The Bard College Berlin Student Blog
Looking deep inside the mirror, he thinks: I am wholly contained inside my skin. His image coats the surface of his eye. He presses his elbow into his side. He squeezes his fist and wrings out his bicep. His body, steaming, stands before him in the grey, sending signals: his image back and forth between him, grey, satiated. He stretches his lips, presses his cheeks into his eyelids and sends up a special kind of prayer. You beast. He strains to call forth his deathless name: Monster. Monster.
As the years came for me I learned to cope with problems in the most artistic forms I could. I would swim to liberate myself from any burden or remorse. It didn’t matter what time of the year it was. I would throw myself in and give my all to the ocean, my hands continuously trying to unbind from where they belong. Nothing was rigid; there was a constant movement, an unbreakable peace.
I know we were married, but that day itself has gone from me, recently. I had it until yesterday, or the day before. It was not a space I immediately noticed. I ran through my life, wondering what was missing, and noted at length that that day was gone. Sometimes it seems there is order to the washing away of my mind, but in truth it is sporadic. I hear a baby cry. I remember the birth of my daughter, all at once, her red face.
She sat on the toilet seat to wait for the dye to set, and while she did she ran a bath to soak her feet in. She poured in mint bath salts. She thumbed through a magazine. There was a spread about women before and after plastic surgery. She no longer thought plastic surgery was vain; she thought it had to do with the autonomy of a woman’s body. She associated it vaguely with the word empowerment.
The night of the UK election, my phone lit up with a series of texts: “They’ve figured out how to make supporting fascism woke They’ve figured out how to make opposing fascism unwoke They’ve cracked the code” I read the texts while half asleep and responded: “Are you listening to Red Scare?” But my friend
I met up with Philip on an early December afternoon, in a cafe near campus, which is populated mostly with mothers, cradling shrill babies. From the windows of the cafe, I could notice the great stacks of Christmas trees installed in a market near the bus stop. When Philip enters the cafe, he sees a friend, who he greets in German. Our interview paused only for Philip to order a slice of poppyseed cake.
The term ‘feminism’ has been highly misinterpreted in modern-day society and wrongly associated with stereotypes that do not reflect its nature and purpose as a political movement. To label oneself or be labeled as a feminist is often regarded as a negative thing due to the way feminists are portrayed in the media. Feminism is
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…
After the release of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, there was a buzz around one rather unexpected scene. There is one scene in the film where a dish called Jjapaguri is prepared. The scene itself is humorous while carrying an underlying satirical tone, but the Korean audience swarmed around this scene to offer a different kind of interpretation. Although this interpretation may have been unexpected for the film’s international audience, it came very naturally for its Korean audience: mukbang.
