the blue curtain #6
Summer reading
Dear Reader,
It’s been a while. How is your summer going? In a few days, I’ll be packing my bags to return to Istanbul, as my writing residency and fellowship in Rheinsberg come to an end. Five months have flown by. Remember when I moved to the palace in March?
To commemorate those early days, I’ve written a diary that blends fiction with reality. Diaries, to me, are among the most fascinating literary forms. On one hand, a diary is the most subjective way to narrate life, explore the human condition, and bear witness to the present. Yet, there’s something intriguingly risky about it: diary writers are perhaps the most unreliable storytellers.
Arrival in Everyday Life
March 2, 2024
The night here is pitch-black, raven black, blacker than black. In the supermarket, you can buy pink salt. My mother does not exhale in her sleep. Everything is very strange.
March 3, 2024
The light at 4:30 PM is as golden as it is on the Bosporus.
March 4, 2024
I live in the Marstall, where the royal horses used to be housed. As a child, I could do a headstand on a galloping horse. Anyway, the apartment is really nice.
In the kitchen, there is an oven, four champagne glasses, a sky-blue coffee grinder, a kettle, two jam bowls, a refrigerator (without a freezer), a marble sink, an old radio, and six breakfast plates. There is only one thing missing: a cookbook. The walls are mustard yellow.
In the bathroom, there is a washing machine. Shower, toilet, sink. A green broom hangs on the door. The water is very hard. There is a spider living in the cupboard under the sink. Maybe even two.
The windows in the living room and bedroom look out onto the water. That's the best part.
In the living room, the walls are turquoise. Along the long wall is a chocolate brown sofa, in front of the window is a dark wood desk and a standing desk by Peter Brasch. In one corner of the living room, there is a chest of drawers with eight towels and fifteen bed covers, in case guests come. There is a bookshelf with literature about men and guides on caring for squirrels.
The bedroom walls are painted pink. There is a wardrobe with seven hangers. You can store all sorts of things here. And, of course, a bed. And a bedside table that once belonged to Prince Heinrich, which I find brilliant. His snuffbox is still there, too. The bed is very comfortable. I prefer to sleep in the gap.
There are wooden floorboards throughout the apartment. That's great. They creak with every step. The apartment door is light gray and has seven and a half locks. You must lock them all when you leave the apartment. That's the most important rule.
March 5, 2024
- Buy smoked fish
- Write postcards
- Find out how often the carriage runs and how long it takes to get to the train station
March 6, 2024
Potatoes and quark for dinner and a story by Marion Brasch about Godot – it was lovely.
March 7, 2024
Dreamed last night that the apartment was an orphanage. They locked me in, walled up doors and windows. I wandered fearfully through the rooms.
March 8, 2024
I am tired of myself and incredibly annoyed. Maybe I should befriend the geese; they seem kind and chat all day long. (They probably know the best gossip in all of Rheinsberg.)
March 9, 2024
There is a doll clinic in town, but no cinema.
March 10, 2024
Went to the palace and was led through Prince Heinrich's halls by one of the geese. She knew her stuff very well. I think we could become friends. After the tour, I imagined what it must have been like back then and got jealous that I arrived here over 200 years too late. I would have loved to attend one of Prince Heinrich's parties. After all, the grounds are called the "Pleasure and Muse Palace," and once you've seen the Shell Hall, you immediately know what went on here. It must have been as wild as Berghain.
March 11, 2024
Dreamed of the orphanage again. And of insects. At three in the morning, fear marched into the room. You really can't see anything at night. I lay awake for a long time, scared like a 5-year-old.
March 13, 2024
The dreams spoil my mood. I already go to bed with anxiety, which of course does not help. Someone on the internet suggested imagining yourself as a jellyfish in the ocean while falling asleep, without a face, without a mouth, without a nose, just floating.
March 14, 2024
Loneliness is like a tantrum-throwing child or a hysterical mother. It demands all your attention.
March 16, 2024
Note to self: Jellyfish technique helps.
March 18, 2024
Several trees have plunged into the water at the shore, and today I saw five deer in the park. Bambis with white bottoms. Somewhere I read that among all professions, female writers are particularly prone to hysteria.
March 19, 2024
Patience is a fine quality. So far, it is rather underdeveloped in me.
March 23, 2024
Saw a snake on the Poet's Path earlier and was very startled.
March 28, 2024
British writer Virginia Woolf drowned herself in a lake 83 years ago today.
March 29, 2024
After a long winter sleep, the beautiful female statues in the palace park were freed from their gray wooden sheds this morning. It must have been terrible to endure months of darkness. But as a woman, you get used to a lot.
March 30, 2024
The geese have had babies. The lilac is in bloom. The rowing club has opened the season with a race. There is asparagus at the market. Election posters have been put up. This time, you can also vote for fruit, which I find very silly.
March 31, 2024
Virginia Woolf was right: A woman needs a room of her own.
A present from Lara
As promised in Newsletter #5, I have a special summer treat for you. Artist, poet, and writer extraordinaire, Lara Lakay, has generously gifted 'the blue curtain,' one of her exquisite poems:
sappho*
On the islands, everyone writes themselves a letter
an emphasis, a longing soaked into my flesh
I believe in a god, one day a
water
one day a bird
an animal whose name I don't know—
and a faithful tree
—- on top of it, an animal
oh how much I love myself
oh,
mother.
It's been almost a century since my childhood
where are the Greeks, the poets weaving poems for mules
night wells and morning razors
deep ache, deep sigh, beautiful lament it's almost you, my childhood. See you and watch out for the jellyfish!
xoxo
Carolin