I received an email from The New York Review of Books, though I do not remember signing up for their mailing list, advertising gifts for the Class of 2020. Enclosed in the email was a catalogue of thin silver bracelets with quotes from famous authors. The advertisement’s featured bracelet had a quote from Thoreau in a handwriting-like font that said: “Go confidently in the / direction of your dreams— / Live the life you’ve imagined.” I will not be buying one of these silver bracelets, nor have I learned, these past few months, how to bake sourdough.
CategoryDays in Berlin
Militarization and Love
My grandmother says, Das Militär steckt in unserem Blut. My grandmother says, The military runs in our family. What is lost in translation is the word steckt. Hides, is stuck, is plugged. Somehow the military exists in our blood, lingering. The verb steckt suggests something active, positive or negative, but a presence nonetheless.
Abortion and Women’s Rights: A Conversation with Patty Zegarra
I. In Argentina, where it all started, the green handkerchief can be found everywhere these days; tied to the necks and the wrists of women and men, as part of their hairstyle, hanging from purses, bags and backpacks, on bikes, cars, strollers, and even tied to pets and around trees. It is also painted on
And Now, The Generalissimo Will Use These Tortellini to Turn You into a Horse
What I can remember, however, every morning, is a dream. Not merely a memory of a memory hiding in the recess of a bad night’s sleep. I remember every detail. The color of the curtains in the room, the number of flowers in the vase, the dialogue, what I’m wearing, who I am. I can recall a maximum of three dreams from the previous night, but I average around two. But just like you probably have no idea what you ate for dinner a week ago, eventually the dream falls away. I make a point of remembering the ones I want to remember and I let the rest go. People always tell me to write them down. I’ve protested this practice. A dream is ineffable, not simply language, it isn’t just a story…
Concerning our Education: Students and Academic Freedom on Campus
Erdogan’s television tirades, railing against “criminal” academics, had taken us to contemplations on the difficulty of securing funding within the German university system. Yet we had managed to forget, or avoid discussing, a threat that is hardly nuanced or subtle. It is the threat that we students pose to academic freedom.
How to Go to the Movies in Berlin
A film belongs to the dark and can only be fully absorbed in the isolation of and submerged submission to sitting in a black room in front of a large bright screen. And so I search out these dark rooms. It involves a little fieldwork, scrutinizing some pamphlets, saturating my search history with movie theater websites…
Shifting Thresholds
Hopes and dreams trapped in objects: waiting to be unleashed, or ready to be discarded? Easier just to keep it all, stuff it in dresser drawers and cupboards, hide it under a duvet at the back of the linen closet, until one day, through some trick of fate, it ceases to be invisible again …
Mnemonic Musings: Reflections and Behind-the-Scenes of LESC 2019
“Impasse 1: ‘…whether the elements have being potentially, or in some other way…’”
What?
Prepare to engage in the story of a small, motley crew of BCB students – with little to their names but enthusiasm and sometimes-precarious ideas – organising the next Liberal Education Student Conference, through a series of impasses.