this letter is excerpted from my weekly patrons newsletter.

Dear D,

here is a collection of moments from my turn of the year — things I saw, felt, heard, and dreamed. I left new york city exactly a year ago, on jan 17, 2020. I don’t think i will be going back.

01. the sound of trees falling

only a few days after Christmas, trees started to fall from the sky. a few doors from my apartment building, a man pushed the pointy end of a tree out from his third story window while a woman stood on the sidewalk beneath, waiting. her eyes were blue and stern, and she looked tired. I smiled at her as I walked past. she did not smile back. then, five steps later, I heard it before I saw it: the sound of a tree falling — so quiet it was barely a sound; a soft rustling, like falling onto snow.

02. things dropped from tenth floor balconies

ten days before Christmas, the day before all the shops in Berlin closed for lockdown — I went to Schönenberg to buy ten kilos of clay, and watched as a man hesitated before dropping something from the tenth floor of an apartment balcony. a small asian woman — dressed in a loose, dark silhouette - stood waiting below. in that moment, me watching her, her looking up at the man, his moments of pause, something falling from thirty meters above, its tiny metallic sound upon impact with the pavement (why did I think it would be louder?) I felt a sensation of joy in me, rustling like a bird. for just a few moments, I almost felt as though I were part of their configuration of family. witness to an intimate act made dramatic — the end result of laziness, and forgetting.

how would it feel to be up there, ten stories up, palms closed around a key — that symbolic token of private kingdoms — and, on the verge of letting go? I would have hesitated, too.

03. both ends of the rainbow

on Christmas Eve, I saw both ends of the rainbow while running through Tempelhofer Feld — that abandoned airfield turned public park. that morning, the sun, sieved through a cloud, was as luminous as the moon. I turned the corner of a winding road and ran straight into a rainbow so vertical that it seemed to come from a faucet in the sky. (where is that faucet, and who turned it on, and why?) I smiled big, my eyes opened so wide in shock and awe — that I felt like one of those people on reality TV who were just informed that they won a million dollars. I felt like a million dollars. more. what surprised me was that no one else — none of the other joggers, walkers, cyclists, rollerblading people — seemed at all affected. no one stopped to stare, no one laughed out loud, no one fell on their knees to praise god for this life. did they see the rainbow? are we living in the same reality? clearly not. I ran unabashedly, like a fool — my body going forwards with my head turned perpendicular; I ran until my neck was sore and the rainbow faded, and then, finally, one woman pointed behind me at the rainbow emerging from its other end. then it disappeared again. I went home and painted it, wrote about it, that I want to live my life like this, all that time. like I’m constantly running into rainbows.

04. little birds

I didn’t know that in Germany, they exchange gifts in the evening, with dinner, and not in the morning. we sat on the floor of F’s room gathered around the feast we made — scallion pancakes, lentil kofte, potato salad; one dish from each of our respective cultures — and noted how we had made a dinner composing only of side dishes. what do you think happens to our spirit after we die, M asked. I don’t know, I said, but I want to be burned, not buried. we unwrapped gifts from under the Christmas (plant). they gave each other clothes and healthy chocolates and massage oils — and me a giant picture book of illustrated wilderness. then we sat together on F’s bed and watched Love, Actually.

on Christmas day, I woke up in darkness to finish their gifts — little clay birds perched on a rock. first I formed their bellies and heads, then I pressed them wings, and then I carved their feathers with a needle tool. I covered them in glass, covered the glass with a piece of cloth, and tied the cloth with twine. as if, like this, I could keep them from flying away, even just for a moment.

I made a bird for him, too — that stranger I met in the park — but he didn’t show up that morning. instead of waiting around, I walked on an empty stomach two hours to Tiergarten — a giant wooded park — while plotting ways for his bird to commit suicide. when I came back, I saw that there was a bag by my door: with a bag of spices, pistachios, and pine nuts, and a pair of winter pants, made in my home province.

…

read the rest of this essay via my weekly patrons letters

letter no. 5 from berlin: six transition moments