Berlin Notes Blog & Writing

Blogging is by definition all about writing. I love to write, I’m compelled to observe Berlin life.

I live in Berlin, so my blogging tends to be about Berlin, the streets, the people I observe. Berlin’s streets are punctuated by side streets that lead off into a flâneur’s dream world.

If you live in a city, it’s important to get to know it. What better way than to walk slowly through its winding ways, or to grab a camera and go out, with strong intention, and take photos of whatever catches your eye?

We allow life to pass us by. I think most people are guilty of that, to wander through life as if it were a series of stepping-stones laid out by some god, or that an invisible hand is guiding us. Well, that’s okay – in spite of all the nonsense on the internet about “How to be Somebody”, it’s okay for you and I to live life in the moment. When we do, we see things that others consider unprofitable. You can’t make a profit out of just enjoying life. But you can have an enjoyable life filled with quality.

Life is about discovering a meaning in our existence. Not about carbon copies of other people’s fixed plans of life. Your life and mine are separate. That’s how we discover as time passes that we can, at best, only communicate with each other through the power of the word, or the image. We paint, photograph, and we write.

We speak to each other, much too much. We remind ourselves to listen. Listening is hard with the din of voices that surround us.

To write, or to blog, helps us to gather our feelings, and pattern them into coherent ideas that are worthy of reading. That’s hard work.

We do have a desire to be understood. That’s why we talk, and often we talk as if we are flaneurs who wander through the streets, looking, stopping, backtracking, correcting our viewpoint, and never getting to the point.

To think, to articulate, to make sense of something that you saw, thought about, and then tried to communicate with words, is hard. We tend to fluff it mostly, but at least the writing helps us to slow down, and to express ourselves with well chosen words.

Writing about connections with the world is about all we have. It’s a big thing.

How I feel about myself, about you, about the love I feel for others. These are worth writing about. To create fictions about our lives, but carefully, so that readers know that it’s fiction. We learn about love and fear, war and peace, about boredom and excitement, when we read fiction.

I love short stories, to write them, and to read them.

A good short story takes a long time to write. I remember short stories that I read years ago. The story had a point, a driving point that dug down into my soul. It dug down into me in a pleasant way, it massaged its way into my soul and stayed there.

I’ve written stories about murderers, lovers, and ordinary people who meet and discover something about each other. Stories about life.

I’ve never written a story about people in space, aliens, or heroes who feel the need to save the Empire. I don’t have a need to emulate Hollywood’s current surges and trends. Just people, in real situations. People who wander through life are very interesting- they appear to be quiet, bored, bookish maybe, or they have a hobby which is only for them alone, but underneath there lies a current of life that is in constant flow. It shifts and gathers, it has power to love and hate. There are uncontrollable drives that could lead to greatness or catastrophe. people are interesting.

The flaneur wanders through the streets, shuffling, only looking, not speaking. Hands deep into pockets, cold pallid face, eyes wet but alert. An ordinary Berliner, but full with dreams and hopes of something good that comes next.

Write about it.