The Predictability of Lightening

I’m having one of those moments where you go to a new place thinking everything is going to be just peachy – I have a taxi waiting for me there, I know Arabic already, I have friends in town who are going to take me out on my very first evening.  No.  Wrong.  False.  Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh.  I hear one of those buzzers in my head when you get a question wrong on Jeopardy. 

So far I’ve been overcharged about 20 bucks by my taxi driver, I arrive to my apartment and the power is shut off because the generators for the building overheated.  Forget about power in Lebanon.  State regulation has made it so that the simplicity of receiving 24-hour electricity – something we take for granted in the States and Europe and elsewhere – has now has become a luxury.  Power is as unpredictable as the wind.  An hour after the first power outage I’m out looking for phone credit.  I’ve forgotten my passport, which is apparently a prerequisite, so I go back to the apartment, then back to the credit store then back to the apartment only to realize that they’ve given me a SIM too large to fit my phone.  Til tomorrow then.  Hanshoof.  We shall see.  Inshallah.  God willing. 

Grocery shopping goes well, though I fumble through Arabic conversations in a dialect I do not know, putting me back to square one in that department.  I’m also confused as hell about the money and still not used to paying for things in quantities of 20,000 or more.  I go home and make pasta that’s little more than noodles in broth and I sit in the room with the AC and check my emails.  The power goes out again. 

It’s amazing how quickly your eyes adjust to darkness.  It’s amazing how quickly your body and sanity and lifestyle adjusts to what you are provided.  The second power outage lasts less time than the first but I am ready this time with candles, which are already burned down to their wilting brown wicks and are adorning every surface of every room.  I have learned one thing from my experiences abroad in the Middle East: nothing comes easy.  But this time I am ready.  So darkness please, come swift and strong. 

Berlin, du bist so wunderbar

They say that New York is the city that never sleeps but for me, whenever I hear that slogan, I will always think first of Berlin.

The sun is shining as the boy and I lug our (my) suitcases up 5 flights of steps to a beautiful, quaint Berlin apartment. The weather is warm and the city - the vast, sprawling metropolis - is silent, as if waiting for something, someone, me, us, him.

We attend a play at the Berlin Ensemble theatre. We see Peter Pan, directed by Robert Wilson with music by CocoRosie and I sit there, captivated by the sheer beauty and horror of this epic that only a city like Berlin could have produced. The sets are dark and the costumes are dark and the makeup is dark and sickening and lovely. Tinkerbell reveals a set of yellow, diseased teeth as she beams at the audience. She jerks and twitches her way across the stage in a black tutu with hints of underlying green. Wendy bounds after her with mechanical gestures and bats those big, pretty eyes which are framed by lashes as long as the legs of bulbous black spiders. She lifts her skirt up over her knees to reveal legs like splinters and canters around as she sings "to die would be a great adventure", breathing life - or rather, death - into the ballad. Peter comes next, flanked by a troupe of lost boys all in black, and the song that accompanies them rises and falls in dreamy, incomprehensible notes that are likely more akin to screams. I am spellbound by the nightmare, and yet caught in its grappling hooks as the delicate raptures of childrens' sing-song voices pull me from the comfort of my reality.

Berlin is unique in this way. Buildings warped by age and decay and a history of violence are now covered in the violent colors of street art and graffiti. "Exzess, miene liebling," one wall reads. Excess, my darling. I am reminded of the play and the way layers of glitter gleamed from the crest of Peter Pan's crown as he sang. Glitter showers the stage - its cast, the audience, the air, everything.

Excess, most certainly. But it is not an excess of wealth or of beauty or of things. It is an excess of life and spirit and motion. The city has soul. It is a tumult of paint-spattered sidewalks and derelict youth dressed in the haute couture of tattered elegance. There is always cheap food and cheaper beer and somewhere to be though the perfunctory act of needing to be somewhere never matters. So put down your talisman, because Berlin will guide you into the darkness and you will wander nowhere and find everything as you stumble through the city of excess and decay and glitter and spirit and light.

So come, meine liebling, because tonight will be a great adventure.