My first vacation, apart from sailing trips with friends, mostly from school, was a trip with three friends from the youth center Haus 401 and later der Turm. The boys were already over 18 and had a driving license, so we drove in a VW Beetle to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer of the Camargue in the south of France. Everything was good. I loved the sea, hanging out on the beach, reading and getting a tan. It was very exciting. My body felt great, I loved it.
On the way back - we were already in German-speaking areas - we went out to eat. I was not happy traveling back to Germany. After eating I felt umcomfortable, was over full and went to the toilet to vomit. When I returned to the table, I was unsettled: did the others notice anything? The contact with them was strange, as I remember it. I was kind of dazed. It was the first time.
Arriving at the line house where we lived with the family at the time, no one was there. My parents had gone on vacation with my siblings, to Switzerland, I believe, but were supposed to return soon as well.
The summer before, I had been with them in Austria in a nice hotel with a swimming pool. But what had been much more important was that I visited my great love Justus (who some months later left me) from there. His family owned a holiday home that wasn't far away as the crow flies, but it took many hours by train because of the mountains that had to be overcome. I stayed with him for a week. His father then took me to a place where I got into my parents' car to travel back to Hamburg.
I was very proud of my trip to France and was looking forward to my parents' return. I remember wearing my mom's floor-length black and white patterned dress with a slit up to the thigh on the side and greeting the arrivals from a slightly higher position on the stairs. My mother, however, was not very impressed with my appearance and immediately looked away, which hurt me deeply. I was then no longer able to consciously perceive and greet the rest of the family, as it is hidden completely beyond my memory.
From then on, I often stopped at the bakery after school on the way home and bought cakes, intending to shove them in after lunch and then throw them up again. This usually happened when I was completely exhausted and had no energy left. It was like an anesthetic.
About two years later, my parents moved into another house and I moved into the city with a friend. It was a two-room apartment with a kitchen and bathroom. I continued to do it there, always making sure that my roommate didn't notice. Only when she wasn't around did I go to a supermarket and buy biscuits, sometimes cheese or sausage. I did it at work when I was selling snacks (and other items) at station kiosks. There I had to use public toilets. I didn't have much money and bought what was affordable. Nevertheless, it was expensive. In retrospect, I see this as a product of the affluent society.
Finally, two more years later, when we moved into a co-living apartment with ten people, I stopped the nonsense. I tried a couple more times, but the bathroom had two doors and with such a large group there was always someone in the house. Luckily.
------------------------------

I now know why the topic came to mind. My partner often complains that I too often relate what we are talking about to myself and then start talking about myself. That is exactly what happened here.
Before reviewing this text, I told myself to continue reading Benjamin Zephaniah's autobiography to get in the right mood. And there it was. Because I always reread the last paragraph, and that's exactly where I stopped reading to sit down at the laptop and start writing.

In China and other parts of the developing world, as capitalism takes hold, more people are getting an obsession with skinniness. Places where anorexia was unheard of thirty years ago are now subject to the same dogma as the West. You see the obsession on social media with thinness via the craze for things like the thigh gap, or the rib cage; young people essentially oppressing themselves and each other for the fact they're not skinny enough. It starts out with advertising, but anxiety about body image spreads like wildfire via social media platforms and is so corrosive to the young psyche.

The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, 2018, Scribner, editon 2019, p 315


Saturday, 25
Mimi
You know I love it when people call me Mimi. It's like I get a little shot of positive energy when I hear someone call that name. When I hear someone say "Maren," my mood drops. It's not that I get sad, but rather a seriousness that gets in the way. However, my personality sometimes fluctuates when it comes to official things. I have no choice but to use the name from my passport to avoid complications and unnecessary explanations. However, with social media I feel freer.
I went back and forth on WhatsApp. It seemed somewhat semi-official and I wasn't sure if I could leave Mimi there anymore. Fearing that people I've been with for years will no longer be able to identify me or think I'm crazy, I changed to my registered name again. The downside was that the people who get to know me as Mimi - anyone who asks me what my name is gets the answer Mimi - no longer understand what's going on when they find Maren, where Mimi should be. In fact, I definitely chose Mimi on WhatsApp. That's it. And this is my explanation: People who have known me for a while and might be surprised to find Mimi where Maren should be, can look in my profile and find Maren there in brackets. I expect them to take the time to inquire, just as I would with them.


Tuesday, 2
The last time I was in town at the Sky Blue Apartments looking for my own city apartment, I found Benjamin Zephaniah's autobiography on the sideboard in the living area near the entrance. I was very happy about it and started reading immediately. Sandra, the friendly landlady, told me her friend had left it there so she could read it. But I was allowed to read it first. During my week there, I read almost half of the book - right up to the time before he began publicating his poems.
Having been back in Tintinto for more than two weeks now, I've only been able to read a few chapters. Lack of confidence. I find it difficult to take the time and patience to read. The weather here in the countryside is treacherous and bothers me more than ever. The increasing humidity, the continuous strong wind makes tears well up in my eyes - hay fever. I feel weak, scattered, far from that focused energy I had when I returned from Lisbon. Certainly the climate, but also walking around the city, researching and taking photos made me come alive.
She said she needed the book back soon, but I highly doubt I'll be able to finish it by the time she needs it back (in one week latest). However, I have reached the 28th chapter of The Art of the Struggle.

When I stand on the stage and tell the crowd to shout, or be silent, or 'say after me', and they do, i realise the power we have, even more so when they are connecting with an idea I had one day when I was doing something arbitrary as getting dressed. I never thought of myself as someone with my own manifesto. I've never wanted to start a political party or launch any kind of movement. I want to inform people about what's going on, and I don't mind throwing in a few suggestions as to what can be done, but most of all I want to inspire people to think for themselves. Even if I say something in my poetry that I believe to be fact, I say it because I want them to think about it and not simply take my word for it. Power can be easily abused, but I've never been interested in that kind of power, or the abuse of it.

The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, 2018, Scribner, editon 2019, p 159

Journey Beyond the Horizon
Living Dead Time
Beyond the Sound
LES INVISIBLES
Who is Being Heard?
Strange Flesh
Et je renais à la terre qui fut ma mère
The Enigma of the Gaze
Kaleidoscope
Drawing Time: Duets
In Praise of Black Errantry
CONTACT ZONES
Health and City
On the threshold of 1:1
Your curious journey
Women Artists in War
On Water, Flow and Warped Time
Impossible n'est pas ivoirien
Nonexistent Mountains
The Island
MANAWA
Ten Thousand Suns
Endeavours and Masterpieces
Outrageously Rebellious
Perhaps Sunny Days
Odeon
Flash_Looking
Polygonal/e
Undoing Inclusion
You and Your Gang
The Daughters’ Trilogy—Chapter I: Matriarchy
Holiday of Discomfort
Sustaining the Otherwise
How Not to Be Seen
Winter
Braiding dusk and dawn
Thinking Like a Mountain
pink & green
Remain Exhausted
Usufructuaries of earth
A Spring of Hope A Winter of Despair
The Fountain Show
Heliopolis
A Speculation in Four Seasons
What If Women Ruled the World?
A Political Taxonomy of Corviale
Borderland
The Red Studio
We Monsters
MODE * CHAPEAU
Autoritratto al lavoro
Magnificent Product
To the Ends of the Earth
Façana Foto Festa Futur Fideus
Deterrence and Reassurance
ALOHA NŌ
intergenerational forms
Notes On Culinary Geoengineering
Sentimento illumina
Presagio
Unknown Familiars
Inner Sanctum
Light from the Other Side
Genossin Sonne
Groundwork
Narrative Obsession in the Post-Colonial Psyche
Humanity, in this economy?: issue no. 31