Over the last days I didn’t sleep much. When you reach the right dose of too little sleep, and are still up and running from early morning on, reality becomes doubled like a shadow observing yourself. And if the mood is alright, the second ego listens, thinks, evaluates and laughs silently about the things the first one is doing over the course of day. Sometimes even not silently. I then think ok, this is coming close to how it must feel when you witness yourself becoming insane or so.
Yesterday, I felt actually staying home all day, doing nothing, listening music, reading a book while hearing autumn rain on the window. But I couldn’t, there was work to do, and also two appointments, one in Kreuzberg later and a lunch meeting on Kurfürstendamm.
We met at Grosz, a café, bar and restaurant owned by the guy who runs Borchhardt, furnished like an old fashioned coffee house in Vienna with a wooden high-table to read newspapers. Somehow the place is nice, but something doesn’t really work there. I don’t know exactly, may be it’s a bloodless and sort of cold place. There are complaints about the food, which I confirm after having lunch there yesterday. The bar is actually very nice, but too early to have a drink I thought, even though a whiskey sour was seductively standing there when I walked in looking for the three gentlemen I was supposed to meet on a sort of blind date.
Only with one of them I was emailing back and forth a few days earlier. A professor emeritus of history, cultural sciences and migration, actually formerly teaching in my university but then went to Harvard and Oxford (where I was not), now engaged in prestigious government councils here and there. One of the rare cases when you’re already loaded with good emotions about someone just because of some lines of correspondence you had shared with him before. I knew the lunch would be delightful. I knew I would listen to him and feel home. The other two gentlemen were media entrepreneurs, one of them was a former editor in chief of a berlin newspaper, and also of one of the first German magazines back then.
The first twenty minutes where a lecture from the wise man about immigration theory and policy and a disastrous but very funnily executed evaluation of our current administration. While the other gentlemen where respectfully listening and silently acknowledging I couldn’t help but laugh on and on about the hilarious humor of the lecturing professor sitting next to me. The quite mediocre day dish, a fish, came, the dessert, the espresso and I kept still laughing. My second ego was sort of concerned about my behavior but my first one didn’t change it, because I felt so right with it. I knew he was cool enough not to be irritated and I enjoyed that so much. I was so relaxed, and I thought what a luxurious situation I’m in: I’m the kid, he is the older wise guy, I’m the student, he’s the professor, he’s my soulmate, so what?
Only once when all of us were ordering from the menu his story was interrupted by one of the media gentlemen who commented on my choice of food (I guess because our topic was sort of intercultural) by joking (hahaha) that it was expectable that I didn’t order pork because he assumed I’m a muslim. I am, but I certainly eat pork since ever. I thought and told about a pack of wild pigs which where spotted a few days ago while swimming across the Bosporus. I found out that they were living in a little forest on the Asian side up in the northern part of Istanbul where the construction site for the third bridge, the new darling of of prime minister Erdogan, is situated. The bridge shall be named after the Ottoman Sultan Yavuz Selim who is known for committing a massacre against the religious minority of Alevi about 500 years ago. The naming caused an outrage against Erdogan during the peak of the Gezi movement and came along with the bitter irony that both became known for their brutality.
While telling him that, all the images that my cousin took and sent me ran through my mind. She was documenting almost every day how many trees they’re cutting there, actually in vain because they found out, that the construction was not properly situated, and now they need to start it all over again, like Berlin airport Schönefeld. The pig story wasn’t perceived so well, at least on the other side of the table. Out of topic may be.
Today, the wise guy and me mutually wrote letters. I felt home again while my Doppelgänger was still a sleep.