i sign up for french classes and decide i need to know more about cheese and wine. i'm sitting here with my second bottle of Gewurztraminer and a block of Parmesan Romano. my roommates are helping. we all feel spoiled. we all feel special. life is good.
but my heart aches. it pulls toward those old bridges. my broken german longs for a bit of completion. that strange sadness finds me every couple days. travel sadness. the need to be back in germany and walking across the Oberbaum Brucke, the need to race through berlin on the back of a blond's motorcycle, the need to sit quietly at a cafe and sip a latte while i scribble in my diary. it all sounds so lofty and spoiled to american ears but maybe what i'm talking about is simply Living. maybe what i'm describing are the simple pleasures that come from trusting a stranger simply because you receive an unnameable buzz while in their presence and decide to follow the white hot line of it. maybe what i'm describing is the utter joy that floods one's being once deciding that Flatliners was right and today really is a good day to die... so take a deep breath and embrace what you've got. i'm trying to tell myself exactly that right now. i'm attempting to play tourist every day and see california as a foreigner might. it's a tall order but i'm having a great time trying to satisfy it. still, loneliness finds me. i just need to be in the wind. i'm in that Searching phase of life. i need no schedule and no expectations, just a map and a hunk of bread stuffed in my backpack.
...
while i was away, from time to time i worried about my yarnbombs. i worried whether they'd been taken down yet, snipped away by passersby who wanted a bay-area souvenir or an angsty teenager who felt akin to the sentiments. i was relieved and ecstatic to find them all in place upon my return. each and every banner from Aileen to 59th was still there. AND!!! it seemed as if someone had even been tending to them- straightening them out as they slid down the stop sign poles and making sure the text was straight and discernible. a week or so later, i noticed two had disappeared. then, as i walked to the train station this weekend on my way to work i found two banners sliced off and cast to the ground:
the jaggedness of the cuts and the fact that these pieces were then thrown aside let me know that the person who cut them down didn't give a shit about this work and, in fact, was probably pissed off. this is a wonder to me. i've never actually ever seen a yarnbomb be so violently removed from public view. but then again, i've not seen any pieces in the bay area that employ text. maybe the message angered this person??? maybe they found it annoying and was tired of walking passed it on their way to the train??? whatever the reason, this person was obviously angry as evinced by the fact that not all the banners on telegraph have been cut down, only those on a particular block. basically, i'm saying they weren't cut down by the authorities. the authorities would have removed them ALL and wouldn't have cast them into the street.
i'm not at all hurt or offended. if anything, i'm encouraged. this type of response lets me know i'm on the right track and that i need to keep going. i felt a sense of lost whenever a banner would disappear before i went on my trip. so much so that i replaced the one at 58th and telegraph (whoever you are :) ). but something changed in me... i feel more generous these days, more open to evolution and the pain of transformation. i feel spurred on by your violence. your anger gets me hot. it leads to a deep sense of resolve. i don't give a fuck. laugh at me or ignore me. whatever. slice my work to pieces, just know i'm sitting at my kitchen table tonight eating Parmesan cheese and drinking a lovely bottle of Gewurztraminer: my feelings are not hurt. in fact, i like having these photographs of my fallen banners. i like having them laying on the corner of my bed. i plan to frame them. they have a history now, a story i could never have provided that adds to their beauty and intelligence. it's beyond description.
i am thankful for the raggedness that my hands are incapable of dealing.
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