home arrival
2023, june 8, berlin
when i arrived in berlin, i had thirty-six hours of plane and train rides in my body, along with tons of booze. the air was a scorcher and it felt like my greasy clothes and hair were melting in the sun. when i entered my apartment, the entire vibe of my altbauwohnung surged into me. the feel of high ceilings and sun warmed wooden floors and my rosé-colored walls, i could sense it with every millimeter of my body, with my little toenail and with the tip of my tongue. and it felt like every single one of my moves was charged with that delicious feel, every micro-second of making coffee has that feel of wooden floors and high ceilings and sun flooding the rooms. making coffee here feels so different from making coffee in sydney or atlanta. it feels like all the oldtown buildings of europe and mozart’s piano plays are living in the coffee foam that emerges when i press down the french press.
on my walk to our family welcome dinner, every single person i saw struck me as a piece of art. i had never realized this before. you see, it used to be that when i returned from korea, people in berlin (especially myself) seemed somehow clumsier, more coarse-faced, and neglected. and when i once came back from toronto, everyone looked somewhat mopey and grey-mooded to me. and that one time coming back from atlanta, the people-scape of berlin seemed tame, slightly provincial and starkly white. but now, returning from sydney, everyone just looks incredibly charismatic to me. all the street dirt, all the exhaustion etched into people’s faces, it all looks like art. the landwehrkanal morphs into an avant-garde street fashion catwalk. everyone looks so casually hot and cinegenic, their eyes and nostrils revealing yummy and edgy thoughts without any apparent intention. people look like they’re unaware of their existence as subversively famous stars. i wanted to scream at them: do you know how incredibly charismatic you are? they are the stars in this cinematic performance, called the kreuzberg kanal. or katti’s seven weeks of berlin summer.