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Tales
The Second Skin
I took to the lake. The boys of run club in mesh jerseys made laps around Krummelanke. With “eins, zwei, drei,” they departed from a line drawn in the dirt. I shielded myself from gaze and slipped into the lake. A lone swan circled me, moving towards the crown of a woman’s head as she swam backstroke. When she emerged, I found that she was ageless and in a striped bikini. I measured the time of my bathing by the laps of youthful sprinters.
Hair still wet and forming spirals on my back, I bought a bouquet of flowers and walked to Goltzßtrase.
The banister was threaded with nautical ropes, made for holding by children in rainboots. I stood in the doorway of the family I would live with for three months. My fingertip lingered over the doorbell. Two tender faces greeted me. They showed me the spiderweb on their balcony. “So, you like spiders, and cats, and birds, like us?“ I had been delivered into the arms of angels.
I had a sense that this house was a home; even the magnets on the fridge moved me. My bedroom was complete with plum colored sheets, a splintery wooden desk, a clothing rack, and a window into the courtyard.
That first night in Berlin I fell asleep to the layered din of soap operas and infomercials echoing from windows perpendicular. There was a violin tune and a baritone laugh, and murmurs from the courtyard. When I awoke, the cat’s fur was wet from garden leisure.
The kitchen table was the center of our universe. A scrap pinned above the green tabletop noted Elfi and Lilly’s phone numbers above a sentence in quotes, “Die erde ist schön,” or, “the world is nice.”
Every morning, unwavering, instant black coffee. Sometimes tomatoes and peppercorns in a skillet, sometimes meat, sometimes cheese or yogurt, always coffee.
Lilly’s first and most favored breakfast question is “Hast du getraumt?”...“Have you dreamt?” I find that people rarely ask about dreams - they dismiss them as nonsensical and meandering, but in this house, there were dreamcatchers above every bed.
Off to school, to recite the German alphabet and dream of coming home to my purple bed, and a documentary on the television.
Winter came swiftly and with mulled wine. Lilly said something about the seasons, which I translated to “it goes like clockwork.”
When the illusion of summer was broken, I was not upset. Californians cannot help but fixate on the weather; a cold day is the cause for pouting. In Berlin, girls in earmuffs played rock, paper, scisscors on the sidewalk, and when darkness fell, they returned to worlds of interior warmth. “Gemütlich,” was the word to describe it.
The quaint sadness and also joy of shops closing up for the night. The remembered feeling of the Jewler drawing the curtains to hide ivory and silver. Closing up shop allows for interior worlds to unfold, and I wish I could see them all.
Lanterns on balconies and drinkers on barstools made sacred by the light of candlesticks. Reading in the day and exiting to dance at night, when the neon light of restaurant signs illuminate the path home in hours unknown.
Returning from dancing I always knew where to step, so as not to make a sound. I know where the floorboards creak. Lilly’s lightbox, a glass diorama of plastic figurines, amused me as I brushed my teeth. These are the textures of my memory.
With the allure of long hours of CD-listening in that blessed bedroom, I rarely travelled. When I did, I missed my connection from Amsterdam to Prague, hindered by a hole in my left cowboy boot. I found my way back to Berlin by train. 11PM, Elfi was watching television, and Lilly was hoola-hooping for exercise. They made me a chickpea and rice dish. "Fühlen sie die umarmung,” or “feel the embrace” they said...and that I did. The homeliness of a home not my own.
Nearing the end of my months in Berlin, Elfi marked the calendar with “Alex Foto.” I had often perused her photo archive, revering the way she suspended time. Tableaus of old German filmstars, and details as simple and overlooked as the nimble bending of a flamenco dancer’s toes. She somehow respects both the grandiose and the world unseen.
Before my last sleep in Berlin, Elfi told me to dream about jewels.
“The idea, I want you to look through your jewelry, thinking about the stories. Occasionally, you will look at me and tell me what you are thinking. Sometimes I will say ‘Stop!’ And you will look at the camera. In this way, we have a communication.”
She brought me chocolate chunks on a heart shaped plate. “Power, for you” she said. I do not remember if I looked beautiful, or if my hair fell just right. I do know that her understanding of me brought to tears. The experience felt somewhat religious. When we finished our photoshoot, Elfi let me take one photo of her. The scene is a snowglobe on my bedside table that I shake to animate for momentary joy.
Gazing at the sweater I wore in the images, Elfi exclaimed, “This is your second skin! We call these photos the second skin.”
A second skin is the transparent barrier placed over a tattoo that protects from dirt and infection. It is a barely-there layer that allows what’s underneath to be seen, but to breathe and render, all while making it indellible. I believe we all have a ‘second skin,’ and when I say this I envision Joan of Arc’s armor, or an abalone’s irridescent shell. Mine may be as simple as a knit sweater coated in the scent of a loving home.
Nearing the end of my months in Berlin, Elfi marked the calendar with “Alex Foto.” I had often perused her photo archive, revering the way she suspended time. Tableaus of old German filmstars, and details as simple and overlooked as the nimble bending of a flamenco dancer’s toes. She somehow respects both the grandiose and the world unseen.
Before my last sleep in Berlin, Elfi told me to dream about jewels.
“The idea, I want you to look through your jewelry, thinking about the stories. Occasionally, you will look at me and tell me what you are thinking. Sometimes I will say ‘Stop!’ And you will look at the camera. In this way, we have a communication.”
She brought me chocolate chunks on a heart shaped plate. “Power, for you” she said. I do not remember if I looked beautiful, or if my hair fell just right. I do know that her understanding of me brought to tears. The experience felt somewhat religious. When we finished our photoshoot, Elfi let me take one photo of her. The scene is a snowglobe on my bedside table that I shake to animate for momentary joy.
Gazing at the sweater I wore in the images, Elfi exclaimed, “This is your second skin! We call these photos the second skin.”
A second skin is the transparent barrier placed over a tattoo that protects from dirt and infection. It is a barely-there layer that allows what’s underneath to be seen, but to breathe and render, all while making it indellible. I believe we all have a ‘second skin,’ and when I say this I envision Joan of Arc’s armor, or an abalone’s irridescent shell. Mine may be as simple as a knit sweater coated in the scent of a loving home.
As a parting gift to Lilly and Elfi, I set out to print a cyanotype of my favorite Goltzẞtrase relics. A cyanotype is made by placing objects or images on a light sensitive surface.
When exposed to sunlight, blue impressions of their shapes are left behind. The Berlin winter sky only revealed teal blobs where images would have been. I was not proud of it and I refused for it to be our parting gift. I decided to keep it and wear it in my hair. I told Elfi and Lilly I will return in Berlin summer, when the sunshine makes my gift.
On the topic of sky Lilly wrote a farewell to me, tucked into the inside pocket of my painter’s jacket. She wrote “Himmel verbinden uns,” or The Sky connects us.
I found the interior after travelling across the ocean. And I did like the rhythm of the music, and the bounty of beer, and the speed of the UBahn and the clever designs of the various stations, and the faces in museum paintings, and it was not lost on me the way the monuments struck a chord. It might have been their love for pumpkin soup, or the cat named Pipsi they called “Soul with Ears.” Or that when I was sick, they gave me white desert sage to put under my tongue; a flavor unexpected as rain on skin.