Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: Berlin

they were herded

Gleis Siebzehn (Platform 17). Here is where ten thousand Jewish Berliners were herded onto trains. Only very latterly (1991) was a memorial opened. It is very simple and harrowing. No names, just numbers all the way down the platform: 29.10.1942/100 Jews/Berlin-Theresienstadt. 30.10.1942/100 Jews/Berlin-Theresienstadt. The second place name refers to the ghetto or death camp from which human beings never returned. The numbers are staggeringly ambitious: 938 people in one day; a thousand. Towards the end of the war they grow pitifully small: 32. 27. 26. 24. One of the panels has a yellow rose cast on it and on the ground behind it, among the birch trees now growing up through the tracks, last week’s yellow rose lies discarded in the snow; beheaded by its fall, in fact.

March 16, 2013
only Kneipes

Went out to a bar with a new friend who is musical, Tuesday nights is quiet night in Berlin so we walked and walked, trampling snow that had reached that pearly soiled colour that is not grey nor is it brown… so beautiful, it’s my new favourite colour, most of the restaurants were closed and only Kneipes and bars left trading and we walked into bar after bar to be beaten back by the solid wall of smoke. The one we loved I had been past many times, a sign in the window says Street Musicians Welcome and after we had fetched our beers to the bar’s corner couch and made friends with the shy, elderly bar dog who curled up under my friend’s musical hand two fellows walked in, festooned with instruments though – when I focused again – they were carrying only one party apiece. Dude with a beaten-up double bass, dude with a steel-strung guitar. They had a beer then they sat at the corner of the bar on stools and set up this most wonderful racquet, a quiet riot of music like water that runs underground. The bass player was fearless and gentle and had this fuck-it air, I don’t mean he don’t care, I mean he would do whatever it takes to get the sound. Would slap, would percuss, would pluctern, would bowie. The guitar player almost honed himself to one note. We were entranced. The dog fell asleep. The girl who had served the beers came to perch on the end of the couch and lit a cigarette and curled her legs. Walking home the streets were the streets of the quietest sleeping city in all the world.

When they finally brought their first song to a close, it was wordless and almost twenty minutes long, compelling, the guy playing bass held his hand out and announced clearly, “My friend So-and-So is playing guitar with me this evening.” The guitar player shook dreadlocks off his face and held his hand open, like a limp version of one of those guns that says, >bang<. “My friend Charles is playing bass this evening.” But before that the two of them clasped their curled fingers together for a tight moment and then each picked up his beer and they clinked.

March 13, 2013
hot pink banners

Tomorrow I take the train back to Berlin, traversing again this ancestral landscape. What a beautiful week it’s been, I’m so thankful. A girl in a sunstruck cafe told me that Denmark is the happiest nation on earth. “Our third year running!” Every time I remember our conversation I mishear it as “friendliest” and have to correct myself. We got to talking because as I was falling into drowses in the afternoon sun through the window a buoyant demonstration flowed past, stopping and starting in laughing clots. It resembled a dance party or flash mob. Lots of young people dressed in black & carrying hot pink banners. What were they so, uh, angry about? She looked wry. She almost sneered. “Well, they are students – like me – only I live in an apartment and pay my own rent – these guys live with their parents and the money is so good, unbelievably good – the government’s cutting it back – we are so lucky – the world is in recession.” I studied her, she was very beautiful. What are you studying? “Law,” she said. I thought of all the Aboriginal students in outback Queensland who would love to go to university or even high school. The little girls in Afghanistan who are barred from owning books. Malala. Those of us who have this spilling, squandering, golden good fortune ~ let’s be kind with it. It may not last and it’s really not rightfully ours. Let’s keep handing it on, like coin. Hand to hand.

March 10, 2013
I can escape! if you’ll only believe in me

I was standing on the Underground platform just now gazing at a poster for a guy who calls himself the New Houdini. His hair was frosted & his hands outstretched imploringly: I can escape! If you’ll only believe in me! A voice came at my elbow, from a very small, very elderly man: “Might I offer you something to read?” He spoke so humbly I could hardly hear him.

Now, ordinarily this would be an ideal question from a stranger. But the highly-coloured brochure he held out looked so familiar. I laid my hand on his upper arm as gently, as affectionately as I could. “Geht’s um Gott? (Is it about God?)” Yes, he said, nodding soberly. I had the feeling of reaching round in the back of my brain for any extra shards of kindness that might be lying about unclaimed. “You know… I think perhaps I might have read that one before.” He nodded again and turned away, back to his tiny wife who was wearing a soft pink beret, hand-knitted, and was also carrying brochures. With a pang in my heart I watched them conferring, about, perhaps, who they might approach next. He had offered me his treasure, and I loved him for that.

February 23, 2013
that moon

Tonight I saw the moon for the first time in ages and my heart caught fire from its coldness. Only a more-or-less moon, more than a morsel and less than a round, most of its pearl face unhidden by us. Severely it rode the dark blackwater sky. All about me everything was frozen.

February 22, 2013
I’ve been playing this music for many years

Today I was walking by the river when a man accosted me for directions. His tone was accusing and he didn’t say excuse me or thank you. He was carrying a crumpled green flyer, and pointed. “Do you know This Street?”

I turned to show him the sign. “That’s this street right here.” He frowned. “But I need the church on the corner of That Street.” I pointed. “Could it be…. this church right here?” We were standing right next to it. A leafless, skeletal tree waved its shadow over us, helpfully: or would have, had there been any sun.

“You don’t understand,” he said, “this is very important to me. I’ve been playing this music for many years.” That’s right, he had a guitar over his shoulder. “Well,” I said, beginning to suppress a smile, “I’m pretty sure this is the place. What other church is there, on the corner of This Street and That Street, by the river?”

Why does one pity selfish people? I guess it’s because they are innocent, and seem helpless. He pushed the flyer at me. “You should come to the concert. On Saturday.” I said, “Sorry, I can’t on Saturday. But good luck!” But my last words, possibly all my words, were wasted. He had turned away, sighing, “Yeah… well…” and was blundering into the churchyard, trailing his self-absorption like a long, dragging skirt made from stockings filled with bunched-up wet newspapers.

February 22, 2013
bunnyhutch

I was in the petshop section of a department store, because pets were next to pens, as if alphabetical, and it is remarkably difficult to find decent, practical biros in Deutschland that are not too fat to hold. Those I brought with me are all written dry. Standing gazing at the rabbits, whose noses whickered as they twitched and munched, I felt someone come up alongside me. This was an employee of the store, a brand-new rabbit clutched in her hands. She stood there regarding them. “So,” she said at last. “Ihre neue Kollegin.” (Your new colleague). “Be courteous to one another.” Then abruptly stooping she stowed the fuzzy bunny, a ginger-coloured flop-eared morsel, in the straw.

Berlin has a higher population of dogs than any other city in Germany: a nerve-wracking place for a bunny rabbit. I watched. The other bunnies snuffled round slowly but no wars over straw started. After a moment the girl turned and went backstage again, to the ranks (I imagined) of yet-unlabelled white mice, Siamese fighting fish, ferrets, maybe camels. Her formality, her use of the polite form of “you”, the girl form of “colleague”, and the word “courtesy” – the use of the word “colleague” altogether, for bunnies – struck me as inexpressibly wise and drily loving.

February 20, 2013
the man with bare fingers

The man with bare fingers playing guitar at the riverside markets, in the snow. He is playing a languid, spooling version of “I’ve Done All the Dumb Things” by Paul Kelly. In his hands it sounds musing rather than regretful. The two Australians drifting in front of me hatless, talking about parties. The boy who writes in the same cafe as me and who gives a shy smile as he passes on the street. The candlelit cafe playing Echo and the Bunnymen: “The Killing Moon.” The shivering persons who have to go outside for cigarettes. The lovely guitarfurl at the end of the song. The manuscript with biro marks all over it.

February 16, 2013
flimsy

River is freezing over and the swans and ducks have a narrow, darker path that they can swim through. Feathered ice-breakers. The ice is flimsy and resembles the scuzzy glass of an uncleaned shower cabinet but there are pure, sheer white patches where the overnight snow lies untouched and I can see two yellow leaves scudding across the white surface like spinnakers.

February 16, 2013
shop of owls

Went into my favourite bookshop today, which has owls carved of different woods stashed in all its corners. For the first time I noticed the sign on the back of the door: Antiquarian shops are places of inner peace. There followed a series of red circles crossed by red lines, like no-through-road signs for traffic: no headphones. No mobile calls. No shouting.

However I was so delighted I broke the rules immediately, by shouting. The proprietor, who is always barefoot or wearing a pair of rubber thongs & who drinks at one of the cafes I love, had got up from his desk at the back of the shop to say hello. “Inner peace!” I called over, beaming. “No mobile phones! I love this!”

He came down between the stacks of books which seem both wobbly and solid. “Most people like the hectic,” he suggested (it makes more sense in German). “Never stopping for a minute.”

“To never need to think!” I said. “To never… never die, right?” He nodded his head and we gazed at each other with a feeling, or so it seemed to me, on this one subject of utter likemindedness. Us & the owls. Hoo hoo.

February 10, 2013