A Day In My Alternate Universe

In this parallel world, I’m subletting a friend’s apartment/studio at Donaustraße 83 in the Neukölln district of Berlin for a few months. It’s February and the sun won’t rise before 7:30. The light’s a bit watery and it’s a paltry 2 degrees Celsius outside. Time to fire up the space heater and put on a pot of espresso.

“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” -- Kurt Vonnegut

After reading a few pages of my new favorite book Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, I head over to the easels, set up near the front windows overlooking the ratty front garden.

Here’s the thing, it’s always best for me to change into my studio leggings and T, my atelier slippers and an old sweatshirt before stepping up to the easel. Why? I’m self aware enough, just barely, to know that I’m not a careful, tidy person. I’m about as fastidious as a DeKooning. Hell, I make Jackson Pollack look like Josef Albers.

So yeah, somewhere along the line, after ruining a good silk robe or three and tracking alizarin crimson all over the good Bokhara, I learned that I need a studio outfit. When it becomes so encrusted with paint that it stands up on its own, it’s time to find a new set of rags to wear.

After an hour or two it’s time to get away from the work before I banjax the good bits with all my futzing about. I text my cousin Della over in Charlottenburg to see if she wants to voyage over to meet me for pumpkin seed bagels and a lovely Berliner Weisse at Kindl Steben.

After a lovely snack, we’re off to poke around in the neighborhood’s many galleries followed by a matinee of Flight (Denzel!) at the Cineplex Neukölln.

By now it’s late afternoon, the sun has set. Time to head back to the studio to see if any gracious, industrious elves have snuck in to stretch a new canvas for me.

Hey, it could happen. I can hope!

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul -- Emily Dickinson