abbyklinkenberg

[abbyklinkenberg]

01 November 2017

I am a commuter now. I spend almost two hours per day on public transit. It’s always too hot or too cold in the cars and I never get a seat when I feel terrible and need it, only when I feel decent and would prefer to stand. But you take what you are offered, so I inhabit the extremes of decent sitting or terrible standing. Of course, sometimes I end up sitting down anyway, leaning against the walls of the train car with my arms holding my knees, observing peoples’ shoes and briefcases instead of their glazed-over eyes. I’m sure I look like a maniac, kind of curled up at the edge amongst standing adults in suits who hang on to the bars with familiarity and can even anticipate the sways of the train tracks. But those are only the really terrible days. Most of the time I blend in pretty fine. 

Yesterday, around 8.30 am, as I got off at MacArthur Station, something happened. I had been standing towards the back of the carriage, so I hadn’t seen until I started shuffling forward towards the doors. There was a figure on the ground, facing away from me and curled up in the fetal position. I believe it was a woman. She had the hood of a bleach-stained navy sweatshirt up over her head, a pair of sweatpants on, and pink sandals. Her feet and her hands, which clutched around her arms, were dirty. There was trash on the floor next to her, a single chicken bone cruelly placed. She was blocking the exit. 

And all of these rich white people, with their leather shoes, literally stepped over this suffering black woman on the way to their six-figure jobs. 

And I was kind of paralyzed by the moment. A young man near to me crouched down next to her and asked if she was okay. I tried to see what happened, but I was swept away by the crowd. And I suddenly found myself shivering on the platform. I feel like the man left her there, exited before the doors closed because it was his stop. I could sense his lack of commitment, his need to get off and transfer trains to get to his desk in the city. He didn’t have time to help—he could ask if she was alright (which she wasn’t, obviously), but there was nothing he could really do about it. He might get her into the station, but then what? 

And then I didn’t want to be a human anymore. I felt deeply ashamed at our behavior, at my behavior. I felt very deeply a certain sense of impotence, a lack of ability to act in any meaningful way. And nobody has any time for humanity, no one has any time for empathy. Helping someone like that woman was a hollow gesture because, ultimately, you’re just asking her to please be homeless, to please be sick, to please exist, over there where we won’t be as much of an inconvenience for people who are trying to play the game. She already lost, so she should leave the field. 

I didn’t want to work, I just wanted to sit down and cry, but I also didn’t even feel like crying. I didn’t feel anything save a deep disgust for everyone around me, for myself. And then I went to work. Because this is how things go. You tuck that emotive piece of yourself away so that the world carries on as usual. 

But what if the world is supposed to stop? And I’ve been struggling with this a lot, with the idea of how we express outrage or grief. Because when you feel such sad passions so deeply, the world does stop. But there is another terror attack on the news every day, there is another fire every day, another vicious injustice every moment. And they all matter to some people and their lives are ruined by these things but, at this point, we just watch them and shrug. We might debate the causes or effects, analyze the systems or patterns that gave rise to such events, but we do not feel them. We do not give ourselves time to feel them. We just go back to work the next day—we step over the woman on the train. 

I don’t want to be part of a society that commits this crime constantly. And yet I am. I feel like I’m just rattling the bars of my cage because what the fuck is anyone supposed to do about anything? I’m just yelling into the void.

I feel like it’s lazy to be pessimistic--it’s too easy these days. But I can’t see anything good happening. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

20 October 2017

These autumn days are not being kind. There are many spaces where the darkness sets in and stays, many corners where shadows grow. The seemingly sturdy world that I left behind here in California has grown shaky and I worry that a gust of change from a wrong angle will topple it all over. 

Nothing is quite where you left it when you come back to your childhood home, to your parental home. I’m currently in the same house that I grew up in--the same one I was brought to after I was born. It also framed the first 18 years of my life--and now this odd/haunting interlude during my 24th. 

I’m working at KPFA radio in Berkeley during the week. It’s truly an incredible experience--I feel so fortunate to be able to work with such sharp and interesting people and also to conduct interviews with authors whose work I respect. It’s really the only thing that is going unequivocally well for me right now--or, rather, the only thing about which I feel absolutely confident. 

Everything else is taking on an ambiguity that makes me vaguely nauseous; everything else is so up-in-the-air. Of course, my parents are phenomenal and not only do they support me in my pursuits, but they also remind me constantly how nice it is that I’m at home (this is after seven [7] years of living elsewhere). Despite their comfort, I still find myself feeling very disoriented, almost as if I am living in a surreal parallel universe. 

I haven’t cried so much, with such regularity, in a very long time. The past three weeks or so have absolutely upended my sense of normalcy and chilled me to the bone, honestly. And now I’m faced with the task of re-establishing my reality, grounding it again in relationships that I can’t help but feel to be vulnerable. But it’s a difficult thing. I don’t trust consistency anymore. I’ve always theoretically known this, but I’d still been more-or-less insulated from the coldest waters of death (wow that word is heavy and feels as if it should be misplaced or hyperbolic--the fact that it is neither of those things in this context unsettles my stomach) until now. 

And so my understanding of Things has changed. And I am surprised that the world still carries on as before. I am surprised that the world hasn’t changed with me. 

And I guess that is grieving. 

So I find myself reluctant to engage with or invest in people as much as before. I’m having difficulty vitally pursuing relationships and doubt hangs over my social interactions. All I want to do is read, but these books are piling up next to my bed and I can’t find the energy to finish them. I am withdrawing into myself.

I don’t know what I’m trying to do by writing all of this down. I guess I’m hoping that acknowledging this stuff will give me a firmer grip on reality. Identifying these feelings so that I can move beyond them. Because not only do I want to read again, but I need to be a supportive and consistent friend amidst all of this tumult. Despite and because of this, I need to be better. But it is so hard. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

01 July 2017

I just finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude for the second time. It's a hot day in Chicago and the edge of the circle of time is so sharp. 

I decided that I should try to see all 50 major museums here in Chicago before I leave, so yesterday I went out on the Brown line & transferred to the Red line in order to get to the Chicago station. There, I had a Potbelly sandwich and talked to Aidan for a little while before heading to the first museum: the Loyola University Art Museum, which turned out to be a very Catholic museum full of religious artifacts from the middle ages/Renaissance era, mostly. There were relics, the bones of saints, in some of the pieces--there were silver chalices from Germany in the 1700s and Roman keys from the first century BC and paintings by students of Caravaggio and stone apostles defaced during the Reformation. One of the hallways was full of self-portraits done by member of a poor community somewhere in Chicago, just pencil sketches that mostly looked as if they were done by children but were probably done by adults who never had the time or resources to fool around with artistic experiments. I tried to read all of the little museum information signs but at some point I got overwhelmed by the religious imagery and simply took it in aesthetically. There were two stained-glass windows done mostly in gray with bright yellow shading as the only color that I probably liked the best. A display of keys from the copper ones of the Roman empire through to the iron ones of the Middle Ages and steel ones of the Renaissance was also really striking. I like that they all did the same things but in slightly different ways, that they were all so neat and precise in their designs--one even had a club shape as the barrel of the key, or whatever it's called. It was really empty, I only saw maybe one or two other people apart from the staff (college-aged girls in blue shirts and black pants) who gossiped with one another while I walked through the museum. 

The Museum of Contemporary Art was only a block away, and was the real object of my day, so I went over there and paid the $8 entrance using my JNU student ID that expired last month. Lots of young people sat on the steps leading up to the entrance and the windows above were adorned with a giant tentacle motif in homage to the Murakami exhibition on the third floor. The first floor had two exhibitions, ETERNAL YOUTH and SMOKE, RISES or something; the first was nostalgic somehow, with magazine prints of Marky Mark and Kate Moss in Calvin Klein ads, an Instagram model blown up to be life-sized, and some other not-so-surprising or provocative looks at youth; it's not surprising anymore, to see kids wrecked by drugs or hiding behind masks or struggling with the trials of adolescence; we're so oversaturated with such content these days, it felt like a somewhat lazy exhibition--I did find some of the text pieces interesting, talking about the commodification of youth and how it's used as an empty promise and vague reason to buy something. 

The other, across the hall, was a series of basic sculptures involving 'other people' outside of the exhibition somehow, outside of the museum. Marble sculptures with shallow pools containing contact lenses of people who didn't know one another, SIM cards in cement blocks, manipulated window panes folded in strange shapes with cigarette buts or guitar strings attached to them. The most provocative one, to me, was a 'wall' with a square canvases on either side painted in the pattern of a shirt and a dress worn by a man and a woman who would occasionally come to the museum; the might meet, they might not; the canvases were put on parallel tracks that ran the length of the wall. And then a metal rod with a single earring through it--the other is presently worn by a woman somewhere in the world, which is the complementary part of the sculpture. The artist invites you to imagine the human elements that are contained in-part, yet that ultimately transcend, the museum space and sculpture itself. I found myself wanting more of that one, I felt that it was real art that provoked something in the viewer, a creative act that was the same and different every time. 

There was another gallery on that floor, tucked in the corner--a series of made-up constellations was on one wall, understandably meditating on the arbitrary yet meaningful nature of any constellation in the night sky that we have come to identify. The exhibit was named after some part of Moby Dick, 'the shallow level' or something like that. From Ahab's quotation about needing to strike through the mask, about how there is something beyond us that we can't quite access. Though the written explanation of the intention excited me tremendously, I found the art to be somewhat lacking, probably just because it's not to my taste. A painting that was overlaid with pink paint such that you can still kind-of see the stuff beneath (really obvious relevance, not profoundly interesting), a set of concrete blocks that looks solid from 3/4 sides but opens on the other, a map written over with a poem by the artist about metaphor and perception and imagining an analogous human example of reducing the world to a map, which I liked best, and some other things that didn't strike me particularly. 

Upstairs was an installation that I really hated with some computer-generated supermarket images of fruit and weird grocery store dollies and something about trying to make you feel like you're inside of a freezer with bags of fake ice and all that. Then things that look like paint cans but are actually meticulously crafted wooden sculptures of paint cans. The only part I liked, which was small, was built into the wall; a supposed massage parlor--you can see the entry with the sign, a stairway up to a door, and a back entrance, all in miniature, through holes in the wall. Playing the voyeur with nothing to see, sparking a curiosity that exists but can't exist there. 

On the third floor was the Murakami exhibition, which I didn't expect to love so much. The wall was covered in silver and electric pink, tentacles patterns and a stylized 'MURAKAMI.' Some of his beautiful early works with a traditional Japanese artistic technique that depicted turtles that seemed to have been made of condensed and reptilian mystery. A massive blue wall of many panels and absurdly deep blue pigments, an ornate stage setting with 2/1 at the top to celebrate the artist's birthday by making fun of that one guy who only made art that was the date written out on a canvas. More of those mocking types except the date and the canvas were painted the same color so it can hardly be distinguished. And then some rooms on Mr. DOB, his mouse-thing, that I liked sometimes but mostly didn't. Some explanation of his workshop technique making his larger pieces was also featured, but I wasn't too interested in seeing how the magic is made, but rather in the magic itself. His 'superflat' pieces were really compelling--flowers with faces covering an entire wall, for instance--and his aesthetic came back to me from his various famous collaborations with people in the 2000s, especially. None of that stuff was really my thing, but the rigorous detail impressed me. It started to get really exciting for me upon seeing Kanye's Graduation album cover in real life, in addition to a sculpture of the Kanye Bear and another painting from that time-period. A grandmother was trying to explain to her grandkids who Kanye West was--'a very famous rapper' and I found it funny. 

The room that made me feel the most, though, was a huge rectangular gallery with two massive sculptures of demons or something, red and blue, at the entrance and exit of the room, with some Murakami stained-glass windows behind them in a sort of religious allusion. The long walls were covered by two pieces--one was a white and blue dragon that didn't captivate me terribly much, but the other was a huge, intricate, and profoundly striking work of 100 monks of various sizes, stylized and detailed in the most precise and stunning manner. It was both grotesque and ascetic, simultaneously religious and irreverent. The size of everything was really moving to me. 

The final room displayed Murakami's most recent piece, done especially for the exhibition, entitled 'the octopus eats its own tentacle' or something like that. It's a reference to a Japanese saying that deals with cutting off an arm in order to grow a new one, with the recycling of the past and the coming of a circular future. That one was also beautiful, though I had been too impressed by the previous room to feel anything but a visual hangover as I pondered the equally beautiful scene. 

I left looking for a place to read and enjoy something to drink while listening to Vince Staples' new album, which I was inspired to hear because the museum is having him speak there later this month. I really liked what I heard and keep meaning to peruse it further. I ended up at a little French bistro where I had some happy-hour red wine that I had missed. Red wine was plentiful in Argentina, but I was very deprived of it in India, so it felt like a revelation. I read my book, talked to my sister and parents, and then ordered some muscles around sunset. They were gorgeous; I had smelled them from another table earlier in the evening and resolved to try them despite my ongoing attempts at vegetarianism (currently, I've decided to eat meat only one day per week). And it really was a beautiful day, I couldn't have asked for anything better. Solitude isn't necessarily that bad. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

12 February 2017

I’m living on campus at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. I’m writing from my dormitory of paper-thin walls, upon a duvet of loudly kitschy print, under lights of harsh fluorescence. I still find myself unable to write about my experience here in ‘travel’ terms (regarding the culture, the sights, the sounds, the people, etc.), but I am finding myself changing or, rather, aligning along a new axis that I’m enjoying very much. I do hope to write something proper about living here in New Delhi soon, but that day is not today, unfortunately, and I’m sorry because I assume that’s the big-picture stuff that most people want to read about as opposed to my internal mechanisms and their more mundane adjustments. Later, though, I think I’ll have the clarity to do so. For the moment, I’m too much inside my mind to think of myself as being ‘in India.’ Of course, none of the following could have happened without this change in location/backdrop to my existence. I’m constantly amazed at the effects of a change in scenery. 

Lately I’ve been working really hard--I wish that I had had this level of motivation earlier in my academic life. I’ve been focusing on learning German (in India, I know, it sounds stupid)--but I’m a rather quick study when it comes to applying rules and understanding concepts; it’s reassuring to know that my brain still works, that I can access this wildly intense level of concentration at will. I’ve always had the intention to study German this semester; the fact that the class clashed with others that I’m taking has made it a personal project and somehow gives me more motivation because I’m doing it on my own. It’s also a very cerebral and unemotional thing--learning a language--it’s basically just rewiring your brain and building parallel structures along different planes. There is no room for feeling, which is so refreshing and satisfying. It has been so long since I’ve felt like actually doing something, adhered to a self-directed schedule, and spent my time doing things I really want to do. Perhaps I’ve never felt like this. 

I’m usually so completely involved with my feelings (so sticky) and emotional state; the fact/realization that I can keep it in check (or at least limit its hold over me) by throwing myself into real theoretical work, into academia, into trying for my own pleasure as opposed to simply for a grade, is incredible--I can’t overstate the importance of this--I need to stick with it, I really do. This is productivity in the direction I really want to go--

And maybe I should acknowledge that I really do wonder what will happen with various tensions in my life; how they will release and in which particular directions they will take me. I really don’t see any situation as ‘bad’ (I can accept friendly detentes but, of course, I’m more emotionally invested than I’d like to admit). This month, the next few/couple weeks, really, will determine a lot. But on a deeper level still, I feel that I should be smarter than this, that I am smarter than this, that I shouldn’t settle for half-baked potentialities and instead only accept sure solidities. It’s true that I’ve gone through so much in these past years as a product of such faulty premises. I’ve endured so much that has simultaneously filled and emptied me because I’ve given people that power. I don’t know how to prevent myself from that--it’s an impulse that I’ve never learned to turn off ever since I ‘became’ a ‘person.’ And yet I can’t stand the idea of empty hedonism, worse still than the even greater specter loneliness that such a closure would invite. I can’t, won’t, don’t want to change the game because it’s fundamentally all I’ve found that has kept me. The players, the variables, do and requisitely (necessarily given the nature of humanity and of time) evolve, perhaps resulting in new situations. I do court difficulty, it seems--not consciously, I don’t think, but the fact remains nonetheless. 

I’m also thinking about people from the past these days--about the hard wall that I feel separates me almost wholly from my former self. I could cry just thinking about it; we’re so far from where we were, all dispersed in different directions, from that original seed of life that we sprouted and cultivated together. It hasn’t died, of course, it’s just divergent, which doesn’t preclude potential convergence in the future. That whole lifestyle no longer appeals to me, or at least I can see/recognize it for what it is now--there’s a place for it, of course, but I can’t live in that extreme anymore. This space of rigorous theory and protest and rebellion and effort to provoke change--this is so much more vital than the empty vitality of so much of the past that kept me occupied but never fulfilled to the same extent/measure. 

I don’t know, I think it’s all been important and relevant, but I had felt myself slowing down and no longer changing or evolving. Recognizing patterns (unintentional ones) in my own life really devastates me. Re-tilling the same soil, living in set loops, succumbing to stagnancy. Alas, again I feel the shifting of tiles under my feet, the creak of wind pushing open windows, etc. The grammar of my existence is again changing and relieving me of the stress of unsustainable and haphazardly arranged architecture. A more virtuous and aspirant set of structures--ones that can actually foster and allow for creative production, not just the façade or hollow intention of it--is slowly building. 

I want to do something--by that, I mean that I want to make something. Something good and resonant and meaningful, which can only happen if I am ‘ascetic’ yet eternally open, if I’m feeling and learning and reading and seeking. Always seeking the ideals that still haven’t even revealed their outlines or their shadows to me, of which I have only ever caught a distorted reflection--and, even then, only for a fraction of a second. And these efforts, these forever-efforts, can be made in the rigorous silence and fastidious environment of this library, among the probing and ravenous minds of my recent conversation partners, in the wake of the onslaught of critical and questioning words I find myself reading, in the polluted by clairvoyant atmosphere of these brick-walled classrooms. I’m not just saying that I’ll ‘make the best’ of it--I’m implementing it in practice. So I must maintain (erhalten) this tenacity towards shaping my brain in a virtuous direction--studying and following my schedule. This also gets me out of the room and limits my sleep--factors that have held me in their vice-like grips for too long now. So these are some resolutions. 

I really need to keep doing my own thing and indulging in solitude (genuinely and no longer simply to justify my isolation). And then to fully enjoy the challenging company of others. 

So I’m happy here, basically. I find myself, I feel myself, striving again--of my own volition, of my own accord. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

Words that are roughly about Northern Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile: untitled/unmastered

//

Powder blue skies, dismantled brick walls, charred fences and vegetation. Hazy blue mountains set against one another like fish scales and the scenic solitude of the dusty horizon.

Steady 140 in an 80 km per hour zone.

Trees trimmed to have flat tops so that they won’t hit the telephone wires. Traversing arched brick bridges over dusty riverbeds—they look like ancient Roman aqueducts amongst ruins. A single field worker against seas of green and on the other side of the road a Soviet-looking nuclear site or something… It’s too hot and the metal signs rusted over thirty years ago, colors faded away ten years ago, and mankind gave up only yesterday. The province of Jujuy (‘like an effeminate owl.’)

Cinder block housing, corrugated iron and chain-link living. Brick, rust, broken windows. A woman was selling strawberry juice with so much fruit in the transparent container and in the serious heat I wanted some so badly.

Along the road between the gorges, that Devil’s Valley, the geology and natural formations kept getting more extreme and majestic. Cacti, llamas… The town of Tilcara where the stars are bright and the city is a dream…

La Paz: a brick city built in a canyon. Rather dazzling in its terra-cotta houses that hang on cliff sides, seemingly precariously but never falling down. Coming around that ordinary bend and seeing the city below, shimmering in an urban glow against the magnificent mountainous backdrop... Clouds the size of cities themselves, wander above, as if wanting to see it all for themselves.

I didn’t realize how much thinner the air was 12,000 feet up until we walked up so many stairs (this city is oddly built like a funnel, only the center pit can never be found; maybe it disappeared (a) after the Europeans arrived, (b) because hell came to the surface instead.)

Visiting Bolivia is an exercise in humility.

Hot sun hitting hotter metal, coated with rust that resembles the rest of this crisp day landscape

Layers of clouds, white, purple, gray,

Over layers of mountains that shimmer shyly in the afternoon altitude,

Home to hundreds of thousands of pixelated houses situated strangely within and atop one another in the upward urban slope towards that thin, thin sky where birds don’t even fly.

Bricks and cement, burnt orange and cinder-bloc gray,

Slithering streets that spin down towards the center, where all the echoes meet at once, the only place of silence suspended in this mess upended.

Cloud shadows cast themselves calmly, walking tenderly on eggshells.

Linens drying on clothes-lines, gently pushed and pulled by the breeze—

Red and yellow tightropes // over black and ashen gun smoke

Contemplating the same views for hours on end; the occasional light reflected, continuous, subtle movement of the clouds and sun; thus the particular angle and intensity of light is all that changes—how is it so endlessly interesting? The smallest rustling of leaves, reckless dialectics of cotton sheets on wires; air and sun against your skin, the same breeze that touches me and musses my hair is that which found its way over hundreds of unknown miles, chimneys, and children’s toys. Never the same twice, these smallest of changes, interruptions, proofs of time passing… And these instants are all over over, it’s overwhelming—blink and you’ll miss something that will forever be lost—

**Ephemerality is nothing new, of course, but it explains the endless appeal of viewpoints**

I picked up that rock, which had been where it was for hundreds, thousands, of years; I picked it up and threw it as far as I could. Changing nothing and everything—imposing my will (my whim) on an indifferent world. It is changed and I know that I did it, the toss of that stone is added to the hundreds of thousands of stones previously tossed, moved by human behavior—by the natural unraveling of the world as a function of time. In that gesture, I join in a phantom communion with the world. Stones created by pressure and sediment, broken apart by erosion, kicked up by hooves, toes, wheels, and now my hand. The sheer madness of my gestures having concrete consequences… And yet the desert is unchanged by my throwing of that rock. It is still and will remain—would have been and remained—even without my concrete but infinitesimal action. And yet I am and I did, even if I’m the only one who knows.

Cable cars built above the city, just as normal and everyday as metros in other cities—panoramic views not for tourism but for practicality. This fishbowl full of thin, fresh air and shells of history constantly shed in favor of new models. Dried blood in the streets, 9000 revolutions later… And now the noble noose of tourism threatens another implicit revolution, war, more destructive and more creative than before.

Women with gnarled fingers, patterned hoop skirts, and bowler hats

Cemeteries miles wide, still not big enough to hold all the dead

My lips are chapped and I keep seeing unaccompanied children.

It’s hard to re-tell the past few days—so much of it was experienced on autopilot and under the anesthetizing feeling of awe. The scenery here is impossible to describe… huge, vacuous spaces and paralyzingly scenic views of mountains/volcanoes, valleys, deserts, salt flats, rock formations, geysers, lagoons, llamas, babbling brooks, and, oh the SKY. One never really gets the true/full sense of the sky until one is in the midst of unspeakable and unending flatness. I’ve had a peek of it before in Holland, but it’s nothing compared to the completely inhuman, unfeeling emptiness of the desert, where the sky feels like a dome above and the earth like an uncanny virtual simulation designed to keep us from realizing the infinite extent of the nothingness that surrounds us. It’s rare that the eye can only see nature all the way to the horizon, unencumbered by any sign of humanity or its various manipulations.

At one point when we got so close to the llamas, hopping over strange little streams and bulbous mounds of earth that dictated their flow, I bent down and broke off a piece of ice that had frozen over part of the water—at that moment it really hit me that all human beings do is destroy. Even when trying to appreciate, we end up ‘exploring’ and thus compromising that strange harmony that exists apart from us. Even breaking off that piece of ice, even tossing stones, are acts of violence against the completely self-sufficient Being of the world. Maybe that’s why I want to be so independent—it’s a way to join being-in-the-world rather than grappling with interpersonal consequences. If humans only exist with that odd obligation of consciousness that allows us to perceive our actions as consequential to the future and, further, in terms of the past...

Life under a sky that threatened to rain the entire day and never did

Salta is quite humid, but the perfect temperature to sleep with only a sheet. I feel that this morning I was the essential form of the concept ‘languid’ brought down to earth. The fan next to my bed (the top bunk on the right) oscillated in the best fashion—I love those repetitive noises, they’re so comforting. And, anyway, as I listened to the fan in a daze of half-sleep, I felt my body continuous with the cotton sheets and the molecules of air in the shadowy morning light—all part of the same continuity—a semi-conscious being-in-the-world that really amounted to a complete and gorgeous resignation. Morning malaise.

There’s so much to do and at the same time absolutely nothing that can be done… and ultimately time will pass and nothing will have changed but everything will be different.

20 October 2016

[abbyklinkenberg]

04 September 2016

I’m writing from Buenos Aires, where I’ll be staying until December before moving to New Delhi for six months. 

My room is above the kitchen: it has terra-cotta tile floors and the wall opposite the entry is painted a mysterious orange-peach color while all the others are a certain stucco-white. It’s quite small, but the ceiling is high and a wooden yellow door with six window panes connects me to my own bathroom--the toilet has one of those long chains that you pull to flush and the tank (which hovers three feet above my head) says “IDEAL” in capital letters, which reminds me of Basquiat, which I also like. Someone drew a chalk poster of The Godfather and left it here for decoration; I’ve always liked Marlon Brando and it’s actually really well done, so I appreciate its presence. An old wooden desk and ripped black leather chair stand together in the corner, united in their state of noble decay. I also have a few lamps around whose wires circumscribe the room like so many wandering snakes. There are two home-made dream-catchers (turquoise and pink, pink and goldenrod) hanging from the light above my bed, which I believe work quite well. My sheets are striped and my comforter has Simba from The Lion King on it. To reach my enclave, I climb up a metal staircase next to a wall of multicolored glass panels through which the sun shines sumptuously most days, even in the present depths of the Argentine winter.

The distinct aroma of seafood cooking in red sauce is rising from the kitchen below me in thick, warm waves. The comfortable clanging of silverware and glasses underpins a din of deeply accented Spanish conversation and laughter. (My roommates are Columbian, Norwegian, and Venezuelan and their lingua franca is Spanish, so I really do need to catch up.) 

I found a copy of “Webster’s New School & Office Dictionary” on the street today. It was printed in 1951 and a golden tag on the inside front cover says “Harrods,” right above a table of alphabets (English, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, and German.) It was raining and I like to think that I rescued it from a watery end. I’ve been referring to it while reading Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar, one of Argentina’s most celebrated writers. So far I’ve learned the meaning of “ataraxia” (“complete peace of mind; contentment”) and “pataphysics” (which wasn’t in the dictionary, so I googled it.) I can see why people love this book, it’s stunning so far... it’s both philosophically rigorous and aesthetically rambling, which I admire very much. I just finished The Time of Indifference by Alberto Moravia, which was his first book (Boredom was so much better), so I give him some slack, but there was something so dry about it, despite its clear merits. Perhaps it was all too clear. That was a book that was made to have a paper written on it--this is a book that was written to exorcize a demon, or perhaps an angel. Before that, I read 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, which was a truly wild tome. And, before that, the ever-inspiring and impossibly good Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (who may be my hero, honestly.) Additionally, I’ve dabbled in the masterful modernist prose of Clarice Lispector and the American-American poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. 

I’ve written a bit since arriving here on the 14th, but nothing terribly meaningful... some poems that are worthwhile, I think, but nothing truly substantial. I’m hoping that in writing this I am starting something, if only in the form of a gesture towards a wider goal. 

Socially speaking, it’s been hard to be away from Berlin. I primarily mean the people who have essentially become the city for me, to say nothing of the döner, clubs, and comfort. On Friday, I made a friend outside of my program for the first time--I'm so happy about this, as the air of Global Studies has been beginning to feel rather stale. Not that I haven’t truly been enjoying actually getting to know the people with whom I am fortunate enough to be spending these two years--I must say that everyone (well, nearly everyone) has surprised me in a positive manner. Intimacy can come strangely and circuitously, often when it is least expected... It’s something more than sweet to see some holes in formerly solid walls, something more than nice to no longer feel strange giving or receiving a hug. I also do like being proven right, though, and I’ve found that where I had anticipated compatible complexities in certain characters I’ve discovered even more resonant minds than I’d expected. But the constant buzz of interpersonal relationships is often tiresome and at these times I withdraw (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) into that glass box where no one can touch me. Often I get locked in, but the key always materializes eventually in the labyrinthine circuits of interiority, or perhaps in the sleepy bottom of a wine glass. 

And now some abstraction:

At any one time I can only see one whole side of the dice--perhaps parts of two or three sides, but never truly grasp the reality of the entire six-sided reality. My impressions are contingent: all we get are fragments. But our ideas, our explanations of the Other sides, those narratives are equally important as those ‘truths’ which we do ‘see.’ The unreal can be just as real as the existentially real (to bastardize a quote from a recent reading.) I’d rather imagine a full figure than assume that what I see is all there is. Would that make me somehow spiritual? Separate me from the materialist disposition of our age? How do I know that the dice exists at all? 

I don’t know: I’d just rather live assuming that a kind of terrible, three-dimensional beauty does exist (the kind that drove Nietzsche to insanity, that caused Ginsberg to see a lion, that inspired Blake.) Those ideals--the idea of the Complete Human (the full dice)--I feel my own completion so strongly even though no one else can understand it. I feel that it is only reasonable, only fair, only just, to give everyone else the benefit of the doubt--to afford them all dimensions.

While all people have that complexity, there are varying degrees of awareness (self-awareness and awareness of The Other, awareness of the larger meaning[lessness] of it all.) I’m drawn to those humans who seem to have that within themselves... ideally humans who are more aware then me. I recognize that this involves a judgment call, but that’s just where I need to trust myself--not to hide from my ‘self’--to believe in my consciousness and the validity of my experience. Trust myself to know who I can learn from, resonate with, etc. And I think I have--I think I do. It’s all an asymptote, of course, or more likely an erratic function that pulls away and draws nearer intermittently, without reason.

Chaotically trying to grasp the immediate chaos that is contained in the greater chaos.

[abbyklinkenberg]

27 July 2016

Every revolution has its moment. This is not the moment; however, this fact does not in any way detract from the cause itself. 

The American political system is slow to evolve, which is almost impossible for Us (born into an age of instant gratification) to understand. I'm impatient, as we all are, for true change. 

That being said, I will be voting for Hillary Clinton (who is admittedly imperfect) because I prefer slow evolution to quick devolution, I prefer slow evolution to dangerous abstention. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

29 May 2016

Writing from my apartment in Friedrichshain. It looks out over a church, has a garden, two beautiful cats, and a lovely roommate. I’m holed up in my room, having just finished Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates and, just before that, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. 

I’m studying at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, getting my master’s in Global Studies. 

I’ll be moving to Buenos Aires in August 2016 and then New Delhi in January 2017. 

I’ve been writing a lot of poetry that isn’t so bad sometimes. I have the idea for The Novel, I just need to start writing it. I wrote a really great essay the other day, but scholastic achievements are no longer my sole intent. 

I’m hungry. I’ve been thinking about the difference between mind and body, metaphysics and material reality, my own tendency to be all-or-nothing, and what it means to love meaningfully. I think I’ll go get a burger or something.

[abbyklinkenberg]

28 January 2016

The windows are open in the room I’m writing from in Neukölln. It’s cold, but not in an uncomfortable way--growing up, my house was always freezing, so it’s nicely familiar. I’m listening to Rihanna’s ANTI album, which just came out yesterday, trying to decide my opinion. I think I like it. 

I just finished reading The New Yorker from November of last year--some really amazing articles on polling, advances in genetics, the Herculaneum scrolls, Elvis, and Vladamir Nabokov’s letters to Véra. 

It’s 4:45 pm, the light is starting to fade into pastels as the sun sets. That was one of the more shocking things about moving here--how early the sun sets in winter. I knew that Berlin was rather far north, but not to the extent that it would change my perception of time. Like I said, it’s not too cold today; I’ve been trying my best to adjust to Celsius, but it seems that I’m too American still. 

I stayed in Berlin for the holidays, familiarizing and ingratiating myself with some then-new friends, who I so desperately needed to find and am so glad that I did. 2016 was brought in from my 13th-floor balcony on Potsdamer Straße. My apartment is still kind of messy from that night. Sophia brought sparklers, which we lit in feeble comparison to the fireworks exploding all across the city from the city streets below us. I prefer sparklers, they’re delicate alternatives to the pyrotechnic violence. We drank a lot and then went out for döner. It was a good night--Justin came to celebrate. Last New Year’s we spent together in Haarlem, this year in Berlin--I hope it’ll become a tradition. He’s the best.

Olivia came a day before Justin left--a short-lived but perfect reunion after our time spent together in San Francisco last January. We mostly just fooled around, explored the city, ate out at delicious restaurants (her favorite is this one around the corner from me on Lüzowstraße called Maltauschen Manufaktur (or something of the sort) that is always so quiet--we tend to make it louder. I think she likes noting the difference between when we enter and exit). We grew really close this trip--closer than before, and I didn’t think that was possible. I can’t get into the details--they’re too nebulous and bound to our relationship to be shared properly. But wow, I’m excited for her to come back in May. 

My internship at fineartmultiple ended on Monday--bittersweet, really. I loved working with the ‘team’ (so grown up), but I am working freelance for them on another (upcoming and really fucking cool) project now, so all is not lost. 

I’m happy, for now. Let’s hope it continues--

[abbyklinkenberg]

24 September 2015

I signed the lease for my room today. It’s in Schöneberg, right next to a park. It’s 20 meters-squared and it has a lovely window that faces east so that I can feel the sun on my face in the mornings. 

I am beginning “Being and Nothingness” by JPS again. I made it part-way through last summer, but I really want to process it deeply, so I’m reading it all over. Last week, I watched three documentaries (part of a BBC series called “Human, All Too Human”) on Nietzche, Heidegger, and Sartre. It bothers me that Simone de Beauvoir wasn’t included and I largely attribute that oversight to sexism. I’m looking forward to buying a good translation of “Being and Time” by Heidegger and really learning about these things. 

A friend of mine wrote beautifully about the things that she can speak about with authority; it made me reflect upon what my own list would be. Truthfully, it’s not too much; probably a very select amount of rap music, social justice, the flaws of global capitalism, the artistic capacities of language, and existential philosophy. The last one is the one I’m most proud of, the one I want to cultivate to the best of my ability--it also happens to be the one that reassures me most when I’m overwhelmed by, well, existence. So I’m reading this 800-page tome again. 

Few things inspire so much interest in me as the condition of humanity in general. When I feel distanced from it, as I have felt recently, there’s a pervading numbness in my days that I can’t seem to shake, like a metaphysical head cold or a lobster clawed onto my shoe. When I read about it, gorgeously articulated, I feel a clarity that I can only liken to the feeling I assume one gets from religion. Except I feel better about philosophy because it’s an actual exercise in logic and isn’t predicated on millennia-old social conventions/ superstitions. This philosophy isn’t designed to make you feel better, it’s designed to scare the shit out of you and explain why you feel afraid of the senselessness of existence; on the other hand, religion coddles the brain and demands the ultimate sacrifice of freedom (freedom in terms of agency and self-actualization on self-made grounds).

Similarly, I like Nietzsche because he doesn’t say “believe this,” but instead says “don’t believe it--think critically, posit alternative origins, don’t make it easy for those in power to exploit your compliance.” 

Anyway, I finished reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude” about a month or so ago. That book has lingered in me, bobbing up in the sea of my consciousness rather frequently. I think it’s partly because I’m struck by the recurrence and “same, same, but different” aspect of reality; eternal recurrence; time is a flat circle, etc. A richly colored and emotionally layered tapestry of humanity told through generations of characters that echo one another, complement one another, recall one another over time. 

One of the coolest ideas, the base idea, actually, of Sartre is that there is a pre-reflective cogito--a consciousness that exists independently of the ego. It’s translucent--whoever is here will be aware of the chair, but only latently. And then you reflect upon yourself, “I am conscious of the chair,” but the “I” is not actually there as a subject, it is an object: the “I” only emerges after a reflection (hence “pre-reflective” consciousness). So the ego is a secondary form that doesn’t actually have anything to do with consciousness as such--it is only a summation of your past consciousness, imperfectly processed, attempting to make sense of a senseless world. 

This pre-reflective consciousness is an intermediary between “the world” and “the ego,” two idealized totalities of the non-self and the self; pre-reflective consciousness is a lens that simultaneously separates and clarifies the relationship between the two. That struggle to break through that wall, that will to truly be in/inhabit the world or to fully comprehend it in the ego, is in large part the struggle of humanity. We try to take those two idealized totalities and converge them into one--it’s best expressed by the mind-body duality. The struggle to express your “self” fully in the world, to BE yourself--to have your external self reflect your interior nature. The only time that tension will ease will be in death.

Anyway, I love this stuff. It might bore anyone to tears, but I can’t get enough. It makes me so happy, even if I can’t explain it properly right now.

I am kind of upset that I didn’t study philosophy, but English, political science, and global studies did sort of broach the philosophical field. My favorite parts of each discipline were theoretical. Literature is lovely because it’s so often rooted in a philosophy or world-view that the author conveys in a limnal (?) way, just weaving words that, on a macro level, spell out something larger than itself. In political science and global studies, I found that some economic theory, especially Marxism and socialist theory caught my attention; capitalist theory, on the other hand, inspired a great deal of anger in me. But these interests are continental in nature; the analytical side of things bores me to tears. 

There’s little room to be creative in academic philosophy--writing papers analyzing arguments without much personal flavor sounds terrible. I much prefer writing beautiful sentences that might not mean much individually, but come together to create something reminiscent of the human condition. 

Such lofty goals... I’m reminded of my objective each time I read this kind of thing. It’s all there, waiting; I just need to study it rigorously and shape my mind in such a way that my words will hint at the philosophical foundation below the surface and, hopefully, give people the same satisfaction that I get when reading Sartre.

[abbyklinkenberg]

07 August 2015

In twelve (12) days, I will fly to Amsterdam and, in all likelihood, stay on that continent for the next two years of my life. 

I will be attending the Freie Universität, Berlin, pursuing a master’s degree in English Studies. As silly as it sounds to go to a non-Anglophone nation to study English language, literature, and culture, I trust that it will provide some incredible and much-needed perspective on what is unique to the English literary canon. I am looking forward to being surrounded by a foreign language such that my thoughts can ramble, unencumbered by the ceaseless prattle of the public. The opportunity to construct my own world is exactly what I need; in a place where every corner holds the unfamiliar, I’ll be able to piece together the eclectic lifestyle I’ve always envisioned for myself after UCLA. 

I’m really piecing together what it means to write, these days. I just finished Dr. Viktor E. Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which outlined and articulated so many psychological phenomena that resonate in today’s nihilistic, neoliberal American culture to which I have become so accustomed but never desensitized. If anything, I find myself increasingly sensitive to the industrial, economic, and dehumanized way that the world works--perhaps that’s a consequence of being in the “real world” (however real the world can be to me in my bubble of suburban domesticity) after graduating. 

I’m absolutely anxious about my economic future, but my profound lack of actual usefulness is ironically inspiring my productivity. I’m hoping that living and studying in Berlin, essentially knowing no one, and constantly culturally adjusting will be conducive to prolific writing. I’ve finally decided upon the sorts of stories that I want to tell and I’m slowly constructing the method--circumstances just have to provide the opportunity for it to spill out. 

In the mean time, I’m taking notes on literary style, psychology, and character while working my way through some classics. I need to pick up some Spinoza and Schopenhauer this week, for I’m increasingly noticing that gap in my philosophical knowledge. I hope for my work to be human stories placed in a philosophical framework. Easier said than done. 

On an emotional level, I’m negotiating two very contradictory impulses: (1) pack everything up, compartmentalize it, and lay it to rest; (2) keep it messy, make things as difficult for myself as possible, and wait for my heart to break due to poor pre-departure preparation. 

My sister is currently going around and trying to sell off all of the clothes that I’m not bringing to Berlin. It’s mostly of hilarious how much of a vulture she is, but it’s also vaguely sad that my place here in L-Town is so transient. 

Good things to come. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

10 July 2015

I just re-integrated all of my books from school into my meager collection here at home. My bookshelves are filled with other peoples’ books, so I’ve adopted the half-wall that separates my room from the stairs as the place for my permanent collection. It adds a bit of color and intrigue to my otherwise bland room. It’s really more of an attic, actually; after I moved to Los Angeles, my sister took my actual room and in the brief interludes between adventures, I find myself tucked away up here. 

Yet this interlude is a bit different than others--simply because it does not yet have an expiration date. I organized my books, which is basically what “settling in” means to me. I don’t know when I’ll be leaving; it scares the shit out of me. These thoughts have been the silent soundtrack to my past three days: What if I never amount to anything at all and have to stay here all my life? What if no one wants to read what I have to say? What if I have nothing to say? 

I mean, I know that I can be terribly pretentious, but what if I do truly harbor grand illusions about my future? Is being self-assured acceptable if it has a basis in fact? Or maybe I’m entirely mentally skewed and need to be taken down a peg, to eat a slice of humble pie. I mean, I don’t think that I’m a particularly extraordinary human being, I just feel that I have something important to say. Maybe narcissism is a prerequisite for any kind of creation, good or bad...

I really just need to chill the fuck out and stop overthinking everything. 

A few weeks ago, I graduated from college with a couple of degrees and a minor--summa cum laude, too (if we want to get into the technicalities, which apparently I do because, really, where else does one have a space to justifiably brag than one’s own blog). 

I graduated and then embarked on a trip to find the 21st-century American Dream. I didn’t find it, per se, but I did eat a delicious sandwich in Detroit at a place called Smoke’s that was called, aptly, “The American Dream.” It was delicious. I also spent the Fourth of July in New York City, overlooking the East River and watching fireworks in an intoxicated haze. I cried helplessly on the road from Toronto to New York City and then again at a Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit in Brooklyn. I lost all of my money due to an apartment scheme and had to come home three weeks early. And here I am now, next to my cat.

Today, I enrolled in an online TEFL certificate program so that I can fantasize about earning a living in all of the beautiful and exotic locations where I am currently not. A faint hope lingers for an autumn adventure abroad, but given the circumstances and trajectory of my present situation, I am erring on the side of caution and assuming the worst. 

There’s something somber about this summer. I don’t want to go out at all, I really just want to read and learn with a fervor that only be inspired by the idea of never being forced to read or learn anything again. I’m being rather strict with myself--I can’t and won’t become complacent. At least not mentally. In every other way, it seems that I have, in fact, become rather complacent. I should really keep in mind that I need this break, though--that perpetual motion can take a toll on the soul. 

All of my books are stacked up nicely; I arranged them according to my own abstract categories: philosophy that I need to read immediately, books that I need to read immediately, books that I’ll get around to eventually but still really want to read, Beat Generation books that I have started and never finished, Camus pile, Hemingway/Fitzgerald/Faulkner pile, books that I’m in no hurry to finish, school books that I want but can’t bring myself to sell, etc. etc. etc. 

I’m currently reading “The Prime of Life (1929-1944)” by Simone de Beauvoir. I’m learning a tremendous amount from it and my ambitions are inflating with each page I turn. And yet I cannot produce a page of decent prose--even this post is riddled with mediocrity. At moments like these, I feel that college has taught me precisely nothing; the discrepancy between my desires and abilities is so great. 

Give it time, give it time...

[abbyklinkenberg]

26 May 2015

It’s 3:00 am and I just realized that I graduate in 18 days. As much as I love that sentence, I feel that I have left much undone. I wish I had taken some international development courses, I wish I knew more about myself when I started (though what better way to learn about yourself than going through the socially grueling collegiate machine?), I wish that I had met some people earlier and others later. Most, though, came into my life at just the right times. Or maybe they all have.

I only began to like Los Angeles recently. I now find so much of the city charming in its own way. Part of me attributes this to turning twenty-one; part of me thinks this is directly due to Uber and Lyft allowing me to see other parts of this too-big town. I am reminded of one of my favorite lines from On the Road: “A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.” At this point, I’m all-too familiar with this sentiment–it resonates with my heartstrings.

The most time I’ve ever spent at one school in my life is three years. I know by now that just as you begin to get comfortable, something will inevitably uproot you like an unfortunate carrot or miserable radish. Last year, I felt this most acutely–in Paris, I had something so wonderful and now it only exists in fragments (in broken texts that ding the transatlantic satellite, in imperfect memories, and in this blog, actually). I suppose all that we ever have follows this form of tension and release (succeeding/shattering; boom/bust; coolness/chaos; life/death).

I pride myself on drawing parallels, connecting dots, seeing similarity on a macro-level (theory and practice; cultural juxtaposition; how the part relates to the whole)–it is at once my favorite thing to do and I like to think it my best talent. I like to share it and articulate it beautifully for readers like you. Yet, to utilize this skill, there must be contrast–there must be novelty: I can’t stay in one place. My home is the in-between.

Fatal familiarity nips at my heels–I constantly run away from its wet-dog smell. This might be part of my tendency to preemptively put an end to things but, as I know that all shall end, it may as well happen on my own terms. Agency is the greatest human capacity. Will to power, and all that. I am happiest on the fringes, following grand plans of my own design.

Despite this, facing the fact that I will finally be free from Los Angeles (which I considered to be my own personal hell for so many sad months past), I realize that I will miss it.

I came here as an angst-ridden youth with the idea that Southern California would make me feel better–that I would be inspired by and internalize the culture of sun-worship and beach yoga. As a seventeen-year-old, I signed up with the intention of changing, only to find that it was incredibly difficult to do when you don’t know who you are to begin with. Here, I found many things that I am not–and that scared me for a while. That loneliness that still hides in the deepest marrow of my bones would find its way to the surface for mad months at a time. In my pursuit of self-actualization, I did as so many before me have done and moved somewhere far, far away. Suddenly, it was normal to be alone–human connection suddenly bore so much more weight than the false-lunch promises of nameless acquaintances. I had no one to nod to and no one to please. It was new in just the way I needed it to be. The Parisian air, heavy with history and ennui, felt fresh in my lungs. I only feel confident in saying this now, about a year on, but I really did find myself over there. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise.

I was terribly afraid of this year. I was afraid that I would undo all of my progress and descend into a pit of isolated sadness (ie. my bed for days at a time). Although I do still indulge myself in the occasional self-imposed quarantine, I have found a semblance of happiness here–in my silly apartment filled with squalor, in my few but fascinating friends, and in writing.

I firmly believe that I belong nowhere in particular, but I do have these secret refuges in human beings strewn across the world from New York to New Zealand. The only problem with traveling, with living other places (my privilege is massive and I really do know that, I promise), is that you are condemned to miss something or someone at all times. Often it isn’t at the forefront of your mind–it’s just a latent image of a street corner or memory of a conversation that makes you sigh for a moment. I never expected LA to be one of those hazy places that puts a lump in my throat, but somehow its smoggy soul has given me happiness in the end. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’ve really gotten something out of these past four years. I will, indeed, sigh about true blue skies, Sunset drives, and five-am highs.

I used to cling to the idea of somewhere new as refuge from the present, but now I see it as my inspiration for the future. I’m okay with starting over now.

Goodbye and thank you.

This has been my love letter to Los Angeles.

[abbyklinkenberg]

24 May 2015

I purchased a skateboard today. It looks really stupid: there’s a picture of a bottle of maple syrup on both sides of the deck (check out that technical term!). I went to Target for some juice and came out with a skateboard. Funny how these things happen. 

I’ve never been particularly athletic and my family always worries about my notorious weakness, even to the extent that my sister often calls me a “frail little bird.” I used to be good at t-ball and softball as a kid, but that was probably because I really loved hitting things--I would often get terribly board in the out-field and sit down in the grass. I was also always afraid of the ball, so catching was never really my thing either. Anyway, my dad frequently tells the same story about my sole sporting accomplishment when I was ten: hitting a bases-loaded triple to end a game. I ended up quitting everything, though, when I was twelve and began hanging out on AIM like all of the other cool pre-teens. What a time to have been alive. 

Anyway, despite my pathetic past of athletic failures, I now have a skateboard. 

To begin, I did what all great skateboarders have done: I googled “how to skateboard.” Tony Hawk would be proud.  

I just practiced outside for about an hour, though, and I think I figured some stuff out.

I like how it’s a solitary thing--all progress is personal. 

I like how I need to truly control and inhabit my body in order to ride it. 

I also like that it’s actually incredibly practical. 

I have about three more weeks of school before graduation. I have a really major project coming up, so stay tuned. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.

Lemony Snicket (via ifnothingelsebekind)

[abbyklinkenberg]

29 November 2014

On Monday night, my roommate, his girlfriend, and I were all sitting around our dining room table (a flimsy wooden fixture from Ikea)—silently staring at the VICE footage coming out of Ferguson. It was only a few hours after the grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown. The city was in flames. 

The reporter (I forget who he was) wasn’t saying anything—he was simply walking around the streets of that suburban city, as if surveying the damage. There was no commentary—just police sirens blaring, windows shattering, and the eerie sound of fire consuming architecture. It was entirely arresting. 

Until I saw that footage, I didn’t realize how fraught the proverbial system is with institutionalized inequality. 

For some reason, I still had some oddly tucked-away illusion that things like that didn’t happen anymore—at least not here. I didn’t realize the extent to which I had taken authority figures at their word. I was, and still am, disgusted with myself for that. 

See, growing up in an affluent, white, suburban town, I was sheltered from most things. The closest I ever came to discussing American race relations was in school; a chapter was dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, bound next to chapters on the Revolutionary War and the Industrial Revolution. It seems entirely belittling and patronizing to put the Civil Rights Movement in a history book, because to categorize something as history (at least in my mind) is to imply that it is over. 

Watching that footage, seeing Ferguson ablaze, I realized that my history book tidied up the complex issue of race in America by saying, “oh yeah, all of that is over now—we are in the age of equality.”

Now, I’m not completely blind or ignorant—a “post-racial America” was never something that I believed in—not at all. I have always known that racism exists, that systematic inequality is pervasive, that there are real problems—but somehow I always thought that it was something that the government was in the process of eradicating. 

Somehow, the US government has always been the “good guy” in my mind—at least domestically (obviously we have committed numerous atrocities abroad**). I kind of understood the federal government as a well-intentioned brute—mishandling international affairs in a boorish way in order to advance some ideal. I now understand that some ideals are only for show.

**Intentionally conflating the ‘pursuit of democracy’ with the ‘pursuit of oil’ abroad is obviously fucked up, but it is condemned openly and it is not necessarily systemic… but perpetuating social inequality at home in such a blatant manner is something that I cannot rationalize in the slightest. That isn’t a conspiracy of one wayward president and his counsel—that is a structural flaw that we refuse to acknowledge.

Maybe I was just gullible as a youth, to believe what my teachers and textbooks taught me. In recently realizing the extent to which I had been deceived  I now truly understood “soft power” for the first time: "power is not winning the game, true power is setting up the rules" (a fellow from Bulgaria said that to me, recently). It’s frightening to think that I could be so susceptible to government propaganda—no one likes to think that they are being played, so to speak. That is what happens everywhere—anywhere dynamics of power and control are at play: the ugly truth is hidden in order to advance a pretty lie. 

Ultimately, watching those protests on Monday night was like watching moments of the Arab Spring—for me, it conjured up images of Tahir Square, in particular. For so many Americans, to live under the white patriarchal power structure is just as oppressive as living under an autocratic regime. That is what really got me—that is what I hadn’t understood up until that point. I just needed one final piece for all of it to click into place—that piece was Ferguson. 

[abbyklinkenberg]

11 November 2014

I spoke to my sister on the phone for a while today. A boy from our high school died last night, face-down on a frat house couch. It breaks my heart. She was so shaken up. 

After a while, I asked her, "What do you think happens after you die?" I remember speaking those words back when I had a greater sense of wonder, back when I was little; but they came to me, heavy and honest in my mouth, so I let them out. All of a sudden, I felt eight-years-old again. She usually gets upset with me when I talk about things like that, like mortality, like death, but she was receptive to it for maybe the first time in forever. She didn't berate me for asking something so serious--she just gave it some thought and decided that she had no idea at all. I liked that she admitted that. 

I told her that I had heard this quote: "you are the universe expressing itself as a person for a little while." I talked about how our atoms were made in the bellies of stars, how when we die we just return to cosmic dust. We'll be the universe again. 

I hope that's how it works.

I didn't want to admit that I have no idea--that it's all wishful thinking.

I often speak to her as an authority on certain matters, even when I'm just as lost as she is. I want to protect her from these dark things, these ambiguous spaces that drive people insane with anguish and terror in the face of nothingness. I want to protect her but also enlighten her. It's a difficult space to inhabit.

It's hard to react to death at all, especially the death of someone so young and promising. It really demonstrates the obscurity of time--how we rationalize twenty as the "beginning" of life when, in reality, there is no beginning/middle/end. There just is, and then there is not. It's fragile. 

He had plans--he anticipated sixty more years of converting oxygen into carbon-dioxide--he thought he had time. And then, all of a sudden, he's taking his last breath. That's kills me. It's so terribly unsettling--these things are not guaranteed, even on the most basic level. 

What happened to that boy is unspeakably tragic--it makes me sick to think about for too long--but things like this do serve to ground people, to bring them back down to earth when we have a tendency to float high up in the sky on our unsustainable Icarus-wings. 

She told me today, "You're a five-hundred-year-old piece of ancient art in a body." I laughed a lot at that and replied that she is a child with a heart of gold.