An unexpected irony had emerged from within Berlin by the end of the 1980’s. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as famously articulated by Francis Fukuyama, signaled not only an end of a specific form of (political) ideology but the end of the possibility for (any) ideological pluralism writ large; and if the event was triumphantly received by those like Fukuyama, and skeptically received as an emergence of eschatological hegemony by others, there was nevertheless an agreement that, by the beginning of the 90’s, geopolitical power had homogenized into the form of western liberal democracy. Simultaneously, the very environment in which these events were taking place, namely the urban fabric of West Berlin, was receiving the finishing touches of a decade-long, city-wide, and unprecedented experiment in architectural Postmodernism: the Internationale Bauaustellung, or the IBA. Having gathered the foremost practitioners of the architectural avant-garde, Berlin city officials had spent the better part of ten years giving them stylistic free range to test, in built form, ideas on Postmodernism (as well as the beginnings of its unruly subset, Deconstructivism) in an urban scale and context. One imagines, then, that for architects, the irony must have been palpable— what better city than postwar Berlin to test out, at such a large scale, architecture’s newly recognized capacity to draw upon the contexts of collective memories, tap into subconscious multiplicities, and subvert traditional centers of power? And what worse time to finish constructing such a test, when the rest of the world would come to see the political events of that very city as harbingers of precisely such a centralization of power?
In this sense, the IBA never quite had a chance; that is, whatever the hopes were in accomplishing an urbanism beyond the mere repair of city blocks (ravaged by both war and Modernism— after all, Berlin had been the sites for projects by both Albert Speer and Le Corbusier) and the implementation of vast swaths of social housing, there were far larger, far more consequential forces at work that would overshadow whatever aims the IBA’s participants had at affecting the relationship between the citizen and the city— or framed more broadly, between the public and the res publica. Still, that the obsolescence of these projects would become obvious so quickly (most of the buildings were completed by 1987) serves to illustrate two central vulnerabilities of Postmodernism: first, that the concentrated efforts to articulate and reflect existing contexts, whether physical or psychological, ultimately prove inadequate in anticipating whether those existing contexts remain static, or even relevant; and second, that because it is a force of reaction, not action, Postmodernism operates parasitically as a mode of critique without providing an ideological agenda that could supplant the very institutions it proposes to dismantle. Put simply, the projects of the IBA, arguably tasked with the reimagining the city, offered instead strategies of remembering, and dismembering, the city.
Though I don’t know it yet, these things will happen to me today.
*
While waiting for the uptown 6, someone will approach me on the platform, black plastic bags in hand and shuffling inside the unmistakable cloud of the funk and gag of homelessness. She will be an older black woman and she will wear a wilted gray hat. As I prepare the well-practiced shrug that means to convey my unwillingness to part with my change, she’ll stop maybe five, six feet away and look directly at me, lucidly. She will allow the awkward pause to settle, before saying, “You are an angel of God.”
I will look down, then up again to find her stare stubborn and fixed, and she will repeat: “You are an angel of God.” She will lean into the word angel as if her considerable weight could anchor the term like a stake into the tiled platform between us. Then: “God bless you.”
Forgetting for a moment the ungainliness of the situation, I will offer, stupidly, “But you don’t know who I am.”
She will reply, “I know that you are blessed.” Then she will finally look away, turning in place without moving away, and rest against a column as if she had been standing there, waiting for the 6 like everyone else. When the train does come, she’ll board. She’ll say nothing at the customary scattering of passengers offended by her stink; she’ll sprawl out across a few newly emptied seats. She will stare at the palms of her hands, then her fingernails, and look up grinning, at me, standing half a car away.
*
At work, only an hour in, Adan’s box cutter will unexpectedly stick against the edge of the box he’s opening, and when he tries to pull it free, it will jump out and over and down again, too fast for Adan to realize that it will stick again, this time into the thin bone of his left thumb. The blood will ruin the contents of the box, maybe eight hundred dollars’ worth of boots. Mr. Pak, the warehouse manager, will attempt to feign sympathy as he watches Joon drive Adan off to the hospital. Most likely, both their hours will be docked to reflect their absence.
Mr. Pak will return to his office, and I will find two items in the blood-soaked box that I am now responsible for cleaning and discarding. The first item, clinging to the sticky edges of the box flap, will be a small sliver of flesh, maybe a half-inch long, most likely the result of the blade’s upswing when it was pulled free from Adan. The second will be inside the box: the discovery that at least half of the merchandise inside was wrapped pristinely in plastic, untouched. With both Joon and Adan gone, and with Mr. Pak inside his office with the expectation that the mess be cleaned up when he re-emerged, I will quietly bring the entire box outside to the dumpster, and once outside, place the undamaged merchandise in a separately marked box, awaiting my pick-up.
Later, over a beer on Third Avenue, I will explain the merchandise to James; he will make an offer. With any luck, I will be able to make rent.
*
When I start home, the sidewalks will be empty and hard as the February air. My fists will be thrust into the pockets of my coat, my collar up. It will be four or five blocks before I run into a tiny old man, walking a tiny white dog; he will be whistling atonally, threadbare wisps of breath only just visible in the cold on his lips. As our paths cross, he will keep his gaze on his dog, and in a low timbre, whisper Rilke:
“We transform these Things; they aren’t real, they are only the reflections upon the polished surface of our being.”
*
The guys at the breakfast cart on the corner, they’re brothers I think. The younger brother mans the grill, the older one handles the coffee and rolls and money. I order my sandwich, and step back to let the line go while the eggs cook. It’s still early yet. Trucks rumble down Lafayette, roll-gates clatter up, and push carts and bikes and taxis stir awake.
The morning light hurtles across the earth in its searing horizontal path. It hurts, and illuminates nothing but the sky stretching above, yellow in the hour, a realist portraiture of the day to pass below, though I don’t know it yet.