Pigs flying or something like it

I’ve been thinking about Berlin, likely because if I didn’t have Woody, I’d have already bought a ticket, and I’d be selling everything but a few paintings my brother gave me. But I’ve already spent nights I should’ve been writing or sleeping trying to work out how to get my dog to Berlin. There’s the problem of the flight. He’s not riding cargo. There’s the apartment issue but that could be solved. There’s a breed issue. He’s a quarter pitbull. But I could always ask my barber if I could steal just a little of her hound-lab mix’s DNA.

That I went straight to borrowing DNA vs checking how they’d even know he’s a quarter pitbull is a tendency you might imagine would disqualify me from life in Germany, a nation of rule followers. Even I imagine all Germans to be engineers, but my experience in Germany is mostly limited to Berlin, as an adult anyway, where I know two anarchists for every one engineer. That I know anyone at all is why I consider Berlin my best option for leaving, which again, is a thing I can’t do because it’s a pain in the ass to immigrate even without a dog. It’s hard enough to make friends as an adult. Add a language barrier and a different country and customs and all the rest of it…

I miss Berlin even when I’m not reminded this country fucking hates me and the rest of us. I reserve the right to be a single issue human being and my single issue is I don’t want to live amongst people who don’t recognize that I’m a goddamn human being. Nevermind that. If the motherfucker had raped dogs, they’d have cared more. Yeah but that’s weird. And it’s not fucking weird to rape women? Do you fucking hear yourself?

I know. It’s not all about rape. But it is. It should be a line. Pretty fucking easy line to draw. And it’s not a party issue either. Fucking Democrats will trot Bill Clinton out every chance they get like some revered elder statesman. I said something about it during the convention and took a beating as always because we’re supposed to ignore it. Because it was a witch hunt or the only problem was he lied to congress. Fuck you. The problem is he’s a rapist and this fucking country wants every little boy to know that he can grow up to be president one day, even if he rapes a few women. That’s the important thing.

I know. They didn’t vote for a rapist. They voted for eggs and didn’t google what the fuck a tariff actually is until the day after the election. They voted to expel illegal aliens who they’re very concerned might be rapists so they put a fucking rapist in the White House, again.

I know damn well that democratic party has completely fucking abandoned the working class. I know it’s fucking infuriating to keep hearing about all the new jobs when everyone has two at least and still can’t pay their bills. I know it’s fucking bullshit to hear another goddamn thing about the stock market and record low unemployment when people with actually good jobs are living in their fucking cars. I know. The rapist they voted for isn’t going to fucking fix it either.

Here’s another problem. And moving to Berlin won’t fix it. But at least I wouldn’t have to fucking deal with it anymore.

We don’t talk about politics.

We don’t. We shut the fuck down if anyone even slightly pierces our delusion and preconceptions and memorized mantras. There’s no fucking nuance. We’re all just fucking yelling at each other and no one’s fucking listening. I don’t even know if we know how to recognize that someone in the room or the group chat might be the resident fucking expert on a subject and maybe the thing we believed was wrong or slightly wrong or deserves another think through. Do we even fucking think at all or are we just regurgitating a fucking meme we saw or something Joe fucking Rogan said last week.

I miss talking politics. I miss sitting in a crowded bar watching someone roll a cigarette with a little filter pinched between their lips while an engineer asks me if Americans think Obamacare is helping anyone but Aetna or if Americans care about drone strikes or that our food supply is poison.

It’s not always comfortable to be the only American at the table. But I don’t like being the smartest person in the room and it’s hard to imagine I am when the rest of the table’s switched to English because I’m the dipshit who only speaks one language. I miss listening to opinions of people who aren’t spoonfed by tiktok and cable news.

They were gentler the last time I was there, when it was becoming increasingly clear that Trump would be president. It wasn’t yet clear to me. I wanted to believe things like rape or we’ve been making fun of that fucking conman since the nineties at least would matter. You never really want to see sympathy on a German’s face. It’s somehow even more condescending than their usual condescension. Didn’t help that I was on mushrooms.

We’d left the bar across the street from where I was staying in Kreuzberg and bought beers at the train station where a guy tried to teach me how to catch the lid on the doors of a passing train to open a bottle. The shrooms kicked somewhere in the next bar when I had to ask a Russian sitting next to me if the pigs dangling from the ceiling were real. He interrupted his typical diatribe about how things can always get worse to inform me the pigs were dangling from the ceiling, yes, but wooden. The pigs will not harm you. Allow me to tell you how things can always get worse.

One of the Germans told him to take it easy on me. That I was on mushrooms, and I didn’t know yet that it was possible to hate my country more. But of course it is possible. You will learn. I am sorry. It is, I imagine, not so pleasant. We were taught. They don’t teach you in school.

I couldn’t make eye contact with the pigs. So I took this picture..

Which is how we’re here again. The shit we didn’t learn in school, or any time after evidently. Basic civics. Simple definitions. Socialism. Democracy. The role of the vice president. What happens when you mix nationalism with militarism and sell it to corporate interests. There’s a word for it. Something to do with the history of Germany, with ours. You’re fucking living it. Welcome to the show. To quote a Russian friend who’s kind of a dick, but they tend to be because Jesus fucking Christ, it can always get worse. And it will.

Every so often the subject comes up, how we should buy some land. Build a commune. And I always entertain it just long enough to remember I grew up in a cult. But I don’t think it’s a commune we want. We want Berlin. Or not Berlin. We want a city where our friends live a few blocks over or a train ride away. We want a life that isn’t spent in traffic or at work or thinking about work so that all we’re left with is a few goddamn minutes to scroll our phones or stare at our TVs to numb our minds to the reality that we have no fucking lives at all.

And yeah, I’m fucking pissed. I’m pissed at the reason “will I lose my health insurance” and “DACA” and “denaturalization” and “tariffs” were the trending google searches the day AFTER the goddamn election. You were supposed to fucking do that research before you fucking voted and maybe think about what tariffs will fucking do to inflation or mass deportation will do to the price of eggs you absolute dipshits. But I’m just as pissed that we’re intentionally kept this fucking stupid.

Who has the fucking time. Throw in a lot of sloganeering and fear and no one in the group chat wants to listen to the one asshole who actually knows anything. Fucking libtard. Always talking about facts or truth like there’s such a thing at all.

Imagine if we weren’t always struggling to keep our heads above water. Imagine if we could strike without losing pay, losing our jobs. Imagine what would happen if we realized how much we’re losing, how much we’ve lost, how little we have while they keep us fighting each other for scraps. Imagine if we had the time, every evening for no reason at all. Imagine if we could meet up in a bar, no one scrolling their phone, no one even arguing, just asking questions and listening to the answers, recognizing that someone’s life experience or earned expertise matters. Imagine a beer cost a dollar fifty.

It’ll never happen, not here. They’ll never let it happen. We might storm the capitol for a good reason for once.