment at which I

learned to let go that made this feeling of peace worth the pain, nearly forgotten , that I had 6

learned to live with until my Berlin winter destroyed my false solitude.

!This particular Liebeslied is not for my darling Ren. Its for Berlin, the love that came first and

burned me from the inside out. After the winter came and went, I was left with a choice.

Baldwin, 136


Vegetation would have been so simple for me. Drowning in my own pain was always

something of a pleasure for me. It made quitting an expectation and I no longer felt at odds

with others perception of myself, which had always been inconsistent with my own. But I was

fully aware of the opportunity left behind in my own ashes and I took the same morbid joy,

previously afforded to me by my vegetative tendencies and let the city consume me. I dont

remember being ever being as afraid as I was when I realized that this was what I had always

wanted true love.

!But what is that other than a bad question and a gateway to cliches. I believe that, to some

extent, we find love at our weakest but most passionate point of existence. It would be easiest to

describe this as a low point but it would also be the most reductive route. Love brings us to new

heights, so I think that it makes sense that we must begin somewhere below that. Its a moment

at which a person comes to terms with one of the most magnificent moments of vulnerability

and they are given something to lose. It is mortality in its sweetest shade of pink, but not so

pink that you cant see the rosiness of the blood beneath it. Its sunlight pouring through closed

eyelids red, orange, some darknessclearly moving but somehow safe. There is a thinness to

all of this, or a fragility. Now, when I close my eyes to remind myself of Berlin, it moves. There

is no one place. It is one thousand moments recollected at once, in one deep breath and a slow

blink. Where I once saw pictures, I see graffiti-painted streets like pulsing arteries, cozy bars

and dner stands like hearts and lungs, snow and rain like blood, candlelit dinners like body

heat, gray sky like skin, and itll never leave me. When I ask myself again and again, What of

my love in Berlin? I do not have an interest in understanding the love itself, I want only to

understand the the nature of it, to ask the right questions. What was the essence of my desire?


!I wanted a home that I believed in and I was scared that I would never find it because I also

believed that homes, like personalities and hair color, were things among the many blessings

that I person received based on sheer luck. This was not true but I had to do some searching

before the malleability of home could be realized by me. Part of the problem came from the

rigid philosophies that I spent time with beforehand. At this point, my understanding of home

and identity came with strictly enforced limits. Instability was something to avoid, and my

inability to express unwavering loyalty to any one space or group of people (other than my

family, who I love) made me, and my limited language, feel inadequate.

!!One of the first concepts I became familiar with in my German culture classes was the concept

of Heimat. Heimat does not necessarily have an English equivalent and this speaks to its deep

roots in the German history and culture. Though it has gone through many phases, Heimat is

generally accepted as the relationship between a human being and a spatial and social unit. It

implies a spatially derived identity that is very closely linked to that place where a person was

born and raised, its language, and its history. As one might imagine, this idea took on a more

negative implication following the second World War because the Nazi conception of Heimat

and the homeland was meant to alienate and this went as far as blood type. Jewish people who

were just as German as the next were now known as mixed bloods under this new

identification. These were the adjustments made in an effort to plant the seed that would later

justify their elimination to the rest of the German nation. It makes sense that no one would

rush to claim their nationalistic German identity after the Holocaust. While the identity that


tied the Germans to their country remained important, they were not particularly eager to rub

it in anyones face. Because I was naive and really quite eager, I was immediately drawn to

Heimat.

!!Naturally, Heimat, as with other nationalistic concepts, draws up a wealth of problems. I

suppose its difficult to think of the American equivalent in this sense only because the same

symptoms found in the German Nationalist issue manifests as a field of complexities in the

American context. Patriotism doesnt quite cover it. The United States is quite different in that

its foundation is built on immigration, a large population of people that were not born on the

countrys soil and had a plethora of first languages. Patriotism is readily available to all. It is

flexible. Maybe its practice leaves much to be desired but its essence will never be unavailable

to anyone. Heimat, is an inherently rigid concept forced into flexibility by circumstance.

Perhaps flexibility is not the right word. Heimat, German identity, had to be reconstructed in

order to understand and absorb the disasters of the path in a way that could successfully

capture the modern German Geist. It was this conception of intellectual life and large scale

identity reformation that it became clear to me that I could decide what my defining

connections were going to be. Germany was like the superhero role model I never had.

Partially because I was never into superheroes but also because I spent most of my childhood

wanting to know how I could get my hair to look that Brianas.

!!!


From the very beginning of my ambivalent waltz with academia, Ive been hesitant to engage

too aggressively with any body of theory or discourse in fear of not being able to do it justice

because I believed, and to some extent still do, that I do not have the right to handle these

works in the way that I must. I understood that, in losing myself in Berlin, I would be following

in the footsteps of many a flaneur before me. This was both supportive and highly

discouraging. Engaging with a space in this way is a deeply personal experience but it goes

without saying that certain experiences become more credible than others by way of the

knowledge gained through the engagement. These ideas and stories were already being broken

apart and reassembled in my head and this could not be any less valid than those of my

German inspirations who really did much of the same. So, I set out to find these legendary

thinkers. We will begin where I did with Walter Benjamin.


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


In the beginning, I knew that I would not use Walter Benjamin. In Berlin, I was only just beginning

to admire him. During my German prose class we spent some time learning about his life in order

to gain some background on a piece that he influenced. I cant remember that piece now, its strange

how many things escape your mind from semester to semester, but I do remember holding the

book. The book was Berlin Childhood Around 1900 and it was beautiful in the way that most books I

hadnt had the opportunity to read were beautiful to me. It had a weight that reminded me of

something dense, but the font in the book as large and I could see that its parts were meant to be

read and appreciated as miniature stories. These were the vignettes my professor mentioned, a

poetic approach to the non-fiction work of autobiography. Benjamin called them Denkbilder . 7

!I wanted to be able to take more from Benjamin that I was allowing myself to take. Each time I

attempted to immerse myself in his story, I found myself hitting the wall at the point where his

familiarity with the space transcended mine in a way that made it difficult for me to see where his

flaneuristic recollection of childhood would ever meet that of my young adult life. He writes about

his Tante Lehmann who never leaves the house, his love for his nanny, and things like that. The

severe banality of his bourgeois upbringing was really quite difficult to ignore and even became

frustrating at times. I dont believe that there is anything more self-destructive than having to bend

someone elses narrative to find your own, especially when that narrative seems to be bound by the

bone to its subject and author. But I stuck with little Walter because I trusted him for the same

reason that I was so reluctant to do so in the first place so much of him was in these words. I

admired that and wanted it for myself.

! Benjamin, Walter. Berlin Childhood Around 1900. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 7

2006. Print.


!!!!!!

!!!!!


Somewhere in the middle of the book, I reached a story called The Otter. I was going to skip it

based on the title alone but, as customary, I would read the first few sentences just to make sure

there was nothing here for me. The opening began with this sentence:

One forms an image of a persons nature and character according to his place of residence

and the neighborhood he inhabits[]. (pp. 78)

Its a game that he played in the Zoological Garden, one of the largest and most well-known zoos

in Europe. It was opened in 1844 and an aquarium was added in 1914. During WWII, much of the

zoo was destroyed and only 91 of the 3,175 animals survived. For a child of his upbringing and of

his time, a trip to the zoo would have been as common as a trip to the playground or park and,

evidently, for him it was. In The Otter, Benjamin writes about his routine deductive

characterizing of the zoo animals, something that is done effortlessly every time he goes to the zoo

until he falls upon the otter hidden near Lichtenstein Bridge, the least used entranceway just

before the most neglected park of the garden. The otter is elusive and young Walter visits many

times before he sees the animal. He muses about how his visits to this space are a trial in his belief

that spaces, like plants that grant foresight, have the power to reveal the future to come. These

visits are defined by Berlins characteristic rainfall which Benjamin in this case describes as a gray

comb that nourishes and baths the pampered animal that seems to occupy a temple rather than a

place of refuge. I was at home with the otter, he says. Like the otter in his cage, Benjamin let the

rain lock him away and in it, the drops would whisper his future as one sings a lullaby beside the

cradle. 8

!

Benjamin, 818


More important than the picture of Berlin that Benjamin painted for me what the picture of

Benjamin that was reflected in his own exploration of Berlin. My first experience with his book

was meant to provide a glimpse of Berlin at the turn of the century, but what comes through even

more brilliantly than that is the child and person that Benjamin believed that he was through his

experiences and reflection on the space. This was a writing of the self meant for a reading of the 9

self. While I will always stand by the idea that Benjamin would have never been able to tell a story

like mine, I was, once again, seeing this mysteriously familiar threads of connection that had

appeared to me in other works on Berlin before. The snow that never once showed any signs of

letting up, made me feel safe. I could count on the wind swiftly, and silently, pushing the flakes

into the folds of my jacket and scarf. In the bright gray mornings, with my head down, and eyes

carefully tracing the lines of the cobblestone, I could think and I could see that this would not be

the last of Berlin for me.

!From the month of November to the month of March, I walked to class in the snow. Every time I

did it I thought of those times in the movies or in books when the protagonists grandfather would

remind them not to complain and to take note of their fortune because when he was a kid, he had

to walk through five feet of snow for miles everyday to get to school and the luxuries of childhood

today were not to be taken for granted. I thought of my father, who told similar stories, except

they were about how he never had proper shoes and used to play for every sports team in school

just so that he could use the warm-ups as outfits. At night, six of his siblings would sleep in the

same bed as him. Snow reflects more memories than it does light. In New York, when it snows I

am relatively resentful. Somehow I feel that the stress and disappointment that I deal with in this

Benjamin, IV9


city should earn a few days of good weather but the winter hung around as long as it wanted this

year. In Beriln, the snow was gentle and the city was quiet. I never fought for the best chance at

getting over a moat of brown slush. I didnt cry as if it was the worst thing I had ever heard when

someone asked me to take a walk when them in the snowy darkness. At night, I would go for jogs

and the brightly lit emptiness made me feel like the city was my own. On a lot of days, it could

have been. I did things that I would never do in New York. I said yes, to more invitations,

proposals, dates, stupid questions, than I would even consider responding to back there. At home.

I was moving. In that movement, the complexities of my relationship to the swamp city was

becoming clearer.

!Derrida says that love often starts with seduction implying that the failure of love occurs when we

realize that the qualities or essences that originally seduced us, were not sustainable or never truly

existed. It is in this moment that we are introduced to what separates the heart: the who and the

what of love a separation that already exists at the very fundamental levels of existence, and of

being, which for all intents and purposes falls under the modern Western interpretation that lends

itself to plasticity and, more importantly, the Nietzschean concept of the will to power. In the

simplest terms, will to power refers not necessarily to any particular drive, but to a pouring out

of ever-swelling energy that functions as a source of a range of human whims and energies. Love 10

appeals to being through this juxtaposition of binaries. In dancing with the liminality of love, one

is being linked to the powerful center of our existence and therefore granted a great deal of

agency; all of which comes from within. The surge of strength that I felt when I let-go-of-

identified-came-to-terms-with (fair-gang-en-heights-beh-vell-tih-goong) my past made sense.

Wicks, Robert. "Friedrich Nietzsche." Stanford University. Stanford University, 30 May 1997. Web. 14 10Apr. 2014.


The same subtleties in the narratives that surrounded me were illuminated. These were people

falling in love without knowing it. Tuning into the unsung liebeslied, leaving behind the

uninspired, channeling the elusive bermensch. So, here we were at seduction.

!A story of seduction that seems to repeat itself at the turn of every century is also one of

movement; movement from the country to the city. In a general sense that move is driven by

promise; promise of money, a career, and success. Theres the concept of the country as a

stagnant space and the city as one of unforgiving change, the previously unattainable tough

lover. I am reminded of Doris. Doris is a character in Das kunstseidene Mdchen (translated:

Artificial Silk Girl) written by Irmgard Keun. The book was incredibly popular in Germany

when it was released, but was swiftly banned during the Nazi regime because of its particularly

realistic, gritty, subtly feminist imagery.

!What is most significant about Doris is that she is a thoughtful, writerly representation of a

rather average girl trying to benefit from the promise of the roaring 20s in the big city. She is

seduced by the myth of a wonderful Berlin (Berlin of Die Sinfonie der Grostadt and Berlin of

Weimar) Where other interpretations would leave you with the brilliant caricature of the decade

weve come to love, Keun gives us poverty, disappointment, trial and error. Through all of it,

Doris just writes. In place of snapshots, she gives us reels: I want to write like a movie. Shes a 11

collector of images. When I read her words I watched her attempt to confront situations with

her delicate rural thinking only to be met with the shameless fickleness that is urban conviction.

I saw her wish for a real boyfriend only to drift from bed to bed in hopes of acquiring a new

"Damned by the Nazis, Hailed by the Feminists - Other Press." Other Press. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. 11


shirt or dress. I watched her learn how to do it without sleeping with them. I was with her when

she learned that she would never get the intellectual fulfillment that she hoped for from the men

of her age; that only some people would ever hear her, and even fewer would ever listen. I felt

her tolerance and her openness birthed by her proximity to death on the streets. She grew in

ways that she had never anticipated. She wasnt real but here I was, nearly one hundred years

later, feeling as though my perfectly grungy black boots are falling right into her prints in the

snow.

!I think of Doris because I felt like her when I moved to New York and again when I moved to

Berlin. Moving to New York, I was filled with different illusions of glamour and a willingness to

abandon control in an effort to fall into place but moving to Berlin, I primed myself for a certain

degree of observation. Years of trying to fit in and behave normally had worn down on me. I was

learning to be alone and in that exercise, I was getting to know myself. Maybe the best thing a

person can do for themselves, while trying to get to know themselves better, is move to another

country alone. The week that I spent in bed recovering from jet lag is the week that I will always

return to when estimating future behavior. I will never be able leave version of myself for as long

as I live, for I discovered it in a moment without precedent and without expectation. In this life,

I am forever expecting, anticipating, or just waiting. In taking in the people and places around

me, in letting strange things, new things, happen to me I felt myself growing stronger, and more

committed to my capabilities as a living, breathing, changing human being, and not a victim of

circumstance. My days in Berlin were not always easy, but I was infatuated. I suppose that, even

if it cant last forever, magical things would take place in that time. And they did. I will always

insist that this malleability was afforded to me by Berlin.


!!Berlin is no stranger to the plastic mind, because it is a lesson in plasticity itself. In a continent

full of ancient city centers, Berlin is young. When I think about revolutions as fresh starts, its

even younger. One of the first notable occupations occurred in 1806 when Napoleon marched

under Brandenburger Tor and captured the city. Industrialisation further transformed the city

while the unification of the German nation occurred toward the end of the century in 1871. It

was then that Berlin became the capital city. After a period of wealth in growth during the

beginning of the 20th century, the first World War left the country in psychological and

economic shambles. Primed for yet another occupation, Hitler came along and, through a chain

of self-generated terroristic events, established himself as the most viable candidate for

chancellor of Germany. In 1933, it would be so. As everyone knows, Hitler was gone by the end

of the second world war. Germany was again, left in a battered state. Only this time, they were

made to pay for it with their full independence and the occupation of the country was split

among the Allies and the Axis powers. The unified nation was now two: East and West

Germany. In the East, a strong Communist regime came to power, and in the West, a

hodgepodge of Western influence spread among the US, the French, and Great Britain. It

remained this way until 1989 and the struggle to create a unified identity has remained, only to

be complicated by the great need to integrate the growing immigrant population.

!The wall came down in 1989. It had been up for nearly 30 years. When youve never lived in an

occupied space, its hard to believe that a wall could change a city the way it changed Berlin.


Even after being demolished there was a Mauer im Kopf that keep the wounds fresh through 12

the remained of the 20th century and into the world today. Sometimes when I walk through the

streets of the city alone at night, it feels like, in a way, the space has grown up with me. This was,

in many ways, exactly what I was looking for.

!I, then, could not understand why the same thing did not happen for me in New York. After all,

New York was the first place I went when I decided that I needed to leave home and at that

point, my southern problem should have been solved. But it wasnt. In New York, my problems

manifested themselves in different shapes. Without the perpetual gratification of successful

whitening, I felt like I no longer knew who I was. Class was no longer effortless, my friends

were not my own, I was the last person invited out, and every single thing that went wrong

made me question my sanity. New York was not playing the role of the destination in my life, it

was merely a catalyst that helped me recognize that I needed to learn to be my own affirmation.

!But then the question became more about whether or not this is what I needed. Wieviel Heimat

Braucht der Mensch? (How much heimat does a person need?) I cannot answer this question.

Jean Amry tried to answer this question and his answer appeared to have left him with only

one option suicide. His attempt to come to terms with the past entailed the very real struggle

of being Jewish with German identity during the second World War. In Jean Amerys time, he

would survive Auschwitz and exile to a number of different places. In the beginning of his essay

he describes the distinct form of misery he felt at every border crossing:

This is literally translated as wall in the head. It is a term meant to describe the remaining historical and 12intellectual reservations based on various lifestyle and political differences developed amongst East and West Germans as a result of years of separation.


What misery. Whoever didnt know it was taught later by daily life in exile that the

etymology of the German word for misery, whose early meaning implies exile, still

contains its most accurate definition. 13

The German word for misery is Elend and the word for exile that he refers to in this part of the

essay eludes my level of German but, again, we are met with the deeply woven connections

between self and space inherent in German language. Faced with the associations every day I

cant imagine that it would one day become easier to simply separate the two and Amry never

does. He reminisces about a degeneration of life that occurs when one is forced to live away

from their home for an extended period of time, remarks about the potential insufficiency of his

title. He understands that the necessity for a home cannot be quantified, but based on his

experience, he does not come to any conclusion other than the fact that a lot of home is

required. In saying this, it is important to reiterate the incapacity of English to properly

summate the concept of Heimat (the word that he is really using) in succinct fashion. When

read in German, each time I came across this word, I was reminded of the pain and the rejection

as well as the familiarity and warmth that might have been brought to mind in Amrys own

reflections. There is an ambivalence in his words but a clear longing for for a remedy to the

perpetual unheimlichkeit that has become his existence. What remains is the most matter of

fact observation: it is not good to have no Heimat. 14

!

Amry, Jean. "Wie Viel Heimat Brauch der Mensch." At the mind's limits: contemplations by a survivor on 13Auschwitz and its realities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. 42-49. Print.

It was incredibly frustrating to rely on the English translation and the rather insufficient use of home. 14Throughout the essay, Heimat is quantified. It just sounds silly to use home, so in an effort to preserve the beauty of the conclusion, Ive elected not to use home here.


My reading of Jean Amrys essay was paired with a poem from Friedrich Nietzsche called

Vereinsamt . He quotes this poem shortly before the last lines of the essay when he ponders 15

Nietzsches cawing crows:

I worked to translate it before I read the essay itself, and I suppose that, in doing so, Id found the

answer to the title well before reading it. Amrys suicide was not a surprise. While the

Holocaust is set on a sort of pedestal when it comes to comparative discussion, Id like to think

that much of the nature of the Jewish diaspora resonates with that of the modern American

Negro. In both situations the individual is left grappling with an identity that she believed

belonged to her. Movement, be it exile, forced, or voluntary as a result of this struggle is a

Die Krhen schrein Und ziehen schwirren Flugs zur Stadt: Bald wird es schnein, - Wohl dem, der jetzt noch - Heimat hat! Nun stehst du starr, Schaust rckwrts,

ashley rennt: an adaptation of the german heimat

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