WILD WANDERER – « Ich liebe Berlin » V2.2
Berlin was built on a swamp, and it keeps sinking into the soft sand. In Berlin, everything floats, everything flows, and each own individual impulse slips into a common current. This human city invites to realease – but can also leads to lethargy, doubts and fears. Nothing of what makes human weaknesses is foreign to Berlin. It is not a winners’ city like New-York or London. Here, defeat has a room, as have proved two world wars. The city do not stabilise the system, but contemplates, as does the Spree wich flows so slowly it sometimes looks like it comes back to its origin.
Normal Ohler
Those words sound like an epitaph of my own grief.
For my first Berlineer journey, I was drained. I wasn’t exploring the world, I was retiring from mine. I was escaping endless chats, constant waits, unconscious pressures.
I was coping with ideas, concepts, dreams I never had, the green city was my shelter. I paused in an unknown place, in a foreign language: I had found the perfect town for my retreat.
I then went to Berlin, not knowingly, to enlighten my defeats. Past and present. Constant and passing. Not to fight against or to make them weigh, but to welcome them in its hearts in order to make less of a drama about it.
I went to Berlin to get closer to the one I had always been.
Today, I am another kind of drained. Purer. From everything that had drained me before.
My grief is real. It is not an idea, a concept, a dream anymore. It is a body, a memory, a promise. And I can only shelter in life, in the wide world, made of flesh and cities, to cope. And I have Berlin, its early drawings, its learning languages, to align with my own frequency, now that I know it rhymes with Berlin. A city born the same day as me but 752 years before. A city resurrected the same year as me. (I was not that wrong to feel a peculiar bond the first time, making the fall of the wall my own History.)
I then go to Berlin a song in my heart. Not to be at war not to be at peace. Because I am none. Not to bury my defeats, not to celebrate my victories.
I go to Berlin to be the one I have always wanted to be, I have always been without letting me be. I am a blank page starting to draw. Swimming through my new inner conjuncture. Winding through this new private pattern. I try new paths to reinvent my system.
Between the first and the second time, some roads meet and imprint. Others part. I am here now with the promise of tomorrow like a beautiful climax of what I have been rehearsing for a year in order to be ready today (yes, it is a lot of comes and goes!).
For my first Berlineer journey, I was full of my own resolution. I was trying to make peace with my own mistakes. To make room for them. Without judgement nor immediate purpose. I was seeking peace to let them breathe not bully me.
Today, I go to allow myself to win. Not like New York or London. Not against someone or something. Even less against myself. I go to realise I have already won. I was the only one doubting.
I then go a song in my heart. With no plan for the city nor for me. I go with my peace and my war, I am made of both to get the fragile balance of my soul.
Justine T.Annezo – August, 31st 2026, Berlin – GTM+2
Fleeting Wor(l)ds 