H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
HOLLY JONES
Falling asleep
in Berlin
It’s odd to fall asleep in a foreign country.
The sounds that come from somewhere down
the road are unfamiliar: the sirens wail
with an irregular tempo and in a different pitch;
the yelling that makes its way over the
window sill and into your bed arrives with strange
syllables and an odd
accent that makes you feel like you have water in your ears.
But you are relieved to be in a foreign country,
to not have to speak to anyone, and to not
be spoken to. This language barrier allows
you a rare privacy and a break in the stream of
information that your
mother tongue lashes at you daily.
When you can’t understand what is being said, it’s
as if you have been given the gift of
not having to care because you are excused
from participating and therefore are not
expected to have an
opinion on any subject. You do not have to read the newspapers and
learn how horrible
the state of the world is. After all, the words make no sense, including
food packages, road signs and traffic
patterns; however, these are things you can get your
head around eventually if you wanted to,
unlike the state of the world.
I hope to finally get some sleep here. The
Germans want to forget the past; I also want to
forget the past. So
we have this in common, and this alone is all we understand of one
another.
[Originally
published in NHS 2010, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs10/index.html.]