Eleven rainbows: Melbourne in Winter 2017

Posted on By Lena

This is a diary of my time in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, containing musings, thoughts, notes written down in June and July 2017. Edited in August 2017 and February 2018. The number of rainbows is true and something else; everything else is as true as you need it to be. 

Day 1

A bird on a daring flight crashes from the sky, down, down, down, approaching us, this crowd waiting at these traffic lights by the library. Only right before hitting the ground right in front of us, in this very last fraction of a second, it comes to a halt, seems to pause in the air, before it rises back into the sky again. I’m in awe, I almost want to applaud the performance (even though I despise birds). I look around me to find out if anyone else has seen what I just saw there. Only one man and me noticed. His and my eyes meet and lock eye contact for a second. We both nod, knowingly, turn our heads and go our ways.

This is how it begins.

I’m overcaffeinated and underloved and most of my misery stems from distances and men. (This might as well become the title of my autobiography one day.) It’s been six and a half months since my last visit and I’ve been counting. Now, I’m back here to find out what has changed since, but much more interested in what hasn’t.

I’m so tired. Just so, so tired all the time. I stay in bed as long as I can, refusing to open the heavy brown curtains that block the overcast sky from my sight. I spend the mornings, the evenings and late nights working, because time zones are not my friend these days, and everyone I work with is so far away. In between, I face fundamental questions about the work I do, where I do it, and why. A friend talks me through a Visa processes for Australia and I’m tired.

Does Superman take superpower naps?

My dreams are mostly nightmares these days. Meanwhile, I learn that Berlin is having a few summery days, with temperatures around 35°C. Much later, I will learn that this time already came to a close after four days, and this was all of summer that Berlin got that year. And much, much later I will find out that this will be my year without a summer.

I’m so tired, and so cold. It’s cold, everywhere and always. When I’m outside, I hear the people here talk about winter like it meant something. Sometimes, when we’re out together, you’d spot dogs in the streets for me; the bouncy dogs look so happy when they’re walking. Walking by myself, I’m too tired to try. As I stroll past the library and cross paths with a seagull (we ignore each other; until today, it’s unclear whether it was polite or passive-aggressive ignorance), I watch a group of 50 blue suits collectively cross the street on the other side. All suits are the same shade of dark blue. It’s so close to #06224f. Right next to me, someone holds a phone to their ear, listening with eyes closed; they open their eyes and look straight ahead saying: “Take everything, nothing matters to me.”

A child smiles at me. I think about what matters and still wait for the traffic lights. Jaywalking is practiced on a regular basis here, even during traffic as heavy as this one right now, so it is very surprising that so many people have gathered here and stayed for so long that it allows for a glimpse into their lives, or this version of their lives that’s right here, waiting as much as I am, or even more.

I find an “I heart NYC” sticker on a lamppost. I do heart NYC as well, and I’d love to go back. It’s funny how, no matter where we are, we dream of being somewhere else. Maybe it’s this casual unfulfilled thought of escapism, the inner sticker on a lamppost, that keeps us from running wild right where we are. It’s not always the light that makes a city special; sometimes it’s only the façades that create reflections.

Day 4

The weather is bad, but at least it’s authentic. These are days for velvety coffee and dreams of the sun. I admire the dip section in the supermarket and am very happy about the opportunity to finally try French Onion dip. As I tell someone about it (very proudly), they break into laughter and tell me that this has been absolutely out since the 90s, and I tell them that it’s still absolutely en vogue in my life.

In front of the museum, there’s a white van parked close to a wall, doors slid open. There’s only one woman inside of it. She sits in the middle of three rows of passenger seats, close to the door, her chin leaning on her arms that are resting on the headrest of the seat in front of her. She looks out into a distance that’s not there.

In the first exhibition, I see: a baby donkey; a dolphin; a woman dressed in a long red skirt, forming a bridge with her body; a baby’s and a grown-up’s feet; a collection of circles and paper balls; the question of all questions. As I walk out, they’re playing my favourite Elton John song.

In the second exhibition, I see colourful paintings of unspeakable things, pieces of leather and branches, sculptures of ghosts throwing shade, and so much art that was shaped by violence, racism, abuse, and colonialism.

On my way out of the museum, a museum guard named George tells me stories of Aschaffenburg and Fiji. When I’m back on my way in the rain, it takes me a while to wrap my head around the beauty of this encounter. I cross a bridge, turn around, the sun comes out, I take a photo of the dramatic clouds and it’s only on my tiny camera display that I notice the huge, half-faded rainbow. Seconds later, it fades. Leaning on the bridge railing, I keep staring in this general direction, waiting for the rainbow to come back.

It never will.

The crows are flying towards the sunset, into a sky full of dark grey clouds set against a bright yellow and blue backdrop. I watch the sunset and I care more about the way it’s reflected in the building next door. At night, I watch other people do Karaoke. I love Karaoke, I even maintain a list of songs I’d sing during Karaoke, and I always want to sing during Karaoke (kind of). But I never do: all of the songs I enjoy singing will kill the last sign of good mood in a party crowd. So I only watch and listen. With every new 90s song that’s on, I actually listen to the lyrics for the first time in my life, and this way, with every new 90s song that’s on, another childhood memory of mine gets destroyed forever. Here’s one advantage to growing up listening to pop music while not speaking English.

Day 8

On my way out of the city, I stand under a sign saying “Hail tram here”, and I look up what “hail” means, just to be sure. And as the tram approaches, for the first time in my life, a I hail a tram. The tram stops and I get on. Inside the tram, there’s an old man carrying a lion balloon.

As I get off the tram, a child gets on the first step leading up into the tram, stops on the first step, looks back over their shoulders, says “bye bye park!” at the park behind them as if it were the best and most exciting thing in the world. And it probably is.

A palm leaf strokes my hair. I meet a woman with an incredibly fluffy dog and she tells me the dog’s name is Ewok. There’s an amusement park with a rollercoaster and a ferris wheel and I wonder why I know the word ferris wheel. I think about what the loneliness of riding a ferris wheel by oneself feels like. The palm leaves keep sizzling in the wind. It might as well be spring. It might as well be good.

There’s an ice skating area under palm trees and a sign that says LOVE right next to a fortune teller’s tent. The palm trees are wearing fairy lights, and it might as well be spring. And then I stand on the green area between two roads and for the first time in my life, I see two wild, light pink parrots sit in the grass just a few steps away from me. I keep walking down the road, and then there’s the sea, that’s so calm and quiet today under this overly shiny sky. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to walk down a beach without looking for shells and stones. I sit down on the beach and look straight ahead, narrowing my eyes because the sunlight is so sunny and light, and then I drop there, into the sand, right where I stand, in my winter coat and sweater, my boots, my tiredness, and my emotional exhaustion, and I just stay right were I am and look straight ahead. A container ship lingers on the horizon at ten o’clock. And oh, the waves.

On a tram back into the city, I sit by the window. A drunk man squeezes himself on the seat next to me, then onto me, and blows his drunk breath into my face. I say excuse me, get up and head over to a different seat on the other side of the carriage, a seat that allows me to keep an eye on him. As I sit down, I think about apologies.

I see a man sitting on a wall hug a backpack and lightly rock it as if it were the most wonderful, precious thing in the world. As the tram keeps moving, I see a tiny dog stick its head out of the backpack, and I finally understand. Someone on the tram keeps saying “last stop” over and over. We’re still very far away from the last stop of this tram, but maybe it means something different for them. Also on this tram: a woman looking at food photos on Facebook; a man making a phone call and taking a photo of a photo on his second phone. Outside: an advertisement to “earn your black belt in 18 months”; a mattress shelter under a bridge. I love trams for their ability to gently drive us past each other’s lives, while giving us this smooth transition between where we were and where we want to go.

I get off the train and suddenly find myself whistling along to a Vengaboys song that’s playing in a store I walk past. I meet a dog again that I last saw six months ago. His name is Doc. I take a picture of your window as the sun is hitting it.

My fingertips keep tracing the shape of a snail shell in my pocket. I walk past a drawing saying “Colour the dream”.

Day 13

Standing at a bus stop at a major crossroads, trucks blasting past me, I think about my life choices. But then I’m on a bus out of the city and as we drive past houses, trees, houses, I keep wondering where the city actually ends. The grass is glowing in the milky light of this day and I can sense, hear, feel your affection when we’re close; it’s so hard when we’re apart. I walk past a garden center, their slogan: Our reputation is growing.

A child walks out of an enclosed part of the park asking their parents: “why are there no snakes?” One parent responds, “because it’s too cold.” The child responds, a disapproving look on their face: “but I’m bored!”

I wonder about the plastic that’s wrapped around the trees and it’s only days later that I learn it has to do with possums. Someone walks past me looking at their phone, which has the picture of another person as a home screen. I always enjoy seeing this: it must mean this person has someone in their life who means that much to them.

There’s a girl throwing red leaves into the air; a giant walnut sculpture; a bush with leaves that smell very familiar, but I don’t know the origin of the familiarity; a child looking at a sculpture, wearing a jacket with golden dots; frames with yarn woven through them into beautiful shapes;

I’m drawn to a tree carrying tiny orange fruit and white blossoms. I pick up one of the fruit from the ground and hold it in my hands. I want to know what it is, and I want to eat it, but I don’t dare. The more I see of all this, the more I want to show you what my life was like many, many years ago.

On the other side of the park, I find a giant apple tree. I stand under it and smell the sweetness of the overripe fruit. I close my eyes and dream of falling asleep and three weeks later, I would wake up again and I would be in a different life. Time goes by much more slowly when I’m alone.

Someone writes me that they’re living vicariously through me, which is funny because, while this is so exceptional, I’m trying so very hard to find a sense of normality in all of this. And most times, I fail horribly. I fail myself, and I fail us.

It’s late and dark as I head out to go home. Out the door, right, down, half-left to open the door, left, right, down the road. I’m incredibly sad. On the next corner, the keyboarder that always plays here has set up shop again. As I approach, I hear some chords. A group of people is standing around them, all filming on phones that they’re holding up like trophies. I get closer and as I hear the first sweet bites of a melody, the rest of my gut drops right to the spot where it hurts so much, and I want to break down and cry. I keep walking, past the shops that are now closed for once but are still blasting music onto the streets, through groups of people chatting, and even as I’m way further down the street, I still hear the keyboarder play.

It’s a night for a half moon, lying on its back.

Day 17

The coffee place is still at the same place where it was back then. I enter, the brick walls are still white, the sign in the back corner is still there, I walk up to the counter, and there’s someone I know. They look up, look at me, with something in their eyes that says they recognise me. Just a little later, it turns out that it’s T., someone I met six months ago three times for very brief interactions over coffee, – they still know my name, they still remember my story; and I remember theirs. It’s so funny how sometimes people just see us, and we see them.

I walk up towards the market. There’s a parking space on the left hand side of it. The last time I was at this parking lot was last summer, the same time I met T., when it was more than 35°C hot and I sat out there in one of the few bits of shade, leaning against a red brick wall, sending WhatsApp messages back and forth, waiting for someone to go to sleep and a phone call between a Wednesday and a Tuesday on the other fucking side of the world, sixteen hours difference, finally picking up the phone and staying there for four and a half hours, only moving to follow the shade, curling up as much as I could, making myself invisible to everyone passing by. The connection kept dropping, and on the other side of the line, there was someone very far away, much too far away, and I tried to hold it all together. I couldn’t, and we ended up crying together. A day later, I was on stage to give a conference talk. Life is a funny thing, but many times, just a fucking sad thing.

A man rides past the coffee shop on a BMX bike, with a transparent glitter balloon attached to it. Somewhere in the room, hanging from the ceiling, is the question how you want to be remembered.

Day 22

There’s construction work happening outside of my building. A construction worker wearing a hard hat (I still am amazed by the beauty of the term “hard hat”) stops traffic so I can cross the road. The sign in his hand says “drive slow” on one side, and “stop” on the other side. I’d love to have this sign. (And a hard hat.)

I watch a dog run away, pet a cat, and have my portrait taken and eggs and conversations about bureaucracy. Meanwhile, there’s an outrage on the internet about something that I’ve never even heard of. In a very small tree, a very large bird is trying to sit comfortably. A young woman asks me to help her navigate. She seems nervous and insecure, she tells me that she’s from a small city on the other side of the country (which also means the other side of the fucking continent), and that it’s her first time here. I try to calm her down and we figure out directions together. I watch her walk away with her suitcase. She reminds me of myself, a long time ago.

A woman with a guitar standing at a corner singing very sad songs makes me very melancholic. (I have a soft spot for women singing sad songs.)

At a feminist theater play, one of the parts contains a fantastic bit about proposals, which contains the punchline “Let’s blow up the local Woolie’s together”, which I will heavily re-use in the weeks to follow. ”I am not sorry about the watermelon.” – ”It looked like wastelands where we thought we were building mountains.” I go back home feeling like I could achieve anything. On the way home, I stop for a bit to look over Yarra river at night and realise that I don’t care about the city if you’re not in it. A busker has a sign saying “Rock’n’Roll ain’t noise pollution”. I fall asleep over the idea of a beach.

Day 27

I have a theory of a secret net of book stores world wide which are connected through a door hidden behind the poetry section. (The theory may or may not be connected to my love of books, my admiration for good poetry, and my deep hatred towards distance.) There are at least three versions of every one of my stories, and sometimes that’s eating me from the inside.

I cross a wild road like I knew what I was doing, and I think that’s actually true. I take a walk back to where we began, and I wish I could go back there in time. I’m really starting to know my way around here. I realise that it’s because home is where you are, I can’t help but see this place as home.

Everywhere I go, I ask myself could I imagine? Could I imagine living here? At the same time, I don’t know what home is anymore. The birds are singing songs I don’t know.

For years, I’ve now been thinking in English. And I’m starting to lose vocabulary in my native language, this language that I’ve nourished and broadened and deepened with so much care and dedication. At the same time, I’m lacking words, so many words in this language that’s dominating my mind. And it’s frustrating me. I don’t have names for the things around me anymore. I only resort to categories: palm tree; christmas tree; tree; thing. Flower. Bird. I am back to painting my language with very broad brush strokes. I miss the ability to have accurate words at hand when I need them, where I need them. Instead, I have to search, look all over the place, sift through drawers in my head to find them (and, more often than not, I fail). All of a sudden, as I feel it fading, I feel much more connected to my native language and my home than I’ve felt in more than a decade.

Everything in my brain needs to be adjusted. Everything is like what I’m used to, but it’s still not the same. Everything is similar, but still off by about three to twenty-eight point seven percent. It is like when you’ve just woken up and everything looks a bit hazy, foggy, in weird colours, and you have to blink a few times and rub your eyes and it slowly adjusts. I carry this feeling with me all the time. An incomplete list of what feels off by about twenty-eight point seven percent: the birds, the trees, the rose hips, snakes in gardens, daffodils blooming in July, the intense greenness of the grass, wild orchids, the brownness of the river, the red brown of the soil, the traffic, “kiwi fruit” (you just don’t say “there are kiwis on the counter”), the backyards with their walls, the architecture, the cricket grounds, the footy, the undergrowth, the bushes, the way the forests smell.

No matter how often I rub my eyes, it’s just still off.

Day 33

On a train down the coast, I can’t stop starring out the window, admiring those great open skies over wetlands, the reflections of light, the fields, the trees.

As we arrive, a rainbow is here already. Finally, a place to start and finish a thought, and a place to take endless pictures of the sea.

The next morning, I wake up to a garden view and the sun. We walk down to the beach and I want to open my eyes as wide as I can, to capture all this beautiful light. I look at your eyes, overlooking the open water. The tide is high, and we need to run from the waves. Getting a sense of connectedness with nature has always been fundamental in my life, and I seem to have lost it. I think back to the time when I tried to photograph exactly what you can see when you look at the dunes at midday in sunlight and half-close your eyes.

There’s this one moment when the sea holds its breath.

I take too many pictures of the sea.

As I walk to our place by myself, I smile at the dogs and their people don’t smile back. The soft smell of freshly cut grass in the air. I walk up a hill that people only seem to drive up with cars, and I’m starting to get a sense of how lonely I could feel out here. The bushes look soft in the late afternoon sun.

There’s a rectangle shaped spot of light on the wall, like a second window into a sunnier world. The days go by so fast, and I realise that I only have very few nights left. I’ve known it all along, but now, the realisation sets in: you can’t stock up on anything that really matters.

I begin a thought about belonging and have to drop it, before it makes me too sad. I’m not ready to leave you, nor to get back to my life as I’ve known it so far. The promise of another summer doesn’t make the current winter less sad. I always think that it just can’t feel closer to being over. Then, another second goes by. This was a day of five rainbows.

A moon is out, shining bright over the bay. I want to go down to the beach tonight and walk straight into the sea.

The next morning, we need to head out early. The sky is blue, and a double rainbow is stretching across the sky. Our bus departs in an hour.

Epilogue (Day 34/35)

This is the time when I can’t go anywhere without thinking that it’s the last time. I had more than five weeks to prepare for this, and I didn’t. The pain hits me right as my last airplane touches the ground. And here I am, a body that has traveled maximal distance, waiting for a suitcase at luggage belt. As I open my suitcase, I take out the donut I bought. Twenty-eight hours and a lifetime ago. And this is how it ends.

We were beautiful before this went down
We were beautiful before the years came
And turned it upside down
We were beautiful before we got wise
We were beautiful with sky and blanket laying low

These and more photos are also on Flickr.

Berlin, Winter (October 2017-February 2018)

Posted on By Lena

There’s always this one day in the year when it shifts, the day when all of a sudden, the subway station is warmer than the outdoors again. That’s when you know.

This is the fifth month of winter. There’s not enough sun for all the sad people here anymore.

We try to stay close to keep each other warm. The wind is too harsh and we keep drifting apart, except for the times when the storm hits harder than usual and the rain is so strong that we have to stand closely under the supermarket roof, looking out to water smashing down from the sky, feeling each other’s elbows in our sides and smelling each other’s scents, waiting for the rain to stop, while the slushy machine that’s on all year keeps slushing ice to the sound of Radical Face: Welcome Home.

Oh, the rain. It’s always the rain. It makes the bushes in the back yard below my apartment look like palm trees, it makes my hands cold and my body shiver and the water run through my hair and drip onto my face and first it wets my glasses, then it makes them foggy every time I enter a warmer place. Clear vision is a rarity these days. I have to remind myself to blink from time to time, as a means to make sense of the world right now. As a means to remember the world as it is right now. Because what the world is, is something that makes me want to run, and not run in the good ways like I did in early autumn, when I’d sprint to catch the traffic lights and go for park runs and play catch with the tiniest dog in the world. This is a time when I want to run and hide, or, better, sit on a train and ride it until Endstation, last stop, and stay there forever.

Recently, I read a story of a microwave and two people who are forever stuck in almost kissing, and it reminds me of you. I walk around the corners, blocks, I leave my thoughts in the streets. I spend an entire walk thinking about the cultural implications of house shoes. Little children mostly treat me as a roadblock, and I appreciate the grand gesture in their pure avoidance. I’m counting my steps. I like counting things: steps, stairs, doors, corners, windows, holes in ceilings, books in shelves, pictures on walls, tiles in bathrooms. Most of the time, I’ll only notice that I’m counting again when my head is already beyond ten. A bunch of dried flowers lie on the step in front of the antique book shop. And as, for once, the sun comes out, the day goes by and it’s about to set again, I just stop and stare, stare at the sunset as if it was holding any answers. Outside of a shop, big wreaths are standing outside, and flower arrangements of red roses, the kinds that come with their own stands and backdrops of evergreen and bows to hold them together. CONGRATULATIONS, one says. A big sign above the door reads NOW OPEN. A man walks out of the shop, he has a beard and a melancholic look on his face and as I look at it all, I want to cry over the beauty of life.

I stand on a platform, waiting for a train to the airport, and someone is wearing your perfume (I can smell it over the crowd). As I get on the packed train, I sit across from someone, and without any conversation, we arrange for each other to have as much room as we possibly can, to ensure we’re both comfortable in between it all. After the arrangements are done, for the first time, we briefly look each other in the eyes and nod in respectful acknowledgement, and for the fraction of a second, I feel genuine human connection.

The train stops, I see a woman on the opposite platform. She’s wearing a green coat and bites into a peach, leaning forward. The peach juice drops on the ground. A plane from Munich arrives and nobody is waiting for anyone on it. At a different gate, a woman is waiting. She’s tall, with curly brown hair, and bursting with joy. In one hand, she’s holding a long red rose wrapped in foil; in the other, she has a huge white poster, WELCOME HOME written on it with permanent marker, in giant letters full of impatience and anticipation. She has the excitement of the world written onto her face, and as I look at her, my heart feels like it will just burst with love. The plane I’m on is packed, and the person next to me has broad shoulders. I spend the flight thinking about the radiation of the warmth of the almost-touch of another person.

Sometimes I look at fellow passengers on the subway and imagine what their lives will look like in fifty years. On a Friday morning and another train, I look down on my phone to adjust the music, as I hear someone say my name, question mark. I look up and it’s G., we haven’t met in years, again, and how come it never feels like years, but always is years, and how come that G. is one of these people with whom you just know, know that together, you could’ve been something, but you never were and never will be, and there’s the biggest sadness and sweetness in it. It’s the brutal beauty of subjunctive.

It’s a Sunday morning, and as I walk home at 5am, the snow is falling on my face and rests on my hair. The night is sweet and fading away like the taste of vanilla ice cream and I stay in the street, watching the snow flakes hit the ground and slowly melt away.

Hold on, love. It’s too soon to wake up.

January 2018

Posted on By Lena

Found

  • The dog
  • A better understanding
  • Shells
  • Stones
  • Sticks
  • Not what I was looking for

Wrote

Overheard or said

  • “I accidentally hit him with my pineapple.”
  • “Are you fighting the coconut again?”

Read

A few links to articles I enjoyed reading.

Was

The best pictures

  • The sun shining a bright light onto the forest on the hill, with a backdrop of a very dark sky.
  • The hills in twilight.
  • A sky so full of stars.
  • Opening the curtains and seeing the sunlight through the olive trees.
  • Sitting on a wall, having gelato, watching the sun set over the hill.
  • The view of the city from the top of the hill.
  • Piña Colada on the beach.
  • The jungle, after coming out of the cave.
  • The fire show that ended before it’d really begun.
  • The time I almost accidentally blew up a gas station.
  • The lighthouse.
  • Butterflies, bigger than the palms of my hands.
  • Standing on the boat, the wind blowing the wind into our faces.
  • The rainbow-coloured fish. The corals. And the turquoise sea.
  • The time we got into a fight with a monkey gang.
  • The time someone™? fed the monkey with papaya peel.
  • The time a monkey peed on my shirt.
  • The dinner in the restaurant that was likely not actually a restaurant.
  • Floating in the warm ocean water in the dark, looking at the lights on the beach, the moon and my favourite constellation above my head.

Did

  • Take a horse-fie.
  • Find out that there’s a version of my face without dark under-eye circles.
  • Lock myself out of my suitcase [sic], three hours before a long-haul flight.
  • Forget my wallet at home.
  • Build a LEGO tower to represent myself (it was made of Duplo, had a turtle as foundation, and included a polar bear and an airplane carrying a tiger, a dolphin, and angry superwoman).
  • Drive a scooter for the first time
  • Have the best pineapple of my life
  • Wear a helmet (and we’ll never talk about the ordeal of finding one again; also, let’s all pray that the pictures of that helmet, that was mostly on top of (instead of on) my head, never end up on the internet)
  • Snorkel.
  • Swim through a cave
  • Save a guy from the jungle (not kidding)
  • Make decisions
  • Climb a mountain

Had

  • The most wonderful New Year’s eve with a treasure hunt, outstanding food, and lovely people.
  • The best pasta in the world, cooked by the 87-year-old Nonna.
  • An anxiety attack over the thought of my vacation ending.
  • A very dirty car.
  • A good cry while driving to the airport.
  • Oversized luggage because too many edible souvenirs.
  • A breakdown on a Monday morning.
  • Drinks with dog.
  • Six nights at home.
  • Tim Tams.
  • Tepache.
  • Chinese cucumber salad for life.
  • Thai food every day.
  • Pineapple and fresh coconut all day every day.
  • An in-depth conversation about dragon fruit.
  • Thai pancakes. And sticky rice with Mango!
  • A good conversation about caring, and what happens if you don’t.
  • Another good cry while driving to the airport.
  • The worst cold in combination with a long-haul flight.

Books I finished

  • – (having quite a few in progress is also important though!)

Heard

  • The wind in the olive trees.
  • The city.
  • Tongue twisters in three languages.
  • The waves.
  • The honking scooters.
  • The strange birds.
  • The loudest crickets alive.
  • The humming of the machines.

Watched

  • This is Us: Season 1&2 (FINALLY)
  • Grace and Frankie: Season 4
  • Rita: Season 4

Listened to

Thought about

  • How things end

Twenty-Seventeen

Posted on By Lena

Well, that was fun. …maybe. Somewhere. For someone.

As I started putting together this post, I looked at my 2016 review once more, which I opened with a longer paragraph of a more diplomatic version of “so that was a shit show” — and realised I could just reuse it as-is and only exchange the date.

So, 2017. What can I say. Or, rather, what can anyone say. — It was another year of great dogs (even though we also lost some – looking at you, Smiley). Beyond good dogs, it also brought us another trash fire of a year. It was a really shit year for many people I love and care about; it was a challenging, tiring, and very rough year full of hard work in many life areas for me, and. And, again, the outlook is not very bright. But here we are, now, we made it to the last day of December, so in the spirit of looking back and keeping up with a lovely tradition (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016): here goes. —

The months

January

Returned from Porto, Portugal, where I’d spent the first days of the new year wandering around and reading poetry. Fondue & Farewell. Saw the most fluffy dog alive and Rogue One (and cried and saw it (the movie) again (and cried again) a week later). Went to New York for work (and here are some photos I took on my way to meetings). Had so much coffee, garlic knots, and giant slices of pizza, all while strolling around Manhattan. Met a super cute dog in person (in dog?) who I’d only met online before, and an old friend. Accidentally found the dog park on Madison Square and was in heaven. Went to Strand and am in heaven also. Was mistaken for an American actress trying to imitate a British accent. Took donuts home from NYC (and was very proud of myself when I thought of them again two days later). Got a party hat. Went to a vernissage.

February

Hung out on a couch with cats. Took on violin practice again. Mustache night at the bar and it was the best. Saw the most incredible dance performance at Tanztage Berlin. A bird pooped onto my head, again. Ran out of fucks to give. Aside from that, it was a month of lots of downtime.

March

Continued the beloved pizza & drinks nights. Pizza purse makes a glorious return (but was it ever really gone?). Wrote about working in management & feeling productive (or not). Had Vegemite for the first time in my life and discovered that I have a special Vegemite Face. Kept staring at a tiny airplane on a screen. Said hello in front of a door. Went on a Twitter rant about about the latest tech industry mess. Went to Edinburght and a concert. Saw a dog that looked like a cloud. Did not see an Alpaca, but a good dog in the office. Went to an organ concert in Berlin Cathedral. Had Pasteis de Nata and the first ice cream of the year and my first Tim Tam Slam. Cried at an airport and on a bus ride home.

April

Saw the first flowers bloom. Lifted and carried heavy boxes. April was the month (also the only month) of very successful cooking & baking: of good raspberry streusel tarte, spring vegetable quiche, apple cheddar bacon pizza, blueberry lemon cheesecake, and pan pizza.Started working with a coach. Went to a birthday party and the dentist. Quit smoking. Had wine in the park in the sun.

May

After a successful April, in early May I headed straight into what would become a 7-month-stretch of baking & cooking attempts gone wrong. Went on bike rides (destination: ice cream) and a conference after party. Lay in the park and watched dandelion seeds fly (and lie next to me). Met friends who live too far away. Went to AlterConf Berlin. Made Rhubarb Syrup and had it with Gin on a balcony in the warm late-spring sun. Started writing my upcoming talk. Got shoes and a bag repaired. Got a haircut. Watched the sunset in the park. Worked on big, headache-inducing spreadsheets with timetables and schedules to plan out how to make all my meetings work with the upcoming trip to Australia. Thought about how to tell a story.

June

Played the new Monument Valley. Went to The Lead Developer London, met friends again, and strolled around the city a little bit. Got a Piñata made. Celebrated a wonderful birthday over table tennis and food in a park. Repaired a swing with the help of a shopping cart. Celebrated the five year anniversary of my high school degree (fuck yeah). Went back to Melbourne. Had a lot of coffee and lemonade. Brought flowers. Gave my only talk this year. Had celebratory pizza. Plotted dismantling the patriarchy with a wonderful friend.

July

Still in wintery Melbourne. Was super cold most of the time (*shakes fist at all the houses without insulation, which are basically all the houses*). Cried over a busker’s music. Went to a lot of museums and saw incredibly beautiful art. Went into the suburbs and saw dramatic skies. Stopped by Heidelberg (which is funny because I was in Heidelberg many times in the past, but those times, it was always Heidelberg, Germany). Got to see a fantastic feminist play. Had Glühwein. Went to the coast and walked along a beach. Saw more rainbows than I’ve ever seen in my life. Did not see the stars. Had my first Fish&Chips, first Poutine, and last donuts. Went back to Berlin and wished I hadn’t. Got out of arrivals and saw a sign. Had one of these events that I’d only known from movies, where you’re offline for a certain time (like, say, for 24 hours to travel from Melbourne to Berlin) and a major life event happens while you’re offline and when you learn about it, you’re not just jetlagged but also learn that all has changed. Sat with a lot of sadness. Started a new work journal called work work work work work. Realised that the summer that had visited Berlin briefly had long gone before my return.

August

Had picnic by the river with pickles. Went to the airport. Made anti-cold soup. Became a person who drinks Whiskey (before that, I was someone who drinks Gin). Went to Edinburgh Fringe and saw a bunch of things that will forever be very near and dear to my heart: Katherine Ferns is in Stitches, as well as some of the plays: The Inconvenience of Wings, 100 Ways to Tie a Shoelace, and, way above all: Adam, which (and who) left me breathless and in tears (still does; see also The Adam World Choir <3). AND: What I’d been working on with the team for 8 months now actually happened: I officially changed roles at work, and went from an Engineering Manager role to VP of Engineering (insert :tada:-Emoji), and the two people who’d do my former job in the future started taking on their work. Exciting times with lots of changes.

September

Went up Teufelsberg and had a picnic looking over Berlin. Started collecting chestnuts to keep in my pockets. Went to a concert in Hamburg and stood in mud and pouring rain. Walked past a sign that said Leave Traces and nodded internally. Saw a bridge and accidentally went to Poland. Wanted to catch a ray of sunlight on the drive home. Walked around a lake. Felt and turned the three chestnuts in my jacket pocket and didn’t turn around. Got new glasses. Got good news (for once). Got overalls (best fashion choice of the year). Turned a year older and nothing happened. (For a long time, I’d wanted to celebrate my birthday this month, and celebrate it right; as it was approaching and with all that happened, it was clear that this was not going to happen. Given the circumstances, the birthday was still lovely in the end (and the actual celebration will be six months later.) Went to Amsterdam for the company’s annual offsite. Walked along canals. Had pizza and poetry about comfort food. Was on a boat. Started going on daily walks. Generally very bad month.

October

Slept a lot (recovery sleep). Got a haircut (boy do I not miss the times with short hair and haircuts every six weeks). Many walks in the forests around Berlin (walking my inner dog). Met with excellent people in excellent places. Developed a few new friendships. Spent lots of time and energy working through the fallout of the rest of the year so far.

November

Learned about a pope. Learned about life changes. Ran into a zebra. Carried a print around with me. Spontaneous trip to Munich for JS Kongress and to meet a bunch of wonderful kickass women (again). Great tour around the city (in the pouring rain). Had Meetings and Überraschungseier in my hotel room. First slightly frozen leaves in early mornings. Went into the forests of Potsdam with great humans and dogs. Said farewell to a friend. Restarted something that still felt like something new. Change started to become tangible.

December

Took a train. Made a new dog friend. Had remote Glühwein with friends. Got a special invitation. Carried a tree for someone. Wore tinsel. Had a lot of Pomegranates. Made a very stupid decision with someone. Ran around the city in the rain trying to put together business travel and pick up things for end-of-year-notes for my closest colleagues from the printer and buy cards and make it to a meeting on time. Wrapped up before 9pm on my last work day of the year. Went into hibernation mode for two days. Watched The Last Jedi. Saw the Alpes from above. Ended up in Rome on one of my best trips with one of the best people. Walked 85km around the city and had a ton of food and saw my very first Monet (I’ve dreamed of this since I was six years old) and Hokusai’s Wave and very old tentacle porn and had the best croquette of my life. Was in a balloon room and on a giant Mickey Mouse themed armchair and part of artwork by Erwin Wurm and mesmerised by flowers (and people). Had pizza every day. Lena R. is climbing a mountain (why is she climbing a mountain?). Had a very relaxing time over The Holidays with a bunch of very lovely people over cooking and walks in the daylight and dark, and wine and weird Playstation games. Spent the remainder of the year somewhere in the countryside.

But that, as always, is another story for another time.

2017 in numbers!

(I like numbers)

  • Traveled around 57,680 km: to New York, Edinburgh (2x), London, Melbourne, Rome, Poland (by accident), Amsterdam, and a couple other places (+15% compared to last year)
  • spoke at zero (!) conferences and one wonderful meetup;
  • wrote 10 blog posts, some emails (and my personal inbox is still a mess of sad, unanswered ones), and about a gazillion Slack messages,
  • shared many, many, many Instagram stories (and had a ton of fun with it. Also, I rarely say this, but you should follow me there),
  • posted 510 Tweets (-80% compared to last year),
  • took more than 9,251 photos (+60%),
  • read 18 books plus the equivalent of 78 books in Pocket = 96 books (a bit less than last year since I did less talk research and more reading for pleasure) (~same)
  • listened to music for a lot (my last.fm counts 14,867 songs) (+50%)
  • went to less than a handful of concerts, and Edinburgh Fringe. Generally saw much more plays and dance this year, and they were all performances I enjoyed a lot;
  • changed into a new role at work!,
  • made 637 contributions on GitHub (3x last year’s number; I’m still really not sure why I keep this number in these lists),
  • and had around 800+ cups of coffee (+100%).
  • The 11 songs I listened to the most this year:
    • Daft Punkt — Veridis Quo
    • Tim Minchin — Not Perfect (live)
    • Muse — Knights of Cydonia
    • The Dø — Keep your Lips Sealed (live)
    • Richard O’Brien — Science Fiction/Double Feature
    • Belle and Sebastian — We Were Beautiful
    • Elle King — Good Girls
    • Conor Oberst — Tachycardia
    • Keaton Henson — Beekeeper
    • Alex the Astronaut — Already Home
    • Albert af Ekenstam — 1996
    • The Boxer Rebellion — Pull Yourself Together

Me in the beginning vs me in the end of 2017

 Bits and pieces

  • Learnings: Timezones are hard. Dependencies are hard. Distance is incredibly hard. Processing time is incredibly useful. Sometimes you only know you hit rock bottom when you’re getting better already. I like pastel colours more than neon ones. Beginnings are magical, especially in darker times.
  • Progress: This was the year in which I said no to a lot of things: speaking invitations, conference CfPs, projects, ideas. It was also the year in which I learned a lot about openness and vulnerability, about courage and about finding strength to move forward.
  • Endings & beginnings: Many endings, many heartbreaks, and much pain to work through. Towards the end and last months of the year, a few first new beginnings. It feels like dawn.
  • Change: A fucking lot. Many times, too much at once.
  • People: It was the year of bad timing, the year of connection, reconciliation, and depth, and the year of <3
  • Other noteworthy things: This was the year without a summer. There were many times when walking, strolling (but at relatively high pace) saved me from going nuts (or burning a friend’s couch to the ground). Switched to full-time working from home (instead of working from an office at least once a week) and it was one of the best decisions.
  • The date when I ran out of fucks to give: February 25th.

I’m leaving this year with a full heart, much gratitude, and many, many (so far) unpublished photos and lots of writing in my draft folders and my head, all of which I needed time and distance to sort through, and which I now want to finish and turn into things. And I’m leaving it full of curiosity for what’s coming, and who I’ll be meeting along the way.

those who belong to wilderness
take off your socks, show your fur
and I’ll show you my feathers

(Ellen van Neerven)

Things I’d like to do in 2018

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions, And it’s not like there’s big sense in making plans at this point anyway:

I spent the last months defining some themes and topics that I’m already working on, and have already made progress on some of these, which changed a few things significantly for me and is very exciting. As actual plans go, January will again be a busy month, and beyond that, I have a few more things kind of sort of in the making. But we’ll get to that at the right time. Talking about time: it’s time for me to go. I’ll leave youj with this quote

May the force be with you new year be a better one for you. Good day, good night, and good luck. We’ll meet again on the other side.

On community

Posted on By Lena

As I’m writing these lines, I’m sitting at Munich Airport. I’m waiting for my flight home after spending the last two days on a pretty spontaneuos trip to Munich for JS Kongress. Despite knowing of the event, I hadn’t even thought about, let alone planned to go, since I wasn’t feeling very well (and even less social). Only in early November, I learned that a very lovely friend was going to be there, and suddenly had a chance (and a very good reason) to go as well. The conference itself was great, and there was a bunch of talks that I really enjoyed.

At and around the conference, there was also this very friend, as well as a few more wonderful women who I’ve known for a while, some even for years. Most of us live very far apart, and if we ever meet at all, we only ever meet at conferences. This conference was a chance to reconnect with them over walks and hot beverages and breaks between talks, and an opportunity to exchange stories: from our work, our public speaking, our lives. It left me with a very warm and fuzzy feeling, and, most importantly, with the feeling of community. These few days with these people were a tangible version of some thoughts that have been on my mind for a while now—thoughts about hard times, and about community.

This is what this post is about.—

This year of 2017 has been a pretty exhausting year for me (and as much as I wish that these remaining six weeks will turn everything around, I have a feeling that’s not going to happen). It’s been one of these years that start out pretty okay, until, suddenly, everything is very much not okay anymore. I had a bunch of heavy personal things going on, and was already pretty underwater by the time I went through a big role change at work, which by itself was more challenging for me than I’d expected. This change also meant not working so closely with my amazing team anymore (and there’s another story in here about what happens when, suddenly, you don’t have 14 direct reports anymore, heh), and instead started focusing on and building out my work with a whole new team of awesome team leads. All of this was incredibly exciting and a wonderful opportunity, but: change is hard, and it’s even harder when you’re already stressed out.

In the past, during times of stress and overwhelm, I’d go into survival mode: I’d bundle all my remaining resources, shut down everything that was not absolutely necessary, and retreat to myself in what I’d call cave mode. This would also mean that I’d cut any social ties, to the extent that friendships heavily suffered. For a long time, I’ve been working hard on combatting this behavioural pattern. But cutting back on social ties, neglecting friendships and companionship, is still something I easily fall back into in times like these.—

The realities of this industry don’t help with finding companionship: being a woman in tech in a management role can sometimes be a pretty lonely place to be in. There are still just not that many of us, and this also means that there’s only so many people who share our experiences. And while I interact a lot with people on a daily basis, I also work remotely (and from home), so social interactions don’t just happen, but need facilitation. Lastly, there’s the sheer reality of my work: my work is about 60-90% emotional labour, and this amount of emotional labour, together with some personal things™?, easily results in what I was for most of the last months:

a pretty weak basket case, mostly held together by carbs, Netflix, and anxiety.

Two months ago, I noticed what was happening: It had been ages since I’d looked into one of the countless community Slacks that I’m in, or chatted with someone in a role similar to mine, or even just joined one of my local Women in Tech groups for a night out. It was a time when I was struggling (with) myself, and found it incredibly hard to get out of my survival mode and engage with others out there. I was missing the feeling of connectedness, companionship, and community. The people I met at this conference were a wonderful reminder for me of how important community is.

The bad thing with systemic issues in an industry like the tech industry is that they’re systemic. The good (okay, “good” is a strong word, but you know what I mean) thing is that they are systemic. In societies where so many of us have been taught from early on that we’re less than, where we’ve been taught not to trust ourselves; in spaces where we’re pushed to work twice as hard to get half as far, and where we’re told that only the toughest make it through; and in an industry that keeps diminishing our experiences, qualifications, perspectives, identities, and us: community can also be about reality checks. Like so many of us, I too have inhaled and internalised the societal beliefs that there can only be so many of us that are “successful” (by whatever definition of “success” that you apply here), and that there can only be so many of us that “make it” . It took me a while to learn that all of these beliefs are fundamentally false, misleading, and that they’re robbing us of the greatness and wonderfulness that we can find when we overcome them—and it took me another while to understand how this needs to apply to my work.

For many of us, this is of an industry that we’re in regardless of (the crap, the bullshit, the microaggressions, the *-isms, the setbacks…), and, at the same time, because of (our strengths, our experiences, and all that we are). The people who are here with us are a reminder of the because. The companionship of people who have been or go through similar struggles as we do is a reminder that we’re not alone in those experiences, that we actually are all in this together. Under circumstances like these, there’s great consolation in community. Just the reminder of not being alone in all this can already take off the edge.

The times when we need this community the most will often also be the times when we don’t have the energy, time, emotional resources to engage with it. (And self care needs to take top priority no matter what—but I also needed to learn that there are also times when self care can mean longing for community, and working to find this community.)

All our perspectives and past experiences will differ, but more often than not, the realities we’re in will not differ so much, but will still be similar enough that we can lean in onto each other, learn from each other, move forward with each other.

But community is not just sitting around all our trash fires together to keep warm (while desperately trying not to get burnt)—it can also be this same community that shows us paths forward, give us perspectives for how it can be done (or at least ideas that may be worth a shot), that becomes about being and working together, building things together, and moving forward together.

I have been thinking about all this for a while now. I’ve also been working on incorporating this more into my work—connecting with women and non-binary people, to be in this together, and find ways to support each other and lift each other up. Practically, I asked women colleagues for chats over coffee (yes that also works in a distributed team), and am making a deliberate effort to work with them more closely whenever possible. I reached out to another woman in an engineering management role, and got a chance to speak with her. And I made an effort to reconnect with other women and non-binary people who I hadn’t been in touch with in a while—to move beyond my own old patterns, but, most of all, because I was wondering how much others were experiencing, feeling, the same or a similar way.

This was supposed to be a short, more philosophical note, and now turned into something much longer and vulnerable. It’s taken me a long time to accept my own vulnerability, and even more time to embrace it. What I’m working on now is being with this vulnerability at and in my work (but that, again, is another story for another time).

So often, we’re so caught up in treading water, and don’t notice the others around us doing just the same. For a long time, I haven’t really understood the joy and wonderfulness of community, and the power that comes with it. Now that I’m starting to understand it, I’ll keep trying to find my community. The sense and feeling of community, of connectedness, can change our perspectives. I still have a long way to go, but it has changed mine already. And I greatly hope that, no matter who you are, where you are, and what you do: I hope that, if you want, you will find yours as well.