GROUND 0101 (The Fall Issue)

is from tends to be Finland. I guess
that could be down to the fact that I
think I know enough Fins already... All
6 of them. I’m not looking to acquaint
myself with anymore. They can’t be
Finnish because I hope they’re not. It’s
kinda childish, isn’t it?
Like I was saying before... there
seemed to be Germans galore in the
day and English speakers defibrillating
East Berlin in the night-time and I
barely spoke to anyone I didn’t know
or wasn’t introduced to except to ask
for directions.
Now, things happened in Berlin that I
will never tell anyone; things that are
locked in this old heart of mine. Then
other things happened which I might
be cagey about but I can share with
people, with you; for the simple fact
that writing is a different matter. It feels
impersonal somehow, even when it’s
quite dear. It’s the act of typing maybe.
It’s distancing. It’s expressionless;
unlike my face. Do you know...? I woke
up with two more spots today. I want
to do something about them, but then
I scar easily. I bruise more often than
not and then when I’m sick or get a
cold, I go lighter and my face shows all
these marks.
Let me tell you about where I stayed. It
was on Oranienburger Straße. It was in
the central part of the East. Technically
it was East Berlin. Although on the
U-Bahn map it did seem a little northerly.
In the day it was peaceful and frequented
by people who’d come to see
the New Synagogue and at night time,
there were prostitutes... More about
them later. My reason for the trip to
Berlin was to write 50, 000 words; averaging
10, 000 a day. I gave myself 8
days. I intended to write the body of
my book and then combine that with
the back stories to the characters I had
already written in London. The name
of the book is the Brute Brit and the
Brutish British.
The title is prickly to say out loud. It
looks gauche. It’s not meant to be
something a person is at peace with.
It evokes the feeling that it needs to be
changed and that’s just fine with me. I
wouldn’t have it any other way.
It’s a revenge story. It’s about a man of
questionable ideals who employs the
worst sort of people to help him exact
revenge. He’s a brute and the people
he employs are brutal. They have
no mercy. And if there was one city I
thought would inspire me to write a
hard-boiled thriller, Berlin is it. I guess
it’s because of its history. It’s especially
prominent in the East. You can feel
it. The penumbra resonates, the Cold
War lingers.
Once I walked from Oranienburger
Straße to Kottbusser Tor and I took a
wrong turn because the directions I
had were in Deutsche and I can barely
say goodbye in the language... I found
myself walking through this dark, long
street that cut across a small river. It
was an especially biting night; colder
and immensely bitterer than all the
others; and all the apartments were
vacant. It was eerie. The block was so
contumelious; it felt like it was anomalous;
like it had me up against the wall.
The windows didn’t have curtains and
if you looked long and hard enough
you might just convince yourself that