PILGRIM'S PROGRESS: 5/25/26
A GALLERY OF MY LIFE IN BERLIN & LEIPZIG
1.
German spring. At my local Sunday flea market in Berlin, above, in Neukölln along its canal. It’s #6 on this list. It’s full of cool kids like this one and lots of great booths filled with things that cool kids buy. And below, looking out the train window on a Monday on my way to Leipzig for a few days. I thought my monthly rail pass would pay for all trains in the country but found out it didn't work for the fast ones which are called - I kid you not - ICE. Yep, I’m in another country. And I’m out some extra cash, too. But Leipzig was worth it. I liked it there a lot.
2.
Everything connects. A street scene above in my Berlin neighbourhood on Sonnenallee. Walking the long expanse of Sonnenalle from the eponymous ring train station close by my place to Hermannplatz - a 45 minute walk I often take for some exercise, 2.9 kilometres - reminds me of strolling along both Kilburn High Road in my London neighborhood and the streets of Tangier in my Petit Socco one there. Like those examples, Sonnenallee and this area of Neukölln are quite culturally and commercially Muslim. Below is another “street scene,” this one in Leipzig as I was getting off the tram to head over to the city’s main train station on the day that the costumed cult-like hordes were beginning to descend upon the city for its annual Goth Festival. I was traveling back to Berlin so, thank Allah, I didn’t have to deal with the black-swathed swarms and get my gandering up to speed. But I did like this moment when the woman swathed in her black burka and wearing her hijab was the one taking a gander at someone else’s deeply felt getup that needed for different reasons to get on up there to cover her head in order properly to complete the attire that was required of her.
3.
My London landlady and friend, Suzanne Noble, visited Berlin this weekend and we hung out a couple of times. On Saturday, I met her at a train station of a different order, the modern art museum housed in the reconfigured and reimagined Hamburger Bahnhof. There were two great exhibitions that spoke to us. The first was one that showcased the art of of Joseph Beuys, the German artist who has fascinated me since I first really became aware of him during my Factory days working for Andy Warhol when I was the Executive Editor of Andy’s Interview magazine. Known for his assemblages and manifestos, he was a cofounder as well of the German Green Party. That is his own deeply felt get-up above he got up to while alive - the framing of the self an artistic pursuit as well as a religious and subcultural one - which was hanging on the wall amidst his art. It is one of an edition of 100 identical suits made of felt and tailored from the pattern of the felt suit that Beuys always wore.
“Art alone makes life possible – this is how radically I should like to formulate it,” he stated. “I would say that without art man is inconceivable in physiological terms… I would say man does not consist only of chemical processes, but also of metaphysical occurrences. The provocateur of the chemical processes is located outside the world. Man is only truly alive when he realizes he is a creative, artistic being… Even the act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act.”
The other exhibit focused on the work of Shilpa Gupta. Below is one of the iterations that flapped into being in Gupta’s work StillTheyKnowNotWhatIDream.
4.
In Leipzig that meant for me walking from Plagwitz to Connewitz and back again. The roundtrip was a 13.6 kilometres hike. I walked through lots of wooded parks filled with birds who seemed to be chirping to each other in the emphatically chiseled sounds from which German itself can seem to be sculpted.
I texted a friend during the walk: “I am in the midst of a long, wooded walk in Leipzig thinking a young wounded Nazi solider is going to emerge presenting me with a moral dilemma.” We then continued to text as we discussed my plans to write a column about Israel and Gaza and anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as I contemplated it all while walking in such German woods. It might be a few weeks from now once I’m back in America for the month of June. But I feel drawn to write that column.
When I got to to Connewitz, which is a very leftwing neighbourhood, I was presented with another dilemma when I was deciding whether to buy this t-shirt below at a political anti-fascistic clothing boutique called No Borders. I almost bought it thinking it would be a great one to wear in Provincetown next month for the 20 days I am there after my 10 days in NYC where I arrive on June 1.
But then I thought of the rest of the summer when I’ll be in Tangier and realised that it would not go over so well there and be thought of as an aggressive act perhaps, even one that could cause an altercation. There is a fine line I have walked all my life as a child of 1960s segregationist Mississippi who is now a 70-year-old pilgrim who spends so much of each year in the Muslim kingdom of Morocco. I try to be true to my politics and never back down from discussing them and standing up for them even as I honour the culture in which I am living. It’s a balancing act within the mindful balanced life I continue to try to live on this pilgrimage.
Instead of buying this t-shirt - which, politics and cultures aside, was a bit too emblazoned aesthetically for someone like me who doesn’t like to wear a label of any sort that billboards me as a needy fashionista whose style is defined by someone else’s name - I bought a grey one with the simple and small words kein mensch ist illegal printed on it where a polo player riding a pony would be if it were an item designed by Ralph Lauren. But it’s most definitely not. I’ll post a photo when I finally wear that one.
[TO SEE MORE PHOTOS OF LEIPZIG, INCLUDING YET ANOTHER PHOTO OF A REMARKABLE PIECE OF ATTIRE WHICH I PURCHASED AT A THIFT STORE THERE, COME JOIN OUR PAID SUBSCRIBER COMMUNITY FOR ONL $5 A MONTH OR $50 A YEAR. IT MEANS A LOT. THAT PIECE OF ATTIRE IS THE BEST FIND I’VE EVER DISCOVERED WHILE THRIFTING. I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT WAS ONLY 16 EUROS. YOU’LL ALSO GET TO SEE ME MODELLING IT IN MY AIRBNB ROOM IN LEIPZIG WHICH ITSELF WAS ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE ROOMS I’VE EVER RENTED ON MY PILGRIMAGE BECAUSE OF A PIECE OF FURNITURE THAT WAS IN IT. AND THERE IS ONE FINAL SPECIAL PHOTO FROM LEIPZIG THAT TIES IN WITH THE PHOTOS ABOVE. ]