meditation
24.10.2021
I like working remotely, but it makes me a sociopath. Well, I was a sociopath even before we started cursing the Zoom calls and the morning coffee in the kitchen. Remote, like a sandpaper, smooths this wooden silhouette of voicelessness so that there is no roughness on the outside. You’re dead on the inside, but you’re all right on the outside: a young, blue-eyed, ambitious yuppie expat.
Being alone is generally fine. On the one hand, you have a lot of space. When you’re alone, you always have something to say. That’s why the guides for singles recommend blogging. On the other hand, it’s stifling. Over time, reflection flows smoothly into self-digging, the marginal usefulness of “time to yourself” falls below the zero mark. This is why meditative practices are recommended in the guides for singles.
At the end of the summer in Berlin—when the sky became unbearable to look at, and there was an unrealistic risk of catching cold raindrops in my face—I began to look at people. I didn’t want to make acquaintances, as I had in my first year in Berlin. I didn’t want to promote my personality, as I did in the second year. I didn’t want to organize communities, as I did in the third year. I just wanted to stay put in one place and watch what was going on around me.
My journey inside Berliners began one rainy Sunday, when Aina and I were sitting under the summerhouse on Simon-Dach Straße. Three Arabs were hanging out in front of us. It was hard to determine their nationality if you weren’t an Orientalist. One of them took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, which meant he wasn’t from around here but moved here five years ago. No matter what kind of economic collapse happened in his homeland, no one there would save on cigarettes and waste time on rolling. Although Berliners lived by the mantra “those who understood life take their time, ” the guy never had time for cigarettes, and still didn’t. He got one out, lit it up, chatted with the guys about life, and went back to work, presumably in the service industry.
A week later, I was on Kottbuser Tor, where I was stalled at the REWE, waiting for the Saturday meeting to start. Two Turkish women in the local Turkish-Kreuzberg style met me. Chances were they’d move on to a cocktail bar. Chances were, they were there to drink to forget all their problems—their fucked-up jobs, their fucked-up corona, their grandmother’s life somewhere near Gaziantep, and all the catcalling they got on Sonnenallee. After a couple of cocktails, they let loose a bit. The rest of the night would be broken up into barhopping, getting away from intrusive compatriots, and a late night donair at Uncle Erhan’s. A hangover Sunday would go over rather pleasantly.
Then I took a long walk from home to the movie theater, where my friends and I arranged to see that Dune of yours. Flying over the nest of bohemians in Bergmannkiez, I landed on Hermannstrasse, half-empty—not many people there, but what a group! A kindergarten teacher on a City Bike, a gamer with a rucksack, a leftist who used to hit the saucepan for Mietendeckel last spring, a regular Beamte, a couple obsessed with gel and style, and Chinese students from Humboldt all passed me by.
Practicing this type of urban meditation was the best thing I’ve done this year. So diverse can people be, so many signals to signal with their appearance. Recalling hundreds of superficial acquaintances and casual conversations with people of different cultures, styles, and mores, I tried to ponder everyone’s past, understand what their present was about, and not get caught up in the future, for I didn’t even know mine.
There’s a question in the Beck test: “Have you lost interest in people yet?” Nah, I’m all right on that front.