Now they must destroy the Palast der Republik, a reminder that the old society was once new, for who wants such a reminder? Out with the new old and in with the new old new. They say that 'some people want to back to that'. (the new old) Perhaps it is the one in five Berliners who are currently unemployed, wearing rags or hand-me-downs. Perhaps it is they who thought that the old was once new (or even just a little younger). Back to the new old new. Now it has the chance to fail twice! Then they must make leisure freedom not work!
I'm in Berlin. It's -20. The streets are (naturally) deserted. I received a job offer and this time it was a good one....
Stalingrad Madonna
So, sorted out with some accommodation although the architecture is definitely of the Stalinist era (I think they call it wedding cake style. Grandiose, white, pimply buildings, so abstracted as to almost disappear beyond the skyline. It's hard to think that anyone could have such a minimalist or abstract imagination.) or rather a part of Berlin re-built after allied bombing (is hard to say which it is, the city has been through so much turmoil, still trying to establish its identity). It's still good to be here. I start work next week, 8 classes with Civil Servants from the Ministry of Agriculture. I've brought painting work with me so that I can get on with it even when I'm not teaching. There may also be some fallow days. I was in the Jugendherberge (Youth Hostel) for 2 nights. Actually not bad but the loo paper is grey which just about sums up the rest of the facilities and the experience. (I think it's the grey recycled paper, very ecological no doubt but not very good at its intended purpose) The Spree is frozen solid, with lumps of ice coagulating into little floes breaking the surface and then seeming to disappear. I've never seen a frozen river before. I have some days to myself now and intend to get on with my painting in that time, also visiting some of the museums to do a little sketching. Keeping myself to myself generally although I met a girl returning from a job in Sweden and struck up a friendship with her. She's now returned to her home in Leipzig. Visited the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtiß Kirche (aka hollow tooth - the roof was bombed in during the war hence the nickname) to see the Stalingrad Madonna, a loveless and wretched message in a bottle sent by the 6th Army during its encirclement - the most brutal and bloody battle in world history. The drawing was made of a Madonna and child by a German doctor on the back of map. There is an undoubted spirituality about it. The child and mother are wrapped foetus-like in a semi-circle. Around the pair words in German, life, love, peace, freedom, Christmas 1942, Stalingrad. Stayed in the hotel Les Nations in Zinzindorfer Str. for a night. They remembered me and gave me a room en suite at the economy price. The smart little man was there, speaking his perfect English and complimenting me on my bad German! I walked around the block, just enough time to gather icicles on my moustache and step into a steh cafe or imbiß joint for a roll and a coffee. Lots of Turks lounged around, smoking black tobacco and playing cards.
Meeting with the PDS
This morning an impromptu demo by the PDS (the former Communists). I spoke to them and bought their little paper Sozialschmarotzer. There is a great deal of waffle about Marxism and then lists of the leading Nazis. The strange thing is that they only mention the professions of their fathers. The occupation of Julius Striecher's father hardly concerns me but perhaps it is on the tip of everyone's tongue in Germany.
Fantasies of Revolution
They talked to me about the need for another revolution, that going back to Capitalism is not a revolution (I agree with this, that the Wende was not a revolution....), that when they get in again that everything will be different and better. They talked about the natural laws outlined by Marx in Das Kapital. The smaller one who seemed to have more authority than the others glared at me with seeming strangeness. I noticed a spider burrowing into his little cap. The whole thing left an odd impression, but not the waffle. I'd heard that before. The spider is burrowing into the head of a would-be Lenin on a sunny but cold morning in Berlin, burrowing and going deeper down into his fermented brain pan. Overhead a jet roars. Traffic deepens. The S-Bahn stutters. The spiders aim is to burrow its way to China. Then it can activate a China Syndrome of spiders. They take over the world and cheerily eradicate humanity. Spiderdom is born.
I slept but not well. In the morning I washed but there was no hot water. A cold shower in these temperatures!
Mitteleuropa
Yes a blog. There's something so Grizzly Adams about it all, well it's irresistable. When I get back to my room I have a hot shower and pass out for 5 hours. Then I get up, read or paint and then sleep until 6PM. A bleak Mitteleuropean winter, so horrible it makes Ivan Denisovitch's Gulag look like a holiday camp, but wasn't that what it was intended to look like? O for a bowl of fish head soup, a kick in the head and some bleary-eyed sleep. Woken by the stasi guard for yet another joyous kicking! Makes Orangefield look like a holiday camp. (that phrase again) I seek the sauna and the company of naked nymphettes to do sport with, fornicate, throw soap and the like. This is all salt rubbed into the wounds. Somehow my metaphors have become so mixed its almost good writing - gulags, nymphs, saunas, kicks. On the bleak walk over the bleak former Stalinist kicking ground my head fell off and a group of men had a game of impromptu football with it. Still sipping the last scale of scaley fish head soup, my glassy eye improved with all those important fish oils, I became the first header of the season. Ouch those metaphors hurt this time. My head became a sputnik that failed to make it. blag, blah, blag...
Paul Murphy studied at the University of Warwick, gaining a BA in Film and Literature. From there he went to Queen's University Belfast to study for an MA on T.S. Eliot and the French philosopher Jacques Lacan. He is presently living in Berlin.
His poetry, literary criticism, book reviews and travel writings have been published in journals worldwide. He has published two pamphlets and one book of poetry (In the Luxembourg Gardens, University of Salzburg Press, Austria), and a book on Eliot and Lacan (T.S. Eliot's Post-Modernist Complaint, Postpressed, Australia) and has read from his work throughout Europe.