Moving AGAIN!

My mom took this photo.  This dog LOVED me!  Rare for a Berliner hound to be so outgoing with a total stranger.

I DID IT! I found a home in Berlin that I can come back to after my summer in the States!  Yeah!

I haven't posted much lately, it's true.  I've been pretty busy.  I started making PJ's Pussies again, by hand right now until I bring my sewing machine back from the States.  I'm moving soon, from my tiny narrow room in Friedenau to a more spacious one (for less rent, too!) in Wedding.  We'll live on Soldinerstraße, a colorful and diverse area with a large Turkish and Arabic influence.  YES!  My flatmate Sedrik and I move into the new flat on May 20th.  I then have eight days to find a subletter for the two and a half months that I'm in the States, where I'll be working at a summer camp.

Rooftop party before it got shut down by the cops, May 1st

I have really mixed feelings about returning to the Bay Area to work.  I need to.  I'm almost out of money and I haven't really been able to look for long term work here because of my trip to the US.  I also have a lot of loose ends to tie up in California.  I did, after all, think I would just be in Berlin for two months way back in September of 2011.  So I've got to sell a bunch of stuff, retrieve a bunch of clothes, deal with logistics, but well, I've just gotten so damn USED to Berlin: the public transit, the cheap prices, the lack of fear I feel walking down the street whether it be day or night.  And I am so afraid that I will lose the little bit of language I have learned.  But man, I have a plan when I come back!  I'm going to turn my room into a sewing studio and make stuff and sell it and keep doing improv and slowly, slowly figure out how to make this strange uncategorizable creature that is me be able to function in a capitalist society!  I've got to keep things in perspective.  I've been in Berlin a week shy of 8 months.  In this time, I have been a solo performer, a member of a clown duo, worked as a babysitter and au pair, joined an improv troupe that performs every week, found a community and a few (dare I say) good friends who I trust and found a loving, healthy relationship with a person who treats me as an equal partner!  That's a lot.  So I got rejected from the artist insurance company because they measure success through capitalistic success!  So I'm still poor!  Fuck it!  I came to Berlin to start over, to make a better life for myself.  I had hit a dead end in the States that seemed to amount to "no driver's license."  Too bad it took me so long to leave, except for the fact that if I had left when I was younger, I might not be where I am right now, sitting in my underwear on my balcony in Friedenau in the warm and humid Summer midnight, laundry drying on the rack next to me, candles on the table, wondering if I'll have a late night visitor or if I'll sleep this night alone, content with either option... Ah Berlin, you have given me what I have been searching for for so long...

View from rooftop party, May 1st