TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

9:11 PM
Posted by jodi rose

I can't remember what I did last week. All lost in the blur of wasted time. There may have been a dessert party involved, with 3 tiramisu's and at least 20 other assorted cakes, including the world debut of the schwarzwalderpavlova - to popular acclaim - along with the molehillcake. danced the sugar away until 3.

Actually it's been four days of total hibernation, which is helping rest my body while playing havoc with my mind. All those dark thoughts you can run from in company or the pursuit of that next creative thrill.... lurk in the corners and ambush you on the third day of housebound isolation. Although I did have a visit from a sympathetic friend, when it all got too much, and staying connected to the world online, for what that's worth. At least it shows my strategy is working, and once this flu abates I will get back into walking in daylight every single day, and balancing seeing friends with keeping focused on the tasks at hand. Which continue to expand exponentially, as soon as I finish one thing another three leap up to take its place.

Still, I guess that's the creative life for you. If one does persist in the belief that 'whatever you can think of or imagine; you can make it happen,' ...well at the very least it keeps you busy.

Had coffee with a friend last week, in Edelweiss at Gorlitzer Park, trying to get out into that sunshine! Talked about being able to see our 'emotional bodies' and how they would be scratched, dented and bruised into a completely different shape. The self we present to the world - as a relatively coherent, confident, together, legible person - would somehow only be the surface tension over a deeply crevassed canyon of scarred bedrock and sudden sheer drops into dizzying emptiness. (If you let yourself be affected by life, love and the world)

You might think this state of mind is in part related to soaking up the existential ambience of Berlin, all those tormented romantic poets, but it's also part megrims from the flu. Don't mind me. This too shall pass.

There was a lovely melancholy passage in 'High Fidelity', about how you are in danger of just floating away, when you have nothing to anchor you to your life. I think we've spoken about this before, I'm getting more used to the sensation of being in one place now - and dealing ok with the random drifting currents that sweep me along day by day; but there is only one fixed point on the horizon, and I guess you need at least two to navigate by. I guess it's karma, for someone who has been so resolutely unfixed and determined to remain free and open to anything; at some point you realise that what you have given up is perhaps not worth losing for the possibility of a potential that may never arrive.

Talking about the notion of 'deep locality' with Mika, that the more you are part of the global community, networked, online, virtual presence scattered here there and everywhere; the more important it is to be physically grounded in a place that feels like home. Whatever that deeply loaded term actually represents to you. He mentioned things like knowing the local shopkeepers, and your neighbours, and what kind of birds are in the trees... hmmmmm 1 out of 3 and that's only at my favourite cafe, so i went and took an inventory of the birds along the ufer today. Swans, robins, ducks (two kinds), black round waterbirds with white faces, and seagulls. Which I thought were a long way from home, but maybe we're closer to the Baltic than I realised.

Maybe we're all a long way from home, but at least we're here together. I love my Berlin community, there is something particular to this place and the people who are drawn here. Think I just realised that I'm in it for the long haul, having changed my return ticket to Sydney which was originally booked for yesterday, and is now sometime in February - together we will make it through the winter.