Flug by Night

Berlin is getting colder. The sky is starting to match the cobblestone gray, the sidewalk granite blue-gray, the old building brown-gray, the stone still chipped from bullets steel gray. There must be more words for gray, but I don’t like the sound of puce.
This area is decidedly nocturnal. After the business people leave their apartments at sunrise, passing the remaining stragglers of the night before, there is no one around until almost five, when the businesspeople get off work, and everyone else has finally recovered. There is this element probably in all cities, its true, but it seems especially marked here (whereas new york breathes people steadily, all hours of the day and night, save for a small inhale at maybe 4 in the morning). I can’t speak much past this kiez (area) for now, my experience of which has been almost entirely after dark.

On the first Friday night I wandered out of a photo show opening somewhere in mitte and got distracted by brightly lit streets, where people sat outside under those colorful Thai parasols, found myself in more galleries and a beruhmt graffitti’d artist space and former ss headquarters that lead up up up to a lookout over a sand bar (really, sand) with a film being screened on the building side. Back on the street I strolled into a salsa club and danced with polish girl, who I sat with, with bright red high bootlets, whose name I never even asked and who will always be that polish girl with the bright red bootlets, then, home? No,what lights? another gallery. found myself in a small room with space enough for three cramped people, absolutely covered, walls and ceiling and much floor, with what looked like dio de los muertos inspired painting and sculpture. It smelled like sage and candlewax. Then I stopped to talk to some hippie kids, one from Chile spoke english, we all sat down on the sidewalk, more friends of friends came to sit. there was a girl with a viola, which I played a little until a fight almost broke out nearby and we worriedly put it away. Two englishboys stopped, some of the people sitting had met them earlier that night on the tram. The bleachblond one pranced around like rambunctious drunk puppy, playing ‘I will survive on guitar’ for a moment before bounding off to something else. The sweet quieter one was there for a festival/conference on characters, where he’d been invited to talk/give presentations about his work, about which he was in a crisis, debating the superficiality of a life that was essentially drawing cartoons and designing figures. We talked. I was promptly smitten. Alas, he had a presentation again early the next morning and then was flying back to…Manchester? My chest hurt. “and I’ll never see you again...” he ran up the train steps. Manchester. I hope he got home ok.
Oh eartbreak.