Three

Closed curve, Open curve. When I was six years old I was taught about them. I was really offended by the closed curve because of what it excluded. Sirens wail all around the city. The May day riots are a game played by would be revolutionaries and cops. It is a closed curve. My hospital, my Asyl is shaped in a U shape facing the canal. It is an open curve. On the canal I watched the birds race high in the new evening sky over the hospital while the sirens wailed in the background.

I am trusting the structures. They have an application I can see the usefulness in. This does not harm me.

When you destroy the soul of a people you forfeit your own. This is why my country has no soul.

I thought to write a few notes to allieviate the boredom. I could say that while visiting my flat that I looked out the window as the sun shined on my face. While I did this the magpie flew from her nest. She has almost won. The sirens still blazed across the city in this game between cops, anarchists and neo Nazis. Malcom Maclaren is dead. Sort of funny in this context. I was waiting at the window to see the arrival of a friend. Every minute turned to twenty, and the anguish of being left alone again after a promise of company made me remember that I always thought it would be too much a statement to hang myself from the window, and such a display of despair is an act of revenge. I wish to avenge no one. I had cookies and coffee with Marc and Susanne instead. Yes, I love.

My building was locked at seven instead of eight. I worried that I had missed my check in time at the hospital, but it was due to the protesters on the street that our petty, small minded building manager locked it early. As if the protesters would roar into our lovely garden and rip out the plants.

Seeing the protesters a friend replied that they seemed so sensitive. My, did this make me laugh. I watched the banners go by asking us to smash capitalism, and I thought it so naïve and futile. The cops on the other hand had cleared out Hobrectstrasse for a clean passage parallel to the protest. They looked poetic marching down the sunny, cobbled street in their riot gear. Sensible, not sensitive.

This morning I felt like a fraud getting on my bike. Coffee was late and I did not know what to do. When I found out I had no money everything became one big, meta-problem like before. I turned in circles next to my bike. In his arms I fell apart, and not two blocks later came back together. Cornell came with me to my room. My neighborhood was crawling with mental patients. We went to Maroush and he bought me a sandwich. We talked about the sadness.

Ride my bike to Prinzlauerberg. Sit in Wilhelm’s kitchen. Look at the paint in cans by the window. See the sun slanting high. Ride my bike behind him. Feel the years of friendship and think about them. Go to the gallery. Feel something happening, not know what. Look at the paintings by Alice Neal. Fall apart again, to pieces. Let Wilhelm take me outside and. Hold me while I convulsively cry. It was the human creativity. That crushed me, total, like history. Sit on a rock with Wilhelm. Police vans ride by. Ride bike alone to Susanne’s rehearsal. Lay on my back where the sun hits the floor.

I drifted to sleep listening to the voices of friends. Not quite that, but another. The voices were the water I floated on. They were speaking about language, in languages. The water was language speaking of itself in the sun as I floated.