movin

          

 

                                  SCHLESISCES TOR : U-BAHN

yellow moves you on

hold on tight, pass by below

the city chaos

the things that matter

or maybe more importantly,
the things that don't.

do you, yes you, think that by recognizing the aspects of life that are most important to us are because of recognizing the ones that aren't? i've been having some rich conversations recently about what traveling does to a person. contemplated: how travel forces you to engage, how you settle with realities, resting time is invaluable, our convictions jump up and speak out, we change beliefs. fantastic topics that i enjoy hearing people's opinions about and how their own journeys influence them, and more often than not they do in tangible ways.


news is a funny thing. what news travels where. how it gets there. what filters the world and we as an individual places on said news. what news we only let go in our ears but never as far as our brain the dwell on. be it a good word about the arrival of a dear friend's baby being born, the US women's soccer team taking the gold at the Olympics (i passionately care about while others around me don't hesitate over), civil wars in syria, or the opening of an exhibit in berlin. sometimes we can't choose what filters into our lives, however, we do place filters on how we perceive the information. this can alter with the location of our current point in the world. a lot of news that came when i lived on a hill in an indian mountain town seemed insignificant most of the time. often, what i remember most about hearing news is what activity i was doing or who i was with when news was given to me. i have exact memories surrounding princess diana's car chase death, sept 11th 2002, the virginia tech shooting, when my grandfather passed away. each one here an upsetting story but i have a plot and short character list associated with each time. the news all of sudden seems so much more of a certain time when it is attached with a personal connected memory, even despite being present at any of the news events listed above. that one was at a slumber party then, a summer day there, an early morning before the rest of the world was awake at home then, my high school homecoming there.

back to realizing what is important to us, i have discovered some bits through the back door: the thinking about what is not on the top of the list, or on the list at all. you get to make up your own definition of list. 
if i'm a bit transparent for a moment : conviction about being less selfish and in turn wanting to serve others around me. that the people we have in our lives and what they mean to us are more clear by stepping back so we can actually see who they are and who they are not. sometimes our eyes are clear once washed away with tears. this world is big. i know nothing compared to all the knowledge there is to bring into your brain. knowledge is different than information. very different. cities can speak to us. we can use them as well. they are there for us. kind of like a solid friend. i'm slowly uncovering with many footsteps what berlin has to offer this little life.

olympiad

london olympic park

aerial view

wow.

AECOM designs

i have been to a few different olympic parks and find some odd fascination with them. they are a different kind of urbanism that changes with the city but never with the initial program. changes with the current usage, yes usually so. most often placed a good distance outside of the city center one can only image how uninhabited they quickly become. an early stop on my berlin list of-buildings/parks/publicspcae/installations to see was the olymic park here. it was for the 1936 games. a time during the nazi regime. a symmetrical and neoclassical style of architecture was called for and perhaps for obvious reasons.

others seen : rome [1960] & barcelona [1992]


olympic park berlin below:

on language and book themes

i recently finished up Blue Like Jazz. i devoured the pages, the book was written with a true rawness that, i believe, is rarely achieved on this sort of topic. the post modern christianity one. the stories were what they were. no special extra but a simple dose of truth and honesty. it is a funny thing to think about the act and mastery of storytelling, as this book was a lot of storytelling and read as if the author had nothing to prove. refreshing! why do so many write, talk, tell, yell as if they have something to prove?

[huge edit] realized the internet isn't the place for some topics.
{insert ridiculous and laughable banter on a web-page forum}

anyways. the other day i was in the middle of a crowd in berlin and overhead a brittish man ask another friend of his why he feels like american pastors have this certain aura about them that is along the same lines as a car sales man. he stated that their "time on stage" was like a production as if there was something to sell him. i followed for a few steps before we veered on different paths. he seemed bothered. and quite frankly this bothered me as well. this is only one man's opinion. however i don't think that is the biggest concern. a friend of mine used to say: just because they are many and i am one doesn't mean they are right. so that is the thought.

o n  t h e  u r b a n  s c a l e-- we are close enough to one another in this city to be overhearing conversations all throughout the day. you just have to open your ears. and let me tell you, when you hear your native tongue; it screams at you. your ear somehow picks up on this like the sweetest song you have heard. i can't explain so well how this is, but when i hear english in my daily moves through the city it is just like a loud whisper, the one that is louder than regular spoken word and (usually) no matter what is spoken, holds a little more time for thought. this happened on the bus the other day when two friends were complaining to the max about another friend...blah blah blah. i got twenty minutes of my tram ride with their chatter, i didn't mind, felt a little bad for the brit they were hustling but enjoyed the english. i then excused myself in my best american accent. whatever that means. even though there isn't as much diversity when it comes to languages in the states we really don't get the chance to even find out. it isn't the norm to be brushing shoulders and sharing bahn seats where this sort of interaction or hearsay happens. it still and probably always will blow me away when i talk with a friend in english and then see them turn a switch and speak another language fluently. how can they dooooo that??? i'm simply amazed by fluency in language. on another note, a six year old german girl taught me some important words the other day. i now have: mirror, candle, fork and newspaper in my deutsch vocabulary.


german words we use in america and maybe didn't know it ::

gesundheit (ga-zune-tight)

doppelganger (who is yours?)

kindergarden (we are growing children)

scheisse (shiza, shit)

 The one-ofa-kind artist ,CHRISTO wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin

the year was 1995 and a lot has happened since then

his work never fails to take my breath away

i hope someday to see one in person

a bucket list kind of thing to see

i think i need to invent a new terms that also means bucket list

hmmmmmmmm. still thinking on that one.

planning not to miss the one coming to colorado, though not until 2015, far off excitment.

here is was last year when we visited:



orangerie at the karlsaue (kassel, de)

:: translation ::

this was a baroque castle summer home and home for the orange trees to take refuge in the winter time. they had to keep the oranges happy and warm. today it hosts astronomy ideas/things, garden shows and other beautiful things. this is also the north end vantage of the karlsaue park, the formal garden space in kassel. it's beautiful and just on the edge of the city which is fairly rare. think how far Versailles is from the city of paris. here, you can walk from the city center!

DOCUMENTA 's graphics through the years. not sure about them all

kassel - pronounced - - castle

currently working in Kassel, a small-ish feeling city.

[insert wikipedia reserach time]

population 200,000.

you can call it large as well, depends on your view of a city, town, village, mega-region..what have you. in this country, the stadt  : town & city translation : will make its way to a big-city when it reaches 100,000 inhabitants. towns are considered to be having at least 50,000 inhabitants. There are a few world cities in Germany as well -- Frankfurt, Munich, Düsseldorf, Berlin, Stuttgart and Cologne. interesting topic: world and global cities.

well, that was a tangent. sheesh, no deleting now. i got kind of interested but need to be back on topic and keep this short as there is a lot of work to be doing in the current days of this symposium we are at. to see more of what is going on in kassel, please venture

 to DOCUMNETA 

also,above is a map for you

this compares the university of virginia with the university of kassel, but clearly UVA is taking over the majority of the city. scale...wow!

a new york kind of start

i have made it to berlin! the journey was quite uneventful and fairly quiet. (more to come on that)


on the west side of things, new york city was eventful. and the taking off point for this trip.
i always have mixed feelings about new york. it sounds fabulous, it is fabulous. it sounds chaotic, it is mostly chaotic. 

nyc is a playground for all types of minds and you will hear more than a handful of languages spoken if you open your ears on the streets for a day. i do very much like the city of new york, i have a good number of friends who call it home and say they were, "made to live in the city", i can believe them. while traveling to new york just three times to date and all times by default, i bump myself into completely different places each go'round. this most recent trip was just a few days ago and was the longest i have spent there, 4 full days of wander. i loved it. an entire half of one day was spent watching people stroll, dribble, jog, push babies, chase dogs and more of the like down a park boulevard, all the while i gorged on fresh ripe cherries and an oatmeal cookie the size of my face. that was it, nothing spectacular but just a peacefully wonderful and seemingly local kind of day. i even got to throw a baseball back to a game happening down below the park. you know that moment:
the ball flies out of the fence.
(this case we were a good 40 feet above the field)
it somehow lands nearest to you.
you look around for a moment at the others.
they look back at you.
you know you are the chosen one.
a light jog ensues as you collect the ball.
you say a quick prayer for no blunders. 
for that one moment you get the eyes of many while you wind up and do your best athletic throw.
yeah it was one of those.

anyways, my days were like that, mostly slow wandering.
new on the radar for places to check out is public space. seems odd, doesn't it? well yes, since studying urban design in school public spaces: big parks, pocket parks, streets, sidewalks, parkways, alleys, lawns, boulevards pretty much anywhere the public is allowed to go i wanna check it out. and if it's in the city, even better. i got to see a lot of these types of spaces in new york as they are plentiful there.

[this photo combo i took (same image) is from the highline and the amazing depth you can take in while being on an elevated park in the city ]

PS  PS  PS  PS  PS                                             

 i am moving to deutschland

this -nameless- blog will come to life again.
a map for reference and a few photos from the first berlin visit:

since a wee-girl summer has always been my most loved month

The return of summer brings such relief and joy and anticipation. Life has returned, and with it sunshine, warmth, color, and the long summer days of adventure together. We break out the lawn chairs and the barbecue grill. We tend the garden and drink in all the beauty. We head off for vacations. Isn't this what we most deeply long for? To leave the winter of the world behind, what Shakespeare called "the winter of our discontent," and find ourselves suddenly in the open meadows of summer?

gah.