[en]
I arrived on the 6th at midnight. In
the immediate hourly aftermath of the g_20.
Asking myself -with much lazy dust on the question mark- have I ever spend 35 hours in a bus without
boredom ever kicking in? Wide awake. Never have I been in a bus for
such a long time, in the first place.
The second place in my train of
thought is having imagined every meter turned by those brave bus
tires from Berlin to Petersburg, slicing biutiful Riga & wondering over the brief foggy town of Tallinn. Looking at how one day unfolded
towards the direction of the ride; only to be pushed away by the
greedily greeting night.
Crossing the Russian border is like
counting every single goose bump, one after another: feeling every
one raising, poking my sweaty clothes. Virtual guilt of crimes & cute petty felonies not yet committed.
Do I have to be afraid? Either way, I
did arrive.
As I inhabit my new bathroom, I watch
closely how the boiler heats up, catapulting the black flakes of ash
into the steamy air. They land on my body, on the floor and on the
tub. So, it's the boiler and me. Two warm bodies with a flame in their
chests, heating up for different reasons.
I have to admit. I had luck with the
place I adopted as my new home: its spirits are kind, forgiving and
open. Pushkin is hanging on my wall, whispering, everything
shall be just alright. Tolstoy is climbing a different wall of mine,
but his image is busy writing something, forever. A not yet conscious
Hemingway stays alerted in our hallway, probably asking himself, why
he's not shaved yet. He shares the hall and the task of guarding it
with a calm Tchaikovsky.
Cats are crawling the backyard and
shriek for a temporary partner. Howling also for food, granted by a
nameless lady, the morning after.
St. Petersburg has a certain
inconspicuous layer that makes for a mighty ceiling.
A web of seemingly never ending wires and cables, woven around like
a persistent cloud, demanding, never to have to leave this place. An
understanding net, a constant witness, the best of observers, of what the
city is producing: all occurrences, all improbable situations and all
redundant clichés... never to be published, tapped or broached by
human hand, altogether. Leaving me, to walk those streets myself; the
arduous, more exciting way: namely, on my hands.
