Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: Berlin

  • a beauty

    When I woke up I remembered the beautiful girl who was sitting outside a coffee booth by the river yesterday. She got out her phone and scrolled, she was luminous like a black pearl. When we were leaving I went up to her and said, Excuse me. Do you speak English. Yes, she said, in American. I always prefer to give compliments on the way out, to avoid creating half an hour of shared embarrassment where they have to keep smiling at you for thank you, or avoid looking your way. “You’re so beautiful,” I told her, “it makes me happy to see you. Beautiful, classy face. Bless you.”

    She looked shy and pleased and said Thanks, very soft. All along the river path people were pushing their bicycles, sitting in the sun on benches, tramping with their large and small dogs. I guess everyone is beautiful when you look closely but some people wear it like a treasure they are trapped inside of, which casts its light on everyone they pass.

  • my favourite moments of the May Day march

    The people dancing on bus stop rooves.

    The leggy punk marching in ugg boots.

    The giant skinhead I followed for several blocks who had a gentle face, was six foot eight or nine, and had a dolphin tattoo round the back of his skull.

    The raddled Australian surfer turning steaks on his roadside barbecue and serving, in Strine, with ginger hair falling all over his face. Hours later I saw him propping up the corner of a pub, huge beer in his hand, giant smile on his face; he toasted us wildly, no splashing.

    The fact that 25,000 people marched and the roar from the crowd that went up when this was announced.

    The fast pace! Australian marches are often rather leisurely. At March in March last year we spent much of the route actually dancing. This was like 12,000 people running for a bus, for miles: actually three hours. A kind of political marathon.

    The old dude, late into his seventies, who had modified a bicycle trailer with boombox speakers and was blaring the deepest, darkest old school hip hop for everybody’s edification.

    The young guy who having accidentally kicked over a bottle someone had left standing in the street scooped up all the broken pieces and carried them to the side of the road to stash neatly under an overflowing bin.

    The fact that people were marching with beers in their hands but there was very little broken glass.

    The line of police officers blackened and bulky in head to toe riot gear, boots tapping to the music as they stood otherwise impassive with arms folded.

    The smart punk who was combining politics with business by dragging a very narrow steel apparatus on wheels, strung with four large stripey airport bags, into which he harvested other people’s discarded bottles, choosing those with the highest deposit.

    The stupid punk sitting in the middle of the road with his mates who refused to get up when an ambulance came sweeping towards him, and the ambulance driver who simply sped round him without bothering to swerve.

    The pink blossoms fallen like tissues all along the centre strip of Kottbusserdam.

    The blue, blue sky and the green, green trees and the river of black in between.

    The people watching and waving from their windows along the route.

    The bumper stickers people seemed to have clapped onto parked cars as they marched by, or which perhaps drove in on them, like: Sure. You can be a Nazi. It just makes you really crapola.

    The hand painted sign two well-dressed women were carrying which said Out of the way, capitalism, the next decisions will be made by all of us.

    The City rubbish collectors clad in hi-vis orange who were dancing as they swept up, dragging a wheeled trash can.

    The piles of rubbish people had built after the bins were filled, in planter pots and around the bases of trees.

    The intense conversations later that night sitting outside our friend’s photography studio and the various people who kept trying to come in because in Kreuzberg, a wide-open living room resembles a bar.

    The songs that kept dragging me at a run back down to the milling square just when I got settled, for more dancing.

    The raised cobbled square at the end of the march were everybody was dancing to a really good DJ. The silent disco that transpired when it came time to switch the music off and the DJ started handing out headphones for a 20 quid deposit.

    The moon that came up as the sun finally went down.

    The headphones, and the song whose name I didn’t know that pierced my waters as I skated under the fizzing trees in silence.

    The dancing.

  • don’t you feel like reading books any more?

    I was in a bookshop yesterday with my friend just arrived from Copenhagen. It is around the corner from the bookshop where he and I first met. We met because he was standing gazing at the books in the English-speaking section when I visited to see how the ones I’d left were doing, and I went up to him and said, You should buy this one! I wrote it! And he did and then later I visited him at his own bookshop near the cold Danish lakes which has one wall of records and two walls of books and a tiny espresso machine.

    The bookshop yesterday has a cafe attached, it’s built under a railway line in a series of old-fashioned orange brick arches and you can hear trains screaming overhead while you drink your coffee. Adjacent to the cafe part are the shelves of books in two rooms, and the two sections of literature reach each other by means of a narrow passage, all too brief, papered entirely with the titles published by a German house which uses bold whole colours. So you walk into a rainbow of literature: I catch my breath. On the other side I peeled off to go visit poetry and my friend went visiting novels. The man who staffs the back section (English and French, philosophy, poetry) came sailing through from the just-closed cafe holding a small plate high on one hand. A fork stuck out of it, upright like a sail. Hard on his heels were two sad-eyed beagle-like dogs who weren’t beagles, who gathered themselves at his feet as he reached the stool and gazed imploringly at the underside of his plate. “Two very firm friends!” I remarked. “With clearly no agenda whatsoever.” “Tcha,” he said, spearing a wedge of cake. “Or maybe two very firm friends of the strawberry cake.”

    I began turning over the hardcover books, looking to see how people had solved the design problem I am wrestling with: how do you answer, on the back cover, the one powerful almost abstract image on the front? Do you just have a plain colour? If you put another photo, does it end up looking 90s, like a boulevard magazine? The combination, I find, of ambitious ideas of beauty with design inexperience makes independent publishing hard. My friend showed me a novel marked The greatest book you’ve never read. Neither of us had read it, either. He was looking for WG Sebald. “Have you read Proust?” “Oh, yes. But I can’t remember any of it. It took me months.”

    As he turned away I remembered what my novelist friend had said, at the time: You should put that on your gravestone. “She read Proust.” The man on the stool dropped two chunks of cake for his patient friends. I thought how the poetry section was in the dimmest corner but a good slice of strawberry cake brings dogs to your heels. I turned back to the hardcovers, none the wiser, nonetheless. Another book lover walked in, an older man in a beautiful wool coat. One of the dogs had climbed into the leather armchair at the entrance to my rainbow and was sitting there looking rather tired and sad. “Na?” he said, stooping to greet her. ‘Na’ is hard to translate but means, I think, approximately: so? how are you, person whom I feel attached to and fond of, or whom I like on sight. The dog gazed back at him plaintively. Clearly he had brought no strawberry cake. He tickled her under her chin. “Und?” he asked her. “Hast du keine Lust mehr, Bücher zu lesen?” Don’t you feel like reading books anymore? How Germans speak to dogs – courteously, seriously, with familiarity – makes me truly love them.

    You’ll see some raddled punker and some lady in expensive trainers, their two dogs tangle in a sniffing wreath along the river path and they both stand there smiling tolerantly, as if to say: Tcha…. That’s just the way dogs are. I had seen this that same morning, in a seamier part of town. In other news, we saw an otter swimming along the canal, and followed it for half a mile under the trees. Periodically it dived, making a ring of bright water and then emerging further along up the bank. Turns out otters swim at about a walking pace. In all my life I’ve never seen one before, I’d have taken it for a beaver except that I asked a man standing with his arms folded and he told me, doubtlessly, “That – is an otter.” Another man in his blue kayak was sorting things on the bank, readying himself for a sunny day’s rowing. On the other side two trumpeters stood side by side and played some mournful tune into the quiet water’s ears.

  • I’m in trains

    I came clattering down the stairs to find the train already humming, its destination sign was flashing which means departure imminent. I franked the ticket and ran. The train was right down the far end of the platform. As I came pelting towards the front carriage the doors closed and it began to move. I could see the driver sitting gazing at me from his little cubicle. I said, in English, “You’re kidding, right?” and blew him a sarcastic kiss. And guess what he pulled up again, just ahead, and opened the long row of doors for me. Oh! I said in German, “O! Das war lieb!” He couldn’t hear me because the window was closed. I laid my hand on my heart to thank him. As I climbed in the other passengers looked up, startled, and one man said knowingly, “Ah! Extra Service!”

    Another time I watched as a lumbering skinhead with terrifying facial tattoos made his way slowly down the cabin to where an older man sat slumped in his sleep, all alone. Everybody tensed up as the skinhead said to him, “Hey!” I was wondering should I go up and intervene. His next words were, “Hey! Du! Alles ok? Geht’s dir schlecht?” Hey, you. Everything ok? Aren’t you feeling well? He touched the sleeping man on his shoulder and shook him gently. The man muttered, he was alive, everybody’s ok, the sun is shining.

    Two years back when I was living in Friedrichshain I used to ride back and forth on the highline between my house and my beloved’s. The sensation of speeding among the treetops along an invisible rail was one that always cheered me. The red medieval bridge that linked our suburbs was built in Victorian times: the train zips along its brick turrets and either side down below there is the river. I glanced up from my writing to see an older man gazing with an expression of indulgent fondness, as though I were his granddaughter. “Schöne Schrift,” he offered: lovely handwriting. “Danke!” I said, and we both smiled and I went back to my compelling page. At the end of the ride I clipped up my pen, closed the page, gathered my gear and as I got up to leave he was nodding and nodding. “Alles schön aufgeschrieben,” everything written up nicely, he said, with as much satisfaction in his voice as though he had written something of his own.

    Then yesterday I started to want to write something just as I left the house. All down the street I was towing it like a balloon, bobbing under the trees that have appeared rather suddenly, like umbrellas opening, in the short week we were away in the countryside. Someone has been decorating the city with Spring. I jogged down the stairs and sat down, and pulled out my pen. When the train arrived I got on it and kept writing. You know that intent feeling when you daren’t look left or right, you must keep following the scent underwater with your nose until you find its home cave, that treasure. Just as I reached for my mountaintop – balloon, umbrella, cave – a large man standing nearby said, “Guten Morgen meine Damen und Herren, Ihre Fahrkarten, bitte.” Tickets, please. He went first to the woman on my right and I just pressed on, shaping a tide of sand across the page. The outer part of my mind was tensed waiting for the interrupt. That tiny spurt of rage interruption invariably brings to the writing tide. Matchflare underwater. Dimly I felt how he had moved past me – so cultured! – asking the people standing further up the carriage for their tickets. When I was done writing and had capped my pen and zipped my bag I saw him and his colleague gathering themselves at the doors and he didn’t even catch my eye, I had the ticket out to show him because I wanted him to know I wasn’t trying to evade justice and had played fair, they were chatting casually to each other and jumped out at their door and I jumped out at mine and though the staircase was clogged with drug dealers so aggressive they will actually stand in front of you to ask what do you want I felt high and unstoned and free, like the train that curves among the treetops, in this city which respects art and respects thought, in these people.

  • cold but sweet

    Finally experienced the piercing joy of eating ice-cream in the freezing cold, I always used to wonder why people would do that. But tonight I walked into this swanky ice-cream bar where the guy had just taken all the plastic rims off the deep buckets, presumably to wash them, and he was puzzling over putting them back each in its right place. I said, “Do you just take them off sometimes and put them back all different, then, just to confuse people?” And he gave me his slow, shy smile. “…No,” he said, somewhat reluctantly. “No,” I said, fondly, “because that would be silly.” Only I think I said “weird” or “freaky” because I always think “komisch” is going to mean “comical” then I remember it doesn’t. He didn’t take it amiss, thank god. There is not enough room in a passing pleasantry to say, I didn’t mean that as a passive-aggressive attack, it just came out wrong because my German is faulty. He had a service-smile and then a shyer, boyhood smile which he gave out only sparingly, from under the shelf of his brows. That was the one I remembered and will carry, which slightly alters everything. We’re in this world together! Each of us, gazing out, going: Wow, far out. We exchanged a look which acknowledged this. So then he gave me my ice-cream cone wrapped in a serviette and I ate it walking home in the cold, cold wind.

  • echt Kinderbilder

    I just saw a Berliner sitting with legs planted apart in the sunshine and hugely enjoying his hot dog – or some kind of meat that will never die forced into a large white bread roll. In his opposite hand he held a catering-size bottle of red chilli sauce and was squeezing a gout of chilli into the open end of the roll each time he took a fresh mouthful. Though perhaps ‘fresh’ in this context is not quite the right word.

    The sun is shining. Four men spilled out of an art gallery wearing hats and overcoats and one said, “Das sind echt Kinderbilder!” – those are kids’ paintings – and all of them laughed. In unison like an old school barbershop quartet. I caught the eye of a little elderly lady wearing green and she gave me, astonishingly, her mute and carefully guarded smile.

  • lost in the cake station

    A literal translation of the conversation that took place between me and the gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy working in the Turkish deli just now:

    Me: Hi! Can we have two pieces of that, please, to take-with?

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: Sure! Rightfully to take-with or simply for underway?

    Me: Oh, just for underway please. We can take it on the hand.

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: So not packed-in. Does it reach, like this?

    Shows me two paper napkins and stands the slices of cake on them.

    Me: Yes, that reaches well, thank you beautifully.

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: Two Euros please!

    Me: Beautiful thank you, little bye-bye!

    Gorgeous dark-eyed Turkish boy: Little bye-bye! A beautiful day still!

    Elaborate German courtesy plus cultured Turkish hospitality. It’s like a match made in Heaven, if Heaven were an 80s cruise ship with lairy pure wool carpets and a big band.

  • by appearance

    A man in front of me got up from his bench and ambled towards the train. He was huge and had that loping, awkward walk of a boy who’s been called too big all of his life. I’d say 6’5″ or 6″. As we both sat down on opposite benches he pulled out a book and started to read. I was reading, too, in fact, hearteningly, several books appeared on that ride but the truth is I spent as much time stealing covert glances as concentrating on Mary Stuart’s court. This man was dressed in giant red sneakers, a sloppy, comfortable tracksuit, baseball cap. He was black. In America I imagine he’d have been in danger of being shot for the crime of Being Tall Whilst Black. The expression of gentleness on his face and the shy way he held his head, his utter concentration on the page, made me love him. The temptation to go up and say, Excuse me, you just have such a beautiful, gentle spirit I just wanted to say hello, was very strong. Only respect for his reading and his solitude prevented me interrupting him as I got off. And I didn’t want to make him speak out about himself in front of all those people when he was staying behind and riding further, and I was leaving: it seems aggressive, it would have made him conspicuous in a lifetime where clearly conspicuousness had been a burden. I would so have loved to know what he was reading.

  • citizen’s arrest

    I walked into one of those joyless lunchtime buffets so ill-suited to Chinese cuisine. The name of the place was China-Haus, China-Garten, something like that. They had long ranks of bains marie, tepid with cornflour. Another woman came in behind me, rather young with a lot of glossy hair spilling over her parka, and stood there pulling off her gloves. “Do you have coffee?” she asked the waitress. “Not… not really.” “Oh good. I’ll have a latte machiatto. Do you have aloe vera juice?” I started to laugh. The waitress looked over her shoulder at the kitchen, uneasily. “We basically just have normal coffee.” “Oh,” said the coffee loving yoga monster, dismally. She was so bewildered that I sort of fell in love with her humanity.

  • shopgirl

    Tonight I walked into a Chinese restaurant alone and was seated at a tiny table in the centre of the crowded room. The smaller tables were set out in pairs running the length of the long restaurant; the gap between my table and the couple next door was about four inches. Idly I eavesdropped on their conversation, noticing how he invariably talked and she invariably supplied back-up: Mmm-hmm, yep, I know what you mean. Oh, my. Well, that’s fascinating! Good for you.

    When their meal was done and my meal had arrived the man picked up his unused chopsticks. He had eaten his dinner with spoon and fork and now wanted to know: Sind diese zum Mitnehmen? Are we supposed to take these home with us? His companion, who was older and had a wise, patient face though she had sat unmoved through his several recitations of what sounded like mind-numbing generalisations and prejudice (“they were obviously gay, or had spent time in prison, ha ha”) said, rather gently, “I think some people use them to eat with.” Some people like the woman at the next table, for example. He tipped the long paper bag to let the bright lacquered chopsticks slide into his hand. Playfully he mimed for her their various uses: scratching his scalp with a single chopstick, tucking it behind his ear like a newspaper man of the 1920s, trapping a long moustache under his nostrils by scrunching his upper lip. After that he bunched the two chopsticks together and slid them carefully back into their paper sachet and laid it back on the napkin on his untouched side plate.

    I felt my face squinch into an expression of disgust. The woman was so startled she broke the fourth wall. “What?”

    I said, spreading my hands, “Well – if you put those back into their case, they’re going to hand them on to the next customer.”

    The man looked blank. “And?” he said.

    I gasped a sort of soundless bark of laughter. “And, well you’ve just stuck them in your hair and put them behind your ear and… it’s not very nice, don’t you think?”

    He was so mortified he stood up instantly and began fumbling for his coat. He must have been trembling because it took him a long time to work his arms into the sleeves. For many minutes he stood there patting his pockets, clapping himself up the chest and back down and round the backs of his hips with two spread hands. His companion didn’t move and none of us looked at each other. I got on with my dinner and some time later the man reappeared, smelling of tobacco smoke, and slid into his chair beside me as though no time at all had passed. He began once again describing the world to her and she consented, nodding, agreeing, supporting. He slid the chopsticks out from their paper case and set them side by side in front of him. When I got up to leave I said, Wiedersehen, and got a nod from the listening woman but no acknowledgement from the crumpled, authoritative man.