…the brown bottle sorting station. They have three colours and beer bottles commonly have worn whited shoulders from rubbing companionably up against each other on all those trips back to the brewery and then the store. Och, Germany: you slay me. It’s like a magical land in which everyone behaves the way I’ve always done: we’re all in this together. I had just passed a crossing where another crash heralded a tipping bicycle, whose basket was filled…
…r Kind auf.” We will look after your child. Oh, thank you, she said, and bounded up the stairs – actually bounded – without so much as locking her bike. Is it Berliners who are so fit, or just Germans? The camera guy came strolling magnificently down the street carrying a little notepad. His belly was broad and his gait wide and easy. “That’s him,” said my partner, “it’s got to be.” And we were right – the guy pulled up outside the shop window and…
…“To truly understand something is to be liberated from it.” This fascinating film held me riveted. It’s completely reinvigorated my view of the everyday life I lead and its purpose. I’m so glad I stumbled on it. Hooray, humanity, I love you and I will serve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbvquHSPJU…
…is the assault on our planet’s liveability, sidelined by these posturings of hatred. Read widely. Think deeply. Speak out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt7CxXh5nQw…
…nd to explore. I taught myself to play the gamelan instrument angklung and composed long, complex pieces which I would memorise and perform, roping in my brothers to play keys and drums. We made a film. I invented a language. At our international school we were allowed to go barefoot and lounge on cushions. “Write me a story,” the teacher said, when I finished the term’s work in Maths and in English in the first weeks of term, every term. “A book…
…h family’s door to the nearby street, and in Indonesia where we lived in a compound, surrounded by high fences topped with broken glass, I struggle to ignore the constant stampede of human traffic that passes within a few feet of me where I sit at my desk or curl on the couch. That is mostly families who live here, plus the thundering party animals upstairs. Occasionally delivery men, wrong numbers, post. This was new: the street door downstairs s…
…cess again to his own apartment, and I suppose he was carrying the smashed computer under his arm, but at the time, I didn’t care. Not that I didn’t care: I felt vindicated, I was glad. This was two years ago. We slowly tried to recover, we built on our inimical love, we tried to comfort each other: but it could not work out. That and the baby we had lost and some other griefs had stained us to the marrow so that like a series of transparent micro…
…ch. I put my finger on his sleeve. “Ich wollte Ihnen herzlich danken, dass Sie mich nicht unterbrochen haben. Das ist wirklich lieb von Ihnen.” I wanted to thank you from the heart (Germans say), that you didn’t interrupt me. That was really lovely of you. His face broke into a wizened smile, though he is young. He put a hand on his own heart. “I recognised you – and that you have told me you are working -” I said, “I so appreciate it. You know if…
…st das deine?” Excuse me, is this yours? He looks pained. “Ich werfe es in die Müll,” I tell him: I’ll drop it in the garbage. “Weil es so viel…” searching for the word and bailing out, “so viel netter ist.” Because that’s so much… nicer. He sort of smiles. “Das ist ja sehr nett von Ihnen.” That is very… nice of you. “Danke,” he says. I say, “Danke,” and the small storm of distress in my heart lifts and blows away. Confirmed once again in the anci…
…er… whether maybe this is not quite what he meant? “Ihr koennt das kaufen, und das und das, aber nicht das.” Yes, he said, I’m not convinced that God minds what I sell, either. I used to sing in a tiny madrigal ensemble which performed in an old cathedral and we would have to sit through the services as they droned on in what, to me, might as well have been Latin. Choristers brought puzzle books and read poetry. Every Sunday after the service ever…
…e a drip drip on the stone that slowly might wear a hole. So the blood can come out, the more justice and kindness. The singer said something that made me laugh, a kind of watery giggle. “I’m not going to stop loving you,” he sang, “until the day I die.” Immediately I saw him in his death bed, primly folded in the neatly pressed hospital sheets, flapping his hand to get rid of the wife who has not realised this means, “but, girl – on that day you…
…, or two friends have bought a slab of beer and trucked it down on a sack truck. People are dancing. People are chatting. People are playing boules by the riverbank. It’s like Woodford only many times larger and everyone wearing black. We just walked under a kilometre-long Mauerstrecke, where the old Wall was, lined with almost a hundred cherry trees in pink blossom. A girl walked by with her hair dyed the exact same colour and let me take a pictu…
…he all of a sudden just got so tired. He said in German, Ich will einfach nach Hause. I just wanna go home. And the leader told his gang: let him go home. Let him come home. It’s been two and a half months and my throat thickens with sick tears every time I think of him and how we’ve parted. It’s so abrupt, sometimes my heart itself still feels quivering, like a guitar string dying into silence. That he will not give our sweet love a chance. That…
…lissom afternoon and joined the slow streams of people heading down to the underground station. A man was playing the flute, with his eyes closed. He was entranced. The first flush of leaves has hit the ground and to me it feels too soon. I’m not ready! I rode home via train and bus and train because the middle section of the line was being repaired and in Berlin everybody files in orderly fashion from the ‘replacement vehicle’ back onto the inter…
…leaned across her and opened the window. I said – something. “Misbrauchen Sie sie nicht!”, don’t mistreat her, something far too formal and grammatically scrambled. Reaching across her the man shoved the passenger door open on me sharply, trying to push me off balance. I skipped out of his reach, wondering: now, would he get out. There were people everywhere. Or would he – yes, he just turned back to her and they turned to each other and I could…
…me. Bitte singen Sie weiter.” But I was too self-conscious to keep singing under this barrage of compliments. We talked about the dog and his jolly helpfulness & how tidily & sweetly she kept her shop and then as I was leaving, she called after me, “Keep singing! Always keep singing!” ~ beginning of my second month in Berlin, second date. We held hands and took it in turns to walk blindfolded round the city. Later that week I wrote: Tomorrow I am…
…icians. 50s impresario Bob ‘King’ Crawford on first hearing Hey, Big Splendour said, ‘In my opinion you will be one of the greatest artists this country has produced.’ Even fresher new work can be found at houseoflovers.com.” 25 WORDS (woot!): “Cathoel writes poetry and jazz. Robert Adamson says, ‘a born poet.’ Overland journal call her ‘a first-rate artist at work.’”…
…a lady with a thick neck.’ A wave of disturbance ran through the women around me when Chris said that. Women’s bodies are our own. We’re not there for him to rate and deem more or less attractive. Women are entitled to be strong. We can be competent, powerful, fit, and active. If a professional personal trainer can’t uphold this, who will? The second session a man standing beside me, huge guy, made an off-colour remark that I found very distressi…
…” Gemütlich is a word like the Danish word hyggelig: cosy, it means; warm, comfortable, comforting. The kind of word you invent when you live in a climate where a person consistently turned away from every door can die just by sleeping in the park overnight. The waiter came over to reason with her. Her voice rose, she waved her beanie at him. At first he said, Can you go, please, and You will have to leave, and Do you want me to call the Police? “…
…d like to buy one of your dustpans, and he said, Ach I just live upstairs! Come over and ring my doorbell and I will come down. I jumped on my bike, feeling a bit overexcited. Imagine buying a handmade dustpan which is prettily polished from steel. Imagine buying it from the fellow who made it. His shopfront is more of a billboard for his principles. He has filled it with neatly hand-lettered exhortations reminding us we are all Mitmenschen, fello…