4.11 - Berlin

In Kreuzberg I met a bearded American. The proprietor of a used bookstore. Some of my favorite kinds of stores. They had a lending policy for certain books: red-leafed on the opening page, the inside of the cover.

I finally found White Noise, for which I’ve been looking since I started it some weeks ago back in Providence, on the steps in front of the Diocese, in the windy sun of a sparse New England weekday.

He asked me if I was from California. I wasn’t. He was from Devon, and had gone to Conestoga. Small world. Now he lived in Berlin, spoke perfect German, worked at a used English bookstore, and seemed to have artistic commitments.

It came up that I’d gone to school in Providence. He assumed RISD. I said Brown. He made a softly condescending statement about my not being an artist; 'one of them'. He didn’t mean it badly. A clubhouse just has doors...