After a week of being all by my lonesome, I am being social again!

I've been going, going, going recently! I was exhausted all week and finally felt like I'd caught up on sleep by Friday. I didn't get together with any friends after work any of the days until Friday! It was a Charlotte week. It was nice. I came home from work every day, turned into a youtube video watching zombie, wrote ideas for potential performance art ideas in my notebook, and went to bed. I'd like to get to a point where I'm much more balanced than I am and can actually do things after work, but it takes so much more alone time to get past the decompressing time and into the creative, active time that I tend to just keep the social momentum going. I'm not sure that made sense how I expressed it, but I can go more into the way I operate another time. It doesn't feel important right now. 

On Friday, I met up with friends to go to a soccer, sorry, football game. For many years I thought I was decidedly Not Into Sports but, as it turns out, I just hadn't been to enough games in person. I don't have a desire to watch any sports on the tv but if there's a crowd of people in color coordinated outfits, slightly drunk, singing and chanting together, I'm basically guaranteed to have a good time. In recent years, I've realized I love sports games! Do I feel a desire to go to them frequently? No. Regularly? No. Sporadically, infrequently, when my friends want to? Yes!!! I had a blast. I ate my stadium food, I drank my stadium beer, I smoked my stadium cigarette. And then we went to a bar afterward to keep the fun energy going. A lovely night!

Yesterday, I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to get together with my friends or not because I was sort of feeling just going to a park to sit by myself and draw, but in the end I did get together with friends. And I'm glad I did! We went to this big protest/party (a common combination in Berlin, as it turns out) put on every year by all of Berlin's remaining squats. There were a bunch of squats that came about in the late '60s/early '70s and most of them have been torn down and turned into condos by now, but a few remain and are trying to hold their ground against developers. They protest all the time, as you'd imagine anarchist punks living in squats would, but this particular one is special. Every squat builds out a cart, some just shopping carts with things attached to them and some as elaborate as multiple rickety old bikes welded together with a proper cart on top that can hold five people, and they each get a certain number of balls of one color and then, during the march part of the protest, they're playing a capture the flag type game where they try to steal or barter for as many of the other squats' balls as possible. At the end, they count who got the most balls from the largest variety of squats. 

Also at the end there is a race, which is just people running and pushing the carts. They do not move on their own. It was such a blast! I got rammed into one of the carts at one point (the game part gets a little aggressive, but in a mosh pit sort of way where people sort of throw one another to the ground and then help one another back up) and now have a bruise on my arm and I'm thinking of it as a battle scar. Afterward, we went to one of the squats (which, of course, the city is currently trying to tear down to build condos) where there was a big fundraiser party with live music and food and drinks. We didn't stay too long, though, because we decided to go get dinner at a place where we could sit down and eat. It was one of our friends' first times eating Ethiopian food. 

Today I went to a garden store with two friends and then we dropped off one of them with her new plants and the other one and I bumbled around town for the rest of the day, drinking beer out in the sun, buying old photos at flea markets, seeing magicians and other street performers, and eating so much food. I got a light sunburn on my shoulders. I am so full of tacos and beer right now! 

I have a date on Tuesday. We shall see how it goes. I deleted instagram and twitter from my phone and have been almost entirely off of them both for the past week, but I downloaded bumble (I'm on bumble bff even though I don't actively need more new friends) and have been on hinge more, so I feel like I've just replaced one phone addiction app with another. Maybe I should delete those as well. I'll decide later. 

The mother of one of my best friends passed the other day and I am grappling with the reality of living on another continent than where most of the people I love live. If I were in the US right now, I would be flying out to help them with the aftermath of her death, but instead I am here, day drinking and seeing magicians and going to parties while it hangs over me that there's nothing I can do to support them other than remind them that I'm awake when all our other friends are asleep so they can call me in the middle of the night when they need somebody to talk to. And call and check in on them. But really, the best way I know of supporting people is to feed them and I cannot feed them right now. As adulthood goes on, I know that there will only be more of these major life events (tragedies and joyous events) that I will not be present for if I continue to live far away from everybody I've ever known. Is this just what my life will be like now? Will I always feel like I'm not able to be there for the people I love when they need it most because I am just too physically far? I have always valued having a strong sense of community and such a large part of community, for me, is being there through the good, the bad, the mundane, the tragic, all of it. And how can I do that when I am not there at all? This definitely will play a role in the future in how I make my decisions about where I am living and how I want my life to go. I am trying my best to figure out how to navigate the current situation and I think I will be better prepared the next time something big happens, but I still will always be learning. If you have any insights to share, please do. 

Hmmmm life can be funny, can't it?

Today, a letter I wrote to the ex girlfriend of a former flame of mine was returned to me, undeliverable. There's something sort of poetic about that, isn't there?

I recently had a phone call with a former Big Crush that was two or three hours long. Similar vein. 

(The ex girlfriend of the former flame and I are sort of loosely online friends, I've sent postcards to her before... realized that without context it sounded a bit weird.)

Maybe life is just about things that are silly and fun!!!

If your art is experimental, does that make me your test subject?

I went to a multi-disciplinary experimental performance art thing last night with two relatively new friends of mine (though I suppose all my friends here are relatively new). I've had good luck so far with things I've gone to here being pretty good and so I forgot that "experimental" can really just mean "trying things out" and that "trying things out" can really just mean "throwing shit at a wall and seeing if it sticks" and, well, that's what I felt it was last night. 

There were five pieces of this show last night. The first was a live music thing I couldn't tell you the genre of, then two films, then an ambient music and live painting thing, then an electronic-ish music thing with poetry readings, then an improvisational clarinet piece. 

The first piece made me think "just because you're weird and European doesn't make you Björk." Two people on stage, black and white video being projected onto them, kind of ambient-ish music and singing in a language I didn't recognize. Definitely not exciting enough to be Björk.

The second piece (first film) wasn't bad, but I was a bit confused and it felt kind of unoriginal. Two beautiful, toned, naked women being weird on a stage while they, dressed in a prudish manner, watched themselves on the stage. At one point they became aware of the cameraperson and went crazy. 

The third piece (second film) was also not bad but it wasn't something I would say took much artistic talent or thought. It was just a montage of old home videos of a family from the 1950s with ambient music playing in the background. We kept waiting for something to happen. 

The fourth piece was a woman making ambient music while also doing a live painting, which seems like it could be interesting but wasn't. Neither the music nor the painting was very good and because she was going so slowly, it wasn't even impressive that she was doing both at once. The painting was one of those fluid paintings where they just pour paint onto the canvas and let it dribble around. 

The fifth piece was recordings of poetry readings which the guy then performed music with/over. He seems like he'd be a talented musician in the regular way (his trumpet playing was very good, I could imagine him in a big band) but it felt like midlife crisis art. The sound didn't match the poems well and was dissonant, not in a particularly interesting way. 

The sixth piece was another sort of ambient music piece, an improvised clarinet piece the guy played and put through a looper and other things (I don't know much about these sorts of things, but he was using some sort of electronics). I thought this was actually the best piece of the night but, unfortunately, I was so tired by then and kind of ready to go home and sort of started dozing off during it. 

All this is not to say I didn't enjoy myself because I did. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. My friends and I critiqued each piece thoughtfully but, you know, critically. I'd more often like to sit with friends and pick things apart like we did last night. It was lovely! And it made me think a lot about what I think makes art "good" and "worthwhile" and I'll surely write about that at some point in the future. I'll also write about all the ideas we came up with for performance art pieces. 

Come, watch some YouTube videos with me.

I don't know what this is from but I like it. 

A classic. I've made so many people watch this upon finding out they don't know about Jan Svankmajer. I don't know why I care. 

I think if I met Johnny Flynn in real life it would break my heart because I would surely fall in love with him, but he is happily married to his longtime sweetheart. This isn't even my favorite performance video of his, it's just the one I have open in a tab on my laptop right now. 

It feels sort of self explanatory that I'd include an Ethel Cain video. 

I love old people...

I just think it's sweet. Hehe.

Have you seen this before? Surely, you have...

I'm a banjo fan, what can I say.

I started this last night and then didn't finish it but I suspect I'll do another some other time. I hope you enjoy. 

For Zach: when he said cathedrals everywhere, he really meant EVERYWHERE.

In chronological order. 

A beautiful sunset. 

Funny hen-basket decorations at a restaurant. 

Not my flowers, not my beer. (Just kidding, it was my beer.) I was seated outside at the only available table while my friends ordered food inside. 

A swan at the lake where my friends and I went for a swim. It was cold and I am afraid of swans. It was a lovely day. 

I went to a kind of experimental-ish theater piece in this space that's absolutely meant to be a grocery store or something like that. Have you ever seen a play where you have windows to outside? I hadn't ever before, but now I can say I have. The lead actor even went outside to yell into the street for a minute or two. 

Breakfast before work with a coworker. 

Dinner before a different experimental theater (live film, in this case) piece with a friend. 

The theater, looking quite grand. The yellow banner up top used to say "NONBINARY" for a while. We spent a very long time trying to translate the sign language (my friend's wife is deaf so she knows a little bit of German sign language). It says "tohuwabohu" in case you were wondering. 

My bus, taunting me. I've missed it three times this week in exactly this fashion, and I've only taken it three times this week. 

Fountain near my apartment, first time I've seen water in it. 

Shadows on my bedroom wall. I left the curtains open one night. 

Notes I took during a call at work so I could draw a detail for the mounting of a pendant luminaire in a slanted plaster ceiling.

Spring has sprung in Berlin!

I went to a modular synthesizer workshop today. I don't know anything about them and am not a musician and do not intend to get into them, but it was free and a friend of mine was going. I think this will now be one of the things I take every friend to when they come to visit me in Berlin. It was very cool. 

It can be difficult to manage it all.

One of the universal struggles we all face is that of time management. I think about love and romance all day every day, as I'm sure you can tell by now, but I think I think about time management even more. Isn't that so lame and embarrassing? But it's true. So here I am. 

I want to be able to do every single thing that interests me all the time and, unfortunately, so many things interest me. Recently, I've been going to the theater more. Shows are in the evenings. What else is in the evenings? Dancing. I need to coordinate between the shows I want to go to and the social dance events I want to go to. What else is in the evenings? Basically everything. I hate the 8 hour workday, I hate the 5 day work week. Ugh. It's just impossible! I wish I could take art classes and go for bike rides or yoga classes or what have you in the morning, then work for 5 hours, then go to a show or out to dinner with friends or out dancing or watch a movie at home. I never really watch movies. I never can spare the time to! And yet I spend so much time doing basically nothing. I want to go to museums and write stories and try every new hobby. 

This coming Thursday, I'm going to an introduction to synthesizers workshop with a friend of mine. I had to google what synthesizers look like. I have no previous interest or experience with them, but I love to learn new things and so I am going. Wouldn't it be so cool to make music?

There simply is not enough time to do all these things and run errands and do chores and lounge around in the park, chatting and hanging out. When am I supposed to find the time to file my taxes? (Don't worry, everything's already finished and sent in.) When am I supposed to get the haircut I so desperately need? I need to buy a new basic, everyday, nude bra! I've needed to for months! And yet I haven't! I've just been wearing the ill-fitting one I already have that is absolutely the wrong size now because I've recently lost weight. I barely cook! I wish I had more time and energy to cook. 

I am stuck between not knowing how to make time for all the friends I already have and wanting to make more friends and know everybody in the whole city, the whole world. I need to call my friends from back home and catch up with them. I need to call my friends from back home and plan their visits to come see me in Berlin. 

Although I am on hinge, I have no real interest at the moment in meeting people from there because I'd rather be making friends right now than going on first dates. Maybe that's also due to my current desire to meet a partner organically and have a romance that develops from a friendship. 

I need to learn more about bike maintenance! Can you believe I've never fixed a flat tire? I've changed a car tire but I know less about bike maintenance than car maintenance. Embarrassing! 

A friend of mine and I are starting a dnd campaign. Well, it's more that he's starting it and I'm participating in it. Our first meeting is in two and a half hours. I'd like to get into a rhythm of having certain things I do at certain times on certain days, but I'd also like to have a completely open and free schedule so that I can go wherever the wind takes me. But I have a full time job! How am I supposed deal with all of this? I don't know! 

What good problems to have. But problems nonetheless. 

Temperatures are rising and I am out of doors

Please never apologize for rambling. That's what I'm here for and I've most definitely rambled at you more than you've rambled at me. I think you absolutely should plant some bleeding hearts. And I think you'll be very successful with your gardening endeavors, it feels like a year for that somehow. Something in the air, I'm not sure. 

I went for a bike ride today! I had originally been considering biking to this little town that's almost 90km away from here and spending the night out there and going for a hike tomorrow before coming back on the train, but my weekend has somehow filled up quite a bit and so staying overnight isn't happening. For the better, probably. I haven't taken this new craigslist bike out for any longer rides yet and don't have any tools for fixing it if something does go wrong. Luckily, I'm in Germany and not the US so I would be able to just take the train if need be. But still. 

The new plan was to bike to a closer town and then take the train back from there and then talk with one of my best friends on the phone about their plans to come visit this summer. That would've been a 50km ride instead of 90km. Of course, I kept stopping to eat the chocolate I'd brought along and to take photos of flowers and of houses the camels at the circus I stumbled upon and at one point I stopped and ordered myself a piece of cake at a bakery and sat around and ate that. Because of all the stopping, it eventually started to rain on me and I realized it was getting to be time for me to head back so I could talk to my friend so I stopped early, probably after about 35 or 40km. Conveniently, this was right by the last stop of the S-Bahn line, which runs every 20 minutes so it was super easy to get back. I think another weekend I'd like to do my plan to bike to the other town, but I may start by taking the S-Bahn to the end of the line because a lot of my ride was just city/suburban riding and it seemed like it was going to start feeling more rural if I'd continued and, well, that's sort of my goal in getting out of the city. To feel like I'm really out of the city. But it was fun to ride out of Berlin today and experience that part of it for myself! 

The camel.

Tomorrow it's supposed to get up into the low 70s so I'm going swimming with two friends (the meek guy from the maybe-date and the best friend of a twitter mutual of mine) and then on to a "community networking night" at this events/sustainability space I volunteered at last weekend, which is basically a big dinner party with vegan food and a guided meditation after. I haven't attended one before, but they're once a month so I think if I like it I'll try to make out again soon. Last weekend when I went it was to help build this vertical garden/green wall thing in the front area of the space. 

Not the world's best photo, but this is the front area of the space. You can see two of the five panels of the green wall. These will be mounted to the white wall above them and have wool pouches with the plants attached to them. Very excited to keep working on it and see how it works out in the end! 

What else is there to share? Not all too much. I'm relaxing for the rest of the day. Might watch a movie. Might not. 

For Ciera: Music!

Not that I really need to give a disclaimer, but I will say I've been very especially into folk and country as of late. It isn't a new thing, as you know, but it has been almost exclusively what I've been listening to. 

March 22nd, 2024. A great day for music. Four albums by four women. I haven't even had the time to listen to them all yet. 

Trail of Flowers by Sierra Ferrell, of course.  I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for this album for a number of reasons, one of which is that she played Why Haven't You Loved Me Yet at her show last spring in Vancouver and it's been stuck in my head ever since (and she didn't even release it as a single!!). I think if I'd looked for it, I probably could've found it on youtube but for whatever reason, I didn't. 

Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee. I've only started listening to her recently, but I've become obsessed. I can't stop. Her older stuff is so good, too!!

Bright Future by Adrianne Lenker, of Big Thief. I don't know if you listen to her or not but even if you think you haven't heard her before, you have. I really love this cover of her song Anything. 

Bite Down by Rosali. I'm only listening to this one for the first time right now as I write this, but I'm blown away. A voice like a warm hug. 

Stupid Horse but this time it's on the banjo. If you don't know the song yet, click the first link first to get an idea of what it sounds like.

I know I already sent you an Emily Nenni song earlier, but I really think you'd like her and I hope you give her a listen. Her song Never One to Stay was my introduction to her. 

There are too many incredible artists!!!

Lael Neale is somebody I started getting into right around the time I visited you last February and I'm not sure I ever actually showed you her music? I might have been too fixated on making you listen to Skrillex (which I stand by, btw). Particular standout songs for me are I Am The River and Every Star Shivers in the Dark. 

At the tail end of last year and the beginning of this year when I was infatuated by a guy I'm friends with, I got really into the song We Can't Be Friends by Lorene Scafaria, for pretty obvious reason. 

Erin Rae is impossible to choose favorites from. I wish I could listen to her music for the first time over again. I think that Love Like Before may be a perfect song. I used to occasionally send Can't See Stars to a guy I slept with two summers ago and now I think of him every time I listen to it. I think he was infatuated by me. 

I can't imagine you haven't heard Alice Phoebe Lou before, but I'm including people here not because I think you haven't heard them but because I want to emphasize my love for them. Her live versions of her songs take the cake for me, though I listen to her endlessly on spotify as well. My favorites are this version of Something Holy and this version of Only When I. I used to lie down on the floor in my apartment in Seattle and listen to her on repeat for hours, just letting the music wash over me. 

Same goes for Johnny Flynn. Such a unique voice, so much better in live versions. I don't think I've found a single video of him on youtube that I didn't think was lovely. Here's him singing The Water and Amazon Love. 

I sent messages in our group chat a little while ago about Labi Siffre, but I do feel like I want to underscore that one. He's incredible. Another song I listened to a lot during my infatuation was Bless the Telephone. 

There's absolutely no way you haven't heard of  the The California Honeydrops before because I know I've made you listen to them. I am eternally obsessed and have probably seen them live more times than any other band. I've also hung out with them and danced a very very very long salsa with Lech, the lead singer. It's hard to know when to finish dancing when people are just jamming rather than playing songs. When It Was Wrong was the first song of theirs I ever became obsessed with. Were they at Salmonfest the year you were there?

A very recent discovery of mine is Laurie Anderson! O Superman! There's no way she isn't friends with David Byrne. Speaking of, if you haven't listened to much Talking Heads before, there is no time to start like the present. I've loved them all my life because my mom is a big fan and, well, she has probably influenced my taste in music more than anybody else. 

I've also been really into watching videos of Frank Zappa's live performances recently. Here is a brief example. My introduction to him was at this guy's house after we'd been swing dancing. We put on Frank Zappa and I made him watch Jan Svankmajer films, silently, to accompany the music. 

I will make another post if/when I come up with more to share. There's so much music out there and I want to listen to it all. 

For Zach: cathedrals everywhere, for my eyes to see

A gondola. I didn't know we had one in Berlin until I saw it.

Stylish footwear in a painting. 

A photo I took by accident when putting my phone into my pocket, I think. 

A beautifully blocked and beautifully lit flamenco dance.

A worm on a walk. I was on a walk. The worm was moving in the usual way worms do, without legs. 

A building with a blue sky painted onto it, against a gray sky. A funny contrast. 

I hear her voice in the morning hour, she calls me

The radio reminds me of my home far away...

Take Me Home, Country Roads has been following me for two weeks. Three weeks? Something like that. It's kind of a perfect song. And there are so many beautiful versions of it. 

I've got three road trip playlists, all made by my mother. She's got excellent taste in music and I trust her pretty much blindly and when I was going on a road trip with my ex boyfriend ages ago, I asked her for a road trip playlist. I'm not entirely sure she understood, at that point, that you could just keep adding to a playlist you'd already begun in Spotify and so, when I told her we'd listened all the way through the playlist, another came our way. And then another. There's some John Denver on those. 

There's a specific version of Take Me Home, Country Roads that I distinctly remember hearing but haven't been able to find again. I don't remember whose version it was. 

Here's a nice banjo cover. 

Anyway, the song's been making me a bit nostalgic for the US and the wide open road. There's just something about driving for hours on end through an unchanging landscape. The longest day of driving I've ever had was thirteen hours from Durango to Oklahoma City. There was a snowstorm through most of my way through New Mexico and it added a couple hours onto the driving time. That's also the only time I've ever been in Texas and, wow, what an unchanging landscape. 

I love traveling by train here but there really is something to be said for driving. Sorry, Mother Earth. 

The difference a few hours can make.

The photos from the previous post were all with flash and with the light of the lamps in my room, taken last night. This one is with daylight, taken this morning. The ink has settled in and looks so vastly different on the two different paper options when you put them next to one another like this. 

Clairefontaine Triomphe on top, Original Crown Mill Pure Cotton on bottom. 

Feathering Dilemma.

Liza, if you don't want to read the previous post, you don't have to. It has all sorts of background information I had to get out of my system before I could get to the important bit in here. The Dilemma. 

-----

Okay. Charlotte, ten minutes later here. I think I was being a little bit overly dramatic. I've been frustrated since Saturday because my stamp ink was feathering. I've just stamped a few pages and it's not nearly so bad as I'd made it out to be in my head. But, I am a woman of my word and I said in the last post, which took so long to write (not actually, but still), that I would write this one. And so here we are and I am going to follow through. 

The ink is feathering. Not necessarily feathering, per say, but settling into the paper in a way I don't quite like. The paper is not meant for that ink and the ink is not meant for that paper.

Clairefontaine Triomphe (without flash, with flash)

Original Crown Mill (without flash, with flash)

In person I can still see the issue I was dealing with before. It's not so much that it's feathering as it's seeping into the paper in a way that makes it look like marker, which is very distinctly not a thing I want. I think I'm going to go tomorrow or maybe next week to the stamp store near my office to ask the guy for advice. Maybe I even need to try out an ink meant for fabrics with the cotton paper. I'll keep you in the loop. 

The seeping marker issue is more visible somehow with colored ink. Here it is on the Original Crown Mill paper. 

All of the background info leading up to my current dilemma with paper. Or maybe ink.

It's very hard to know. After all, the two go hand in hand and if I were to change one, the other might become an issue. For a little while now, I've been carving stamps to liven up boring stationery to write letters to friends with. (Side note: if you'd like to send me your address, please do go ahead. I would love to write to you.) I fell off a bit when the whole "moving to another country" thing happened. Actually, let me not lie here, I fell off a bit before that. Regardless, my point still stands, as the only point I'm trying to make here is that it is a thing that I do. Why is it so much more difficult to write the first paragraph of a blog post about paper than it is to write those silly stream of consciousness ones? I digress.

I don't know if you're into fountain pens or paper or whatnot, so I'll assume you're not and just give you the background information. And the background to my specific situation. Fountain pen ink is very different from the ink in, say, a ballpoint pen. Rather than sitting on top of the paper, it seeps much deeper into the paper. In Germany, it is very common for people to use fountain pens, as they're required in school, so a lot of notebooks and paper options you can buy here are much more fountain pen friendly than they are in the US. In the US, you really have to be particular about what it is you're buying if you're going to be writing with a fountain pen, and you can find some random notebooks/writing pads/etc. that are great for it and others that you think would be good that really just aren't. I don't particularly like to write in Moleskine notebooks with fountain pens, but I've had random legal pads before that work well. Do I still write in Moleskine notebooks with a fountain pen from time to time? Of course. 

I ran out of the stationery my mom had gotten me for Christmas years ago probably around this time last year. Maybe a few months later. That was the catalyst for all of this. I had a very specific image in my head of what sort of stationery I wanted to buy, if I was going to spend money on it, and I just couldn't find anything that was up to par and in my price range. I found everything worthwhile to be too expensive and everything within my price range to be ugly. Also, I wanted very specific things like stationery with bleeding hearts (they're my favorite flower) and snails and the like. Not necessarily impossible to find, but just difficult enough to put me off. And what if I found beautiful, affordable stationery and then the paper was poor quality and didn't do well with fountain pen ink? As silly as it is, this was a multi-day dilemma. It haunted me. I went down a number of Etsy rabbit holes and accidentally almost paid $10 for a couple sheets of Soviet era stationery at one point. I would highly recommend searching the word "ephemera" on Etsy. 

Anyway. I had decided that, if nobody else was going to do it for me, I would simply have to make my own stationery to my liking. I'd learned in an art class once in middle or high school about lino printing and had just done it for the first time since with only my vague memory of how to do it to guide me. That was totally enough because, as I'm sure you know, it is extremely self explanatory. The important thing to note here is that I decided I was too lazy to use actual ink and a roller so I've just been using ink pads for stamps this whole entire time. 

Paper! Finally! The thing I said this was all about. By this point, I was in Utah with my older sibling, who is extremely into pens and paper and calligraphy. I am more interested in it than the average person, sure, but I defer to them on any and all related questions. I tried out the paper they have, didn't like it, and ordered some other ones for myself.

They had two A5 tablets (no, I'm not being a weirdo calling them tablets, that is what they're called) and I'm fairly certain one was the G. Lalo Verge de France and the other was the Original Crown Mill Classic Laid. I'm 100% sure of the brands but not sure if they were exactly those or some other similar products, I'm basing them off of what's currently available on the Goulet Pens website because that's where they buy most of their writing stuff from. What I found was that both of those had a bit too much tooth for my liking. I prefer a smooooooth writing experience. Based on that, we went onto the Goulet website and compared and just chose what seemed, based on the reviews, to match what I wanted. I ended up with a tablet of the Clairefontaine Triomphe and the Original Crown Mill Pure Cotton, also both A5 tablets. I bought the matching Clairefontaine envelopes but not the Original Crown Mill (it felt silly to buy cotton envelopes and my sibling had some regular ones from the brand that I took). 

Paper 1: Clairefontaine Triomphe

This one is a regular pulp paper (I'm not sure that that's what it's actually called, but that's what I call it). If you've ever used a Rhodia (they're sister companies or owned by the same company or one is a subset of the other, I can't remember) notebook or pad, you've got an idea as to the texture. It's extremely smooth and sometimes you feel as though you can't think or write fast enough for how quickly your pen sails across the page. This paper is stark, stark white. 

The envelopes have a straight across flap and are peel and seal envelopes. 

Paper 2: Original Crown Mill Pure Cotton

When I say cotton, I mean cotton. I know, I know, I know. It seems ridiculous. This paper is seriously so nice though. It's extremely smooth and homogenous while still having the tiniest bit of tooth. It feels so crisp. I could go on and on and on. The paper is a bit of a warmer white. Ever so slightly off-white. Not in a way that I would say should make them brand it as off white, but still. It is embossed with the Original Crown Mill branding, which I ideally wouldn't have, but you can't win them all. The Clairefontaine Triomphe is not embossed. 

The envelopes (regular, not cotton) have an angled flap and are gummed. 

I only have one fountain pen with me in Germany and that's my LAMY Safari, which I'm using with the LAMY T53 Crystal Ink in a color I can't remember the name of. Isn't that embarrassing? Looking online, it seems that the closest match is azurite, but that has shimmer so I don't think that's it. Oh well. I'll leave a note here if I ever do figure it out. This ink I'm using is a true blue, which is different from what I'm used to. I used to religiously use the LAMY blue/black ink until I decided one day that I was over it and that I was now into true blue and true black. 

The ink pads I'm using at the moment for the stamps are the Ranger Archival Ink, which I got at the stamp shop near my job. I wonder if it's the only stamp shop in all of Berlin as it is the first stamp shop I've ever heard of existing. 

Today, I bought a bike

I'm always so excited when I go to your blog and see that you've written!! What a joy it is!! 

I definitely think you and I are thinking of slightly different meanings of the word meek. Having met you in real life, I can say that you are not meek in the way that man is meek. It was not anything to do with him being shy or quiet, in fact I've mostly dated people with those traits, but that he seemed to be trying to be the sort of person he thought I would be interested in, agreeing with me too much and not really sharing any substantial opinions of his own. I don't want somebody who is trying to conform to something to get me to like them. I want to enjoy the journey of getting to know somebody for who they are and discovering all the things that make them tick. 

Like the title says, I bought a bike today!! I have been meaning to do this for quite a while. My plan has been to buy one bike for around town for less than 150€ and then maybe buy a second, more expensive, one four touring this summer. Bikes get stolen a lot here so I really didn't want to risk it with a nicer one, even with a good lock. 

I have not read the passion by Jeanette Winterson but I will!!

What else is there to say? I'm not sure. I might make another post later today about paper. I've been having a lot of thoughts recently and also a bit of a dilemma. 

I went to Amsterdam to see a friend

I forgot to finish writing this on Tuesday and so also didn't post it but now I'm posting it, incomplete. Oh well. 

On Sunday, a week and a half ago now, I got a text from a friend of mine asking what I'd be up to the following weekend because he might be in Amsterdam. I'll spare you the specifics of the back and forth, but he sent me the text in the mid afternoon and we had booked the trip before I went to sleep that night. 88€ round trip! Wow! It's kind of amazing I can just do that now. Also amazing I crossed a border on a regional train. Also amazing that Amsterdam has shops where you can buy "magic truffles" which are ever so slightly different from regular psilocybin mushrooms (they grow underground, not above) and therefore legal. They're like dispensaries, you choose which strain you want based on which effects you want. Again, amazing! What a crazy thing! I thought my friend was kidding or deluded when he explained it to me, but then we saw a shop and he was right! 

I got in late on Friday night, around two in the morning, after a four-train adventure. On the first one, I met this beautiful classically trained singer whom I chatted with on and off for the entire ride. We exchanged contact info at the end and now I have a place to stay in Münster if I'm ever there, which means I need to find an excuse to go there ASAP. 

Well, I went on my first date in Berlin.

It was good in that I had fun and enjoyed the conversation, but I just do not see it going anywhere romantically. He was too meek. It was the guy from the blues dancing thing last week. Anyway, I've dated people before who can be described as meek and although it feels a little mean to say it, I can't stand them. Like. Grow up. But I do think we can be friends! I am debating whether or not that is something that I need to explicitly say, because it wasn't explicitly a date and didn't have much of a romantic vibe (or really any at all) but it is possible that he thought that because I was enjoying myself that meant it was a Good Date. You know what I mean? I may just see what it's like the next time we see one another, probably on Friday night for blues dancing again, and then decide whether it needs to be addressed or not. I really can't picture him making a move on me (again, he's too meek). 

In general at the moment I'm not seeking out dates. I'm not on the apps and I haven't been meeting anybody I want to go on a date with, I kind of just went on this one because why not? I enjoyed chatting with him last weekend so there wasn't any reason not to. And hey, maybe I could've realized that I am attracted to him and do want to date him. But I didn't.

I am so sleeeeepy and I don't know why

I got enough sleep last night! I had a headache last night and have it again today. And I spent all day yesterday doing one mind numbingly boring task, so I think that may have played into it a bit. I ran some errands today. I feel like you know you really do live in a place when you run into people you know on the street and I was thinking about that a bit today. Berlin is such a big city and I know so few people and I've only been here a month and so running into anybody I know is very unlikely. Would you believe me if I said that it happened to me today? I was on my way to the Kiehl's shop in downtown Berlin and was passing in front of the opera house and another girl I know from my hometown stopped me on the street! She'd been at a yoga class in the opera house, very interesting. I've been meaning to get together with her since I got here, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. We chatted for a minute and now I might be going to her dnd campaign's Valentine's Day extravaganza on Wednesday. I'm very excited about that. 

I came home, thinking maybe I'd take a nap. Haven't done that. Did watch some youtube videos and some instagram reels. That all didn't help the headache. I'm heading out soon to this art exhibit thing that I think is like lights? I didn't bother to look closely at the website before agreeing to go. We said we'd go out to a bar after if we're feeling up to it but I don't really think I'll be feeling up to it... I think I want to come home and watch a movie and go to sleep early.

I! Am! Making! Friends!!!

I think I generally just prefer writing something somebody else will read over writing in a diary, which is a shame because I do think diaries are great (and I do keep one, kind of inconsistently). Not sure if it's just this week or if it'll continue, but there definitely is a chance this will become a nearly daily thing in the longer term. 

Yesterday was excellent!!! I met up with my friend (I feel like I can call her that at this point, I think this is the beginning of us spending more time together and I've really enjoyed all the time I've spent with her and can only assume it's mutual) and her guy she's "kind of seeing right now" at a building that belongs to her university because it's near where the protest was starting. Her other friend somehow ended up in a suburb of Berlin because the same street address exists there, so we waited quite a while for her and didn't get to the protest until quite late. Oops. It was weird, though, because my phone took me to the right place. Apparently a lot of places in Berlin exist twice, because this is the second time I've had this issue and I've only had like four social outings since moving here. 

So many of the people in my life have lived such bizarre and interesting lives that you constantly get whiplash hearing their stories and this girl is absolutely at the top of that list. Definitely top five, maybe top three. Absolutely top three if we're only counting people in our general age range. I really do want to tell you all the stories I heard yesterday but I just don't feel like they're mine to share publicly on the internet (even though I know, realistically, it's at maximum you and two other people reading this). 

None of us dressed for the weather, so in our protesting adventures we got absolutely soaked. We also got lost at one point trying to find the protest and then I, the person who has lived in Berlin the shortest time, guided us to it. Afterward, we ended up going to a bar and having some beers and smoking cigarettes (indoors! my coat smells of them now) (I didn't smoke any cigarettes inside but they did. I figure if I stick to one cigarette when I'm out with friends, unless I'm drunk, I wont get addicted and I'd already had my allotted one cigarette of the day) and chatting for a couple hours. Lots of laughter, lots of hypothetical plans made (backpacking trip in Bulgaria?), lots of stories told. Her boy and her friend are also people who have a lot of crazy stories. To give a little taste, the way she and her friend met involves an exorcism and the reason for Bulgaria being a destination of choice is because of a recent trip there by her and her boy that was because a friend of his had unfinished business with the Bulgarian mafia. 

I have some sort of growth on the back of my left shoulder. It's either a cyst or it's a giant zit and I've been kind of freaking out about it for the past couple of days. I told them about this and, wouldn't you know, her friend has a long history of with cysts and giant zits and other similar things! One time, she had to have a cyst surgically removed from her butt cheek that left a gaping hole she had to pack with gauze for a few weeks following the surgery. Inconvenient, but not necessarily a huge problem, except for the fact that she's a stripper and had to take time off from work because how are you going to work with a huge hole in your butt cheek? Regardless, she wrote down exactly what I should do and what medicine I needed and I went to a pharmacy and got the goods and did as told before bed last night. 

I need to buy a bicycle soon. 

Blues dancing in Berlin, finally.

I took an ubahn line to its last stop and walked fifteen minutes or so in the dark (not complete dark, but Berlin really ought to have more street lamps than it does) until I got to a little bar at the very end of its street. The place has a dancefloor and there's an upper area in the back (open to the dancefloor) with seating. Some sofas and armchairs and, farther back, tables and regular chairs. Not the best explanation. I'll try to remember to take a photo next time. 

When I got there, they were just finishing up the lesson and I was really seeing what this guy I met at a swing dancing thing almost two weeks ago said about Germans and moving their hips. Not the best innate sense of rhythm and not the best hip mobility. Once the lesson was over and people started to dance socially, though, I was pleasantly surprised! Whenever I go to a new place for dancing, I tend to dance more with older men than any other demographic (my least common demographic is women my own age) and last night was no different. I was chatting up a storm and asking them who they recommend I dance with next and I've come to realize that it is very common here to dance two or three songs in a row with somebody, even if you don't know them. That's very explicitly bad manners in other social dance scenes I've been in. It's really been throwing me for a loop and, if I didn't enjoy dancing with them, I still feel a little obligated to dance another song with them. 

I danced with a few very very very good leads, but didn't chat too much with any of them. No instant bonds there. 

There was a man there whom I'd met when I went swing dancing nearly two weeks ago now, an older Mexican man who's lived in Berlin for seventeen years. I'm about to head out in about five minutes to go to a protest (pro-Palestine) and he may meet me there. We exchanged numbers. I also met someone my own age (wow!!!), a British guy I chatted with for quite a while after he bought me a beer. I can't tell if he was flirting with me or not, he's kind of the twink to end all twinks but I've come to realize I'm just the type of woman bisexual twinks are interested in so I'm not sure that's a reason to rule the possibility out. Regardless, it doesn't really matter because I am not interested in him in a flirtatious way. I would like to be his friend though and plan to make that happen. We also exchanged numbers. 

I'm meeting up at the protest with a girl from my hometown. I've always thought she's so cool, but we've never been friends. We bonded a bit this summer at a music festival right before I came out to Germany for my big Finding a Job Trip. She told me to let her know if I ended up in Berlin and, well, here we are. 

I've been considering for quite a while (probably about a year now) getting a lip piercing. I've heard it referred to as a pout, though I doubt that's the real name, it's the one in the center of the bottom lip that goes in right under the lip and comes out in the front of the lip. I would get one that's just one hole right under the lip, but lip piercings are actually really bad for your teeth, so I don't want any metal fully inside of my mouth. 

I burst out laughing at the thought of you smelling like a horse farm.

 That's all.

Another blog post, just under the wire...

Third blog post since deleting twitter from my phone on Sunday morning... hmmm... 

Anyway, I'll try to make this one a bit less angsty than the last few, but that is kind of just how I've been feeling. Today there's something new, though. I am feeling a little bit insane. At one point today I could feel my brain melting and expanding against my skull, threatening to break through and ooze out of my ears. I'm not even kidding. I don't think people were meant to sit at a computer all day (though here I am, at a computer again) and I have a theory that I am one of the most extreme cases of not being meant to sit at a computer all day. Or maybe that's just because we're all trying to hide from one another how utterly insane it makes us feel. 

There's another strike on Friday from 3am until 10am and it's going to make me late to work, so I'm going in early tomorrow and will work nine hours. I really truly think it might make me go insane. I am going to take a shower now and then go for a walk and then I am going to come back and look up everybody you listed in your post from yesterday and take a good, long look at their artwork. I think I need to walk more. I'm feeling inspired by your five mile Wednesdays. 

Re: your rejection from the exhibition, I'm sorry to hear that! I do think outside motivation is necessary sometimes, as much as we'd like to imagine we should be able to operate in a vacuum. 

Re: scents, I have been on the search for something that will make me smell like the idea of what you'd smell like after working in a garden all day long. I know the reality well, having worked as a gardener, and it's mostly just stinky and sweaty, but I'd like something that's herbal and floral and a touch mulchy and smells like the sun is beating down on you. Do you know of anything? Also, if you do end up launching a brand, I would like to be one of your first customers. 

I think I need to really get to work thinking about my career because there is no world in which I can just keep on sitting at a desk for the rest of my life. I am considering gardening again or going to school for horticulture or maybe becoming a bicycle mechanic (I, who cannot change a bike tire) or maybe becoming a massage therapist. Regardless, I would like to minimize time spent sitting at a desk in front of a computer. Admittedly, though, I am hoping this insanity is only temporary and that I am just settling in and that soon I will feel normal about work. I do doubt it, though... 

If a tree falls in a forest and only I am there to hear it, does it make a sound?

I'm not entirely sure this is universal but I do imagine I'm not alone in this and that it's actually quite a bit more common than I'd think it is. So much of the time I spend alone I feel as though I don't quite exist. Unless I'm doing something Big. A Saturday walking around town and running errands or a Monday evening spent cleaning up and showering and preparing for the week are just black holes. I didn't "do" anything with them, I have no proof that anything even happened at all, other than the stocked fridge or the clothes back on their hangers. If I make something or I really do something (a hike, perhaps) I feel like the time actually passed in a meaningful way. Not in the sense that I find those things meaningful, which I do, but in the sense that every minute was put toward something. Sometimes, it can be shocking to be out running errands and look down at your watch and see that hours have gone by and all you've done is bought one book, tried to come up with a good grocery list, and found out that the art supply store you wanted to go to is closed for renovations. Why do things happen the way they do?

I deleted twitter from my phone yesterday morning. We'll see how long that lasts. Before you ask, yes I did still check in the evening yesterday from my laptop. And tonight, too. I've been told that's harm reduction. 

Maybe continuing to exist when nobody else is around is one of the more difficult things I'll have to learn to do in my 20s.

There's a strike and I'm making friends and I was on my period.

I guess it's what it sounds like. There was a rail strike which meant I took the earliest possible trains to and from the town in northern Germany where my friend whose birthday it was lives. That also coincided with a protest, which was kind of fun. I basically stepped out of the train station and into a huge crowd (I think the estimate was ten thousand?) of people protesting against the far right political party here in Germany. The birthday party was lovely but I was pooped from my day of travel and fell asleep on the sofa. Oops. 

I've begun making friends in Berlin a little bit. One is a coworker and three are friends of friends. I've yet to meet somebody, like, truly organically here. I guess the coworker is organic but she started a week after I did so we we're brand new together. One of the new friends is sort of a soulmate person. I've only met her twice but I have this strong sense of kinship toward her right off the bat and I'm hoping it leads somewhere beautiful (platonically). I think we'll see one another this week. She just had a pretty major surgery and so I'll go over there with some flowers and snacks and see if there's anything else I can do to support her. 

This past week was rough because a boy I've been in sort of constant contact with for about a month lost interest in me and kind of went AWOL at exactly the same time that my period started. Oh well. Neither the former nor the latter was much of a surprise. My period came when it was supposed to and, well, I knew that would happen with the boy sooner or later. What can you do? Back to the drawing board, I suppose. That or try to be a little less obsessed with romance. It feels sometimes like it's the only thing I think about. 

Have you ever become convinced one of your friends might be your soulmate?

I don't know. It sounds kind of silly. There are a select few people I can really truly picture a life with. Not because I'm in love with them, necessarily, but because I know we love one one another so much and are such committed people that if we decided to be together we could absolutely be happy together, simply because we've put our minds to it. I think there are two people I see that going even further with, to be that like in some universe, on some level, we are perfect partners for one another. And one of those people I really truly think I could fall madly, deeply, passionately, all-consumingly, from this life into the next in love with if given a chance. I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing about it because it doesn't really change anything about anything. I don't want to be in a relationship with him (I mean in like a distant, hypothetical way I sort of do but not in any real way) and we don't live in the same country and we don't even talk very often and he is dating somebody and I, though I am not dating anybody, always sort of have somebody occupying my thoughts. I think if we ever kiss I will see god.

First post from my new place!

I've moved! I'm in Berlin now! I wasn't going to post where I am on here at first, but I decided today there are definitely enough Charlottes in Berlin that it really truly is fine if I share that. Plus, I don't actually think any random person is going to find my blog and decide to stalk me. Anyway, I'm in Berlin. I've moved into my apartment (huuuge bedroom, kind of chilly, tall ceilings, in a cool part of town). The apartment has four bedrooms and soon there will be four of us living here, but I've only met one of my roommates so far. 

I haven't made any new friends yet, but the last two days I've seen K, the girlfriend of the best friend of my penpal N, whom I'd never met before December, and her friend G. They met through their masters program. They're very nice and when we spend time together it's been very laid back and comfortable. I don't feel very alone at all, knowing I've got them. I'm getting settled.

Today, I've got to work on learning a software I exaggerated my abilities with during my job interview (oops) and I think I may go to a flea market or two, if they're open, and see if I can find a few little things I need. A butter dish, some sort of jewelry stand, a dish to keep odds and ends. I thought I would have more time yesterday, but I didn't. I was going to buy some books, but that will just have to wait until sometime this week. I mostly just went to the grocery store (once before eating, during what seemed to be a grocery rush, without a list, and once again after eating, during a quieter time, with a list) and sat in my room and talked on the phone. 

As mentioned before, my apartment is kind of chilly. It's a bit below freezing today and it's a Sunday and I have my radiators turned all the way up, but that's no match for the size of my room and my enormous windows, so I'm wearing a cashmere pullover and a camelhair cardigan and have a blanket over my lap. It's difficult to motivate myself to venture outside to go to the flea markets... I'm not entirely sure I'll be leaving my apartment today. I had originally thought I'd go for a walk today. Maybe I need to change out of my wool tights and denim skirt and into my warm wool pants. That might be necessary for a walk. Maybe I should make some tea first. Maybe I'll take a bath later.

I'm a little bit sleepy...

I start work tomorrow.