New York I am going to climb right up in your lap and press my face to your grimy heart. Where five hundred million faces have been imprinted before. The photobomber in your every selfie sweet New York. Asking scarves of passersby do you know who invented ‘photobomber’. Who invented ‘selfie.’ Brilliant language. Melted together […]
Crossing the park I passed the usual gatherings of African men standing about under trees, whiling away the hours until someone comes to buy some drugs off them. Sometimes they sidle up and say, “Alles klar?” and occasionally a whisper of “Grass?” comes up or, once, from a bolder guy, “Cocaine?” I’ve worked out at […]
A girl with a most glorious voice started singing as the train took off, she was hidden by a mess of passengers who cleared, instinctively, to give her some room. Playing a tiny ukelele and letting the song free like a bird: her fond little scratchings on the instrument suited the sweet, round spiciness of […]
Riding on the train underground I feel like a caterpillar carving through the belly of the city. The hungry metallic smell of the train’s breath is become familiar as I jog down the steps to Underworld. Sitting and writing and sitting and writing. I glanced up and caught the eye of an elder gentleman standing […]
Rounding the corner on my bike just now I accidentally took part in a mass demonstration. I don’t know what it was about, maybe just a celebration of biking. People seemed easy and relaxed, it is a sweet sunny day with high white cloud, a blue sky, the pack of people travelling at jogging pace […]
Walking along a quiet street feeling grumpy I heard a loud, juicy burst of fat laughter. Coming towards me was a man on his phone, shortish, gleaming, African, with laughter rolling through him, like a wisp of weed rolling in the sandy sea. Further down the street I saw a dog waiting in the laundromat, […]
Passed a remaining section of the Berlin Wall and saw tourists of all languages leaning up against it for photographs, posing with big smiles and often two thumbs up; one Japanese girl had a coy, sexy grin. I wonder what it is they imagine they are visiting. photograph is of a building-site skip transformed into […]
When I leave I will miss the magical wildness of Berlin, that is already being built out for apartments and hotels; the overgrown factories with railway lines running through them; the fact that on every sunny spot, a railway bridge, a low brick wall over the river, people will bring out their paperbacks and their […]
Voted! Gosh it feels wonderful. For those few minutes with ballot paper in hand, we are utterly sovereign, entirely free. It turned out something of an odyssey to get there: which feels also appropriate and fitting. So many people have died for our right. I got sidetracked, absorbed in some other work I was doing, […]
Saturdays in the studenty district of Berlin where I am living have been infested with a gobbling string of raucous hens’ parties. You’ll see a dozen young or not so young women all wearing matching headpieces – bunny ears, airline-hostess hats, fascinators, halos on headbands – and maybe pink t-shirts with a slogan, or beauty […]
Yesterday morning I woke in that state known so satisfyingly as A Towering Rage. Must’ve had infuriating dreams. The sun came in my window and all the injustices of life lined up around me and stared like palings. It’s not a very usual experience for me and I wasn’t well equipped to deal with it. […]
Berlin, Berlin, I cannot but love you. Unbelievable, unmistakeable. The contrast to Copenhagen is immediate. At the airport nothing works. Every toilet is barred with tape and the man in the kiosk is grumpy but funny. He raises his eyebrows and shrugs. We are laughing. The train smells faintly of old urine. When we get […]
I’m alone in the house and my heart feels filled with love. It’s a feeling like glass-slippered waves coming in over your feet on the sparkling, rough sand, so shallow you barely get wet but the softness of the water is inexpressible. Like water from stars, I mean light, I mean starlight, the salt water […]
Last night a lost soul brushed past me on the street and I could feel the black, sucking wind. She was very beautiful, extremely young, just-enormous eyes. Bare feet and ankles swollen like stumps. Bruises. Old bruises. She was leaving the curb as I reached it to cross the street, making a decision, counting out […]
It was breathlessly hot. Almost every inch of Berlin seems to be paved. I went out with a friend who has a dog. The cafe we found has three guardian trees, sentinels of sensibility on a long glaring featureless street. The dog flung himself onto the shaded pavement. The cafe owner brought him a basin […]
Yesterday walking down a very Turkish street I saw four groups of boys, one after the other, carrying large, menacing, (plastic) bazookas. One held his fake sub-machine gun to his friend’s head as the friend squirmed and several times tried to bat it away. An eight-year old carrying the Ramadan bread tucked it under his […]
Berlin, Berlin. Familiar and overwhelming. On the train back from the airport a girl with an extraordinary voice hopped on and busked. At the end of the song, the guitarist accompanying her took a bow and people burst into applause. “Wow!” she said, opening up her hat. A cute couple jumped off and a guy […]
A punker girl crossed the street under the shady trees, shouting at some invisible or internal enemy. She was dressed in black from boot to root, her ears infested with silver and bone. Parts of her bristled and other parts erupted with pus. She scraped a chair out at the cafe where we were reading […]