2024-10-31 09:50:53
Sasha Engelmann
Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-19
The humidity is 100% today. When T and I wake up, we see condensation on the living room and kitchen windows- as if the flat is sweating. Yet it is not warm, it is strangely cold. Later in the morning, I find myself getting anxious at the amount of assessments I have to review for an external examiner appointment at another university, and for which I need to synthesise feedback to the whole department by the end of tomorrow. To calm down, I spend twelve minutes on the couch after lunch meditating with the help of an app. This meditation is called 'Sense' and at several points, the guiding voices says 'There's no need to go out looking for sounds. Just like a satellite dish, we can simply receive what's coming'. I find myself puzzling at this metaphor while the meditation continues, so much so that I realise I am not following the instructions anymore. Does a satellite dish 'simply receive what's coming'? And is the body anything like a satellite dish? I remember the meditation Soph invented for their students in Eindhoven, called 'Your body is an antenna'. I have always loved this meditation, and find that it makes sense- an antenna can just exist, and it can pick up a wide ranging but also environmentally limited amount of information around. A satellite dish, on the other hand, feels intent on capture, on picking up a television signal. Later in the day, after I have made some headway through the external examining, my body antenna feels less tense, more open. Outside I can hear the beginnings of Halloween, as mobs of small children spill out of houses and make small shrieks of excitement on their way down the street.
2024-08-17 18:24:32
Sasha Engelmann
Jadrolinja Ferry between Stari Grad and Split, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-15
The inside deck of the Jadrolinja ferry from Stari Grad to Split was far too crowded, so me and T sat on the floor of the upper deck. The air rushed around us, but the humidity stuck to our hair and skin. We said goodbye to Hvar for the summer. I said goodbye to my Baba.
2024-08-02 22:55:42
Sasha Engelmann
Kottbusser damm, Berlin , Germany
Germany
NOAA-18
Berlin, Friday night, August. I peeked off the ledge of my friend Omid's fourth floor apartment on the Kottbusser damm, and set up my ground station looking East. The traffic 'rush' sounds below mingled with laughs, drunken conversation and sometimes yells or screams. I noticed how the antenna reacted to the side of the building, the almost-midnight radio environment, and to being hand-held - it preferred the balcony ledge. I had travelled all day by train from Vienna after an intense week of work with Soph, a week in which we ate market-fresh pickles, swam in the Danube, worked like crazy on open-weather, and sat together with pangs of uncertainty about the future, both immediate and further afield. From my midnight perch, I sent Soph a hug and some calm energies through the body-temperature air.