Author: Emilia
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Bambi Legs
In seventh grade, I was cast as the Reverend Mother in my middle school production of The Sound of Music. I was also in Bel Canto Singers, the premiere girls’ choir in Minneapolis. On a grey Sunday afternoon the weekend after the cast list had been posted for The Sound of Music, while my parents Read more
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Scheiße Scheiße Scheiße (or: trying to live in Berlin)
This is the fourth apartment I have lived in since moving to Berlin in September. It might not be my last before I leave for the summer on June 21st. You will recall that I had two more apartments to my name before I even landed in Berlin. You will recall that in December I Read more
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Weinmeisterstraße
It’s a chilly-grey Saturday morning in Berlin. Still early—just before 10—and I’m watching the shops open, and the carnation-sellers in their approximate uniforms of white shirts and black pants arrange and rearrange their cute little cart and buckets of flowers, clumsily deciding on the best spot to promote whatever unneeded brand they are here to Read more
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Flight Risk
Term 2 ended on April 4 with a week of work-in-progress performances of 20 minutes each, followed by a 10 minute lecture about the work and our process, followed by a term paper explaining our process and our work in more depth. I thought some of you might enjoy seeing the video of my performance, Read more
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Like Roots Out of Soil
This morning, like most mornings the last few months, I wake up and give thanks that I have awoken, again, in this place, that this is my life. That this is my life. That this is my life. That this is my life. That for better and for worse, as far as I know, I Read more
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Half a Year Here
I arrived in Berlin six months ago today. With the 29 minutes I have left of this day, I thought I’d reflect quickly and briefly on this milestone. (I am all too aware of how long it has been since I have shared an update; every time I sit down to write, I end up Read more
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This Week . . . A Month
Earlier this week, as my devising group and I were checking in, I began by saying, “This week . . .” and my colleague Felipe finished my sentence with, “a month.” And that was only Wednesday! The last week and a half of my life, our lives, has been so full, with painful, hard conversations, Read more
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The Accidental Fulfillment of a Lifelong Dream, and other small miracles
My bedroom windows face the street, my favorite way for my bedroom windows to face. On the lower half of the windows is translucent, prismatic contact paper, which I dislike because it keeps me from staring down at the goings-on below me, but which I appreciate because it distorts the bright lights that would otherwise Read more
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1 January, 2025
Let’s play a game. Let’s call it “What if, in 2025 . . .?” Humanity is wrestling with itself for its own survival. With the blunt instruments of bombs, disinformation overwhelm, and two-party elections, we conduct our philosophical explorations into when the deaths of children are justified, and who has the right to kill them; Read more
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im Gleichgewicht
Merry Fourth Day of Christmas, vom der staat Nordrhein-Westfalen im Deutschland! I am sitting on the sofa at Inge and Karl Heinz’s house, watching the unhurried turning of the huge windmill’s unbelievable sails as the setting sun sets jet trails a blazing orange above the deep blue silhouettes of the mittelgebirge, themselves hunching shadows behind Read more