Entry five: Week V.

i have been thinking a lot about this movie project and exploring emotions through landscape or urbanscape or whatever. i recently realized (in a big way) how this film could be the most ideal manifestation of my experience here. how did i manage to neglect that fact? well, i think when we first started talking about the film, it seemed like an idea we could all relate to and rally around. and then we started to get pragmatic, narrowing our movie down to explore four emotions that both build on one another and our direct effects or causes of eachother. these four emotions are: excitement which lends to disorientation which lends itself to loneliness which then in turn lends itself to a resurgence in excitement which finally gives way to a feeling of comfort or confidence. it makes sense, i think, when you lay it on papaer and talk about. it is linear and cyclical and reasonable, if not too simplistic.

i wish i could zip through these stages like our film's protagonist will and arrive at that comfortable place where the city can feel peaceful. but that's not going to happen by decemeber. there is no way. thinking about our movie and how i should try to use it as a medium to explore my non-cinematic experience of this city, it is difficult to sit down and evaluate my own situatio. with all of the bustle and the business, the persistent and over-stimulated way i run around here, the lack of restraint, minimal obligations, all of this potentially providing the best experience possible, and still i feel a definite lack somewhere. i don't ever want to oversleep here for fear i might miss something spectacular. i have even caught myself thginking about issues from class in my dreams. time is such of the essence it haunts me and the history and class material i am finding myself immersed in often dominates my focus.

i don't think i feel comfort here. i think comfort is in the contact i receive from outside berlin, the postcards from grandma, the packages from mom, the telephone calls with friends, and emails with bro and sis. i want so badly for this place to feel like mine, but it#s so hard in these initial weeks for a place to feel like it even wants you. i think i am getting ahead of myself. the bottom line, though, is berlin is enormous, so BIG! there is no possible way for me to cover it in the way i'd like to; experience everything.

back in seattle, when i find something new, it is so exciting (my most favorite and recent find being a new bike route up to capitol hill). it is exciting because seattle is so familiar. it is comfortable. i like to go to bed early in seattle and cook dinner and sleep in and do nothing. here in berlin, everything is exciting and novel, confusing, strange, intense and only slowly becoming familiar. it is, to say the least, tiring.

is that weird? i feel like i am in constant motion, motion i haven't necessarily consented to but nonetheless have accepted knowing it is the only way to keep up. and the thought of leaving seems, well, stupid. i don't want to sever the momentum we have been building and at the same time, i crave peace. i want familiarity that isn't my hideous apartment that semlls bad or the handful of other americans i have been spending the last 5 weeks with. so it must be bigger than familarity, something that runs deeper.

i really enjoy my recent interactions with the turkish man at the getränke down the street. he shakes my hand and pats me on the back, asks me how i am doing and wishes me a goodnight. all the while, i just smile back at him. sometimes throw out a few thank you's in german. one time i said "alles güt" which i am pretty sure doesn't really mean anything, but would convey to him what i was trying to say. it is all good, sweet turkish man. i don't really know what i am doing with myself here, but it's all good.

resonance? recognition? connection? confirmation? acceptance? coherence? perspective?