EARLY THIS MORNING

. . . I took a cheap train from Warsaw back to Berlin . . . I was cold and exhausted for the entire five-hour trip, and I was stuck in the fucking middle seat, and so on, but the only thing I was unhappy about was not being in Warsaw anymore. I had gone to Poland not really having any idea what it would be like, and, AS IT TURNS OUT, I happen to love it. I attribute a lot of this to meeting and hanging out with someone there who reminded me of myself if only I were a billion times cooler. Wow!

Anyway: I will write about my newfound affection for the Poles soon, because of course I will. I took this picture of the Warsaw skyline this morning just before I left my little rental on the eighth floor of an old apartment building a few blocks from the central train station. I’ll tell you what, I was sadder than hell just then. On the walk to catch my train, I kept trying to think up ways I could stay a little longer, but surrendered finally when I realized how dead tired I was. And so I stood swaying drearily on the platform as the train pulled in at about a hundred miles per hour . . . and once stopped I stepped aboard a train car that was colder than a fucking meat locker. I sat down and put my sunglasses on and my hood up. I looked like the Unabomber and smelled like cigarettes. I nodded off a few times, maybe for a minute or so, only to wake up with a stiff neck on account of the seats having a 90-degree angle . . . and I’d watch the Polish countryside roll by outside the window at 120 miles per hour, and see people riding their bicycles along the narrow roads parallel to the train tracks, and the red rooftops of the houses in the little villages that dot the 530 miles between Warsaw and Berlin.

My body was completely shattered and I was so tired I wanted to cry. I felt a longing I had forgotten I could feel. AND YET STILL: I kept thinking that I’d had one of the best weekends I’ve had in a while. On paper it almost sounds unremarkable . . . I just did what I always do, which is to walk around and meet people and bear witness to it all. If you approach the world this way as I do, you sometimes get extremely lucky and trigger a series of strange connecting events leading to some previously unseen path. Then suddenly you’re Mr. Jackpots.

I don’t know . . . I guess you just had to be there. Fortunately for me, I was!

Well, for now: Good-night~!! ☆彡