Ruby Stark

On Tuesday, I went on a work outing to a bowling alley. My boss and I prodded each other on our way past to the bar or the loo or the food laid out. I attempted to skittle the pins in the next lane, but missed. We went for a few drinks afterwards, and when I said I was leaving, Malt walked me to the U-Bahn. I wanted him to come home with me, but it didn’t happen.

On Wednesday, my friend, Suki, came for supper. I made gazpacho soup and bread and a salad with French dressing and tzatziki. We ate and talked about why people believe in homeopathy, and about boys and having multiple irons in the fire while we played with the cats.

On Thursday, I was beside myself with tiredness. I had had three early-morning visits to the doctor to get more drugs and have my INR level checked with a blood test, so I was completely shattered. At work, we had a review meeting and everyone wrote down good and bad things about the past two weeks’ work and then we grouped them into categories for discussion. When we got to the final item, all the points were positive, so someone suggested we have a group hug, so we did. Each of the fifteen people in the meeting hugged each other person and it was very moving. I love the company I work for so much.

In the evening, I went to a programmer meetup and watched Dust give a talk about running a certain programming language on a certain hand-held device. I decided against going home to get some sleep and went to meet Malt and some work friends for someone’s leaving drinks. On the way home, I listened to Sunset Rubdown.

Today, I have pottered and, soon, Malt will arrive for supper.

Tomorrow, I get on the sleeper to Paris.

Tonight, I went to see Peaches Christ Superstar with Brown. I arrived at the theatre and we stood on the pavement and drank beers and I smoked cigarettes surrounded by the warm smell of summer. We had a skittering conversation about how God doesn’t exist and how we kept on failing to appreciate the weather and then coming to and thinking we should be noticing it more. I was fast and funny and insightful and felt very cool in my baggies and leather jacket and white t-shirt. I loved myself, I think. I talked about dying and my upcoming date on Saturday with my boss (now brunch, Capture the Flag, a visit to his workshop, a bar for a colleague’s birthday and then the dubstep/glitchcore night) and .

The show was surprisingly wonderful. Peaches came out in a white, cotton catsuit that had a high, empressesque stuffed collar. She somehow managed to be the whole of a musical ensemble as Chilly Gonzales hammered the piano in accompaniment. It was like watching a far more expressive ’50s crooner. The last song of the first half moved me especially: just her singing, “You liar. You Judas”, high high high, one spotlight on her face, slowly fading her into a ghost and then into nothing.

At the interval, Brown and I went outside and carried on talking and drank more beer. When we went back in, I sat in my seat as Peaches sang a couple of slow songs, almost sobbing, “Will no one stay awake with me? Peter, John, James? Will none of you wait with me? Peter, John, James?”, and felt perfectly drunk and warm and bathed in happiness.

After the show, Brown and I walked to find a bar, and just ended up walking the streets, having one of those wonderful conversations where you reach into another person. I told her about Potential and how it talks about the joy of having exciting possibilities ahead, and the pain of the draining feeling as they come to nothing. We talked about passing happiness and trying to hold onto it and regretting it leaving even while it’s still here. We talked about how one can look back on a happy time and the feeling, the quality, the texture of the happiness can still be so strong. I said that I was pretty sure I would look back on these last three weeks in Berlin as a very happy time.

We walked and walked and then finally came to Kreuzberg and went to my favourite pizza place. Brown told me about her recent long-distance fucked-up relationship with this bloke. She got to the part where they were sending flirty texts to each other, her in her hotel room, him on his way back home, and then said, “I’m sorry, I’m going into too much detail”, and I blurted out, “This is the stuff conversations are made of.”

Finally, we parted and she said, “I don’t know which I enjoyed more, Peaches, or the walk around Berlin.”

Yesterday, after I got home, I deployed the dongle I’d bought and sucked down great lungfuls of internet. I did a ton of research about squats, queer stuff and volks (people’s kitchens that serve cheap, nutritious meals). Then, I discovered that my computer had started flaking out: the system preferences and terminal were fucked, and finally it would not boot up. Two complete erase and reinstalls later, I had a working computer and a strong suspicion that the dongle software was poisonous. Thus, I had no internet again.

Today was not great. I set out to buy some food and discovered that most shops in Germany are closed on Sundays. I then waited in for the landlords to come round and mend the internet. They arrived about seven p.m. and failed. They will return tomorrow to try again. I feel completely cut off without the internet. It’s hard to research Berlin, to talk to my friends and family in England.

I have planned out a walk that will take me from Kreuzkölln – the informal name for the area populated by exiles from Kreuzberg’s gentrification – to the Yellow Sunshine vegetarian cafe on Wienerstr. to the area between Kottlier Bhf. and the river Spree where there are reputedly lots of squats and punks.

I’ve been listening to Deerhoof, Des Ark and Dear and the Headlights.

I’m not sure I want to move, anymore. I keep on having fantasies of running away to Rio De Janiro or Mexico City, and I’m pretty sure that having fantasies about running away from running away is a bad sign.

What, before, was a secret city with hardly anyone in it now feels desolate. There are few people on the streets. Many roads feel like Milton Keynes: wide, bare and unadorned by anything other than blocks of flats.

Mitte feels like a provincial large town, mostly small outposts of large chains.

Kreuzberg was a huge relief: broken down buildings, graffiti, cafes, weird shops, squats and parks.

All my Mum and I really did was walk around a lot, visit a market and a gallery, drink coffee and shelter as often as possible from the bitter cold. Therefore, I’m hoping that living here will be more rewarding and more like my times visiting Theresa: fun gigs, weird cafes, playing music, drinking in bars + helping out at squats and doing political stuff.