begging

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Today I am going down to my favourite Berlin cafe to write. Last time I was there was four months back and I did not plan to be away so long. It was winter then and a homeless man came along the rows of customers to beg. He stood for some time reading over my […]

12

Och, my heart’s pounding! I just queued in the supermarket next to a man taller than me (rare) with whom I conceived one of those fleeting yet it stains your day – your weekend! – mutual desire curves founded in, apparently, mutual liking as well as pheromonal drift. Oh, I stood next to him and […]

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On the subway a woman suddenly opened her mouth and began to sing. Her voice was tentative and good. She had a little loudspeaker rigged up through her mobile phone and had set herself to perform some songs in her own native Spanish. She was rugged up like the rest of us in a puffy […]

In the cafe he showed me the pictures he had taken on his walk here, of a dog skateboarding in the park. “You should animate those into a thumb-book!” I said. Amy Winehouse was singing. “Or maybe a – gif.” We watched a couple walking past in their somehow sweet and somehow matching outfits. He […]

3

Autumn in Berlin and the grimy guy begging outside our supermarket is absorbed in a book. When I come home he’s set it down to thank a woman who dropped some coins into his smashed paper cup. It is Sylvia Plath. I prefer him to the punker dude who spreads himself with a large dog […]

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Walking through the park in the unexpected sunshine yesterday I realised suddenly: strolling through summer in Berlin is like strolling through an off-duty circus. People are riding bicycles with no hands, they are taking turns practising walking slack rope, one man is playing the tuba and another is set up with his slap box between […]

4

I met a man with shit-stained pants on the subway and we sang together. He had been swaying by his pile of plastic bags for half an hour, offering speeches to the cabin. People ignored him and looked away. Only the Hispanic man behind us covered his face with split fingers and laughed into his […]

Oh, gosh. A friend of mine is visiting Berlin from Finland with her young family, they came here instead of to Budapest so that we could catch up for only the second time since we were both 11 and schoolmates in Indonesia. We saw each other on Friday and again just now, they are leaving […]

Two li’l punks on the footbridge to the Warschauerstrasse station, lounging with legs crossed and outstretched, dog lying between them, begging bowl out and a large sign propped on her legs which says in English: FOR BEER AND WEED. He obviously adores her. They have matching frothy haircuts, blonded and shaved up the sides.