Rosh Hashonnah: Not So Traditional After All

On Thursday Eve and I rehearsed in a small park in Prenzlauerberg.  I don't remember the name of it, but it's a strange little spot on Papalallee that is a park, playground and cemetery with a theater next to it.  I tried on Eve's moustache and became Boris.  I wonder who this guy is.  I think he is part walrus.  I'd be interested to play around inside him and see what happens.  He is either a cowboy or some sort of lazy cop.  In any case, he is confused.

After rehearsal, I went to Eve's place.  She is living on the top floor of an old squat that is now a flat with roof access.  I am hoping that I can move into her room when she goes if I do indeed figure out a way to stay.  The place is amazing, a little gritty, high ceilings, art everywhere.  On the balcony is a miniature/forest, swampland, complete with DIY pond.  The roof is accessible by ladder and gives a beautiful view.

We bask in the sun for a bit and then I have to come back to Neukölln for a tandem speaking appointment.  S-- a friend of B--'s, is working on her English and has agreed to help me with German.  At 6 the bell rings and I invite Simone up.  She is a stout woman with mannish haircut, and a slight left-side deficit.  Her eyes are firey and she has a warm smile.  I like her immediately.  We figure out how we will structure our time.  An hour of English, and hour of German.  Perfect.  She speaks enough of my language to have a conversation.  She asks me about clown and I tell her about the idea of the other.  We talk about Artuad.  She is working on a writing project called "Handi-captured" challenging notions of disability and looking at how every person has deficits and is able-bodied at once.  She says she is an in-between person.  Due to certain things that have happened to her, she cannot do things that she used to with out help, but she is an independent and strong woman, and likes to do most things by herself.  I tell her a little bit about me.  She asks me to write a one-page story for the project.  My deadline is the 12th of Oktober.  Yes!

At 20:30 she goes and Daniel rings the bell.  I get ready to go to this Rosh Hashonnah celebration, trying to look nice, conservative.  I did not bring so many clothes with me, so this is not an easy task.  The woman having the party is orthodox, which makes me nervous, but I will be with my friends, people I trust.  They will keep me safe and comfortable. 
Before we go to meet Sharon at Hermannplatz, which is about 3 blocks away, Daniel looks at the directions in his email.  Of course, they are in Hebrew, so I can't read them.  We walk to Hermannplatz, Daniel chattering playfully and me a bundle of nerves and caffiene.  I begin to smile in spite of myself, and by the time we get to the plaza, I am dancing to music in my head.  Sharon arrives in a huge bicycle with a seat on the front.  "Get on!"  He says in his authoritative tone.  I laugh and decline.  We shove each other around a little bit. 
We try to figure out where we are going.  The directions say to take the U-7 to Nuekölln station and then walk to some address.  It's written in Hebrew.  I have no idea what it says, so I just say, "Okay!"
Daniel and I hop on the train.  Sharon pedals off.  He'll meet us there.  Outside the station, we reconvene under a bridge.  I pull out my map and we look for the street we are supposed to go to.  It is nowhere.  Sharon takes the map, turns it over to the list of street names, stares at it.  "I never remember the order of the letters."  He says, handing me the map, "Can you find it?"
This shocks me for a moment.  Sharon has a brilliant and complex mind, speaks two languages fluently (Hebrew, English.)  But it makes sense. Both he and Daniel grew up with a separate alphabet.  I keep finding myself in these situations where everyone has something separate to contribute of equal importance.  All auslanders (foriegners), we all sort of need each other.
I find the street and the location on the grid.  It is on the other side of Berlin.  What to do?  If we try to go there now, we won't get there until midnight.  We can't call the host because she cannot pick up the phone due to it being the high holy days and her being orthodox.  And we are hungry.  We begin to walk.  "No sausage."  I request.  "I've had enough sausage."
"Oh, but this is traditional food for Rosh Hashonnah." Sharon chides.  (Sausage is pork.  Do the math, goyem.)
We don't want döner.  We don't want shawerma.  We want pizza.  "Harvey,"  Sharon says in his commanding voice.  "Use your powers.  Find us pizza."  We walk along.  I focus on pizza.  After 3 blocks, it appears, but it is pricey. 
"Sorry. " I say.  "I forgot to focus on cheap pizza."
Daniel begins to chant, "Cheap, cheap, cheap."  Too more blocks and voila!  2 euro pizza!

I get a margarita pizza and the Israelis both get salami and cheese.  Our pies come.  "Shana Tova," we all say and laugh.  Not only is salami unkosher, but they are eating it with cheese.  After, I want to go to a park.  I have a few bier in my backpack and, hey, it's new year's.  We walk and talk about all kinds of stuff.  Life, death, the soul, what it is and where it goes, pick up Daniel's bike, which is by my place. Eventually we reach Templehof Freiheit, only to find that it's closed.  We sit on the side of the bike path.  It's woodsy.  Sharon pops open the bier with his lighter, Daniel stretches out on his back.  I here rustling in the bushes and turn to my right. A fox is staring at me!  It is still, we are still.  Sharon moves his leg and the fox darts back to his hidden safety.  I feel magic in the air.  "Shana Tova!' Sharon and I clink bier bottles and Daniel's plastic one filled with water. 
We finish our biers.  Again, Sharon tells me to get on the front of the bike.  I acquiesce and get a ride home.  "Tchuss!"  I yell after the boys.  Daniel has sped off ahead. "Good night, Harvey!"  Sharon's voice trails off as he pedals toward his home at the circus.
My first observance of the Jewish New Year.  Nice!

We have plans to go hiking in the forest for Yom Kippur.

The Good, The Bad, The Emotional Baggage

On Saturday I have a workshop with a woman named BT.  Eve, my clown partner has arrived the night before and decides to come, too.  I am really excited!  Excited to see Eve, excited about the workshop, excited!  The place is a little hard to find, but we do.  At the beginning, I can tell something is going to go badly for me, but I do my best to ignore this.  BT notices that my left arm doesn't straighten.  I explain, quite succinctly, that I cannot bear weight on my left arm.  I'm used to this.  I work in a physical form.  My arm is part of my physical body.  A good clown teacher will see that I know how to deal with this and let it go, but I feel BT's attitude toward me shift.  She makes too much of a big deal out of it.  Besides Eve, there are two women in the workshop.  They are older, one in her 50s and one in her 70s.  They don't really know how to use their bodies.  But both their arms straighten.  I am immediately cast as the other.  Whatever.  I'm paying for this (45 Euro) and I am going to get something new out of it, goddammit!  If I just have a good attitude, BT will forget about my arm. Right?
We walk around the space.  She doesn't like the way I walk.  Thinks I am "clowning."
"No," I say.  "That's how I walk."  I have always been told that I have a distinctive walk.  I used to feel self-conscious about it, but I don't anymore.  I LIKE the way I walk!  People recognize me by it.  It is mine and mine alone, a hard gait to forget.  People have asked me if my walk is a result of my brain injury.  I don't know.  My accident happened when I was 2.  There was no me before it.  I am a result of my brain injury, every part of me: my walk, my arm, my mind, my sense of self, my ability to fight, my independence, me.  And I don't have to medically validate myself to anyone.  I am just me, and that is it.  And that is good enough.  I have lots to offer, lots to learn, lots to teach.  But Bartushka can't see any of this.  All she can see is that I am unique.
And she does not like it.
We do some exercises, nothing new really.  I maintain my positive attitude.  Then it comes time to show work.  I set up the cake. She has a different vision for the piece.  Fine, that's what workshops are about. You try other people's ideas.  If you like them, you keep them.  If you don't, you throw them out.  I am trying all the things she suggests.  She says, "Now stick your hand out the top."  I stick my right hand out the top.  She says, "Stick your other hand out first.  It is too much for the audience to see that hand first."  She is referring to my truncated thumb.
"No!" I say, maybe a bit too firmly.
There is a pause.  "Then show it off." She says after a beat.  And I do, I waggle my half-thumb around, I stroke it with my fingers, I make it the sexiest amputation in the world.

When the workshop is over, she encourages me to come to her open stage at Scheinbar, where she has booked me to perform a mini-slot of 3 minutes on Oktober 2nd.  She booked me after seeing my video.  But I guess when she say my video, she didn't realize that I am really "other," I don't just play it onstage.  She wants me to come to Open Stage to workshop the cake.  But you know, I don't feel like giving here anymore euros, anymore cake, or anymore me.  I would cancel the gig if I didn't need the 15 Euro she was payng me so badly.  She likes the song I sang in the workshop.  I'll do that.  BTdoesn't get anymore sweat from me.

Eve and I hang out a bit, and then she has a dinner party to go to with the guy who is hosting her.  Daniel has invited me to a circus show that evening at the Shake! tent (the circus near the Ostbanhof.)  I am not sure if I will go.  I feel weird and I realize it is because I am angry!  I haven't been angry in a while, but BT really hit a nerve.  If I wanted to be treated like that, I would have stayed in San Francisco.  Since I have gotten here, I have felt safe, unjudged.  I have felt at home at the CIRCUS, for crying out loud!  I have felt accepted, like I had something valuable to offer.  Now, I am just MAD!  But I decide to go see the circus and the Israeli boys. They always make me feel good.  I can be myself.  Daniel just accepts me and Sharon asks a lot of questions.  We are painfully honest with each other.  The things he has done in the Israeli army and the things that have happened to me, they make us both sort of aliens, and we connect through this and humor.  Also, the boys and I are all Jews.  I think the three of us feel a little bit revolutionary. At the Shake compound, I go to Daniel's trailer.  He is on Skype with his mom, introduces me as "Harvey. She is Jewish girl."
I find Sharon.  "What is wrong with you?" He asks me.  How does he know?  How are we so connected after such a short time.  I try to brush it off.  "You must let go of anger.  It doesn't help."  He squeezes me.
"Ja."  I say, but I'm still mad and he knows it.
"Stop being angry or tell me why?"  He says.  He doesn't mention the third option, which is me leaving, so I guess it's not an option.  I am not ready to talk about it, though.
"Sharon," I say, "I think that we have both experienced things that we don't think the other would understand."
He nods slowly, chewing on my words.  "I understand."  He steers me to the kitchen.  "I have to clean."  He sits me down at a table.
I want to help, need a task.  I tell him so.  He nods but then sits.  We start talking.  I tell him the bare minimum.  I had a difficult time in this workshop.  His eyes light up.  "That's good.  It means you learned something new."  Then, out of the blue, "You need to learn Hebrew."
"I'm working on German right now."  I dismiss his thought, though I think it's adorable that he wants me to learn his native language.  "I didn't learn anything new.  Let's clean."  I do the dishes angrily and he wipes the stove.  Daniel comes in, starts drying.
We go watch the show for a bit.  Or, they watch the show.  I try, but am too mad.  As I'm leaving, Sharon grabs my hand, but I leave anyway.  It is a bunch of young kids from a circus school.  They are all wickedly talented.  I sit outside, write in my journal.  The boys come out.  "You miss the whole show!"
"Sorry," I say. We go back to the kitchen.
"You need to eat." Sharon tells me, handing me a plate.  I pile it with pasta and sauce made out of yams.  I eat, then go back to the dishes.  "You are still angry," he gets me to follow him outside so he can smoke a cigarette.  "I hate watching all these young people do things that I will never be able to do.  At least you have an excuse."
"That offends me, I say.  And then I tell him.  I tell him about the workshop, about how the instructor could only see my thumb, my arm, my otherness.  I tell him about wishing I were like other people until one day I woke up and I was glad I was me and I just want the rest of the world to get over my differences, because I have.  I tell him about being a kid and being in special PE.  I tell him about trying to hide my scars and then cutting off me bangs.  I tell him everything I can.  He deserves it.  After all, he told me about killing a girl point blank, sitting in a tank for five days, waiting for any Palestinian to pass, about being brainwashed, about how he has flashbacks and his mind won't leave him alone.  How sometimes his reflex of violence terrifies him.  So I tell him.
And he puts his arm around me.  "The world,"  he stops.  "When I asked you about your thumb, it was scary.  People are not ready.  You are unique.  You are different.  You are a real clown!  Some people..." He trails off.
"I'm ready!  Fuck people!"  I say. "Let's finish the kitchen."  We play music from my kitty backpack.  I sing and dance around.
After half an hour, Sharon asks, "Are you still angry?"
"No!"  I smile, and then Daniel comes in.
"Good," Daniel says, "Then let's go to Nuekölln for a beer!"
Sharon won't come, wants to wake early and study German before a meeting he has with a possible juggling partner. We hug goodbye. I tossle his hair, he plays with my pigtail.
Daniel and I go off on our adventure and Daniel tells me all about this girl he is dating who is "not his girlfriend." (Yeah, right.) I introduce him to the American phrase TMI.  He likes it.

That was all Saturday and there's more to report, like actual Berlin stuff, not just Harvey stuff, but this seems like a good place to close right now.

TMI?

Circus, Disability, Cops in the Head

First, a cheers to small successes:

My sim-card was running low.  I slip on my sandals (it's sunny today) descend the five flights of stairs and walk down the street to the cell phone shop.

"Hallo, Ich will nach ober meine sime-karte."

The guy behind the counter asks, "Zwanzig?"

"Fünfzehn."  I reply.

He presses some buttons, hands me back my phone.  "Danke.  Tchuss."  And I walk out the of store.  No English!  First time.  It is a microscopic thing, this interaction, but something
something
is starting to happen.

I begin to relax.  No longer do I sit forward, alert, stressed on the U-Bahn, furtively listening for the announcement of my stop in what used to sound like a peanut butter-mouthed language.  I start to hear word separation, consider sentence structure.  Mind you, I still have no idea what anyone is talking about.
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I feel blessed to have fallen into the crowd of people that are surrounding me.  Last night I went to a circus-varieté/cabaret at Zirkus Zack.  I wasn't sure if anyone I knew would be there except Jana, who was the stage manager/director.  I was a bit nervous about finding the place, but it was very near the Ostkruez S-Bahn stop.  I walk into a compound that feels like burning man.  The ground is packed dirt.  There is a permanent bathroom but everything else seems fairly mobile.  Some trailers, one of which is a concessions stand.  At this point, I am quite used to not understanding most of what is being said around me.  I don't feel self-conscious about being alone.  In fact, I feel strangely safe.  But I do get a little bored sometimes.  I see a child about age 4, take out my balloons.  "Hallo!  Hund oder Katze?"  The child looks at her mother.  I say to her mom, "Ich speche kein Deutsch."
Mom smiles, says to kid, "Hund oder Katze?"
"Hund."  The child says, so I make her a balloon dog.
There is another child, "Hund, katze oder blumen?"
"Blumen." She gets a flower.
An area in the dirt is cleared and fire arts start, poi, staff, some crazy looking apparatus I don't know the name of that resembles a staff but has big flaming rings on the end.  I feel like I'm in Black Rock City except this is real life.  An announcement is made.  I don't understand what is said, but everyone lines up by the tent opening to go inside, so I follow. The old adage, "If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?" comes to mind.   There is a certain amount of trust I must put into those around me these days, I suppose..
"Harvey," a familiar voice says my name, though it is not one of the Israelis.  I turn.  Tobias, with his wavy salt and pepper hair and prominent nose saunters over to me.  "Hallo!   Come, Vie are closer in zie line."  Tobias has this amazing accent, soft, gentle, precise.  He is from Southern Germany.  I wonder if they all sound like this down there.  I join him, his girlfriend Jule and their friend Robert.  They all speak English.  Tobias and I start to talk about heady stuff, performance theory and psychology, but he doesn't have the English for the more complicated terms, and I definitely don't have the German.
Inside, we sit together.  The Israelis show up and Sharon comes and sits next to me.  The show begins.  The premise, a hotel. Clowns, aerialists and acrobats tell a story line that is possibly a bit thin, but then again, I cannot understand what is being said onstage.  The talent is amazing.  There is breathtaking sole tissu act, some very talented jugglers, and a few incredible clowns.
There seems to be a different set of taboo here in Berlin than in California.  Even is San Francisco, I feel that references to sexuality and gender in the media  are somewhat marginalized and most definitely only for 18+.  On the other hand, violence is not only accepted but expected.  We Americans are addicted to guns, to war, to blood.  Here, it is rather opposite.  While this wasn't necessarily a family show, there were definitely people with kids there, and there was a lot of sexuality happening in the clown work on stage.
There was a cross-dressing man who played both male and female roles in a tryst under the sheets, complete with the sounds of creaking bedsprings and then acted as the woman who had to get out of bed to pee and wanted to get back into bed for another romp.  A female clown did something with cigarettes, stole cigarettes from someone in the audience, and then sort of freaked out and told the audience that we should all love each other RIGHT NOW!  There was a sort of slow build to all of this.  I believe the act was about desire.  Or something.  Whatever it was, it made my sides ache.
My favorite part, though, was two naked men in a bathtub.  I am told that this is a copy of a sketch by a famous German comedian who just died, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/24/germany-comedy-loriot) I am not sure what they were talking about, however I believe some of it had to do with penis size and that the water was cold, and that the rubber duckie was an intruder and not allowed in the tub.  They both took turns standing up (multiple times) and revealing that they were indeed naked and one was possibly Jewish (if you don't get it, ask someone else), manhoods, wobbling around unashamedly.
This would never happen in America.  Not in a million years.  Berlin, Ich liebe dich.

But there was something that happened to me inside.  See, I have always had this rocky relationship with my body, not how it looks but the way it moves, the things it is capable of.  I'm a brain injury survivor, grew up with words like "special" and "disabled" pasted onto me.  These labels were meant to help me by helping others understand me. (At least, that's how I feel about it now.)  But because of these labels, I was allowed to think movement was a scary space, and also a space that I was excused from inhabiting.  In graduate school, I had to learn to dance.  It was terrifying.  I didn't want to do it.  I almost dropped out.  I almost got kicked out.  I would run out of the studio crying and lock myself in the bathroom like a child at the simplest request to cross the floor in a group improvisation.  I had nightmares and insomnia at the same time.  Cold sweats, dry mouth, the whole thing.  Phobia.  It. Was Not. Fun.
But then this thing happened, where I looked across the circle we were sitting in and realized that we were all fallible. Specifically, it was that someone else in the class (a person I thought was a very graceful mover) couldn't touch his toes, either. And I started to have fun.  And I started to love to move.  And I started to dance.  My second year of graduate school, I went to circus school, and it was a place I definitely did not belong.  It was the polar opposite of the loving support from that first year of my studies.  There was only one right way to do things, and I was not doing it.  I tried and tried and tried at juggling, acrobatics, rolla bolla.  And then my dad had a stroke and all my strength, effort and will power went elsewhere.  The circus became a door that was closed to me.  There was no love for me there, no ensemble, only judgement and alienation.  So I've had a pretty bad attitude toward the circus for about 5 years.
But I come here, to Germany, to Berlin, where all of a sudden, the type of person I am is no longer oppressed.  Jewish, queer, an artist, I may not be rolling in the dough, but I feel so safe here.  Safer than I feel in San Francisco, anyway.  The first place I perform here is a circus tent.   The first person I meet (beside Tobias) is an aerialist.  I don't say anything about my head injury. No one asks me about my scars, the way I move.  I am a clown.  I make the audience laugh.  That is good enough for them.
Watching this show last night, though, all these things bubble up inside me.  Things I thought I left in Amerika but things I can't leave in Amerika because they are inside me. They will come with me wherever I go.  I am not going to do even the simplest acrobatics.  I am not going to juggle.  My left arm will never straighten.  I will never in all my days be able to bear weight on it or effectively straighten it without having minor surgery and physical therapy (and I just don't have the insurance for that, thanks USA.)  But none of these people know that, none of them are asking and none of them care.  I don't need to validate any part of myself to anyone.  I am a clown who has come from Amerika.  That is all and that is enough.
In this city, I will never need a driver's license because the transit is so amazing and the streets are safe.  I can be an artist and no one questions my contribution to society.  I am not angry here.  I feel like I have a place.
The learning curve for this language is slow, but I can handle it.  I wonder if it is time to put my old baggage to rest, to dump it somewhere, to emerge, to transform.  I am beginning to have real, true conversations with people and this seems like a difficult thing to translate from die Englisch sprache.  Though it is true, no matter how far we run, our pasts will be with us, no matter how long we wait, until the oceans run dry, this stuff will be there.