4.15 - Berlin

This morning I woke up in the sunny warm tiredness of having not gone to sleep until 5am, rolling to the bathroom to crap out the tofu and curry I’d eaten still recently on a drunk belly. I drank some water and the last of the orange juice, gathered my notebooks into my bag, threw a long-sleeved shirt on its back, and went out to the courtyard to untilt the wooden bench and table’s laying against one another (for the run of precipitation and protection of the wood). I tried to think about art and social critique, then went off for a walk without destination.

When I got back, Nick was hanging out the window, asking about brunch. We went, meeting up with his roomate Otto, and his fiancee Unni. I ordered fruhstuck vegetarische: more tofu (unseasoned) with hummus and guacamole, olives, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, sprouts, bananas, strawberries, and so many cheeses. All laid out on a big platter, I threw everything but the fruit and olives into a couple of sandwiches, and ate slowly, for what felt like forever, on what felt like the first day of summer. Or maybe spring.

At the park in Prinz Lauerberg, with Nick and Paul, near where the old wall ran, we sat down on top of a hill, and smoked the last of my pot from Amsterdam. Between Good Friday and Easter, with Jesus dead in a cave somewhere (or something to such effect) we joked about tatoos, Paul suggesting that I get one of Alfred E. Neuman doing the Pope from behind, while the Pope made a face like Macauley Culkin from Home Alone with his hands on his cheeks, a bit suprised. As wearing such a likeness on one’s skin would most probably be some sort of sin, we decided I’d then be required to confess it. Does the Pope hear confessions? Regardless, an interesting scene.


After doing two Hail Marys, we tumbled down the hill and tried to play hacky sack. A small German girl of about 3 and shaggy brown hair, in a flower print dress, came by to join us, correcting my English words for things with their German equivalents; giggling. She said my airplane was not an airplane, though she pointed at the sky, not a sky, just the same. We threw the hacky sack into it, into the air above her head, letting her try to catch it. Once she had gotten it she would toss it off in a direction apart from our circle, already running before she'd let go, trying to beat us to it. At one point, hit softly in the forehead, as cutely as possible, she said "scheise", picked up the hacky sack, and threw it back.

She made long excursions across the length of the park, randomly inserting herself in a game of frisbee, or grabbing a soccer ball. Raised in small parts, in the course of a day, outside, in the German sun, by total strangers. Not so strange to her non-existent childhood self-consciousness.