real life struggles

I live in a mod­ern Bud­dhist tem­ple and the amount of fear I have about my Bud­dhist land­lord is re­al­ly ridicu­lous some­times. She will come into my room, yell at me about some­thing in Ger­man then in­sist that I am be­ing disrespectful.

If I have been – it is al­ways with­out mean­ing to. This is my first time in a flat share of this na­ture and some­times I do not know how to be con­sid­er­ate. Af­ter ar­gu­ing she leaves sud­den­ly with­out let­ting me try to an­swer for my­self. She is count­ing down the days un­til I leave and re­al­ly seems to dis­like me.

The dif­fi­cul­ty is that there is a per­son from the Dojo who she uses as a go be­tween, L.

How­ev­er, this man is very dif­fer­ent on­line and to one’s face than he is in re­al­i­ty. In per­son he is very friend­ly and help­ful but as soon as it comes to ac­tu­al­ly get­ting some­thing done in a time­ly man­ner he quits re­spond­ing to mes­sages – some­times for months at a time. He will also give con­tra­dic­to­ry in­for­ma­tion to what the land­lord says.

The sit­u­a­tion now is about a loft that is built into my room. On it there are eleven box­es filled with ran­dom books, clothes and dish­es stored by the Dojo. When I chose to move into this room he said that if I wait­ed a few weeks they would deal with the box­es and I could con­vert it into a nice sleep­ing place.

Now it has been five months. They have made a small amount of progress by nail­ing some wood to the ceil­ing. I asked if I could take the box­es down so they would have an eas­i­er time re­mov­ing them, and L did not say no.

We spoke of when he would be or­der­ing a net or when I could start do­ing the con­struc­tion my­self. So I took the box­es down think­ing they would be able to get them on Sun­day – their work day. It has been three weeks since then.

To­day, the land­lord no­ticed that the box­es were down for the first time and told me I was be­ing very dis­re­spect­ful. She re­mind­ed me I was only here un­til Sep­tem­ber and there was no use try­ing to make a bed in that very dan­ger­ous loft. Since I was plan­ning to stay in Berlin longer, I was hop­ing to ex­tend my con­tract and keep stay­ing here – but at that time it seemed like not the best mo­ment to men­tion it.

Ap­par­ent­ly L had not com­mu­ni­cat­ed with me that the land­lord did not want the box­es removed.

Now I am in a weird space where I would like to ex­plain that I mean no dis­re­spect, but wor­ry that if I try to talk to the land­lord again she will be­come more an­gry with me. The set up of our rooms is such that they have a shrine on this side where they fin­ish their med­i­ta­tion, of­ten she will talk to the oth­er Bud­dhists just out­side my door and I will ease­drop try­ing to un­der­stand their qui­et Ger­man. So of­ten it’s her com­plain­ing about me, and once she threat­ened to make me leave with a one month no­tice – about a table.

Then mo­ments ago some­thing hap­pened. The land­lord and L came into my room to re­move the box­es. She said she did not know why they were both­er­ing, since I had only three months to re­main. Ap­par­ent­ly, I had not up­dat­ed them that I could ex­tend my visa and I will have to move out in the be­gin­ning of Sep­tem­ber. When she re­moved the box­es, I thanked her and said – I know you’re wor­ried about my safe­ty and that falling could be dangerous.

Then she said some­thing re­al­ly hurt­ful: “Mir es egal!”
you do not mat­ter. If you fall down and die it will be dif­fi­cult for the tem­ple. She yelled this in Ger­man. I kept my composure.

Then I asked L about stay­ing longer. He told me that since I had ten­ta­tive­ly said Sep­tem­ber they had al­ready found some­one. This was odd, be­cause the last two times they had been re­al­ly slow in find­ing new people.

When they left, I was pret­ty up­set. My mom had also told me my life didn’t mat­ter, so what the land­lord said was trig­ger­ing. I cried. Sep­tem­ber is go­ing to be such a tu­mul­tuous time be­cause I will, hope­ful­ly, be grad­u­at­ing col­lege. I had planned to re­new my visa and keep liv­ing in Berlin. Now, I will have to find an­oth­er place to live here or move to an­oth­er city.

My flat­mate came in be­cause she had heard the yelling and com­mis­er­at­ed about the sit­u­a­tion. She’d nev­er seen Bud­dhist be­ing so hurt­ful and mean before.

She made tea. This is the first time I have had a liv­ing place with sup­port­ive room­mates, and los­ing them this Sep­tem­ber is a bit trag­ic for me.

Strug­gling to end on a pos­i­tive note here, change is hard and I would pre­fer to remain.

—Car­nelian king

Flom­mist Car­nelian King is a per­form­ing artist, prod­uct de­sign­er, toy mak­er and non­bi­na­ry clown cur­rent­ly liv­ing in Berlin. Copy­right © 2018 Car­nelian King.

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