Made with time
by Diana Radovan, winner of ‘Story Slam’ held in
at the 25hours Hotel The Royal Bavarian in Munich.
City of my childhood,
from the hybrid memoir Our Voices, by Diana Radovan
you’re like a forgotten body
I can no longer own.
I remain a passenger
through you,
who can never return.
Once, there was a shy little girl who loved oranges. Oranges, to her, were a reminder of love, but also of the scarcity in the city of her childhood, a city that she knew as Timișoara but that had no name for many people who lived in other cities, in other countries. Oranges reminded her of hot summer holidays by the lake with her parents, of taking long forest walks with her father in the dark, of watching fireflies with him, and of lining up for the one and only annual delivery of December oranges at the street corner.
Where did my birthday go? she’d ask her parents every year. But she couldn’t trap or escape time. The little girl unavoidably grew up. The teenager she became also unavoidably grew up and turned into a young woman, one who quickly discovered sex, death, and the need to have a paycheck in order to keep paying her rent each month. She moved from city to city and country to country. Always feeling like she was on holiday, always waiting, longing to find that elusive feeling of home again.
After twelve years that seemed to have passed like one, she settled in a city called Munich, in a country called Germany, at least temporarily. People would use words to describe her and her origins, words she had not heard before and could not identify with. They would call her a Foreigner, an Aimless Wanderer, an Eastern European, an Immigrant, but never an Expat, while she would keep trying to call the city of her choice Home. She gradually learnt a few words that made more sense to her: Borderless, Global, Hybridity, Theatre, Art, Community, Happy, Writing.
At Haus der Kunst, at Lost Weekend, at the Neue Pinakothek, at The Munich Readery, at Hugendubel, in Werksviertel Mitte, she was Home. She was also Home in Language. One day, she discovered a pop-up hotel in the heart of the city, which hosted poetry nights. The front door read, in capital letters: NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU. ALL PLACES ARE TEMPORARY PLACES. The hotel was gone one year later, but the words she saw that one night that saved her stayed with her for a long time. They made her stay in Munich. At least temporarily. The years passed.
Her favourite jacket, a Made with Time brand, came from her life from long ago, and could be used on both sides. It was made from upcycled materials from all over the world. Aren’t we all made with time? she wondered. Weren’t life and memory matters of subjective time, of remembering past versions of one’s self, of constantly becoming? Wear me backwards if you wish. One side green, another side orange. Old kimono silk and wool, blended together in one thread, in one story. Like the nature of the city, her inner time carried change, the frailty of life, but also a lot of possibility. Years passed and the girl-woman was temporarily still in and around Munich. The buildings were mostly the same year after year, but the flowers would bloom differently. She’d bloom differently. In some years, she wouldn’t bloom at all.
They say all stories have two plots, they’re either about somebody going on an adventure or a stranger coming to town. Which, at the end of the day, is the same, the only universal human story. For aren’t we all wanderers? Aren’t we all travellers? Who among us doesn’t carry a thread from our shared ancestral tapestry? Aren’t we, collectively, a human blanket spreading our embracing arms all over the city of Munich tonight, or any other city that we gradually inhabit? How was embodied time measured anyway? In moments, in smiles, in walks around the city, in seconds like this, when the woman would get up on a stage, still feeling like a tall, but shy little girl? Her voice trembles while speaking her truth in front of people she does not know, hoping her words would reach another soul, one living outside of herself.
She leaves all her questions open, she doesn’t answer them. She leaves the 25hours Hotel and walks on the path she now knows is hers to the Hofgarten, to her heart’s comfortable nest, Diana’s Temple. She takes out an orange from her bag, peels off the skin, licks her fingers, and takes a deep bite of Life. It’s flood season, yet she knows that Midsummer time is near. Back in her old country, Romania, where she is now only a tourist, Midsummer is called Sânziene. The name Sânziana comes from Sancta Diana, the ancient Roman Goddess of Nature, Fertility, and Young Maidens. In her chosen home federal state, Bavaria, Sommerwende fires would soon be ignited in and near Munich, on the peaks of the Alps, the Alps that are at times visible even from the city hills of the Olympia Park, when the skies are clear.
Fireflies would soon return, even in Munich, even in her friend’s garden. The city of Munich is now embroidered forever in her own personal time, it is the burning, drumming heart of her multi-textured world, the warm, juicy, orange centre of her inner universe.