Special K

K is moving out this weekend to another WG. It's good in some ways, but also saddening. We've spent the last two months implicitely redefining the relationship, and I was hoping to lay the ground for our future ties and friendship. I sometimes have the feeling this failed completely, as miscommunications sometimes left both of us, I guess, or me for sure, feeling like this was a pointless effort.
I wonder how often we will meet once he's moved out.
In those moments of miscommunication, I feel a certain sense of failure, in that after all those years, we still haven't found an easy way to discuss certain issues that are important to us, we will still sometimes say things in a hurtful way, as if respect for one another had to go away with the deconstruction of the couple identity. But there are also pleasant moments, and the feeling goes away.
I think I am drawing one important lesson from all this - At last - which is not to lay the source of my own strength outside of myself. Nor to think that I am carrying part of somebody else's strength.

Which probably all sounds like esoteric-sociologic abstract bullocks.

The Extravagant Story of Mister K., PhD

I forgot to say that Mister K got accepted at New York University for a Phd and offered wallops of dollars, a flight to and weekend in NY, a theater evening, probably a few cocktails, but most probably no loose women. The professor who wrote him the email, now nearly two weeks ago, to tell him he was accepted, is just what I hoped for after K. sent his applications. An intellectual who doesn't care about superficial details, and who thus wouldn't care about K.'s leaving some of my comments and some typos in his CV and statement of purpose, but would still be impressed by the genius of his essays. The professor himself made several typos in his email which he didn't even bother to finish before sending - it's cut off in the middle of a sentence.
Of course I was pleased - I spent nights during my Xmas holiday working with Mister K. on messenger and trying to get him to write decent statements of purpose that gave more of an idea of his intellectual personality (rather than his first attempts that sounded more like a child's holiday report written under duress). But obviously, and although I did all the last minute pushing and whipping, the merit is all his. Naturally, he's already found ways of diminishing his achievement:
- Sure! I'm one of only 16 candidates who have been chosen! But there were probably only 17 candidates to start with, and the 17th sent his application two weeks late, couldn't write and had mental deficiencies.

Well whatever. He'll be so proud to get his first business card with "Mister K., Phd" written on it, that he'll probably print 10.000 of them and send them to everyone in his address book, with a little note explaining, as the Germans would, that the title is part of the name. That's exactly the sort of person he is. Ex-act-ly.

my boyfriend

makes me laugh and smile.
But I know it's not really "thugs" who "forced" him to go to a bar tonight, not really "thugs" who "forced" him to buy various east coast magazines over the course of his life. He's much too mighty and strong and imposing and Big And Important for thugs to even consider approaching him with evil thoughts.
So I wonder what the real explanation is...

Boyfriend came, boyfriend went

Mr. Big & Important came over for the weekend. It was surprisingly comfortable and easy to fall back into a 2-people rhythm. The weekend was very pleasant and relaxed, inspite of being squashed between two presentations I had to do for uni. The work I did for the first presentation on Rorty did help me prepare the second presentation on Bernstein's text though, so I suppose this time having a high concentration of work actually was a good thing.

The next five weekends are totally booked - I will
1) attend the congress on solidarity economy,
2) go visit a commune a couple of hours north of Berlin with a co-student (M) I really appreciate,
3) prepare another presentation on this commune for a seminar linked to the congress (see 1 and 4),
4) and attend a block seminar before
5) flying off to the UK for my first Christmas there.

I'm really looking forward to visiting the Longo Mai commune and interviewing the people there. It's fairly small compared to the one I visited in southern France, but then again, it hasn't existed for half as long (a good 10 years I think). It's part of the same European network which gathers perhaps 200 people across France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Ukraine. I am getting more and more fascinated with the whole enterprise - the network aspect most of all, and the travelling, experience and knowledge exchange, and general openness this allows for.
Of course northern East Germany in winter is bound to be a lot less glamourous, from an aesthetic perspective, than a hill in southern France in Summer. But I'm excited to go.
More generally, I'm excited by my own personal development over the past year, and especially over the past couple of months. I have the feeling at last that I am becoming the person I wanted to become.
The cubist worldview is slowly becoming more approachable.

The Dream Swallower

As a teenager and up until I was 23, I used to have a lot of dreams. Dreams with complex stories and images, dreams that were entertaining to recall. I started a diary of dreams, to collect them. As soon as I got together with Mr B&I, I stopped having dreams, or at least stopped waking up remembering dreams. I found it strange , as previous relationships had not stopped me from having a creative sleepy brain. I got used to it.
Now that Mr B&I has moved to the Silly City, I am having dreams again. It started as suddenly as it had stopped. The dreams vanished once again during my visit to the Silly City.
Mr B&I is a dream swallower.

Naked and Homeless

Disbalance seems to most appropriately characterise my state over the past few weeks. Increasing disbalance. With Mr Big&Important's looming departure for la grande ville, I feel like my protections, my comfort zone, my home, my base, in a way nearly everything that was making my Berlin life is about to be removed from around me. Picturing life in Berlin After His Departure, I feel like I will be stranded in an absolutely foreign country and culture. And very lonely.
Of course I know other people, but real friends are rare and few, and I've had to flash-realise that I do not feel at home with Germans, in spite of my superficially successful integration.
So I've had to start thinking about my relationship with France again. Not really home, yet where I grew up, is there more to it than beautiful cheese? The German Alternative Left has developed a great passion for französische Verhältnisse, the term applied to the lasting resistance organised against the first employment contract. At least one "do you speak French" sign is bound to pop up on any given demonstration nowadays. The creation of a national myth seems exagerated, but I have been interested in all sorts of developments in France too. I've followed with a certain dose of amazement news on grassroots resistance in favour of children of Sans Papiers, for instance.
I admire the German Alterniv-linke, their energetic commitment to self-organisation, to regaining control over their own world. I feel I want to join them in their efforts, but sense also a certain barrier, that is, I suspect, not solely cultural. Would it make any difference if I tried to join these forces in France? I fear it isn't a question of country or geographic place. I still haven't found the key to resistance movement.