My 60 Pages term comes to an end today and I look back with joy and sadness. Joy that I had the chance to be part of it for a short while and sadnees because I coulnd’t write as much as I wanted to write.
When I started writing I was looking for a flat and while I was still writing I found a place ( I fell in love with). The whole packing, renovating, painting, moving, settling in, fixing stuff, building new stuff kept me from writing in the end as I forgot how exhausting this whole moving adventure is.
Moving is always something that bothered me and I’m not very fond of it. I did some moving throughout my life and most of the time it was traumatic: We moved to Germany the first time a couple of weeks after I was born ( trauma), then moved from Duisburg to Berlin while I was a teenager (even more trauma!), I moved to Kreuzberg from suburbian Tempelhof ( liberation!), moved to Metzingen with a big Trara to work at Hugo Boss only to come back within three months ( beyond trauma…), moved within Kreuzberg a couple of times and thought that I decided to stay in Kreuzberg for sometime like the rest of my life. Only moving within the borders of Kreuzberg I felt secure moving away felt like a terrible mistake.
I once said that I learned my share of Savoir Vivre in Kreuzberg and that is true. Everything I cherish in life and love- I have it there. My family aka my brothers, my friends, my cafe aka Bateau, some of my favorite restaurants, nice people, lovely hang-out spots, recreational areas like the waterfront in form of the Landwehrkanal, annual political Get-Togethers aka 1st of may demonstrations and many things more. Kreuzberg is in Berlin and the rest I like too but when asked I say that I come from Kreuzberg and everybody knows what I am talking about. It is like an attitude that you cultivate and I like to cultivate my attitudes as I am strong believer in attitudes, tastes and beliefs. It takes me a long time to adapt them and it is only done after a long period of consideration. When I believe in a person or an idea I do it with every inch of my own persona. I am quite conservative in this point (and believing is by no means religiously connotated.)
Leaving Kreuzberg in favor of Istanbul also took a long time of consideration. Going back and forth for many years, exploring the city, falling in love with the city then a guy, leaving the guy and move there anyway. No sense, no logic, just curiosity and a strong belief that this moving wouldn’t be traumatic. ( It meant moving away from Kreuzberg but to the city of which Kreuzberg got its nickname of: Little Istanbul.) I am overwhelmed everyday by its greatness, hectic, diversity, wealth and poverty, its beauty and its hideous face.
The political turmoil of the past weeks is beyond imagination, the future is not to be foreseen, neither mine nor the country’s. I don’t know how long this adventure will take but I would like to remind everybody that it is never too late to change your style, your haircut, your city, your set of strong beliefs if there is something that needs to be changed. I always hear that it is soo courageous of me to move at „my“ age ( whateever that means…) and that „they“ could never do this. First of all: you don’t need to do this if you don’t want to, second: you don’t have to compare yourself with others and last but not least: I think it needs more courage to stay than to move because fear is a bad advisor and courage it takes to foster your fear.
While writing, the last words of my favorite book The Great Gatsby comes up my mind, :
“… So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ( This ending is phenomenal and it was apt for the book.) Nevertheless I have hope not to be born ceaselessly into the past.
I would like to end with a toast to neverending curiosity, passionate love, optimistic dreams and the power of change! No matter if it’s political systems, cities or set beliefs.
To change and constant progression- a life without would be unbearable.