July 31, 2025 :: 22:10:11 :: My ninety-five cents
At the post office today I saw three labubus hanging next to the counter. “Wow,” I said, “You guys have labubus, that’s crazy.” The guy behind the counter said: “Yeah.”
I had to mail off a transfer slip I got from my family doctor yesterday, so that my insurance will pay for my vaccine from the incident in late January. I sent a transfer in March already, but the next insurance quarter started in April and it didn’t get processed in time. That I had to ask for a second transfer we can chalk up to me getting used to navigating bureaucratic norms in a new place, but I can’t really explain why I waited four months to follow up on such a simple task. Here is another “bureaucratic norms” sort of thing: The post offices only take cash [Question: Do you even have to pay for the labubus in cash?!]. I had exactly ninety-five cents in my left back pocket (50 cents + 20 cents + 20 cents + 5 cents) to pay for postage.
Now I’m sitting in my room and typing this before I go to bed. I’ve packed everything for my trip this weekend and am pretty excited to see nature and a lot of movies and my boyfriend. I can already feel the pain in my shoulders from carrying my big travel backpack around all day. I’ll have a lot to do when I get back, but the idea of sitting in the library every day has gotten a bit more appealing now that I’ve actually done it a bit. It feels like good time I can spend with myself to sit there and think and get something done. The same kind of time I’ll spend on the train tomorrow. And when I get back to Cologne, I’ll have spent a good couple days with the cows on the farm and will be recharged and reset and ready to get everything done. Something in my life has to change. Or many things, actually, but it’s a lot of waiting and listening to find out what change to make first
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July 30, 2025 :: 11:35:19 :: Oops
My morning walk led me today to the university library, where I left my residence permit in the scanner. A very friendly security lady chatted with me while I signed the form saying I had come and picked it back up. Little did she know it expires in less than 48 hours!
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July 27, 2025 :: 23:26:37 :: Ryder and Robin playing hopscotch
I'm biking from R's place back home. It's the same old cold gray summer rainy day, the kind of day I've biked through thousands of times now. It's one of the city rental bikes, it's heavy and I have to stand on the pedals a lot after stopping at lights. I get home and nobody else is there, nobody at all. The sun sets and the sky turns black and I hear my neighbors speaking Spanish into the courtyard from their open window.
At R's place I ended up third wheeling a lot, but it was worth it. I finally got to meet her girlfriend, Q. She's really cool! We all cooked a tomato sort of thing with big 'ol white beans. S and T left to go meet a friend, but until then I'm wrapped up in the same old warm feeling of R's apartment, the same familiar sound of all of our US-American accents.
Yesterday morning when I got up out of bed, I was so exhausted I fell down to the ground and lay there and slept for two more hours, until I finally had enough energy to get up and pour cereal and milk into a bowl. I spent the rest of the morning drooling in front of my laptop. Despite the fatigue and confusion, I managed through sheer force of will to be at least a little productive and make myself a guide of all the libraries I can study in for the next six weeks, when they're open, and if it's faster to get there by bike or by metro. I can't tell you how many hours I've lost just staring at Google Maps, imagining some sort of adventure far away, always weirdly enough in the moments where it feels almost impossible to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the kitchen, or bathroom, or the stairwell, or down the sidewalk, or or or...
And when I did make it down the sidewalk, down the numerous sidewalks and to the café, I met up with Robin and talked a lot about life and spent way too many delicious, delicious dollars [Euros] on lunch and a sad, gray-colored matcha latte (FAIL!). We did make it to Robin's place afterward and studied, very well-behaved and studious of us. Along the way there was a give-and-take bookcase in the neighborhood which we stopped to inspect. One of the books on one of the shelves was titled "A very special juice: URINE." It was a collection of radio interviews about the "sensational possibilities" of pee. One woman had called in to say that her ear had finally stopped itching once she rubbed it daily with a Q-tip dipped in her own fresh morning pee. This experienced shocked me back into an experience I haven't had in a while: the visceral and imminent realization that I live in Germany.
Of course it's always lovely to hang out with Robin and see the cats, and cook together, and giggle constantly. When we were done studying we decided to play hopscotch. I don't know why--I think I had mentioned I'd never played it ever in my life(!!). Robin busted out the good chalk and I busted out a YouTube video from 2010 about how to play hopscotch. Hopping between 1 and 10 wasn't enough for us in the end, we had to add more and more difficult squares all the way to 20. The 20 square was a heart with eyes, ears, and lips. We googled and discussed other games we played or didn't play as kids, and the clapping games and rhymes we remembered from elementary school. But simply nothing was as fun as hopscotch.
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July 24, 2025 :: 13:43:53 :: A third cup of tea
Caffeine sometimes makes me feel very anxious, but I've also come to realize that it's not just the caffeine. The morning is when I usually get started with my day and start chipping away at the ugly and unpleasant stuff I have to do, accompanied with feelings of anxiety--and often a cup of tea! I stopped drinking coffee because it gave me chest pain and made me feel sick. But that doesn't always happen if--for example--I'm drinking some coffee with a friend at a cute café (like I will do Saturday).
Today a cup of tea (black tea) made me sick (not feel well). I think I have to cut out black tea too, now. And of course the half of why I felt so bad was because I was dealing with the current emergency situation in my life: the fact that in exactly a week, my residence permit will expire and I won't have any official documents here in Germany. I've already applied to extend my current permit. That was two months ago. I can't reach the immigration office by phone or email (although believe me, I've tried), and dropping off a letter and relevant documents in person didn't do anything. Now I have to start sending faxes with legal threats in them and going to the offices in person to see if the security guard there will be sympathetic to me if I explain that no, I don't have an appointment, but it is an emergency.
There's not really anything that you, former or current student of Amherst College, can do for me. But it's nice to put my thoughts somewhere and have no one react. I like my life and I should write more positive things here more often. My pinky promise: To write about the musical tonight, the talk with my new friend tomorrow, the café the day after tomorrow. But it's also so nice and therapeutic to put moody thoughts somewhere and have nobody react at all. Talking about my residence permit woes usually makes people freak out or try to calm me down, or remind me that I'm a privileged US-American and they're not going to deny my request to extend my permit, which I wasn't expecting anyway... But they can't approve my request either if they never give me an appointment, which means that in the meantime I'm stuck in a situation where I can't leave the country, I can't work, and I can't finish my degree.
A situation like this--the prospect of learning a new skill (how to sue someone)--does not invite hope into my heart, doesn't make me imagine a beautiful pink sunrise. But it's 2 in the afternoon so I don't know why I was expecting a sunrise anyway. Sometimes all I can do is just smile a bit and reach my hands out, take a breath in, then out, and draw a mental curtain between me and the stress i.e. dread i.e. fear. It's today and not a week from today, and I did what I could to make a week from today better, so now I'll work on making today better. I will clean my room, I will read my papers, I will listen to music!
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July 22, 2025 :: 22:47:57 :: Your transfer is on the way
I am playing dangerous financial and international-legal games. It's not like I'm the type of person to try to live in a foreign country with pennies and no proper documents--I am anal and try to extend the things I need to months in advance--but it just kind of happens to me. What have I done to deserve this?!
In my head I imagine the letter I dropped off at the immigration office still sitting there at the bottom of the mailbox, rotting and growing little mushrooms on its sides.
~~~ :: 19:40:02 :: So exhausted
I had a difficult day
and am listening to Madonna
Hey Mr. DJ... (๑ Ỡ ◡͐ Ỡ๑)ﾉ♡
Put a record on... ┏(‘▀_▀’)ノ♬♪
I wanna dance with my baby ( ♥3♥)
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July 21, 2025 :: 10:51:56 :: Another cup of tea
The water is still limy! I don't remember if it was this bad in Göttingen. Definitely the coffee we had at brunch didn't come with swirling, shimmering mineral hexagons on its surface. I hope this isn't some sort of danger to my health. I feel fatigued, like if someone had come up to me with a baseball bat and hit me all over, so I'm going to drink the tea to try and gain motivation to get out of the house today.
I was in Göttingen over the weekend, and it was fun to see my Amherst people there and bond and reminisce a bit. We saw the new Lilo & Stitch move in an open-air cinema, had a book club meeting (Minor Detail by Adania Shibli), and I was taught some starting wheel gymnastics warmups. Then I hopped back in the train for my five-hour journey back to Cologne. I had looked up all of the geographic regions in advance, so that I could stare out the window more productively. The mountains crouched down more and more until we were back in the plains. Instead of rolling along towards the sea we turned to the west. The view started to strobe violently between green fields and concrete city centers, around which point I fell asleep. And when I woke up, it was just in time to get out at the Cologne Messe/Deutz station and transfer to the metro.
To get to the metro, you have to walk down a very long, kind of steep, rather dusty passageway. It's a lot how I imagine it to be crawling through an air vent, like a spy in a movie. You usually go down to the metro lines in a loose cloud together with a bunch of other people who just took the same train as you. While repeating that same old ritual it struck me that Cologne is pretty much my home, now, or at least the best of a home that I can have right now in my life. After spending a weekend having fun and/or deep conversations with friends nonstop, the silence in the metro felt extra quiet. I was lonely, already, but today I feel at peace with myself.
I have to write a lot of final papers, which involves locking myself in whatever neighborhood library for a couple hours seven days a week. A lot of planning has to go into this so that I can still see friends and clean the apartment. I just find it so sad to stay inside all day when I'm happiest to be alive walking around. But it's just this summer--then I'll never have to write a final paper ever again, probably.
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July 19, 2025 :: 13:25:?? ::
I think Step One of my life is to be a WITNESS, but that’s not very fulfilling. I lack some sort of agency when I’m just watching my thoughts from the sofa.
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July 15, 2025 :: 19:19:12 :: The envelope
I took a strategic route from the metro station to my destination. It always feels a bit threatening to be back downtown navigating the tiny, concretey, touristy streets. I make it to what is essentially the town hall for central Cologne, which in my head should be a large, craggy, and looming castle on a cliff complete with bats flying around and evil laughing in the distance. Instead it's just kind of an office building.
I check and make sure that the immigration office is at this address as well. Which it is. So I pull the heavy, heavy envelope out of my backpack and slip it into the mail slot. The left one. It swooshes down and lands somewhere dark with a dull thud.
...
My new friend. The one who told me about his friendship with eighty-seven-year-old Brunhilde at the fancy bookstore, while we were walking through the Stadtwald talking about books and reading and--yes--Brunhilde!!
My boyfriend laughed when he heard that my new friend's favorite poem is The Panther by Rilke. That is, I suppose, the German equivalent of if I said my favorite poem was some random sonnet by Shakespeare I had to read in high school. But actually in that interaction in the park, I was the one who felt a bit corny, because my favorite poem is a random and really abstract one from Ingeborg Bachmann, which I only know from one of my German courses in Amherst!
We met at the party the night before the big Christopher Street Day parade, the same night with the butch4butch drag show and the intrusive thoughts about the water bottle. My boyfriend and I were talking with our old friend -- my new friend (then a stranger) came over -- he is an old friend(?) of my old friend -- so much friendship!! Then two days later we ran into each other in the park near my house and chatted. Then two days later(?) we hung out and talked about books and Brunhilde.
My university experience in Germany, and thus by extension my social experience of Germany, is sprinkled with this constant sadness that for as much time as I spend with these groups, no one has the time or effort or interest or will to spend some more outside of class. The way things work here is much different than Amherst, and everyone lives in different cities, sometimes really far away, working a part-time job to get through their studies. I feel that's the way it will stay, too, because after Wednesday I'll be done with my classes and just have one (1) internship to do and 1 (one) Master's thesis to write before I won't be a student anymore! The giggles from my Turkish class will fade into the distance... The faces of the cool people I knew from that one seminar blur and smear... And I'm left with a lot of friendly faces who I may very well end up seeing across from me in the grocery store someday. But probably not. And that's a lot of friendly faces.
So that's why it's nice to be reminded that I can still make friends with people--this guy, i.e. my new friend, who I would call my book friend except the other friend I made in real life is arguably also my book friend.
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July 13, 2025 :: 13:07:53 :: Black tea
Our water cooker ... hello?! Our (ahem hem) KETTLE is completely calcified and your tea will end up in the mug with small white chunks of something, no matter how much you swill and cook it with vinegar. #sad ... But I'm drinking it anyway and ingesting whatever minerals have made it my way via the Cologne water infrastructure. I need this bit of caffeine in me because I was up until 3 in the morning last night sitting on a bench talking to my new friend.
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July 11, 2025 :: 11:25:11 :: Ship of Theseus
I promised myself I would start working on stuff the second I got home. By that I meant something dreadfully urgent--but is streaming the new EP from GRTV not also important? He will bring me everything, He will bring me everything!
I've never met a Skating Polly fan in the wild but I've been waiting for that moment for years. Then I get to gloat and say, "You like skating poly?!" The other person: "Yeah." And I say: "That's so funny--because--I actually had art class with Kelli Mayo in the 6th grade!!" [Imagine a heart-eyes emoji here.] I'm not sure anyone actually cares that I had art class in the 6th grade with Kelly Mayo, but it's very entertaining to me. And proof that some good things can come out of Oklahoma City. File along with Chat Pile and Don Cherry.
Every time I've seen a celebrity in real life (not that many times), it's pretty underwhelming, they look just like in the pictures and are real people. Imagine that! [Which is also the official tagline of Oklahoma, just so you know!] What I find really fascinating is when people you knew or sort of knew go out into the world and become notable in ways that have nothing to do with y'all's relation to each other. When I was back home during the worst of the pandemic, I followed Oklahoma City politics with freakish dedication. In the middle of one of the city hall meetings, my old piano teacher, at that point a full-on pastor, walked up to the podium. She was trying to convince the council not to give out five bajillion dollars for [some irrelevant tourist project] and instead to make mental health services more accessible and higher quality in the OKC area. Something like that. I found it very moving. I would file Lori Walke along with Mayo and Cherry and Chat Pile.
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July 7, 2025 :: 18:52:11 :: Fuck my shitty life
I do my dishes by hand and I use bar soap!
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July 5, 2025 :: 23:00ish :: A waking dream
We are dancing after the butch4butch drag show. I see the colorful light pierce through the smoke near the ceiling. I hear the sound of glass shattering. Everyone is dancing. I hear the sound of glass shattering again. Everyone is holding a drink in their hand. Mine is a comically large glass water bottle. I'm sitting down on the crusty couch. I hear the sound of glass shattering. I see the water bottle coming down over my head.
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July 2, 2025 :: 17:43:15 :: The heat wave is ending
The heat wave is on its way out! It started right as my Turkish class (online today because it was hot) was wrapping up. I ripped down the crappy white IKEA duvet cover I use to reflect away the sun and there were big gray clouds in the sky. It thundered and rained and the hot smell of the pavement in the courtyard of my apartment building wafted up to me. The rain ruined my plans to go to the lake this afternoon with friends, but it's okay because we'll all see each other Friday. The tabbouleh I made for us is still sitting in the fridge, so I hope when I eat it here in a bit the flavors will have melded really well.
These sorts of temperatures, in a country where every building is made to keep in the heat, and air conditioning only exists in stores--it's quite educational. Our Turkish professor forgot to mute himself as he went to grab some more water and was groaning and swearing about how sweaty he was on his way out of the office. For me it was a reminder that it really was hot as hell and that these temperatures are difficult to deal with and hard on your body. I kind of forget that sometimes
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June 30, 2025 :: 21:55:55 :: My graffiti walk
I've been amused and intrigued lately by two of my friends who are both very creative and get this creativity out of their system by (among many other things) tagging and graffiti-ing across Cologne. Once, at a birthday party, a friend of a friend talked to me about how paying attention to street art makes the whole city an art exhibit, and while most tags on lampposts and power boxes aren't on the same aesthetic level as a mural, it still adds something to your experience of the world to notice them. Like knowing the names for the trees along the street, or being able to tell which birds are singing at any given moment. Just the other day I actually walked past a tag that one of these friends had made just the day before. It was like knowing a sidewalk dandelion on a personal level.
I headed out to the east-ish on a graffiti walk, keeping my eyes open for who tagged what and where and how. I went through the park, past a lot of dorms, and through a church courtyard (St. Stephan--it had a really cool bell tower). This is all rich people territory and while my apartment building and the whole neighborhood is plastered with the word METH (a prolific Cologne graffitist), I can imagine people here would be a lot less tolerant. There was a lot of HACF and CARE and this one person, PARX, whose past steps I could trace so easily because they had tagged about once every two feet. Since I've been on walks with people who tag, I had the visual vocabulary in my mind to imagine what it must have been like as PARX walked through that side street at night, stopping at every red-and-white bike barrier to mark that they were there.