2023, december 22, berlin
sparkles and flashes everywhere when the sky is blue, as the water reflects so light so loudly and the brightness of the white swans is dazzling, and the trees’ nakedness feels resolved and radical. there is no hesitation in their bareness.
2023, november 19, honolulu
hawaiian language sounds so delicious because it tastes like bubbles. as a child, i always dreamt of only eating just the holes in cheese or the bubbles in aerated chocolate. that's how the sound of ōlelo hawaiʻi feels. airy, bubbly, as if i'm finally allowed to eat just the yummy holes.
2023, september 23, cammeraygal (sydney)
chinese place in chatswood. we're sitting in semi-private dining booths. the tables have these built-in hot pot baisins, ours is bubling with extra spicy broth. i'm dipping in beef, tofu and massive glass noodles. the server hands us hair ties and red aprons – a shield against splatters. every corner has someone celebrating their birthday – with birthday banners and sparkling balloons decorating the table. a robot glides around serving dishes to tables, dropping off dumplings and enoki mushrooms for us. another robot parades around with a shockingly pink birthday cake. two servers carry a massive blinking sign, going from one birthday group to another. the sign is flashing with birthday wishes, hearts, what have you. they swing it around, performing songs for every birthday table. they are wearing these headbands with tiny ears — maybe mouse ears or rabbit ears. makes sense, it's the year of the rabbit after all.
it strikes me that asian spots here, unlike berlin or new york, don‘t seem to be part of a hipster foodie culture but instead inhabit their own self-immersive parallel universe. a world seemingly hidden from many white sydneysiders. for moments, i forget i'm in sydney. and the sichuan pepper leaves a numbing tingle on my tongue and a delightful dizziness in my head.
2023, september 11, gadigal (sydney)
shanty bar night in redfern. props scattering the ceiling, a pink phone, a tiny table football, some kind of retro toy car, an aboriginal flag. the air red with dimmed bar light, the crowd a deep, deep a cappella choir, singing and humming. it smells pre-pandemic, of gleefully innocent aerosols. fresh, cool beer in my mouth, the heat of wild abandon in my shoulders. later, m. sends me a text: you looked happy like a kid.
2023, august 28, cammeraygal (sydney)
german day-to-day communication often seems so trapped in a never ending spiral of blame and premature defence. i‘m so used to this guilt-soaked language that it always catches me off guard when i‘m out and about in kinder corners of the world. here in oz, it never ceases to surprise me when the house manager, bus driver or doctor’s receptionist doesn’t bite my head off. what are they waiting for?! i’m standing here, ready to be snapped at, but it‘s just not happening. it‘s like when you have the hiccups and they suddenly stop, but you‘re still bracing for the next one.
2023, august 11
message to a friend.
taejongdae is a park right by the sea. my mom grew up there and it’s her favorite place. you can walk up the hill and if you know the secret spot, you’ll end up walking down steep steps. down and down and down, until you reach cliffs right by the water. there’re all these old, tough, badass korean ladies selling super fresh fish. they have all these plastic bowls filled with water and fish swimming in them. you pick your fish and they will, super fast and without mercy, transform them from being alive to edible. you can buy soju and beer and there are big plates on the cliffs, to sit down with your tray full of tasty stuff. in my profile pic, you see me holding a tray with super fresh raw fish, with chillies, garlic, soy sauce, and wasabi and you wrap it all up in tasty lettuce leaves and pop it in your mouth, while the waves crash against the cliffs right next to you and in the distance you can faintly see japan and the sea is turquoise and breathtaking and the waves are wild and rough and white. and it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world and i explode with happiness every time i sit there eating fish and drinking beer and soju and looking at the sea.
2023, august 7, cammeraygal (sydney)
sydney: the sky is so dazzlingly blue it seems endless, sea-turquoise and harbour-turquoise mingling, a thousand shades of green in wendy whiteley‘s secret garden, gigantic fairy-tale trees at every street corner, and birds displaying a palette of candyland colours. the soundscape melds ocean murmurs, the hum of the highway, korean chatter, birds sounding like laughing monkeys, shrieking cockatoos, and the constant backdrop of waves splashing and pools splattering. and in summer, purple trees and a whiff of lemon tree scent everywhere. it smells of clean streets and tamed people and asian grocery stores. sea-salty pool water on my lips. and spicy korean chicken. the sun wakes me up every morning, immersing the entire bedroom in an incredible orange light.
2023, july, 27, saigon/ho chi minh city
as soon as i've landed, the air coats me like lotion. at the market, everyone thinks i'm vietnamese. they say i look like one of them. they even talk to me in vietnamese and react surprised when i don't understand. at a market stall brimming with buddha statues and mobiles, the market lady tells me the only german phrase she knows is “langsam, langsam!” it’s funny because u. told me just yesterday that “langsam, langsam” were her first words she learned in indonesian when she lived in bali, so she could tell the moped taxi driver to slow down. from the market, i head to another part of the city, a neighborhood i heard was very palm-green and vacationy with “bali vibes”. i’m peering out of the cab window. by the road, a man is selling goldfish. his motorbike is loaded with transparent bags filled with water, where the goldfish are swimming. i’m not really sure if they are goldfish, but from a distance, they look like the typical fish you would see in a goldfish bowl. under a bridge, someone has set up a space with a mattress and colorful blankets. above their sleeping space they had pinned a yellow poster on a pillar, saying “you can’t copyright vibe”.
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.