MY APOLOGIES

. . . I try never to let this much time elapse between posts. It’s like the fella said: I try all things; I achieve what I can. Thing is, I have been lately attempting with some desperation to make my apartment here less a bachelor pad and more of a cozy Hobbit-like place where I can live in peace in prosperity. I am eschewing filthy MINIMALISM for beautiful MAXIMALISM regarding my humble domicile . . . I have books and movies and incense holders scattered around, and a Persian rug between my couch and massive TV, and on and on. Eventually I want overlapping rugs and gloomy paintings . . . all the trappings of a loner shut-in night owl who GAZES WISTFULLY AT THE MOON WHEN THE DARKNESS FINALLY SETS IN. But such a thing must manifest itself naturally. To force it would be like getting thirty tattoos all over your body within the span of a year. It feels too affected at that point. May as well start carrying a Poser Card . . .

For the first few days I was back in Berlin, I felt a sort of despair that I attribute to coming home to a cat-house house, and being reminded that Dante has been gone for a year and a half now, and feeling also the whiplash of traveling to a new city every few days in as much time and suddenly being inert in a city where I intend to keep building upon whatever my life is now. I had wanted to keep going forever so as to outrun that awful feeling I have felt since August 2023, but realistically how long can you keep living like that? And yet now that two weeks have passed, I feel all right again. There is all the difference in the world between briefly occupying the homes of all my friends goodly enough to put me up when I was passing through, and having my own place again where I can take baths with the bathroom door open, and sleeping till noon without inconveniencing anyone, and watching movies on my own TV while sitting on my own couch.

SPEAKING OF WHICH

. . . today is the second day of March, and according to Letterboxd I have so far watched 66 movies since January 1st. And tonight it will be 67. I’ve been watching a movie every night, sometimes two. Listen: it is a source of peace for me. OK? And multiple people have sent me this, implying it is me:

Thought I: That’s the guy from that movie PERFECT DAYS. Why have I not watched it yet? A Wim Wenders joint! I had seen plenty of screen caps from it, many of which I identified with personally, but namely these:

And so saying, I woke up at noon today and made coffee and my gay little smoothie and immediately put it on. It just came across to me as a Daytime Movie, and I suspected it would also be a quiet and relatively plotless Hang Out Movie, which some might also call a Vibes Movie. For once in my life, I was correct on all accounts. Wow!

The film is about a middle-aged man who cleans public restrooms all over Tokyo. He lives an ascetic lifestyle wherein he reads books, listens to cassette tapes, waters his plants, rides his bicycle, eats at the same restaurants every day, visits a public bath house, gets film developed, and on and on. During his lunch breaks, he smiles at strangers and watches how sunlight creates shadows upon nearby surfaces and takes photos of trees with an old camera he always keeps in the pocket of his work jumpsuit. There are a few little dramas threaded in and out of the core meditation of this man’s everyday life, but for the most part you just hang out with him. You know what: I love it. I’m all about hanging out with a cool dude.

Afterwards, not unlike our hero, I felt a strong and ancient impulse to religiously deep-clean my entire apartment.

Earlier in the film, upon seeing this dude’s bedroom, which is just a traditional Japanese bedroom, I was reminded of my own bedroom back in Portland. I was in a real Who Cares Man pit of absolute sadness back then, and I supposed my life was over. I would walk around looking for places where they could bury me when I gave up the ghost before my 30th birthday. My favorite place to hang out was a cemetery, for God’s sake. But inevitably I would wind up back in my room on account of it raining ten months of the year, and though I might think its simplicity is quaint now, I’m here to tell you that it was not a source of happiness in my life. And it must be said here that I am deeply indebted to the saintly women who were goodly enough to sleep with me in Portland, because not a single one of them showed any sign of disgust upon seeing what you might charitably call a utilitarian bedroom, a place where my furniture was made of cinderblocks and wooden boards, and where I literally slept on a Japanese futon on the floor. They say it’s good for your back, and you can always roll it up in the morning and have way more space, such as my Japanese brothers and sisters do. But as a 29-year-old white guy with $12 in his bank account, it was straight up bummer.

Look upon my bedroom ye mighty and despair:

Not long after that, I saw the light and I heard the word . . . I got a cushy office gig at a publishing company in Oakland, effectively rescuing me from my impending doom. Which is to say I was able hightail it out of that godforsaken city and head back to the East Bay where all my friends were. Now that I was being paid the same amount of money every two weeks rather than hemorrhaging money and staring down the barrel of total ruin, as I had been doing for years and made especially worse in Portland. How did the old refrain go again?

There is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable affliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

. . . perdition be damned (lol), now that I was back in Oakland, I instead went about the humble task of furnishing my bedroom with actual furniture and an actual bed, and so on. Soon enough my bedroom resembled vaguely the kind of room inhabited by an adult now three decades deep upon God’s green earth:

My apartment here in Berlin is more or less headed in this direction. OK? I even have the same bed and everything. I need to have all my paintings shipped over from the US, including and especially the self-portrait of world-famous Canadian multimedia artist Laura Rokas . . . but I’ll deal with that next September when I’m back in Virginia for my cousin Jack’s wedding.

You know, perhaps one day I will revert to the relative simplicity of the Tokyo toilet cleaner from PERFECT DAYS . . . But for now I, a younger man, often wrestle with the same thoughts as good ol Squall Leonheart . . .

Truth is, it would be nice to hang out with a g-g-girl. There sure are a lot of them here in Berlin. I recall the words of Cloud’s mom from FINAL FANTASY VII, which I read as a teenager and thought “That sounds nice . . .”

And the other night, as I finally got around to playing the remake from 2020, I made it to the Cloud’s mom flashback scene, and once again I thought “Aw :,)” . . .

Silly goose! I dig the new localization. And man, I need that, except I’m never going to meet an older girl because they’re just not into me for some reason. But it would be nice to find someone sweet. (In the back of my mind, I still have a hope that I will meet a French girl with red hair who is mean to me, but I don’t know how you go about finding one of those those.)

FOR NOW I WILL GAZE BOTH NIGHT AND DAY UPON THE WAR-BROKEN SPIRES OF KAISER WILHELM MEMORIAL CHURCH, THE BEACON OF WEST BERLIN . . .

. . . which can be seen in the opening of WINGS OF DESIRE, when Damiel the angel is perched atop the tallest spire surveying the city below, and only children can see him:

I think of that scene every time I walk past the cathedral, which so ominous and gloomy in its brokenness, just like me. Zoologischer Garten Station is only one stop away from me on the U-bahn, and a 20-minute walk from my apartment, so I see ol Kaiser Wilhelm’s place of worship often. It’s even right outside the flagship Muji store. Wow!

(I am remembering now that Bex and I saw it lit up on some foggy November night when she visited me here from London . . . Sigh!!)

Back in the HERE and NOW, coiled up in the galaxy-glow darkness of my own vampire spire in Schöneberg, I was content to straight up chill all by myself. At that very moment my dad said this:

Hey baby . . . he ain’t wrong.

Later that night, Kenny Powers spoke absolute truth:

And on the nights preceding and following this one, I ate a tangerine-flavored gummy and watched a whole bunch of movies while STONED to the BONE. I’ve been watching a lot of good stuff recently. See here:

(MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE, FIRST REFORMED, PICKPOCKET~)

FINALLY, REGARDING MONTY

The other day my friend Lucy posted an Instagram story that was a picture of some little fabric painting (what the hell do you call that?) depicting a smiling clown in a boat beneath a quarter moon. I immediately requested she gift it to dear Monty, who is something of a contented clown herself:

Monty and I, both stoned off our asses, meditated upon the mystery of clown’s journey . . .

An hour or so later, I received good news from the Western front: My negotiations had paid off. Lucy was going to give the clown painting to Monty.

Upon informing Monty of her newest artistic acquisition, hope for peace and happiness in the world manifested itself in some small way, and we were glad.

And what of the other Monty news? Well: The other night, she sent me a picture of her new copy of PIERRE, which is the novel that killed Herman Melville’s career. He was deemed insane and never again wrote a novel—just short stories and poems.

You’re wondering: How did I respond? With a picture of my own copy of PIERRE of course:

I have never read it. I just happened to bring it back to Germany with me to finally blast through the thing because I love Herman Melville and thus I know this book DEFINITELY rules. From the forward:

We have decided to read the book in tandem and at the same pace. I’m so excited I want to puke. See, you have to place these things for yourself in the future or else you will sink into a despair. Something like deciding which new book you’re going to read next is like placing a present at the feet of your future self. It is a good feeling to have when inertia might otherwise steer you into The Dark World, as for a time it did me. (There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness . . .)

I shall now conclude this post, this trash heap of total idiotic nonsense, THUSLY: With what the kids might called a MOOD BOARD. Yeah . . . just some ways I’ve been FEELIN lately. Such is my tale. Yeah?

FIN.

Earlier I was sitting at my desk staring at the wall and with perfect clarity I suddenly remembered something my friend Hali had once said to me:

“I woke up this morning and was glad to see that it was snowing. And then I remembered everything else.”

i love spending the night at someone’s house, and just before we go to sleep, they say: “do you mind if i put on some white noise?”

and i say: “hell yeah, go ahead and crank that shit” lol

my friend and downstairs neighbor isabel

Last Saturday I boarded a plane at Dulles with a trunk full of all my movies and most of my books and a bunch of black clothes and flew seven hours to Amsterdam . . . it wasn’t an outright bad flight, but the vegetarian meal was high school cafeteria-level bland this time around, and the interior of the plane looked like it had not been updated since 1986, so the chairs were stiff as hell. I sprung for a duo seat so I only had to sit next to one other person, and she was all right. I think all told I slept an hour or so at best. I refuse to watch a movie on a plane because, for God’s sake, the screen is so small, and most of the stuff they got on there is so bad I want to die. So I read a little, stared out the window into the dark abyss of the Atlantic Ocean, despaired at about how much of a moron I am, and wondered at it all.

At one point I got weak and checked the flight map, always a bummer, and saw that we had only reached Greenland, which is about the halfway mark. And so I slumped my sad and tired head against the cold plastic wall and did my best to tune out in the dark. We were due to land in Amsterdam at seven in the morning with an hour layover there before the one-hour flight to Berlin. I always fly KLM because I dig the Dutch, and inevitably I always get routed to Schiphol Airport. Although honestly it’s a pretty nice airport . . . certainly nicer than essentially all of ours. And with my Austrian passport, all I do is scan it and walk right through the automatic robot gates. I don’t have to explain where I’ve been to anyone. Meanwhile, whenever I return to the US, the customs agents there regard me as though I am Osama Bin Laden. Such is my tale.

The sun had not come up by the time we landed. It was freezing on the jetway. I made my way through the labyrinthine silver hallways accented by Lego-yellow English text to get to my basement-floor gate. The sun rose by the time they began herding us onto the plane. For some reason, despite my buying the absolute cheapest scumbag ticket they had, AS IS MY WONT, I lucked out and ended up in boarding group two, so I was one of the first dozen or so people to board the plane. As I was the approaching the gate agent to scan my ticket, another one nearby said, “Sir, this is boarding group two only.” To which I said: “I am in boarding group two.” Did I appear so scuzzy that she assumed I belonged with the degenerates in group six or seven, where I normally find myself?? Well, I suppose she wasn’t wrong to regard me as such on account of I looked like a rained-on bag of vampire turds just then, so fair enough . . .

Before we took off, the pilot announced in English and then Dutch, a sort of clownish Sims language, that the plane had accumulated ice on the wings as we’d sat on the tarmac. And so we floored it to this empty spot near the runway and a little truck pulled up with a crane perch attached to it, and a dude with a slime gun de-iced the plane within about sixty seconds:

The same thing happened to me back in November when I was leaving Chicago for LA. I watched from my seat on the wing as the iceman cometh:

We almost didn’t make it off the ground that day. I saw in realtime through the Midway Airport website that they were cancelling flights left and right as the heavy snow continued to fall from heaven above. We were the last plane to hit the skies, and I remember being a little bummed about it on account of I wanted one more day, a snow day, in Chicago with Lolita the dog and Gayle, my friend who is a professional clown:

ANYWAY

On the half-full flight to Berlin last week, I shared a row with this hot Berlin-looking girl who reminded me of a girl I used to like long ago. There was no one in the middle seat, so it was just us. She had beautiful curly black hair. When we were de-boarding, she was in front of me, but detoured into a row near the cockpit to fix her bag. I figured everyone can use a compliment at eight in the morning, and so just before stepping off the plane I told her as much, that her hair was beautiful, and she smiled at me and said thank you. It was so quick that I could not determine her accent, which I am usually good at. And then I was gone from her like the morning mist . . .

Back home I unpacked a bunch of movies I’m gonna have a real good time with until Berlin thaws in a few weeks:

I collapsed on my couch and slept till it was dark out. I checked my phone and saw the temperature and the phase of the moon and Wikipedia’s photo of the day, which was particularly good that day:

. . . and so saying, I went out on my balcony at four in the morning and saw the waning gibbous hovering way the hell over the building across the way. I thought: “Hell yeah!!!”

Tonight I watched Paul Schrader’s FIRST REFORMED and had my mind blown wide open. It is one of the best things I’ve seen in a while. Midway through I paused it to make coffee, and I realized it had made me feel a little despair. I thought about what Ishmael had said:

A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that. For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness.

Thought I: “Yeah dude . . .”

Later, THE PEN OF MASTER-AUTHOR PAUL SCHRADER filled me with a hope I had not felt in a long time. Its radiant light shined down upon me, and I was glad. But I won’t spoil anything.

Now the sun is coming up. Hier kommt die Sonne. AND SO I SAY NOW UNTO YOU, WHOEVER YOU ARE AND WHEREVER YOU ARE:

And I wonder, as always . . .

things i found in my phone

yes