Gemütlich as Fuck

Today I got some new furniture, a thing I ordinarily don't do. A swiveling velvet armchair to stick in the corner, and a sweet little cabinet to put my amplifier on. The wood is beautifully flamed on the two front doors of the cabinet, which are a paler shade than the rest, and framed by my cherry-wood speakers the combination of the colors give my parquet floors a lovely compliment.  The apartment is coming together, it only took about seven months. I've never been one to take pleasure in the possession of things, especially those things which will likely end up on the sidewalk when it's time to leave Berlin, but there is something comforting about cultivating a cozy space. This will be even more true once winter comes and fills the city with frosted windows, gives all the roofs glassy teeth.

I can't explain how nice it is to experience seasons again. Full force seasons. That's not to say San Francisco didn't have seasons, because it did, but not with the same intensity.  

Let's see what I'm saying once winter arrives.

Now fall has fallen. Colorful leaves rain down like flecks of rust from the limbs of balding trees. They litter the streets. Today, when passing in front of Hasenheide park, in the center of the lawn where people sat beside their bikes drinking beers and laughing, there was a tree surrounded at its trunk in a thick pile of yellow leaves. I wished I had my camera to capture how striking it looked. Q has admonished me for not carrying my camera with me everywhere I go in Berlin. In truth I've barely taken a single photo. The only proper photos I took in Berlin were of Nadine. Maybe this weekend I'll take a trip to the Elbe Mountains near Dresden. Apparently there are some stunning hikes there and it's only about two hours from Berlin. I remember seeing the area from the train window on the way to Prague. There was a river, or was it a stream, that danced in and out of the foreground while old looking mountains and the occasional castle jutted up into the scene.

But there's always the possibility of staying in town this weekend. A friend is playing a show. It would be nice to abstain from partying for another weekend, but I can't make any guarantees. As good as it is to give the body a rest, these are the last days of nice weather - it might be wise to enjoy them while they last. There's always this tug of war between surplus and scarcity, satisfaction and yearning, doing and not doing. On the one hand, we should make it a point to soak up every moment of every day, to seek stimulation and the exhilaration of excess, if only for the sole reason that one day we'll die. While we exist we should experience all that's offered to us, and often. But even existing, in this sense, isn't so simple and can be further broken down into types of existence; while we exist and are able-bodied, while we exist and are still young. The mantra should be do what you can while you can, before you can't. It's imperative that we live life in the imperative. This doesn't mean all of life should be spent in some gluttonous, hedonistic pursuit of pleasure at the cost of everything else, but rather, that we live passionately. Not with blind passion, however. We should also be passionate about tempering our passions when the situation calls for it - in situations where we might be wrong, or when our passions may hurt someone else, or ourselves. The guidelines are straightforward enough, but impossible to get right all the time.

Here's to trying.