Probably my favourite thing about Berlin is the Saturday night Stummfilm am Mitternacht at Babylon Kino. This week it was Murnau’s Nosferatu. I must say I definitely like German renderings (i.e. Herzog’s 1979 make) much better than the Anglo versions. Somehow stuck-up Victorian anxieties transpose very well to the 19th century Germany bourgeoisie. 

I am at the library. Not writing. All day I fantasised about reading something that would stir me. Some Eliot. Four Quartets. In my beginning is my end. I missed my mom. I texted her, asking her to come visit me in May, maybe? The heftiness of these intimate moments all imploding inside you. A man wouldn’t understand. You’d wish he did. But he wouldn’t. I only realize what I’d done to myself now. How could I not see? “A man of dubious erections.” Stupid, stupid girl. He never loved you. 

Bumped into someone I know from the theatre. He invited me to a party. Then a friend called. I want something bigger than all this. But how? How? I make and unmake. Always. 

I am at the moment sitting in the kitchen of a beautiful town house in Edinburgh.  I should be writing but I can’t. Listening to John Cage instead, intending to reach my arm out to the nearest book. Tomorrow I’ll go to a shop on Royal Mile to buy a deck of Tarot cards. I’m imagining a Anna-like existence for myself. Sitting on the floor. Mind as well as hands preoccupied with something. 

What else? I went to the Portrait Gallery. Bought postcards. Wrote on one. Bought a bar of nice chocolate for someone I don’t want to care about anymore. I’ll probably end up not sending it. This thing, this libidinal energy. I’m slowly re-learning what to do with it. How to dilute it. Dilute it through reading, writing. One thing I’m happy with: am not counting days, dreading or anticipating the day of my return. Home is home. You make it and unmake it. 

Now trying to be slow and efficient. I realized I’ve missed the conversations I have myself against the backdrop of my routine here. 

Lukewarm coffee. Cold weather. Long nights and lazy limbs. 

I went to Babylon to catch the 1600 Stummfilm. La Passion de Jeanne D’arc. Beautiful, eerie images. Antonin Artaud was also in it. Small but intense role. I loved the economy of language. 

Johann Christian Dahl. Norwegian. View of Dresden in Moonlight.