Dolphin Address 6
February 17th 2005
It balances upon each twig, not one excepted. Berlin is tucked in and every crystal absorbs the brutal sounds of the city. Yesterday evening I already saw the flakes light up in headlights and streetlamps. It’s affecting your gravity; it heaves your soul and glides with your thoughts.
As soon as they touch down tracks are drawn, those wild boar paths that meander over lawns and that you won’t see else way. The road becomes a tray of slush and the sidewalk is cleared by the block and gritted just to be sure. On car glass the snow slides by its own weight and sometimes folds to a double blanket. From the roof long hands full are snatched for snowballs.
The BSR (Berliner Stadt Reinigung) shovels the crossings free by hand. You can see from the cars if they have been driven after the snow and from the dog turds if they’ve been laid before the shower.
Strikingly many Eskimo’s are walking the street with those shitty small anti-slip steps. And slippery it is! You have to stop breaking in time and land your feet as vertical as possible and in the bends let a counter movement come from the hip to defy the centrifugal force. A string of toddlers threaded on a rope, scratches howling through the snow. In between two shopping bags I walk in perfect balance.
Cars drive with frugally wiped snow shields. In the Karl Marx strasse there is more on the roofs than on the road. Suddenly I realize that I don’t look both sides anymore when crossing. That was the healthy thing to do in Ireland . A snowflake lands on my lip and another one from a distant past, when Mother still had black hair. A seagull flies into a snow gull.
Time-out in the Neu-Koellner Arkade, the living room of the Karl Marx strasse. The tent poles measure thicker than a meter. The civil patrol wears caps that point out from their head, just like the classical police of New York.
I sluice out again. The snow draws the branches on the trees. By its whiteness it looks like getting dark early. It’s only cold if you have nowhere to go.
Jan Ploeg, Berlin, February 17th 2005
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