Aaah

I am back, and a little bruised, having tried to chase a taxi for one block in Shenzhen, as it drove off with my suitcase still in the trunk. I was saved, for the taxi driver had no intention of wearing my skidmarked crusties (he merely forgot there was a case), and all taxis in China give receipts that detail the time, distance, fare - and taxi number. Thanks again to Tosh & Angel for their help in retrieving my LadyBoy's lingerie.

Books read: 'River Town' by Peter Hessler (fab, and can't wait to start 'Oracle Bones'), 'We' by Zamyatin and 'A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire' by Chekhov.

Hosed

The post title isn't an allusion to watersports - I arrived in HK on Thursday 1pm local time and got hosed (jacket in suitcase, no brolly, etc, etc). Following a long meeting and rush eats with HL (while I drip-dripped in the name of drying off) I hoofed it to Taipei, arriving at 1AM Friday morning - just in time to stay wide awake for three hours. Managed to head back to HK before my friend Typhoon Sepat visited Taiwan to say hello - but the typhoon is several hours behind me, which means that I will have a wet weekend in Kowloon - nice if you're with a lady, but no damn good if you're own your own.

I've managed to miss the late summer typhoons out here by hours for the last three summers. I wonder if my record will continue?

Stuff

An interesting book review in the latest Economist.

Also, are cliches dead?

When people talk of 'the war of the end of the world' or 'the wars of armageddon', etc, we imagine people fighting people. I can certainly imagine an increasing number of armed conflicts over access to water (it's life itself). But what of animals? I don't suggest for a moment that we in Berkshire are about to be strangled by cows - for one thing, they do not possess opposable thumbs - but as mankind increasingly encroaches on nature and pollutes it, exploits it, without putting anything back, will our fellow inhabitants in the animal kingdom merely ignore us?

Watch out for pissed off elephants and baboons in the years ahead.

Garden of Exile, Jewish Museum, Kreuzberg, Berlin

Forty nine columns filled with earth arranged in a square on a slanting floor.

Olive willows grow out of the columns.

The effect is that you never get a steady footing. All vantage points give the same visual result - you're overwhelmed by towers. There is no possibility of a new, fresh perspective. No possible change of state, although you will always search for one. It reminds me of a poem I wrote back in 2005:

'Everyman in Exile'

6th March 2005

Diaspora bloom as scatterlings

for the garden of exile.

Pilgrim heart lacks native rhythm;

melancholic tongue turns taste buds bland.

The soul cries fire,

lighting the landscape of longing,

while the slave within,

whispers of returning,

self-possessed by the objective,

to no longer be the stranger wandering.

Is it true of exile that all paths must lead nowhere?

'Fallen Leaves' installation, Jewish Museum, Kreuzberg, Berlin

Metal discs forged as faces of young and old alike.



Visitors were encouraged to walk on the clanking, clunking discs - it provided an aural insight into the sound of killing on an industrial scale - all reduced to raw materials.

One Italian lady posed and photographed her young daughter smiling whilst standing on the discs. I wonder what that young girl will make of the photo if she chances upon it in her adulthood?

Did she identify the expressions on those discs? Did her mother?

Victims of conflicts the world over. Call them what you will - collateral damage, results of the law of unintended consequences, victims, collaborators, enemies, mother, father, sister and brother.

British concentration camps in South Africa. Nazi-era Europe. Indo-Pak partition in 1947. Stalinist gulags. Cambodian killing fields. South America's 'disappeared'. Ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Genocide in Darfur.

All the while, the machine continues clanking, clunking, grinding and consuming.

Holocaust Tower, Jewish Museum, Kreuzberg, Berlin

Visitors were ushered into the blackness of the empty tower in small groups then shut in for a few minutes. I stayed for about fifteen minutes to get a feel for the atmosphere. Most people only stayed long enough to take a photo, but I sidled into a corner, listening for the faint sounds of external rumblings, noting the maintenance ladder on one wall, stretching from the very top, but tantalisngly out of reach for those below (I wonder how many people reached out in vain for rails, ladders - anything - in a gas chamber, or a darkened railway carriage transporting them to a fate unknown). As flash photography was forbidden, my picture of the ladder below hasn't come out (but you're welcome to download the photo and use Photoshop on it).


The next two photos show the corner of the tower (imagine a tall, narrow structure with sharply angled walls) with a shard of light.

It is an architecture perfectly suited to mental anguish, torture - a shard of light (hope?), some external rumblings (a sign you're not alone or abandoned, or the sound of impending death?) - cutting you off, plunging you into darkness, uncertainty and doubt.

Letters Home, Messages Somewhere, Jewish Museum, Berlin

When I think about my visit to the Jewish Museum, what hit me most wasn't the Holocaust Tower, Garden of Exile or the Fallen Leaves installation - although they had an impact - it was the letters. Letters from parents stuck in Germany (facing certain deportation and death) sent to their children in the United States via the offices of the Red Cross. Letters scribbled and thrown from trains on their way to concentration camps, later found and posted. Letters smuggled out of camps.

Sights and Signs, Berlin

Charles Manson's next business venture?


Finally, the one bike that the family can ride together:

A question:

Where Marxist Socialism and art accidentally combine:

The message:

TV Tower cat & mouse:

Two Culinary Gems from Berlin

Breakfast - Cafe Einstein (try the Vienna breakfast)

Lunch/dinner - Kadima (everything here is great)

A Further Commoditised Approach to Insurgencies

I say further, as insurgencies already treat the public as justifiable casualties - a sideshow, a statistic, a commodity.

If insurgents adopt 'hit and run' tactics, does it make sense for them to possess, utilise and discard disposable weapons?

By disposable weapons I mean a weapon where the mechanism and ammunition is combined as one unit, with no possibility to replace the ammo or to maintain and repair the loading and firing mechanism. This would literally be a case of 'fire and throwaway'.

Having hit a target, the attackers can go on the run, having discarded their weapons, leaving them free to mingle with passers-by in a densely populated urban environment.

Once emptied and discarded, insurgents know that the weapons cannot be used against them. Being disposable with no chance for maintenance or reloading, they can be manufactured with lower grade materials and be simpler and cheaper to manufacture.

Gun makers, gun runners and gunmen don't value life, so surely it's a matter of time before disposable technology is used in this manner.

You bet someone is seriously thinking about this already, and that's very troubling.

Berlin and the Colour Brown

I have to face facts; I am the biggest hit in Berlin since Hitler in April 1945. Just about everyone over the age of 40 appears uncomfortable in my presence. Under 40, it's 50-30-20 between discomfort-indifference-politeness/pleasant surprise. Quite different to my time living in Munich back in 1998.

Berlin museum staff have appeared divided between me being either a) an art thief or b) a terrorist. Other tourists were equally paranoid, with the odd middle-aged bloke pushing out his chest and adopting an aggressive stance as I walked by the Bode Museum.

I love it.

You have to stay in their faces and smile. They have to accept your presence, and maybe, just maybe, they'll ask themselves why they felt so uncomfortable. The answer lies within themselves, not me.

Never deny your destiny. After all, how do you get to where you're going if you deny who you are? Once I accepted who I was and the fact that I didn't fit into any kind of classification, life was much richer and also free of fear.

A Stroll Down Karl Marx Allee

Stares of disbelief, the odd smile and a blush (she was married, nach). A couple of unreconstructed Nazi skinheads - tame once they realise I have no fear to exploit (remember kids, it's the racists who are afraid, lost, seeking identity through some bizarre idea of extreme nationalism).

The architecture was clean, functional - all boxes for maximal use of space without any regard to style - true Stalinist architecture.

You can imagine a typical competition entry of the period. Alcoholic architect - essentially a totality of broken dreams and betrayed ideals, stirs from his drunken funk on the morning of a competition deadline. The city's Communist Party bosses expect an entry from him. What to do? He grabs a shoebox from atop the wardrobe. He sticks an imposing arch at the front, with some bollox about Communist solidarity inscribed on a plaque to be attached beside it - as well as a monument to fallen Soviet comrades. He submits it. Voila! It's accepted and built. Face it, truth is stranger than fiction.

Strange how the GDR-era TV Tower, was encased in grey the moment I entered East Berlin.

Art in Berlin

I won't say much. Here's the Bode Museum on Museumsinsel, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and home to several museums:






Inside the Small Dome of the Bode:

The Bode has an excellent sculpture collection (I noticed that some were cross-eyed - what does that say about artistic integrity then versus now?), as well as art works from the late Roman and Byzantine periods and an extensive collection of coins. Several renditions of Christ on the crucifix had him as a wizened, worn out old man. I noticed that when archangels defeated Lucifer, they were tooled up, and he was not. Angels, as always, of indeterminate gender. German sculptures of the Virgin shared an errmmm unique face.

The New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße:

Berlin victory column (Siegessäule):

The Pergamon contained the Museum of Islamic Art, which consisted of many examples of Koranic scripture on parchment, rugs and prayer mats. Interesting, but not quite a match for the 'Turks' exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2005 (which had examples of Islamic mosaics, tiles, amulets, etc). Shame I didn't take any snaps of the mighty Ishtar Gate.

The Great Altar of Pergamon:

Inside the Altes Museum:

The Altes is home the the amazing, exquisite bust of Nefertiti.

The best trip was to the BauhausArchiv. Here I found Alan 'Pentagram' Fletcher's clam ashtray for sale (but as I no longer smoke, I passed on it), Braun watches and Lamy pens (the Lamy 2000 no cheaper than in the UK, sob). The story of Gropius and Co. designing housing for Berlin's middle classes was told really well.

Nottingham

A few words on Nottingham, where the Cistern Kid, iPOD Perv and I have spent the last few days. These are deliberately disjointed jottings (if there can be such things).

Sherwood Forest - lost - iPOD Perv looking as if on verge of death - 8 miles, mostly without water

Wind - terribly foul. Always ensure I am walking ahead of iPOD Perv.

Victoria Hotel, Beeston - excellent

Newark - blimey! It has a castle.

Chutneys - bleedin' crooks

Bramley Apple - lovely (glug)

Harts - lovely restaurant. One of the guests was a young lady in a 'little black number'. Beautiful. Accompanied by chap wearing lurid shirt. Semi-dork. Food was exquisite.

Hotel - drunkenly cavorting behind reception desk trying to woo Slovakian receptionist with a rendition of Edith Piaf's 'Non, je ne regrette rien'.

Tom Browns - flirted with staff (mostly female). One of our party went in and out of consciousness during the meal.

Not much mixing between races, judging from what we have observed in the city centre. Me and the guys have had the odd funny look. Sad. Unless of course they think we make a particularly unattractive looking gaggle of gays (which we do).

Famed ratio of women to men - utter bollocks.

Drunken women in her 50s hitting on the Cistern Kid with the winning line of 'How big is your tadger?' He slowly backs away.

Yes, it's all fun, fun, fun!

Now some photos:

A Fine-Looking Piece of Fowl

Drinking: the Sport of Champions

Wicker Man: the Musical

The View from my Cell after I Take the Wicker Man Restaging Too Far

The Cistern Kid Looking Ready for Lurve (I assume that's what his left hand is doing)

The Cistern Kid's Harem

K

After a fifteen year gap, I met up with K, perhaps one of the sweetest guys I have ever met. It was great to hear he was married to his university sweetheart. Strange that both he and I overlapped in Letchworth back in the mid 90s, and stranger still that he shared a house in Kingston with a former childhood friend of mine.

An evening where the World compressed.