Friday thirteenth.
My limited European run of Burn Collector #16 is sold out! But, if you are one of the individuals who sent me your mailing address, unsolicited cash in an envelope, and/or angry e-mails about my elitism, there’s no need to worry: I’ll be publishing a second, editorially improved and visually fancier USA edition via Pegacorn Press in April… and I will be on the east coast, doing a reading tour April 1-15.
RIP: awesome building, corner of Altonaer Strasse and Schleswiger Ufer
This futuristic high-rise has lain decrepit ever since I first encountered it, looking like a crashed spacecraft, or the abandoned headquarters of some ingenious super-villain. Passing by on occasion, I’d eagerly look forward to the day when the building would be squatted and turned into an art space/autonomous zone by dreadlocked hippie barbarians, a day that seemed to draw enticingly nearer as the European economy teetered on the brink of collapse. No sane developer could possibly think of urban renewal at a time like this, with the Berlusconis and Papandreous of the world running amok, throwing orgies and impromptu electoral referendums. But then, seemingly overnight, fortunes shifted, dictators were deposed in favor of benevolent technocrats, the Euro made a slight rebound– and, literally overnight, the bulldozers arrived and began their startlingly swift work.
Construction sites are nothing new in Berlin– soon after the fall of the wall the city became known as the biggest construction zone in the world, the ubiquitous towering cranes becoming almost the de facto new mascot of the city. The speed with which a building can be erected is astonishing, and tearing a building down is almost faster than the eye can see. You could blink and miss it. I’m glad that I happened to walk by as this fine piece of architecture was being demolished, and so had a chance to pay my last respects. Good bye, building. As for whatever monstrosity will take your place, the only consolation is that it too will someday disappear.
11/11/11
Rose Bush Update
This plant was doing pretty well until the recent onset of spider-mite colonization, which is the plant-world equivalent of gentrification. As outside, so within: all of a sudden, the colorful foliage of nature is being over-run by these single-minded, pinheaded creatures’ ugly, condominium-like web complexes. Down the street, nature reacts to such developments with angry graffiti on the wall: Yuppies Raus, Mieten Runter. Somewhere far away, an abstract entity known as Iran threatens an abstract entity known as the West with “the iron fist” of war, leading us to ponder an alternate quantum reality where the ayatollah Khomeini is a Motorhead fan. Here in the apartment, the tent-like web-enclaves, the city-states of crawling, barely visible activity, which remind me of miniaturized stills from the film Alien, or of a news article you read about human rights abuses in some country whose name you barely recognize. It’s not likely that I’ll be effected, personally; I won’t wake up tomorrow morning cocooned in silvery webbing, at the mercy of some mites’ mandibles– so why should I worry? But then, you find yourself laying awake at night, consumed by a shapeless, irresolvable guilt. The poor voiceless rose bush, unable to cry out, sitting there silently on the other side of the room, being annexed.
Research reveals that pesticides will most likely only kill off the mites’ natural predators, thus increasing my problems. So what does that leave? What are my remaining options? Infest my house with mite-eating spiders?
Bathing the plant seems to be the best remedy anyone can suggest. I’ve done this several times, and it’s depressing. Rose bushes have a Victorian-era bad attitude towards bathing, and emerge from the shower looking beaten up and morally vanquished. The mites, meanwhile, devastated at having suffered the equivalent of a thermonuclear attack on their orderly, structured society, scrabble together the remaining survivors and begin the tedious process of rebuilding civilization. History shows again and again how nature undoes the folly of man. The film Godzilla, a metaphor for atomic annihilation, could just as easily be a metaphor for gardening: all that fiery urban destruction might simply be cleaning the slate, tilling the soil, getting the earth ready for the next season.
Late September, and the prospect of gainful employment falling into my lap is looking slim. I’ve decided to get a head start on winter by growing my seasonal Charles Manson beard, prepping myself for a fruitful winter of staying indoors, eschewing humanity and writing angry manifestos against the order of things. I’m not anti-society, society is anti-me, says a band whose name is unfortunately chosen in terms of trying to cite them as contributing to your life philosophy. But we all have our roles to play in this world: mine to shine whatever small spark of illumination I have. A young anarchist from Havelock, North Carolina, on the other hand– clearly high as a kite on Crimethinc literature– feels it is his role in the cosmic scheme of things to write in and berate me about my “May 1st 2010” review. “Your story is about disappointment, about the pettiness of our little rebellions,” he writes. “But a little bit of magic did take place that night, and you have to cross it out of history to tell your version thus.”
I see his point: to the young upstart rabble-rouser, my view does appear to be presenting society’s side of things. “Who’s going to clean up this mess? Not the anarchists–” the North Carolinian takes this as an attack on his ideology, but truly, it is meant more as an attack on a quantum mechanical reality that includes the existence of plastic cups. The mess is the problem, not the ideology you present for not cleaning it up. Just as the line between idealism and cynicism is a thin one, so is the line between anarchism and nihilism, and these are the borders you have to watch out for, they trace the shape of what is truly important. Quoth the Havelockian: “This is why one picks up a stone to chuck at a riot policeman. Even if Sisyphus, too, picked up his stone in the same manner, doesn’t Camus imagine Sisyphus happy? Aren’t both Camus’ Sisyphus and the aspiring revolutionary both examples of health, in Nietzsche’s sense, in that they inhabit an eternal return they can affirm and bless?”
This person is clearly going to require a long and thorough response, filled with crushing sarcasms that will take me all afternoon to formulate. I have all afternoon to work on it, fortunately. Before that I should spell-check the manifesto, and finish checking my e-mail. The next one is in German, curt and simple, and translates thus:
Mr. Burian-
Thank you for your application materials. We would like to invite you for a personal interview on 29/9/11.
A job interview! Who could have seen this plot twist coming? I suppose there is an argument to be made that I might have, since I did go to the trouble of mailing them a resume and an extremely convincing cover letter– but that was weeks ago, and I’ve already gone through the entire application grief cycle: denial (the polite follow-up to make sure they got my materials), anger (the realization that I don’t want to be a cog in their godforsaken system anyway, the fuckers!), acceptance (well, time to get back to growing the beard and working on some self-indulgent art projects). I’ve already self-defensively rationalized myself out of that job, and besides, I’d spent a good deal of effort getting my resolve and stamina up, ready to face the vast and crushing tundra of free time ahead. I was just getting ready to start looking forward to it! Now, faced with an actual interview for the position, the dream that I worked so hard to crush, how am I supposed to react?
One thing is clear: the beard has to go. Shaving, at this stage in the game, is an ordeal. I hack away the coarsest sections with scissors, and then slowly slog my way through the foam and gummed up razor after razor. Along the way, I make the invariable pit stops: the Lemmy beard, which is fun to fantasize about going to the job interview with, and, right at the end, just before the civilized look completely takes over, the Hitler mustache, which is shocking. Let’s not kid ourselves, every white male does this when shaving off a beard, standing in front of the mirror for at least ten seconds, just to check it out– not because we are all, in our hearts, fascists, as Sylvia Plath might have posited, but because it is such a jarring experience: it is aesthetically amazing how a small square of hair can represent so much. The symbolic power, representing total negation of human values, the darkest pit we have within us, a force the unkempt Manson beard does not come close to. So easily within reach, such an easy hairstyle to achieve. You couldn’t pay me to leave the house looking like this. Shaving off all your body hair, drawing on yourself with a magic marker and going naked would have less social repercussions, and be more defensible ideologically. The mind reels. There are so tantalizingly many ways to blow this job interview. And then, one quick grazing under the nose and I’m a normal man, tucking my most presentable shirt into my pants, putting on my nicest shoes, feeling very civilized as I head for the door.
Christopher Lauer is standing outside of the bank, early afternoon in Prenzlauer Berg, handing out Pirate Party leaflets to pedestrians. I recognize him from the election posters; he is running to be my regional representative, and his poster slogan (“why am I hanging here? You all don’t vote”) is my favorite, the front-runner in this years’ strangely irreverent electoral race. I understand that there have been some moments of over-seriousness here in the past, but does that mean that contemporary Berlin politics have to be so silly? Even the far right neo-Nazi party has joke posters (“have a nice flight home!” accompanied by an illustration of a group of cartoon Muslim-stereotypes on a flying carpet). No one seems to be taking this upcoming exercise of our vital democratic freedom very seriously at all. The newest entry into the race is “die Partei,” founded by a former editor of the satire magazine Titanic. Their entire platform appears to consist of jokes, but they are seriously on the ballot nonetheless.
I take a pamphlet from the Pirate party people and try to rap a bit with Christopher. “I think I’m going to vote Pirates,” I tell him, “though, to be honest, I don’t really understand what you all stand for. I’m primarily in support of you because you have the best poster.”
“Thanks,” he says modestly.
“What do you think about Klaus Wowereit’s posters? Pretty slick, huh?” Mr. Wowereit, the reigning mayor, is running for re-election. The proverbial Buddy Cianci* of this town, a beloved monarch, the man who solved the problem of poverty by declaring it a state of sexiness, Wowereit has this year waged an aggressive campaign of—well, I wouldn’t call it comedy, exactly, though there have been some light-hearted moments (the kindergartner gleefully poking him in the eye with a stuffed dinosaur, for example: a genius PR move to turn that image into a parent-pleasing billboard, instead of trying to suppress the photo and having the kid’s kneecaps broken, as Buddy Cianci would have done). Mr. Wowereit is highly photogenic, A-grade mayoral material, at least visually. But even as he stares into the camera with the clear-eyed sincerity that politicians must be able to muster on command, there is the flicker of a giggle around the corners of his mouth. It is as though even he cannot take this race totally seriously.
Christopher Lauer, meanwhile, does not seem to be interested in talking comparative political posters with me. The Pirates are probably just bitter: as a party whose main platform involves internet accessibility and thus presumably includes one or two computer-savvy people in their ranks, it is shameful how hard the SPD has beaten the Pirates in terms of graphic design. Wowereit’s photo shoot is slick and professional, while the Pirate posters are reminiscent of the Sex Pistols’ “never mind the bollocks” album cover: scrappy, cut and paste, with jarring color schemes. It appeals to people like me, but how will the serious voters respond? Then again, in an election with several (more or less intentional) comedy parties on the ballot, perhaps the serious voter is a negligible demographic?
As one might expect of a Pirate Party representative, Mr. Lauer, a 27 year old product manager for a software company, seems awkward in person, rather than a professional hand-shaker; you imagine him more comfortable at a desk, behind a monitor, writing an incendiary e-mail, than grab-assing with the voter on the streets. Still, he may well get my vote on September 18th. In the past, I’ve displayed anarchic streaks in my voting behavior: write-in candidates, going for all women, or selecting the most unpronounceable names (I voted Barack Obama for Illinois senator in 2004 based on the latter principle). This year, I’ll go with best sense of humor. Why not? They say you are throwing away your vote when casting it for a minor party, but I’ve never been a fan of the “lesser of two evils” argument. This year, I will eschew evil altogether, and go for laughs.
*Buddy Cianci: mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1984 and 1991-2002
September 1st: Eye Swollen Shut
What a way to start the month! But, on the other hand, here’s where living in the first world pays off: the magic of health insurance allowed me to see an eye doctor about this straight away, rather than donning an eye-patch and pirate gear, as would have been my only option back in the USA. Said doctor prescribed me an eye ointment, advising me not to operate a motor vehicle while anointed. “Your vision will be a little blurry,” she explained. I assured her I would do no such thing: even biking over to her office felt treacherously dangerous as a one-eyed person, and I’m not sure my driver’s license is valid outside of North Carolina in any case.
Back at home, I was excited by the prospect of a new medicine. When a doctor tells you not to operate a motor vehicle, that often means intoxication is going to ensue. I rubbed the ointment on to my lower eye-lid. It is a dense, viscous substance, with the approximate consistency of Nutella. Blinking my eyelids once or twice spread the filmy gunk over the eyeball itself, this causing an intense Vaseline-on-the-lens type of blurring. There would be no possible way to operate heavy machinery under these conditions, which, while not making this drug recreational, fits in with my overall lifestyle. Plus, as with the pirates, I can dig the aesthetics: suddenly, the world looked good– I could close my functional eye and see my surroundings as if it were the set of a 1970’s Playboy pictorial, unthreatening, all corners soft and airbrushed. I’m contemplating rubbing the ointment into my other eye as well.
It was strange to run into my friend and former band-mate Tony Lazzara, a few days before my 40th birthday, in Berlin. And it was reassuring: on the U-Bahn trip to meet him in Kreuzberg, I couldn’t help but compare the transit experience to the many times I’d been on the Western bus in Chicago, going over to visit Tony in the house he always hated people to call the House of Broken Dreams.
Even a pretty bad day in Berlin is OK by Chicago standards. This city fails to conjure those depths of doom, or assault the senses with that sort of severity, which is a plus, one point for Berlin, and one point for Tony as well because he has persevered back there and prospered against those odds. A half point for me too, just for being in the right places at the right times, reaping the benefits of fortune and coincidence.
Tony was there for my thirtieth birthday, and although I was, as usual, trying to keep the fact of it a secret, he found out, thought it was an event worth celebrating, and threw together a party for me. We had just met, and barely knew each other. A couple of years later, he missed my thirty-second birthday, which we spent together in Montana, playing a show together at a bar where the entire audience consisted of a double date: four lesbians from a much smaller town nearby who had driven to the big city of Missoula for some adventure, and spent the evening falling out their chairs, drunkenly heckling our progressive post-rock band. After that, a drive out of town into the desolate wild, and spending the night on a picnic table at a rest stop, staring up at the most densely star-clustered sky I can ever remember seeing. No one around me any the wiser. This was my pinnacle of birthdays, the one all others will have to live up to ever after.
My friend Roger spent the last few months in Berlin and, as will happen in such situations, accrued quite a bit of bric-a-brac. Just before leaving, the urge to parent me, which seems to hit a lot of people– must be my pheromones or something– took over, and Roger felt compelled to come by and offer me all manner of useful household items. Toilet cleaner, several varieties of herbal tea, three beers and a wrench were amongst the items included in his grab bag of life-enhancing utilitarian goods. Thank you, Roger! However, also included in this cornucopia were a couple of more ominous items: plants. “Water them once a day,” he instructed, and then, looking at me with the expression fathers give their loser sons when trying to exude confidence and sublimate their expectations of failure, he winced and said, “Keep them alive. Come on, I know you can do it.”
Keep me alive! Only you can do it! These Black Flag lyrics were already resounding in my head as Roger walked down the apartment building stairs. I’ve heard that people coming out of drug rehabilitation programs are advised to get a plant. It reconnects them to the living world, gives them a small responsibility: the training wheels version of empathetic caring for another being. Keep a plant alive for a few months, and you might graduate to small mammal house pet– a cat or a hamster, perhaps. After successfully keeping this higher life form alive for a few months, you might be ready for a relationship.
I’ve often thought about checking myself into a drug rehab clinic. Coming out of the closet as a hardcore substance abuser would explain so many facets of my life. It would excuse all my failures, as well as the weird gaps in my resume. Most importantly, it would be a chance to start over, to begin again. The primary problem with the rehab plan is that I’m a pretty lackluster abuser. Roger couldn’t help but notice my squeamish reaction to the three beers, and politely drank two of them on the spot so I’d feel more comfortable. I drank the third, and woke up the next morning with a raging headache. And worse yet, a couple of new roommates.
The basil plant seems to be doing well. I feel bad for it, in a way. This is the closest I’ll come to being a farmer, giving my chickens and pigs cute nicknames before I brutally slaughter them. I call the basil plant Basil, after John Cleese’s character in Fawlty Towers; it will make me feel less inhumane when I harvest those leaves for a delicious pesto.
The rose bush is the problematic one. People say plants are sensitive to environmental change. Now doubt the environment over at Roger’s apartment was a lot more fun and engaging: I imagine a lot of movies being watched, enlivening conversations ensuing, that sort of thing. Pardon me, rose bush, if I’ve got other things to do. Some of us have actual deadlines, projects, aspirations beyond photosynthesis. I am told you are supposed to talk to your plants. Who has time for this? And besides, flora are notoriously bad conversationalists.
Having the rose bush in the house is like meeting a new roommate once, thinking they seem cool, and then once they move in finding out they are bi-polar manic depressive. Since arriving, the thing has sat brooding in the corner, and its flowers have dropped off, one by one. It’s very melodramatic, very cry-for-help. I’ve done my bit, watering it regularly, asking it how’s it going, but nothing seems to work. The plant is curling into a fetal position before my eyes. What the hell? What am I doing wrong?
Surely, out there somewhere is a regular reader who has always wanted to send me a comment, but has felt restrained by my choice of topics. “If only he’d broach the subject of gardening,” you’ve thought to yourself. “Then I’d have something to say.” Well, here’s your chance. Don’t be shy. I could use some advice.
