Special Occaisions

We approach the hour when nothing happens in Berlin; Sunday. Of course I relish such an opportunity. Precious little happens here most of the time as a consequence of historical trauma, leaving ample time for observation and whatever, however we have been caught up in a certain crisis called 'Julie's Birthday' which is why we are here in the first place rather than in St Albans going frantically mad with her four sisters and about a million kids which we know, as opposed to those we simply 'observe', here in the 'Motherland'.

There are lessons to be learnt in dealing with 'special occasions', occasions I dread of course.

The first is to try and NOT to do anything special. We got caught in the most fabulous rain storm yesterday, and that was special enough for me, water pouring over the canopy of the bar, bouncing off the roofs of cars, all that sort of thing. It was incredibly romantic, and bathed away Julie's birthday anxieties perfectly, but it came from 'trusting to luck' and 'not doing anything in particular' as a mode of operation. The thing is, when there are five sisters, the normative communication on birthdays is 'What are you going to do? (that's special!)' under that rubric (that of the spectacular- the commodification of feeling) and in that zone it's almost impossible for anything special to actually happen (unless you are in Las Vegas, where you embrace that experience as curiously authentic) you just chase around getting unhappy. Instead we get drenched in the rain and found a fabulous restaurant and much more on what would be no more than a ramble around three blocks enjoying various curiosities by accident or trust to luck. This could be a lesson from the surrealists but it remains a hard one to learn.

If I remember rightly, read 'Mad Love' by Andre Breton to cultivate such sentiments.