Why does that happen? Nobody wants a hardcover book. They are hard to carry around. They are hard to hold up in bed. They are twice the price. They are utterly decadent. Nobody wants them.

What happens when you don’t agree with your professor about what constitutes „good writing“? I know I’m supposed to be at college to learn from people who are presumably smarter than me, but the vast gaps in academic perspective between members of different disciplines makes it possible for people who might not really even be that smart to entrench themselves in specifically divisional jargon and stump everyone else into thinking they’re doing significant work. These teachers then expect their students to write in the way that made them successful. Every class a uniquely challenging exercise in changing my personal writing style to please my teachers–especially English classes. I don’t see what can possibly be done to develop my writing except to break free of the intellectually elitist intimidation of academia.

This is something that never happens in California. The leaves are flying off the trees by the bucketful, and the sun is shining through the remaining red foliage, making the ground look like a bushel of squash. The air is warm even when it’s cloudy. Last night I had a dream about going to outer space. I don’t remember anything particularly notable happening. I just remember getting in a spaceship, taking off, easily breaking through the ozone layer, and being surrounded by stars. Other passengers of the ship were able to access the internet in the air. Something about the experience made me incredibly happy. I even slept in so that I’d be able to stay there longer. And then I woke up, and read, and took a shower. And I got a phone call from Powell’s, a great Hyde Park bookstore. I got the job!
„I now work in a bookstore,“ I thought as I walked down the sidewalk with my bike in one hand and my phone in the other. Leaves swirled everywhere. A friend passed by on the opposite sidewalk and waved. I spent the afternoon reading and eating lentil soup in a courtyard.
The leaves swirl two blocks west from my apartment building, and settle on a large lawn. There’s the home of Barack Obama. His entire block is cordoned off and guarded 24 hours a day by Secret Service. The synagogue across the street from his house had to write up an official guest list two days ahead of Rosh Hashanah for review by the federal government. We all know the reason why the security is there, and it’s not a pretty one.
Racism is not a specifically American problem, but we have a special kind of racism here. Irresponsible policy and overt racism kept former slaves in a position of economic servitude until well after the end of the Civil War. The vast majority of the country’s black population is still poor, marginalized, and virtually disconnected from political life. I live on the virtually all black South Side of Chicago. When a student at my school was killed last spring, the news rang out far and wide. Two weeks later, two pregnant black women were found burnt and beaten to death in dumpsters less than a mile from my home. All they got was a police blotter. We’ve thrown our grandmothers’ lawn jockeys into the basement and turned up the Luda, but American whites are still racist.
A recent NY Times Opinion piece discusses the most horrifying manifestation of this latent racism I’ve scene in years. Only in America would a candidate encourage his voting base to decry the opponent because of the color of his skin. I’m voting for Obama for the same reason that he has been followed by Secret Service longer than any other presidential candidate in national history. He has the capacity and the information to bring that most uniquely American problem into the public eye.
After the Holocaust, Theodor Adorno lamented the fact that no one was allowed to say anything bad about the Jews anymore. He reasoned that as long as anti-semitic opinions remained unvoiced they remained unchallenged. Our opinions have remained unchallenged and–until now–unvoiced. Here we are, the silent racists of the 21st century, delighting in our Indian Summer as the great-great-grandchildren of slaves get shot on the bus going home from school. As they try in vain to get competent medical care. Maybe, by the time this weather anomaly has passed, we’ll have a president who actually cares about the needs of the whole country, and not just the „AMERCAINS.“ Or maybe we’ll sit here a little longer, staring up at the sun.

Whatever happened to the sanctity of the library? A long time ago, someone told me that it always has to be quiet in the library. „Shhh kid, this is the library.“ Especially now, in this time of emotional tumult and academic suicide, this time of rambunctious roommates and German listening exercises, I count on the library to be there for me, as I remember it being. As it needs to be. But now I find, it is no more. On the first floor chatter is allowed. Vestiges of conversations in the lobby waft across the computer cubicles and wither away on their way to the window-facing armchairs. Traditionally, the sound goes no further than this. But alas! We find that the second floor is no more amenable to working than a dorm lounge. The third, seeming no more promising, we pass. And on the fourth, oh fourth floor, bastion of solitude, quiet heaven of peace, some shitty econ majors march in, sit down, and start yelling something about game theory. This day, this moment, this breath marks the end of silence. I would suggest a moment of silence, but the days of memorial are apparently also gone.

Good news and bad news about extracurricular life:
As always, bad news first. The post-apocalyptic end of capitalism economy is making it impossible to find a job anywhere, even in the bookstores of Hyde Park. This is improbable as there are so many bookstores in Hyde Park that there is a Hyde Park Booksellers Association. The Seminary Co-op, one of the largest academic bookstores in the country, employs about 15 people at a time, not including managers. Furthermore, in a neighborhood full of academics and people too poor to invest, there should technically not be too much impact.
The good news is that not having a job opens up my schedule, which means I can go and see a lot of Ingmar Bergman movies and interview established writers for school publications. And, theoretically, finish all my reading for class. Theoretically. In real life it means that I’m spending a lot of time redecorating my room.

I got home from Europe a few days ago. Sorry I didn’t post so often. You blog-readers (there are about four of you) didn’t get to hear half of my good stories. I was too busy. I’m thinking of keeping this as an everyday blog, so don’t give up on me.

I have already been in Berlin for almost two weeks, but it has felt like barely a weekend. Every day Brandon and I have gone straight from class into the city, and we rarely get home before 10:30. There is always something new to see, and it’s possible to fill several days without ever having looked at a guidebook, simply drifting down the hip, densely-packed rows of fashionable shops and adorable cafes. The consumer paradise is punctuated often–more often in the former east Berlin–by crumbling buildings and makeshift wooden structures blanketed in several layers of colorful graffiti and event flyers. Sometimes these are artists communes, sometimes playgrounds. Across the street from the most famous of these, Tacheles, is a block of upscale restaurants; down the street is Berlin’s little sister business district, Friedrichstraße.

Even the kids are punks in Berlin's anarchist playgrounds

The real business district is Potsdamer Platz, which is notable for little besides its close proximity to the Brandenburger Tor on one side and the city’s cultural complex Kulturforum on the other. Kulturforum is set up somewhat like a suburban American strip mall. Here is the Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Mies van der Rohe. Across the street, past the church and four parking lots, you’ll find the Gemäldegalerie. Across a few more parking lots, find the Berliner Symphoniker. One more and you’re at the Museum of Musical Instruments, which has a working Wurlitzer Organ!

Any given surface in Tacheles

The analog between a mall and an arts complex works here on more than one level. Berlin consumes art like Los Gatos teenagers consume jeans from American Eagle. The gallery scene here is out of control, especially considering the relative wealth of the city. It’s poor. Berlin is the poorest state in Germany, and also the cheapest. Despite its monetary concerns, Berlin remains the only state whose universities are completely free. Its priorities are clearly in order. So how does a city so poor have enough wealthy citizens to buy up the slews of over 5,000 € pieces of fine art that are on display for free in its hundreds of vibrant, cutting-edge galleries? I can’t answer that question, but I’m glad that someone’s buying them. Those mysterious patrons make possible events like regular mass opening parties on Heidestraße, where the wine is free, the mixed drinks are freer, and galleries stay open catering to the culturally intoxicated hundreds well into the night. Even better, young parents bring their kids.

The German attitude toward children and art is admirable, if a little bit dangerous. Parents are pleased to expose their kids to art, no matter how impenetrable, at a very young age. The good news about impenetrable art is that it’s often also the pretty fun. A group of young girls explored the presence of a James Ireland minimalist sculpture consisting of iron frames and colored glass while their parents caught up with friends at Haunch of Venison Berlin last Friday. Realizing that one of the frames was empty, they mimed touching glass inside it. The miming continued throughout the gallery, until an amused father shushed them and handed out glasses of water. This afternoon, a mother brought her two small children into Galerie Oko to look at the ostentatious motorcycle sculptures of Ushio Shinohara. Seeing them come in, the Italian gallery manager shook his head and said under his breath, „Sometimes Germans don’t care about anything.“ before walking out to make sure nothing got broken.

It’s true, Berliners do allow destructive forces to get very close to art, but that is not nearly so troubling as what they let into their food. This place is teeming with bees. Every display bakery display case is full of them, crawling on the iced black & white cookies, sucking sugar off the cinnamon buns, doing horrible disgusting dancing loops around apple strudel. As soon as food is in my hand, a bee will show up to also be on my hand. And, as you may have guessed, this entire post has just been a clumsy ramble toward this for all things pretty mediocre photo of a bee inside a sugar dispenser.

I'm sorry it has to be this way.

We’re in Berlin for two days now, and it’s fantastic. Paul is here, too. We’re having a good time. In fact, too good to have time to write about it. So far Berlin is the best city ever. More later.

I ended up going to Neuschwanstein after all. Despite the crankiness of my last post, I must admit that the excursion was worth taking. However, it definitely wasn’t because of Castle Neuschwanstein, which was even kitschier than expected. The outlook was bleak from the outset: before the bus even stopped at the foot of the hill leading to the castle, Brandon and I had already decided that it looked like it was made out of plastic. A closer inspection made the castle seem even more fake, and the call number system of announcing tours only heightened the Disney effect. It turns out that the facade of Neuschwanstein wasn’t the only thing that inspired old Walt; he probably learned a thing or two about herding tourists there, too.

After the tourist has fought epic crowds to get through the castle’s front gate, he must work hard to maintain his position in the courtyard until his number is called. At that point, he can enter one of three fenced-in line areas. These strongly resemble the passages that cows follow to the slaughter. The only difference is that you pay nine euros to secure a place in one of these. When the tour time comes, the gate at the end of the fence swings open, and a nice young Bavarian man encourages the tourist to go forward, inward, into the Fairy Tale Castle. Thus begins a 40-minute express jog through the elaborate, silly rooms with elaborate, silly paintings of scenes from Wagner operas on the walls. The tour dumps the tourist right in front of a silly gift shop–one of two in the castle. In fact, I’m fairly sure that about half of the castle is occupied by commercial operations.

We stayed in a state-owned hostel in Oberstdorf that night. It turns out that every German establishment with a cash register–even state-owned youth hostels–sells alcohol. And so I and some friends found ourselves wandering around a rural Alpen community at midnight with a hostel desk attendant named „Ringo“ (he had the hair) looking for cows to tip. Luckily (or unluckily; it’s hard to tell) it was too cold for cows to be at pasture overnight. We came back less injured than we would have to find that the entire hostel was awake, and a good portion of it was speaking very loudly.

After breakfast, we got onto a bus, were told that we as a group were not tough enough to enjoy a „real hike in the Alps“, had our shoes inspected for appropriate soles, and were discouraged from coming. By „we“ I really do mean everyone in the bus. Our hike leader was very serious about his Wanderung. I decided to come despite the fact that my shoes had been judged unsuitable. The hike turned out to be not the lowest common denominator country stroll I had expected, and rather a breakneck scramble up the melting-wet face of Mount Fellhorn. I’m sorry mom, but I really messed up my Campers.

The good news is that when we finally made it to the top I came the closest I’ve ever come to Arcadia. A few happy-looking people of all ages relaxed and walked around a clear blue lake nestled in a ring of rolling green hills. Large brown dairy cows with giant bells on their necks used the same paths as the hikers, providing surprisingly pleasant background music. A few dragonflies buzzed over the lake and the sun shone improbably bright. It’s so sad that Ludwig spent so much money to build a personal paradise when something like this was already so close.

Bavarian politicians appear to be elected based on the roundness of their faces, with the second criterion being the magnificence of their gray mustaches. Beer consumption comes in at a close third. I have learned this from looking at campaign posters and the front page of the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Kurt Beck and Franz Maget celebrate useless castles

Fun fact: Ludwig II sold Bavaria to Otto von Bismarck of Prussia in 1821 so he could build more castles. The more you know! about Bavarian politics.