Five Minutes in Kreuzberg

Hagebutte III - Dog Rose III by Karin Goeppert

FIVE MINUTES IN KREUZBERG

The lunatic’s howling in the street again. He loses his shit

two or three times a week, right around

dusk, whose ambiguous border-line is his full moon.

If it were an optical event, some kind of structure or series

of colors, his anger might be visible from space, like the Great Wall,

like a million large female bottoms mooning the moon,

like a carnival of mayhem on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Yesterday afternoon a woman making banshee noises, demanding  

equal time. Not in trouble, troubled. Maybe she and the howling man take turns.

I’ve read that Saul Bellow, presumably on the advice

of his shrink, used to march out into the woods

for a little primal roaring after lunch. A fashion in psycho-analytic

circles of the day: dozens of writers, painters, poets out in the forests

of Connecticut or Vermont screaming their shrunken heads off.

In Europe the intelligentsia would drink a digestive after

a heavy meal and take a nap or have sex with mistress/lover/spouse. Progress, anyone?

Vacation finally peters out as I run back

into the arms of my routine, a marathoner, falling across the I’m finished line.

Imagine the Stockholm Syndrome applied to daily life. We embrace

our captors—i.e., ourselves—identify with their struggle to keep us on schedule.

You’re not as time-managed as a digitalized metronome? You must be a sociopath.

A Thracian wedding has spilled over into the street: dancing to

wild music, music Orpheus might have been torn apart to, the bride

gift-wrapped and smiling while males in double-breasted

pin-striped suits, sensitive to the sinuosities of the music,  

execute delicate steps and clap their hands. Does the prospect of good food—

e.g., sumptuous Levantine wedding banquet food—bring out the Dionysian

in people? Possibly, but who cares, because I’m

hungry for a kebab (deepest Anatolia). Or Scharwama (succulent).

Or gyros in pita bread (Greek). Mango sauce and creamy yogurt (fattening). A fistful

of onions, cumin, tart herbal sprinklings (everything). Dragon breath garlic too: do I

offend thee by breathing in thy face? Please deal with it (thank you). I must be (crazy). 

Imaginary Traveler by Omar Faruk Tekbilek