Two older couples have been staying here, obviously good friends because the men were calm and the women had the same haircut (in different colours).  They played cards every night.  We asked what they were playing, and all I could understand from their Dutch-accented German was the number 31.

I didn’t know the game 31 but I looked it up and learned that it’s popular in Germany.  Another name for it is Hosen Runter, which means Trousers Down.

There was something I really liked about these people.  They had obviously lived a lot, had their trousers down often and learned from it.  Bad health was up ahead and bad memories deep in their frowns, but there was something about the way they sat together, switching from beer to coffee and back, laughing but mostly being quiet, that showed a common wisdom.  They were stylish.  When some people age, they play card-games and dress like they want something back, like they’re afraid that the clothes and games are all they have left.  These people didn’t seem afraid.

For several years now sports have been the only thing that makes sense to me.  We’ve been keeping up with hockey online while here in Berlin, watching games one-day late on ESPN.  It means I’ve been avoiding Canadian newspapers so I don’t see any scores.

And I’m happy not reading papers.  I have a gathering prejudice against anyone who makes a living with opinions.  When other primates groom each other they make noises – they’re often loudest after a conflict, amidst insecurity, or to emphasize to those outside a group that they are not part of the inner circle; sometimes they are loud when they’ve found something remarkable deep in the hair of the groomee.  Gelada baboons in Ethiopia are among the chattiest while they groom.

Print has had the unfortunate consequence of making our grooming sounds permanent, or making them seem more important than they are.  All this speculation about whether we’re ok, how to be ok, whether that person is really ok; all these gestures to make each other seem better for a moment or indebted to the person making noises. Opening a newspaper is like walking into a troop of Geladas, and I mean that, genuinely, with no disrespect to Geladas.  I do hate baboons, though.

Berlin is colder than Montreal today, which is wrong.  But it’s a pleasure walking these streets.  All the Christmas markets are set up.  I hear the one at Gendarmenmarkt is prettiest.  The big one near us on Ku’damm has way too many sausages.  Some of them are half a metre long.  I think about digesting them, and the concept of Advent changes.

I did a reading in Cologne the other day, and had a great time.  My hosts were a truly lovely bunch and their bookstore was the kind you don’t want to leave (http://www.buchladen-nippes.de/).  The struggle between independent bookstores and large chains seems to play out in Germany as it does everywhere else.  They gave me good beer.

Trying to get to know a city, for me, doesn’t usually enmesh me in ideology.  I don’t feel the need to understand capitalism when I go to New York.  But I haven’t been to any city like Berlin so built and scarred from ideology, with such a concrete record of ideas on the landscape.  Despite the fact that this is now a peaceful city the neighbourhoods seem almost Balkan in their differences, and I ask myself ‘what happened here’ in a way I don’t elsewhere.

The other question I’m asking is whether blogs are inherently banal or I am.

Important questions of national identity are arising because people want to know what to eat at my next reading.  The Bleibtreu is hosting a Canadian meal in combination with my reading tonight.  I don’t know what a Canadian meal is.  We brought several tins of maple syrup from Canada.  I think if we pour that over everything it will make it sweet and delicious like every Canadian I know.

I’m beginning to think that the drab reality of communist East Berlin is alive and well in Canada and never really existed here in the way that we were told in North America.  Suzanne bought a bottle of Brunello for nine bucks at a grocery store.  In Montreal we wouldn’t have been able to afford that bottle and could only have got it at one of the state-run stores.  It’s a small and foolish example, but that’s the nature of blogs.

States should be measured by how they let people choose their days.

(…)

Below are some photos I like.  One is of a miserable 19th-century water tower that became a Nazi concentration camp and is now an apartment building with a very large kindergarten.  I like people who know how to live with sadness.

Am 24.11. liest Colin McAdam Auszüge aus “Fall” und dem Vorgängerroman “Ein großes Ding” (2004) in englischer Sprache. Wer sich auch kulinarisch auf das Land, in dem Colin McAdams Romane spielen, einstimmen will, dem serviert das Küchenteam vorweihnachtliche Spezialitäten aus Kanada.  

19.00 Uhr, Eintritt frei