Zeitgeist and Zeit-Ungeist

Yesterday I read a handful of Guardian articles on the internet, when I was surprised to see an article from the Berlin correspondent that mentioned that a neo-Nazi demonstration was taking place here, today, and that a counter-protest was planned. He wrote that generally counter-protestors had outnumbered the protestors at similar events, but — and this made me worried — that the right-wingers had managed to gather increasingly large crowds.

It struck me because I'd felt uncertain after reading about the Ku Klux Klan and other groups marching in Virginia recently. Was it better no longer to ignore extreme views under the impression they are representative of so few and so little likely to have concrete effects; were the concrete effects in Charlottesville but especially the ambivalence of Donald Trump a sign that ideas like ultranationalism, racism and anti-Semitism are in fact far more widespread than I imagine? Also, am I completely blind to racism that exists here — housing and employment discrimination, street harassment, etc. — because I'm never the target of it?

I thought as a teenager that every person who has 'white privilege' is racist; now I think it's silly. While it is unpleasant to feel that I am certainly not 'colour-blind' and that in the case of strangers my ideas do run along racially problematized lines, I doubt anyone would care about my mental preconceptions, etc., as long as it just makes me embarrassed. It has nothing to do with the actually important, enormous scale of de facto economic, social and political segregation that I've seen glimpses of in — for example — New York.

Either way, the idea of counter-protesting appealed to me. It was not to say that I hate neo-Nazis or to strut around feeling virtuous about clearing a shamingly low threshold of reason and good feeling. The point is rather that I (representing not myself but many others) care enough about the safety and happiness of present-day targets of Nazism — rather than inhumane and horrible ideas of race and nationality — to take the trouble to appear in person and express the alternative point of view.

As J. and I got to Spandau, the thought of a neo-Nazi protest and hatred of foreigners perturbed me as a risk for other Berliners. Seeing pedestrians and fellow subway travellers who were probably from Turkey, from French- and English-speaking African countries, from Vietnam or elsewhere in southeastern Asia, and other places, I wondered how safe they were. What do their children experience in schools or in public, and are their parents afraid for them? etc. Some of the neo-Nazis at this protest were travelling from other countries where their xenophobia might have fewer immediate targets, but what do neo-Nazis in Berlin do to racial minorities?

We reached the U-Bahn station Rathaus Spandau, where the huge city hall and tower were already rearing behind the entrance. To the left there was a long glass façade in the terminal, on the first floor above ground level, revealed the regional train platforms. On one or more of them, I gathered, the right-wing protestors were arriving. As for the subway, it was hard at first to leave the station because there was such a sea of people in our protest: several thousand, I imagine.

We saw red flags for the SPD party, red flags for the Linke; red flags for labour unions like IG Metall; green flags for the Green Party; and a sail-like triangle for the Pirate Party. Not that everyone need trumpet how Nazi they ain't, but I thought it was a pity and a loss of opportunity that no representatives of the CDU seemed to be present. Two posters for the MLPD, which I assumed to be the German Marxist Leninist Party. Enormous rainbow flags. A handmade white poster with black lettering prodding Neo-Nazis to 'Mach wie Rudolf Hässlich,' in other words to make like Rudolf Hess and in other words kill themselves; and another poster outright encouraging them to kill themselves. Another sign, 'Ob kuschlig oder militant, das Wichtige ist der Widerstand' ('Whether cuddly or militant, the important thing is the resistance').

After a delay, we began marching. Spandau is, I'd say, so far out at the northwestern periphery of Berlin as to be almost in the Brandenburg countryside. People stepped out onto their 20th-century or quaintly older balconies, propped themselves up in the windows, or stood on the sidewalks, watching screenlessly or capturing the scene with their smartphones. Their faces were often beaming, and I liked the weekend-strolling atmosphere of the protest, and the feeling that we were redeeming the reputation and honour of the neighbourhood on the residents' behalf. It was only the very elderly who were stranded at their bus stations who made me feel regret. But I felt a little tearful once, at the thought that so many years after my grandparents' awful experiences in the 1930s and 40s people were continuing to pretend that there was something to be nostalgic about.

Schlachtensee

Early this afternoon three of us set out to the southwestern corner of Berlin to swim in the Schlachtensee.

Massive grey clouds were gathered overhead, but also blue apertures, and beams of sunlight; we were worried it might rain, and instead it was only cooler than ordinary; and once we went into the water, the dragonflies swooped as eagerly as ever, iridescent blue beetles thronged on a beleaguered spray of beech twigs, insect corpses and a feather and a dead reed were lulled to sleep on the water's surface, and the green and silvery leaves of the trees half-buried in the banks could not have looked happier or more summery.

Twinkletoes at Thirty-One Years of Age

Yesterday T. and I went to our first ballet lesson, at a much riper age than customary, by at least two and a half decades. She had graceful black canvas ballet slippers affixed in front by criss-crossed elastic bands, and I had beige leather slippers with an elastic drawstring around the edge; I wore grey legging-like yoga pants and a long-sleeved shirt, and she had black leggings and a pale grey t-shirt. Both of us had our hair neatly tied back. Despite our pleasure with our new clothes, it was strange for me to walk into the studio room, with the sea of mirrors surrounding it entirely, and no way of escaping one's own presence there.

We were at the studio, in Kreuzberg (or Berlin's hipster Mecca) early. Closer to 8 p.m. a mother and a child (steeped in ballet) arrived and already warmed up quite professionally in the studio room. Then, as the class had begun, we were joined by two more women about our own age or older, one of whom had done dance already while the other also proclaimed herself a novice. We entered by a small office in front, with changing rooms to the right, washrooms further in to the right, and in front of us the studio room with the vast mirrors, a piano with a computer and other paraphernalia on top of it but a puzzling cushion with the British flag all over it beneath it, a mobile barré, and a well-loved lacquered wooden chairs lined up at the far mirrors. The neighbouring house façades, visible through the classic windows, were also atmospheric.

We were enthusiastically greeted by the instructor, who was a replacement and also usually teaches children. She started us at the barré. We lined up, left hand in front of us reposing on the bar, and began a series of pliés to the accompaniment of music. We repeated these facing in the other direction. I was careful not to do anything that I couldn't do with reasonably safety and with sound technique. For example, my pliés — since grim experience in front of the narrow hall mirror in the home studio had taught me that after sinking into a plié at a certain point, I end up imperceptibly sticking out my bottom in an ungraceful fashion — were the merest bendings of the knees. I can't turn out my toes much without fudging a lot, and endangering the wellbeing of my knees, so I didn't cheat. After that came dégagements, perhaps glissés too, followed by grands battements. The instructor declared herself reasonably pleased by these. After that things went downhill.

We left the barré. We did series of steps, and we also rehearsed the Five Positions. Looking at myself in the mirror, I did see glimpses of grace and uprightness of bearing. But I had been trying to make the 'ballet' painless to watch, after all, and to relax so that the movements could be more natural and fluid. The 'three step run' was a graceless; and yet the jumps in first, second, and third position were less bad. It was too absorbing to notice how good we were generally. But at some point here the instructor — having long ago left off the remarks of 'I think we have achieved that' — said that 'the important thing is to have fun.'

Then, after an hour, we went home again. (Determined to practice.)