I´m waiting for the thunder storm to finally arrive, everything is so sticky and sweaty and I´m sending Tinder messages to guys I´m pretty sure I don´t even like while my cat throws up under the bed. It´s a lot of vomit AND I´M NOT CLEANING IT UP (again). Of course i do. And then I feel sick about myself for already doing things I don´t really want to before the whole thing has started yet. But it´s probably just the sweltering heat making me nauseous and I might also be feeling guilty for ordering those dresses on sale.

Dear girls (and boys and everyone else), please consider signing up for Tinder! There are a lot of people out there who seem to be genuinely nice and are still waiting for their perfect match, those "certified nerds" who like to sing, the guys once featured on Google Street View and Blade Night fans should really not end up alone! Maybe you´d like to pick one up and make him/her your own, wouldn´t that be sweet? And I might be quite happy alone after all...

I have no idea how to figure this relationship stuff out, I don´t even know where to begin. But it basically comes all down to this - my body and its ways: I find it really distressing communicating my chronic ailments when meeting new people, since I´m quite afraid it might be appalling. Should I go with "I have other plans, sorry!" at first instead of "I´m not feeling so good today and all the other days but we can still try to do something as long as it´s okay that I might have to hop on my bike very urgently, ride home and lie down with a hot-water bottle.", since it will come out pretty soon anyway. My sister says it´s crazy to tell this to a guy when you go for ice cream for the first time ever, but all I want to do is blurt out "I´m right in the middle of what seems to be a huge flare up of LENA DUNHAM DISEASE since Easter and I don´t even know if I can actually eat that ice cream or feel even sicker after I do, because my tummy hurts all over all the fucking time and no, there´s apparently nothing to be done about it. And I think this is very unbearable, I´m unbearable and now you do too, right?! So, bye!". And if we´d go even further than that ice cream, how do I share a bed with someone when the nightly cramps hit and I can´t move (or I really do have to move around and start to toss and turn for hours) and need to concentrate very hard to just breath through it, telling myself this is just some kind of nightmare and it will fade after some time. Can I tell him to the spend the night on the couch or send him home since I couldn´t possibly bear a witness to all of this? And, friends, we´re only talking about sleeping here, nothing more! I´m having a very hard time imagining how someone could deal with this, with me, and the usual "But you have to leave that up to them and they probably would want to very much." psychologist´s answer feels very unreal. Why revealing this seems to be such an urgent need I have no idea, it is just something I feel I need to get out of the way before we can move on to all the other things about me, about you. Probably my body needs to make sure that it´s taken care of at all times, that there´s a safe space which in my case means there´s always a way out and I don´t have to start coming up with answers to all those "But why?!" questions. It is a very self-absorbed body and I have to watch out to not be absorbed whole by it. By the way, Lena also blessed us with a fabulous quote to life by: "After all, a walk is just a slow march."

When I wake up still dazed by a dream or after a really good sleep (rare) and I´m spared my reality for a few more blurry blinks I try very hard not to move, to not wake up all that comes with being me. It feels like I just don´t have it in me to go there again and again, day after day, maddening symptom after maddening symptom, trying to find things to blame a change to the worse on - quark with redcurrants? Iron supplements? Sitting on a park bench? Three rounds of antibiotics in three months?

My sister calls me late at night, whispering into the phone asking if I´m still awake - at first I think something terrible has happend until I realize she is actually crying very quietly with laughter. Before that I had already gotten a text message telling me she is spending her boyfriend´s grandfather´s 90th birthday banned to the kids´ table on the crumbling families´ French country estate about to be auctioned off and she just spilled red wine on the carpet. Now she says that indeed it didn´t end there, she also managed to break off two legs off an antique arm chair with hand stitched upholstering just by sitting on it because it was that worm eaten. She then decided she should probably retire to bed right away to avoid further havoc but getting completely lost on the grounds ended up in the wrong room where some uncle was reading naked in bed. We laugh so hard my pillow is wet with tears when I hang up. She says it is so beautiful there she has never seen anything like it. I don´t think I have either.

Both my parents suffered a garden loss this year, the over a hundred years old plum tree my dad loved so much fell during a rain storm and took with it an unripe harvest of thousands of ombre green-violet fruits. This will be the first year this tree won´t give W diarrhea in late summer - as you can tell he´s quite saddend by that fact. And my mum has been in a fierce battle with the box tree moth since it reached our town this Spring, trying all kinds of remedies to no avail. She has now given up on her meticulously cut spirals, balls and hedge-lined flower beds and cut it all down, so she won´t have to witness the spectacular destruction anymore.

These days I try to get W into writing his hilarious little poems again, so he got the task to write something about their garden adventures - he says they are not really good in handwriting but would be quite amazing when printed. That´s an interesting approach for a poet but I promised him to turn them into a book anyway as soon as he has delivered a whole bunch of them.

Some of those pictures were taken back in May, when the box hedges looked still kind of okay, so that´s why everything is such a bright green and the garden is full of peonies and tulips. It was also my birthday back then hence the cookies and matching pillowcase I got from my mum.

(This one has been in the works for such a long time now, which probably didn´t make it any better - so, I just press publish and be done with it... enjoy the ride!)

Two reactions to my ALL OUT blog post - both from the same friend:

1. I should finally join Tinder using that first picture I posted, it would get me a lot of matches.

2. Writing about going mad on social media is probably not going to affect my upcoming dating business, but I really need to go easy on the cat picture posting - this does actually make me look crazy.

I´m not regretting anything, neither writing about it - THE PUZZLING WAY THAT WRITING HEALS THE BODY. So, in tune with said post: You know you got it if it makes you feel good, oh, yes indeed!

A lot of things happening here on this blog (and in real life) are partially my sisters "fault", she keeps encouraging me to always go a step further in the wild direction, so here we go, on and on: her plan for a very long time now has been to find me a date and since it hasn´t happened "naturally" so far, we signed me up for a dating service and app while she stayed over for a while, working on her thesis and being in need of some real deal procrastination. Not a fan of the web thing, but I have been swiping now for a few days and it has been a blast so far (I actually did use the picture my friend suggested)! By now we are full on "Pro Tinder" - which is also the title of her little performance art piece shown above, where she swipes a passport photograph of her boyfriend to the right all the time and I get to do whatever I want to on my little device.

Somehow most of the profiles are disturbingly alike - apparently all a woman wants is a man who likes his beer, rides a bike in full gear and is very into skiing down a mountain, maybe throw a beach in there too, or (an uncomfortable looking selfie in) a car - or better yet: employment at Audi (must be a regional thing, unless working there actually requires having a Tinder account). Also the amount of people skydiving is quite stunning, the sky must be riddled with falling people! And so many men on horses - who knew! It also took me a while to find out what an ONS is, the height thing I still haven´t figured out, but then again - I´m really new to the whole dating situation.

Inspired by all this I included the following in my profile pictures to help things along a bit:
- my collection of tiny beer mugs
- an assortment of bikes stored away in my shed
- me skiing (this won´t ever happen, so I had to draw it for you)
- I also had no recent picture of me on a beach, but I bet I´d look that stunning
- since I don´t even have a drivers license I had to make up the car picture too, plus the one of me wearing a dirndl, holding a Mass

And for almost full disclosure, here are some other things you might want to know about me:

Blessed with anxieties about enclosed spaces and travel.

Afraid of heights.

I have a damaged spine and some other ailments - most of the time no one notices and I don´t really care, but sometimes I´m having a hard time dealing with being failed by my body. This also keeps me from doing adventure sports (and running) (and camping).

Reproductively challenged - we might have to be happy with just each other or buy a baby on Ebay.

Haven´t been in a relationship for an embarrassingly long time.
I am not a minimalist, I´m not even pretending to be one.
Feminist.
Tasteful - my sister says so, I´d add "in a slightly off way".
She also thinks I should mention that I don´t pay rent, as this might make me very desirable (she´s still a student on her way to become an artist/dancer, maybe that´s why).

Collector of odd things (see tiny beer mugs - I don´t even drink beer by the way).

Frighteningly honest about myself (see this blog).

Got clinically diagnosed with a severe desire for freedom.

Completely fine with not sharing every hobby - you´re not expected to prune my Sweet Juliet roses with me (the William Morris is sadly not doing so fine this year), also I will not accompany you on your crossing-the-alps-rafting-trip-thing (or running) or play video games with you.

Love my work (well, I think I´m currently transitioning to something else, but still) AND every distraction I can get from it.

Overall peaceful person, but some things are unnegotiable - sorry.

Laugh a lot and am easily made to do so.

I love people, they are my number one remedy for a lot of things.

Really like do go out and do stuff - often on my own, but that´s actually very negotiable in case someone wants to tag along. I´d like that a lot. 

You´d get access to over a hundred cook books and so many more others (and a vast collection of vintage tableware - you could become a food stylist if you´d want to).

I´m not scary crazy in real life, I save that exclusively for this blog.

What I want? I think I know. 

Don´t get me wrong, I´m not a fool (maybe foolish, I´m fine with that) - I don´t expect any miracles, but so far I have found a lot of beautiful things over the life span of this blog, so why not see if it can help me find the real deal. Also this is not a prank nor a project or 40 DAYS OF DATING, this is just me. Maybe it´s just proof of a new mindset, a start, a hello, another all out.

So, in case you´re not one of my ex-boyfriends who are probably the only male persons reading this blog + the guy from my neighborhood who´s getting married in the next couple of weeks (congratulations by the way!) - I took the first step, let the games begin! 







Wait for the Tinder date bit: THEY USE MY BODY AS THE SHAPE AND MY FACE FOR THE INSPIRATION.

Ich kann nicht mehr schlafen. I lost sleep. Not all of it, but the most important part - falling asleep. It was such an easy thing to do and now it´s gone. Warum? Das Leben, deswegen. And then it all came back and it was bliss.

Ich träume auch nicht mehr. Und dann doch: Wir wollen in zwanzig Minuten nach London fahren. Aber allen tut was weh und keiner hat Tabletten. Also verschieben wir es auf eine Stunde später und holen welche von zu Hause, einer kauft glaub ich auch noch Kondome in der Apotheke. Seine Jacke ist blau, Gore-Tex-blau. Ich weiß, wer er ist, aber warum ist er so klein?

A few nights later condom guy has created a really exciting treasure hunt for me (apparently it´s my dream birthday), the clue cards are yellow, he even spelled his name wrong. I take all of my friends along, everyone seems to really like me - there are tears of joy. We never get to finish it though, the dream takes a turn somewhere. 

This summer needs to slow down. Every summer before that went by too fast, this one is just the same. No more linden tree scented bike rides, meadows already parched by the sun, lavender and oregano in full bloom and there are already quite threatening buds on the Michaelmas diasies - no no no no! I hate those - and phlox, oceans of phlox! And why are there so many hipster sedum plants in my garden, about to burst into those ombre flowers everyone is so crazy about despite the fact that all they do is announcing f... fall?!  I´m this close to do a bit of brutal weeding, but tearing out these signs of pre-fall just won´t keep the seasons from changing.

So soaking it up it is! That´s how I do it: trying to avoid bladder and yeast infections at the swimming pool - might even go for those greasy fries next time, they go so well with chlorinated water. Maybe I could also find out if that circling of crows over the pool is a reoccurring thing as soon as the divers line up - are they really hoping for calamities? Forcing my friends to visit the most bustling places of our city at night, so I can watch people queue for ice cream and be so young - so young! Deepening that Birkenstock Arizona shaped tan on my feet and acquiring more freckles now that I finally don´t mistake the one on my lip for a chocolate stain anymore trying to rub it off. And how come I´m still waiting for the first mosquito bite of the season? I really have to use my rose scented geranium leaves to finally make this very fragrant POUND CAKE again. This is not a particularly summery thing but I do like my way of calculating and since these new pieces are getting more elaborated every single day it certainly keeps adding up a lot - it´s gold-plating now, who knew? And then of course there´s W singing his signature Marilyn Monroe song at the Jazz festival - they had a prime spot at a prime time this year and a great crowd who loved them:

Running wild, lost control.
Running wild, mighty bold.
Feeling gay, reckless too,
carefree mind all the time, never blue.
Always going, don't know where,
always showing... I don't care!
Don't love nobody, it's not worthwhile.
All alone and running wild!


My friend says he knows when I´m not writing the truth. He knows it´s never enough. It´s hard to appreciate the little things when what you really want is huge. 

Und dann sagt der Freund: "Darf ich was Romantisches sagen? Dir fehlt die Liebe." Und ich sage: "I know." And this time I mean it.




The bloody amazing CHARM BRACELET PRINT is by the wonderful FAYE MOOREHOUSE.
The BUTT BARRETTE is by us and it doesn´t get old ever.


Always, always, always NAYYIRAH WAHEED.

our BOOKCLUB will be meeting again on 26.7., 19.30
and we will be discussing TSCHICK by WOLFGANG HERRNDORF
this means friendship, the hell that is puberty and first love, 
a hot summer school holiday and of course a stolen Lada

in case you want to join, let me know (mail(at)wsake.com) and i´ll set you up with the details
PLEASE NOTE: these meetings are fun, not work!

FAMILY SCORES

Elsa Artmann und Samuel Duvoisin

Buch + Performance
Mittwoch, 12.7.2017, 14.45
Studiotheater Zentrum für Zeitgenössischen Tanz Köln

Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, wann ich begann, mit meiner Schwester Anna Englisch zu sprechen. Es mag in Leipzig leichter gewesen sein, als ich mich bemühte, meinen bayerischen Dialekt abzulegen und es mich anstrengte, beim Telefonieren darin zurückzufallen. Unser Englisch ist angelehnt an die Serien und Late-Night Shows, die wir schauen und ziemlich unvollkommen. Wir sprechen mit deutlichem deutschen Akzent und fügen deutsche Wörter ein, wann immer uns die englischen fehlen.

Über Intimes auf Englisch zu sprechen, macht es für mich weniger wirklich, mehr zu einer Inszenierung. Ich höre mir dann zu wie einer Figur aus einer Sitcom. Alles wird zu einer Anekdote, fast alles wird mit einer Redewendung beantwortbar, aber alles wird auch möglicherweise bedeutend, möglicherweise ein Wendepunkt. Auch die Konversationen mit mir selbst, die ich fahrradfahrend auf dem Weg von der Uni nach Hause führe, sind oft auf Englisch.

Oft träume ich hier davon, dass jemand mich interviewt. Weil ich in irgendetwas sehr erfolgreich geworden bin, sitze ich mit jemandem auf einer Couch und werde um Auskunft gefragt, meistens über mich selbst. Eine dieser Fragen, die mir ein etwas ignoranter, aber höflicher Host in meinem Kopf stellt, lautet: Würden Sie sagen, dass der Erfolg Sie verändert hat? Oder sind Sie für die Freunde von früher immer noch dieselbe? Und ich würde antworten: If you ask me whether success has changed me or whether I am still the same – my answer would be that of course success changed me since it was the very purpose of my being successful to change me – and no, I am not the same to the friends of old days – the very purpose of my being successful was leaving my old friends behind. Success is about being able to choose your environment, and what I could decide was whether I wanted to belong or to be successful.

Dancing enables me to create a body which has less and less in common with the bodies I visibly share genes with. We lose resemblance, and I win resemblance to bodies of my choice. I aim to wrap my pelvis like my teacher Kojiro Imada does, and in my daily repetition I am going to succeed. All the training makes it possible for me to physically exist outside my family - to be more familiar with others than with my family. My body is shaped by practices so substantially different that even ageing, even my choice of a partner, even my social class cannot smooth over the difference between me and them.

Still, something keeps me from identifying fully with my dancerly work. My practice always has been a fragmented one. I am always in one place negotiating my absence from other places. Looking into the mirror in my ballet tights I ask – Am I a dancer, though? Can I, as the National Dance Company Wales puts it in their call for new dancers, join the family?

Or is there too much in this aiming and trying body that wants to belong to an environment less fruitful, less fluent, less ambitious, less interested in the world?

According to Hannah Ahrendt, privacy is necessary for the publicly irrelevant to survive. So if you want to keep a person in her home, make her case so specific, so individual, so unrelatable there will be no other place for her to survive – but inside.

I refuse to be associated with any domestic work. I refused to learn about gardening or cooking as a child, and I still proof no talent in making a room cosy or welcoming. Whenever it is my turn to cook and I find myself waiting for my boyfriend with the dinner ready, I suddenly feel the depression of a housewife of 30 years on my shoulders. I choose to lie to strangers about my everyday life to not make them assume I could enjoy cooking a soup or arranging flowers or going shopping. I take it as part of my fight for my artistic work to be taken seriously. I keep my distance to the beautiful and carefully arranged work of female bloggers I know, their writings and photographs about food, fashion, gardening, children, health. And still, at the age of 27, I visit the house of my parents to find the inside of these walls is still the proudest presenter of my work, and thus, simply by not excelling in art business, I have become a woman in her place. My art is being domestic.

But also, my art is being domestic in my place, and I am represented my many paintings in the spaces I myself very rarely visit. In the last months I changed the pictures I sent or brought home to drawings of family-themed scores.

Ich nehme einen Körper ein und verlasse die Zeichnung!

Ich bin ein ausgedehnter Pudding mit gespannter Oberfläche geworden und vibriere durch die Bewegungen der anderen, ich kann gedrückt und geschoben werden. Ich verlasse meinen Körper nicht mehr.

Umso intensiver meine Körperverfassung, desto mehr muss ich mich selber auffordern, in Relation zu bleiben.

Wie verfahre ich, wenn ich eine eingenommene Körperlichkeit wandeln möchte, ohne sie zu verlassen?

Wenn ich mich mit dem Rücken zu den anderen befinde, wie erfahre ich dann über meine räumliche Ausbreitung etwas über meine Reaktionen? Ich teile mir ein Organ mit jemand anderem.Was ist die Funktion des Organs, das du wirst?

Ein Organ zu sein, hilft, um die Pose, die eine gezeichnete, abgeschlossene Figur vorgibt, in Bewegung zu bringen. Ein Organ wabbelt, bläst sich auf, schmiert. Ist tendenziell weich und leicht, kann aber auch zittern? Andere Körper können durch ihre Bewegung den eigenen Körper eindrücken, verschieben. Wenn du fällst, fall ich auch, weil sich dein Körper ungesehen in meinen Raum schiebt.

Der Raum war für mich so groß, dass ich ihn nicht erfassen konnte. Da ich in einem Körper war, der größer ist als ich, war für mich der Raum größer als der, in dem ich mich befinde. Ich habe mich kaum von meinem Platz bewegt und den Raum mittels Bewegung wenig benutzt. Ich war sehr damit beschäftigt, mich zu meinem Körper und dem Körper, der größer ist als ich, in Beziehung zu setzen, die Form zu füllen. Zum anderen spielt die Relation zwischen mir und den anderen eine Rolle: Wie kann ich mich an sie schmiegen, wenn ich gar nicht weiß, wie groß ihr Körper ist?

Feuerholz

Drei Tänzer_innen stellen sich einander zugewandt auf und strecken die Arme mit erhobenem Zeigefinger seitlich diagonal in die Luft. Sie sind Äste. Die Arme sind Zweige. Etwa gleichzeitig fallen sie aufeinander. Während sie in ihrer Pyramidenanordnung langsam zu Boden rutschen, erzählt eine von ihnen eine Familienanekdote.

Meine Mama fragt immer, wenn ich sie anrufe: Hast du schon gegessen? Obwohl hier zehn Uhr abend ist, fragt sie immer das gleiche. Und ich sage ja, und dann: Ok, dann, was machst du jetzt noch? Und ich sage, ich schlafe jetzt gleich. Dann gute Nacht. Seit vier Jahren sagt sie immer das gleiche Ding, wenn ich sie anrufe.

Mit 42 hat sich meine Mutter die Augenlider liften lassen und auch die Zornesfalte mit Botox auffüllen lassen. Aber sie wollte in keinem Fall, dass ihre Familie etwas davon erfährt, vor allem nicht der Mann ihrer Schwester, deshalb hat sie sich zur gleichen Zeit auch eine neue Brille besorgt, sodass sie immer, wenn sie danach gefragt wurde, sagen konnte: Nee nee, das ist nur die neue Brille.

Meine Schwester hat mich gestern gefragt: Wieviele Bücher am Tag soll ich denn bitte lesen und wozu? Ich sitze auf der Terrasse, und am liebsten würd ich meinen Kopf gegen den Tisch hauen. So sinnlos. In dieser Wohngegend.

Ich habe meinen Großeltern eine Einladung per Email geschickt, zu meiner Bachelorpräsentation. Mein Opa Norbert antwortete: Oma kommt, ich vielleicht. Du weißt ja, manchmal habe ich keine Lust. Liebe Grüße, Opa und Oma.

C. sagt zu ihrem Großvater (er droht ihr, zu sterben): In einem Jahr komme ich zurück nach Hause.

Meine schick angezogene, dünn gewordene Mutter begrüßt mich vorm Auto mit einer zurückhaltenden Umarmung und drückt mir dann ein Desinfektionstuch in die Hand. Wir drei bleiben vor dem Auto stehen und desinfizieren uns die Hände.

Mit 50 hatte mein Vater eine Neuerfindungsphase und er hat sich seinen Großvater auf den Oberarm tätowieren lassen, so richtig als Portrait. Er fand, dass sein Großvater der beste Mann in der Familie ist. Und irgendwann hat er mich gefragt, ob er sich mich auch tätowieren lassen kann. Zum Glück haben wir jetzt lange nicht mehr darüber gesprochen.