Tonight on my way to meet an Internet Stranger, and upon ascending the stairs from a nearby U-bahn station, I saw and heard loudly the whirring of a police helicopter with its spotlight on floating high above Mitte in central Berlin. Nearby was a massive police barricade. I assumed it was an active manhunt of some sort. Everyone stood on the sidewalk gazing upward and taking pictures. A woman rode up to me on her bicycle, having chosen me out of the crowd for some reason, and said (in English): “I’ve been in Berlin for 30 years and I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

As a red-blooded American citizen I have of course have bore witness to plenty of aerial police activity and what I saw now was nothing new. Even so, the sight of a probing helicopter is always intriguing, and thus I was intrigued. It makes a stranger stare.

I myself took the picture you see above and then turned the corner to get to the Internet Stranger’s house. All due respect to her, but it was a bit of a drag. She was not particularly friendly and a bunch of her friends were there and she even called me Bryan at one point, which is a cardinal sin (Bryan is a poser wannabe Ryan name . . . Brian is even worse). When I finally got to leave, still a spooked up from the joints we had smoked, I was a little relieved. Outside it was a nice summer night and now it was all mine. Gladly I walked two miles home in the dark.

Nearing my neighborhood, I took a left on Pallasstraße and remembered a girl I had seen on the U-bahn earlier that night on my way to Mitte. This girl had looked exactly like my friend Emel-Elizabeth The Estonian Girl, whom I had dreamt about a few months ago after not seeing her for an entire year. And upon texting Emel to say as much, she told me she was in Berlin for one night only, which was that very same night, and invited me to hang out with her at a bar in my neighborhood, so of course I went. In my dream I had told her I missed her, and now there she was because of that dream.

And so saying, tonight I informed her of my sighting of her blonde clone:

What does it mean? My seeming clairvoyance of her? Who knows, but I love it . . .

Now I am back in my high tower in Schöneberg watching a movie I found on the Criterion Channel called CHINA MOON. I couldn’t help but notice that Madeleine Stowe (whom I had only ever seen in 12 MONKEYS) bears an uncanny resemblance to my beautiful friend Alayna:

Just a few minutes later, Madeleine Stowe’s character notices it’s a full moon. Alayna and I always text each other on the night of a full moon. We love that thing. Well: tonight happens to be a full moon. I always seem to watch movies with full moons on full moon nights. I dig that coincidence. It’s almost as cool as dreaming or thinking about someone and them saying they dreamt or thought about you too. The moon is of course an inherently mysterious thing, so when spooky things transpire when the moon is at the height of its powers . . . well, that seems very full moonish to me . . .

I slept badly last night. I went to sleep after the sun had risen and woke up having only got four hours of sleep, which is an uncomfortable no-man’s-land amount of sleep. Take it from me!

PERHAPS YOU HAVE SEEN THIS:

Anyway: I am so exhausted I have tears rolling down my cheek. And so now I will brush my teeth and go to sleep. I wonder who I will dream about tonight. I hope it’s someone pretty and cool. I mean . . . why not! It beats dreaming about being shot or having my guidance counselor tell me I don’t have enough credits to graduate from high school, which are frequent nightmares of mine. Oops!

Finally: According to WordPress, today is the 41st day in a row I have posted on my website. Wow! I guess I got to keep going.

Until tomorrow, here is a picture I took of my girlfriends on my walk home earlier:

☆彡

I was standing on my balcony on the fourth floor at sundown looking at the squirrels in the trees across the way. It was warm outside and a wind blew towards me from the west. Something caught my eye down below and I squinted to see it. I saw the dark outline of a bird lying motionless on the overhang to the basement door in the back lot. I went and got my binoculars. Looking closely now I saw that the bird was indeed dead and lying on its back there. It was a woodpecker with mostly black feathers and some red and white on its head. The bird had either slammed into the side of the building or else had dropped dead from the sky. I love animals and am often sentimental, so of course I felt sad at the sight and knew I needed to bury it, as I have done other times. I couldn’t just leave it there.

Back inside I grabbed a few composting bags and the key to the back lot and descended the hall staircase. Out back near the fence line, surrounded by mossy trees, I dug a hole in the earth with a stick. It seemed to me like a good place to rest in peace, bird or otherwise. I walked back to the overhang near the basement door and stood on a chair to reach the top. Gingerly I used my bagged hand to grasp the bird’s little body, then stepped down from the chair and held the bird there in my hands. Its feet were clenched tightly and there was nothing behind its half-closed eyes. I did not look too long or I would have gotten emotional about it. I tied the bag closed and walked to the hole I had dug and committed the bird to the deep. Using a small flat rock, I filled in the grave with dirt and moss and set the rock atop the grave. I stood up and gazed down upon the little mound there for a moment, then passed through the far gate and took the stairs back up to my apartment.

akira

today is july 5th, which is the 186th day in a standard non-leap year. 179 days remain until the end of the year. and so saying: i have so far watched 188 movies since january 1st. at this rate i will clear 365 movies by the end of the year, one for every day. wow! i’m a loser.

according to letterboxd’s detailed statistics, these actors are my Most Watched actors:

unsurprisingly, my girlfriend jennifer connelly currently wears the crown . . .

(also: rest in peace to my brothers harry dean stanton, gene jacket hackman, and david bowie.)

well! all i can say is that if you don’t have a girlfriend or children or any real responsibilities in life, and everyone you know keeps ghosting you, then you too can escape the despair of mere existence and live inside the magical world of cinema every night of the week.

and now i resume my lonely howard hughesian lifestyle until the sun absolutely sets on time itself!!!

UNFIT TO RETURN TO HUMAN CIVILIZATION

OOPS!

keiichi koike

ferdinand keller