In the words of David Bowie, ‘Berlin is the greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine.’ Vibrant, crazy, artistic, smart, Berlin is the capital of ‘cool’, a powerful magnet that attracts people from all over the world. It’s a paradise for techies, media gurus, creatives and non-conformists, and a relatively low cost of living means many are able to come here to pursue their dreams.

Sometimes you start something, and then that’s it. Procrastinating is a unfinished work, work left to be done, something on the to-do list. It is a stillness of life. Life in pause mode. Work on pause. Is procrastination a bad thing after all? Sometimes its better to come back to unfinished things when you’re ready.

What better month than December to open the door to the realms of quirks, mania and craze. By now, Ms. Mariah Carey A.K.A the Queen of Christmas, will have her festive songs played so many times earning her annual $2.5 million in royalties alone.

As we relinquish the last few days of warm weather, it’s natural to turn to a more retrospective mode. This is why we chose antagonists as this month’s theme. We each have an ongoing story of our life and with it come the antagonists. From a writer’s perspective, there are four types of antagonists; the villain, the conflict creator, inanimate forces and yourself.

The days (and hopes) of a hot kinky Venus in Leo retrograde summer are long over, and we will rest, recover and recuperate into autumn now. October reminds us to take our time, let go and welcome in the darkness. That darkness starts with Scorpio, and reaches its darkest during Samhain, where the veil separating the physical world and the spirits is at its thinnest and welcomes winter.

This year, August got sunk in the water. The days went by under storms, lightning and rains, as trapped in the rains of a tropical jungle. This year, August came and went like the monsoon. It’s the last night of the month and the air is clear. We sit on a bench at a späti and think about the remains of a soon-by-gone summer. We drink beer and burn small pieces of paper that slowly turn into ashes. It was as full as ever. Sun and vacations and ritual dances. We had, like always, music and good times. We laughed and ran, swam in lakes and slept in the forest. We took our time, slept out of time and when we woke up it was almost gone.

This issue starts with a confession: I do not date since prehistoric times. There it is. I do not date. Dating was never my thing. When I was younger and as a (slightly over-)sensitive person, I used to fall in love quick and crazily with anyone who seemed interesting (and interested). I went from heartbreak to heartbreak with multi-instrumentalist fuckboys, circus artists and, generally, anyone with a cool-looking haircut and a lousy merch t-shirt til one day I found myself destroyed to the point of crying and blowing my nose with my own panties (and yes, if you really need to know, I had wore them before). This is probably one of the reasonswhyI’m,alreadyasanadult, somesortoftheso-called“monkeygirl”swingingthe vines without making lots of effort (which means jumping from one night stand to another, sticking to them like a chewing gum only until something else happens). While this might be tightly related to some dangerously untreated dependency issues, this is not the point. The point is here that I do not date and do not miss it either.

We are proud to announce our special edition of Zine Verschenken in collaboration with 48 Stunden Neukölln. If you are new here, we are a monthly local Berlin zine consisting of FLINTA creators, writers, artists, curators, designers and coders. This has been our passion project for the last 12 months and you may have previously seen some of our zines in the zu verschenken boxes around the city. Our inspiration was to create something that was similar to the black and white zines in Berlin in the 80’s.