Walls and Ceilings
Exiled from space, I am floating. I am from nowhere. I have a childhood but the memories are mostly of my bedroom ceiling, my vision eternally confined to the inside of things. My dreams of mobility are the only things that let me transcend borders. I am displaced and exiled from my own planet. The greatest yearning for a human being is the yearning to move freely, without shame. Please let me wander. Let me walk. Let me bask in my own presence in a place.
I grew up in Berlin, Germany, with its history, its confused art scene, its literature that ran around the same questions twice. It’s politics and tears. It’s memorials and secrets. I grew up in Berlin, but I never belonged. If you were to ask me where I am from today, I would say, “does anyone really know?” I would want to say, “ I am from Berlin.” But that would not come out.
While my neighbors and brothers claimed their heritage to the city easily, I always hesitated. I knew of the night life that graced Berlin, but had never participated in it (although I wanted to); I knew of beautiful walks that my friends would take in creative solitude, pursuing their deep thoughts hungrily, and wished I could have done the same. I knew nothing of life outside of myself, my identity was cloudy and abstract.
I begged my parents to let me go outside. The smell of nocturnal time came through my window, but I could not walk. They forbade me from going outside, because “things would happen.” I wanted to write about my home like everyone else, but how could I when I did not know what my home was like? All I knew were walls and ceilings, the walls and ceilings of my room, or the kitchen, or the bathroom, or the living room, or the hallway (perhaps the saddest room of all, and yet the most hopeful; always in the stages of transience: are you coming or going?).
Anytime I went anywhere, I was accompanied by a parent or older sibling. This habit persisted and became more and more absurd the older I got. My mother feared for me. I did not have blue eyes. I spoke German but made mistakes frequently. I ate my friend’s snacks at school, perfectly German, but at home I ate the food of my ancestors, which were not the ancestors of my friends in school. Would you imagine that? Eating without fear was a liberation I anticipated dearly. The only thing I anticipated more was the prospect of going outside at night, without fear.
Instead of being allowed to walk the streets, I sat and imagined. Stagnant imagination was better than no imagination, I guess. I would imagine myself wandering, gazing through windows, looking at mannequins, shiny bags of chips. Potted flowers. Flags hanging out of windows, other homes barren. People smoking on the street and as I would walk by, they would offer one to me. I would say nein, not because I did not want to smoke, but simply because I had the option to say yes or no. Then the next night, a different group of people would come up to me, with a different cigarette. And I would say ja, bitte. And I would smoke, and people could look at me on the street. And from my position on the street, I would see painted front doors, windows with wrought iron bars locking people in and keeping others out, tiny white dogs. Chewed gum on the sidewalk, the roots of trees that punched through cement, natural and urban anger colliding and meeting on the ground.
Didn’t my parents know that everything happened on the ground? Of course they did, which is why I guess they did not want me to walk alone. But good things too could happen… Nothing happens in the sky; it belongs to no one. That was what I had to look at, rather than the earth, because I was not allowed to be a child of the city. I spent my life looking out from windows (my only way of bleak escape from the walls) and seeing only boundless spaces of nothing. I did not belong to the ground. I wanted to. I was confined to sky blue infinity, which would have been comforting if it didn’t mean that I was completely untethered.
Doesn’t everyone know that the most exciting things happen at night? Time goes on, but at night, linearity goes out the window. Forever feels like a reality. I was never allowed to participate in this reality. As a woman, I remained fearful. Men were allowed to wander, to taste the streets like Whitman, or Benjamin, or Baudelaire, all people who wandered. Have you not ever heard the quote, “all those who wander are not lost?” It is obvious: I was lost, and all I did was stay in the same place, night after night.
My brother was allowed to be a Flâneur. He wandered the city with his friends, and then alone. As he decided he would dedicate his life to his practice, the entire family accepted his transition into the urban life. I was happy for him, but also green with jealousy. I cried into my stationary pillow, while he stared at the trees, or the lack of trees, at the lamppost, or the darkness. He saw everything, and all I could only imagine. He took photos of everything he saw and someone liked that, because they gave him a scholarship to go to art school in New York. His eyes suddenly became the world’s eyes, while mine remained possessed by constriction.
It was not until I moved away, and lived alone, that I was able to become a Flâneur. It was beautiful. I moved to New York City, because I thought the city to be fearless..
My first night in New York, I knew no one. The world was suddenly teeming with life, and there I was, sitting at my kitchen table. I decided to go outside, get groceries. It had just rained, and the sky was dark grey. The sky in New York has more colors than Berlin. When it is cloudy in Berlin, the sky is white. Here in New York, it is grey, it is blue, it is black.
I stepped out of my apartment. The world smelled like the ocean, salty, pungent. Tiny rivers of rainwater settled in the cracks of concrete. The outside air was cool and fresh. Freedom was between my teeth and I could not wait to suck it dry.
I walked, bundled in my thickest jacket. Grocery shopping had been easy, fun. I bought onions, olives, whole wheat bread, and a tiny potted plant for my window sill. I bought a bar of chocolate on top of everything else, placing it gingerly in my bag so it would not break.
Stepping out of the store, grounded by the weight of my groceries, I made my way back home, wandering without my phone. I went in whatever direction pleased me. At 12th street, I turned up to walk north because I felt like it. Not even the wind was blowing in that direction.
Soon night fell, and the sky became truly dark. Every corner seemed to be something new for me and I had the sudden inclination to tuck my head down into my jacket and breathe deeply the scent of my old house.
I began to run, and sweat popped along my body, everywhere. I ran until I got to my door, and I stood at the foot of the stairs, relief palpable. I was both happy and ashamed that my happiness had burnt, and behind it had stood fear. Did Flâneurs ever get scared? If they did, I did not know. Entering the lobby, I thought of my brother and his photographs; they were never inspired by fear. Only beauty.
Of course, my bag suddenly ripped. Onions rolled into the corners of the stairwells. The jar of olives broke, and the potted plant slipped, spilling dirt everywhere.
“Woah, woah!” Yelled someone coming down the stairs.
I looked up hastily. “I’m cleaning it up, I just dropped it.”
“Let me help you with that.”
I heard something in the sentence that made me lift my eyes from the mess in front of me. The person who was now reaching out his hand to me was smiling, and I looked at him.
“I’m Joe.”
“Hi Joe.” I wiped my hands quickly on my jeans. I told him my name.
“That’s a beautiful sounding name. Where are you from?”
“Not from here, obviously.” I said, laughing a little. “I was rushing in from outside, I thought someone might try to attack me. I guess I was being a little frantic.”
He looked serious. “I won’t let that happen to you. If that happens, I will protect you. Do not worry.”
He stretched his words out and pulled me into a hug which I was not allowed to refuse. His behavior reminded me of the dark street.
“How about I help you bring these things up and we can hang out for a bit? I was going to go out to buy some dinner but that can wait.”
“Okay, sure. Thank you for helping me.” We grabbed everything and went up the stairs. We reached my door. “Well, I should probably go,” I said. “I’m pretty tired.”
“Was cleaning that much work for you?” he laughed.
“I just moved. Yesterday.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then, you must be feeling pretty lonely…” he whispered. I looked at him, a reply in my mouth, but he grabbed me and his touch stole the words from me.
He would not let go, even when I remembered the word “no,” even when I said I was scared. He only left because someone else, I assume another neighbor, came out and walked through the hallway, asking about their cat.
I ran inside. I shut the door. I locked it. I heard him walk away.
I thought, with my body against the door and my eyes glimmering wide in the dim light of my new kitchen, that I would never walk out of the apartment again.