Der Parkbank Pinkler Kapitel XXIX: die Dimension der Demenzen der Menschen

XXXIX.

 

In einer, sagen wir mal, nicht allzu fernen Zukunft, hier heute als vergangene Zeit dargestellt, als man damit anfing, Straßennamen nach Straßen zu benennen, genauer gesagt, umzubenennen, sowohl die Umbennener selbst und die, die von derselben von Abscheu überschauert, waren sich bewusst, worum es ging, sprich dem (eigenen) Arschloch hinterher eilen. Arschlochallez! Als hellseh' historiker darf ich solche Maßnahmen bürokratischen Umwege nennen. 

 

Ich kann dies und auch anderes tun. Wie, zum Beispiel, die Zukunft in die Vergangenheit verwandeln. Denn ich bin zwar kein Hellseher, aber ich sehe heller, auch wenn ich eventuell geisteskrank bin. 

 

Genau deshalb rede ich nicht nur von, sondern sehe ich vor mir auch die Stalinallee-Allee, ehem. Karl-Marx-Allee, ehem. Stalinallee, die nach der nach dem verrufenen Georgier benannten Allee umbenannt worden ist.

 

Ich leite an ihren, ähm, Anschluss weiter, die ehemalige Frankfurter Allee, die zum Glück, zumindest aus Gründen des Fortbestands, nach der gleichen Allee namens des selben Mannes aus Stahl benannt ist. Ohnehin, würde Polen glücklicher mit Krupp an der Oder nebenan?

 

Diese beiden Alleen sind noch für den Namen geeignet. Ich denke hier an die Stralauer zwischen Ehrenbergstraße und Elsenbrücke, wobei die Umbenennungsorgie eine gewisse Folgerichtigkeit enthält. Die heißt nun Stralauerallee-Straße.

 

Und das ist noch nicht alles. Stell dir das mal vor. Sie haben die Spree in Amazonas umbenannt. Im Bezug Bezos natürlich.

 

Zur Einheit (schon wieder): 

 

Die Spree strömte sich in Grenzen, Gebirgszüge sowieso. Doch letztere hat schon jene lang gehaltene Teilung in den Schatten gestellt, die hier an den Bänken der früheren verlief, im Alten Fritz' Hain.

Die Beute aus der Himmelswand gekratzt, ein Geschoss nach dem anderen, in die Luft, über diese einst gespaltene Stadt.

 

Eine Einheit an die andere, sich zu einem konkreten Tribut erhoben, an Höhenflüge, Schwingen der Begierde.

Triumphierend beherrscht, die Teilung vor den Bänken befestigt. Denn wenn so eine Kette stetig strömt, fließen die Früchte dem Siegreichen zu, einst gemeint zu den Massen hinunter...
 

...Moment. Sind die Fesseln mit einem Schlüssel versehen?

Apropos vorbei gelaufen: 

  

 

 

 __

xxxviii. << -- >> Kapitel ??

.

Peer't through to the be side

Rounding a corner with The Professor is like sharing cheese with a ghost. The guilt trip's your own pleasure.

He'd barely glanced at the sign, if at all, when he muttered disbelief at the modern day marking of the streets of the city after a person who'd inspired so much death and destruction, to which I said dude's no more responsible for the gulags than that edgy objectivistesse for the brutality of United Fruit. Not everyone named Chiquita is a brand-marked terrorist enabler. He thought on this long enough to see my point about the perversion of good intentions, which for Pratt was the duration of the tick before the tock, and said the analogy bordered on no true Scotsman, something he liked to drop in wherever he thought it fit, his analog kidded quarter-proof Scotch himself.

 

I complained the fallacy camouflages a scary creature of dry stalks of cereal plants, and he said at least the chaff's removed, which I think might've been a comment on the potential misreckoning inherent to the citing of a fallacy and the confusion that abounds whenever someone makes inexplicit a construction or the recognition of one, an observation or an accusation.

 

It's perfectly fine, even exemplary, to be a master of filling a composition with nuance of raw power yet not be able to swing from a rope even were it hung from the heavens by the coach of creation. No amount of the big money can afford that wily watchmaker’s wares, let alone grasp what one’s reward whispers not to. Still, the beat was always solid and the words were moving pictures.

 

Knowing of his aversion to in-his-face sentimentality, I apologized when I told him I’d probably feel a heart-crossing shadow upon the news of his passing. Without thinking, he reassured me that was perfectly fine as long as I was aware it wasn't him I was missing.

 

Fin.

Cousins

heut früh himmelwaerts

Jup'ter, Saturn, Venus, Mars

sie starren mich an

 

früh freigekommen

Jeff, Ricky, Jackie, David

Vetternsprozession

 

im engelchen Sinn

gleichsam geistlich als Sinnbild

und auch andersrum

 

im engeren Sinn

seid ihr äußerst weit entfernt

von uns, die warten

No cymbals, no crash

When I hear an ambulance at a distance, I don't take my good fortune for granted; someone else nearer that sound has to suffer the brunt of its siren blast.

 

Should the sound approach, as it often does, and one after the other, some nearer to each other, trumpeting the same cause, some further apart but close enough together to shred the nerves of the audient, unwilling and ill willed, I leap to my feet and scream through the window down to the street below, and wave my fist in the air for good measure, "Oh, you think you're cool! 'I'm sooo important! I'm going to an emergency!' Give it a rest already!"

 

I know of course the driver's just doing a job, and an admirable one. But, like the driver, I have no free will. The driver can't help but to switch on and sustain the wailing even at times when it's unnecessary. Like lunch time. The appetite calls the tune. Less than free will, there's protocol. Rules rule. Less free will than that, the siren must sound. It's the sole purpose of the siren. Therefore, as with the alarm before it, it must be sounded.

 

I can only pretend I'm not annoyed.

for the birds

a minute-fourteen

you will never get it back

just think how they feel

 

Times Signs

Saray ho! Hoserei, Warschauer-/Revaler Straße - 1952
(hover/click for twunny twunny-three)

It's not always the shoe.

Stress is self made, sure. But it's also firmly part of inner and outer space. Blaming oneself for worries is a stretch fraught with more stress.

 

Seen from outer space to view each labor cum love's a life lesson, yeah. Why fret? Yet every concern turned turn-on lies not far from more promising dread informed by the experience of stress, but far enough that navigating between such experience's another art of stress upon the unforgiving entirety of it all.

 

I've gone enough aloud with the cliché of being spiritual not religious only to realize the reverse is so. Might I have that backward, too? Well, it's the shoe, a superstition, and what is that but a glue on a view to religion?

 

If there's a mantra it's always be grateful and don't take for granted, couched in the would-be, something more akin to be ever aware of the got, so as to be not unawares of the not. Should that then suddenly drop.

 

A walk recently concealed the result of what one might say was the walk itself. Or a shoe or something in it. It was the latter was true, but it wasn't the shoe. No dried disc of blood in a sock should serve as exhibit to jump to false convictions.

 

Two toes have served long together more closely than the rest. One could really nearly regard them as one, were it not for their having individual concerns, and the fact of an infraction committed by the ring against the middle.

 

It might be the offender was tired of having the victim draped over & upon it so familiar & snug, so it took a nail and stabbed it just as ad nauseam as the offense that'd caused the crime, not too many times to count but innumerably nonetheless, for there'd be one tiny wound repeatedly offended.

Seeing that dot at the end of it all, one'd think at most there'd been but one drop.

Der Parkbank Pinkler Kapitel XXIX: Rausbereich

Wer sind „sie“?

Nüscht icke oof jen Fall.

                    —nichtig

 

XXIX.

 

Ich führe Gespräche mit bemerkenswerten Menschen. Was sie so bemerkenswert macht, ist, dass sie frei erfunden sind. Frei nach meiner Einbildungskraft. Imaginär. Die Gespräche, weißt du, nicht die Menschen. Die Menschen sind also bemerkenswert, indem sie aktiv an diesen Diskussionen teilnehmen.

 

Ich stelle mir im Lauf meiner Tage Begegnungen mit Persönlichkeiten vor, die ich aus der Vergangenheit kenne. Sie können ja nur aus der Vergangenheit stammen, weißt du. Die Personen, nicht die Gespräche. Die Gespräche sind gegenwärtig. Oder zukünftig. Aber zu unserem Zweck beschränke ich mich auf die Gegenwart. So gesehen sind die Menschen auch gegenwärtig, zumindest vorstellbar so.

 

Weißt du, ich komme aus einer Kultur wo man ohne „Gutmensch” Gesundheitswesen ordentlich ins Gras beißen darf. Das heißt, frei von noch einer Art Meldepflicht, was hierzulande an jeder Ecke gilt, was nervt natürlich auch, ist aber auch frei vom Gesundheitswesen. Sterben macht frei, oder so. Meine Geisteshaltung, sozusagen, wäre von dieser Sorglosigkeit eingeprägt. Es hieße denn Akkulturation. Kleine Ironie beabsichtigt.

 

So hab ich's zuletzt etwa formuliert, im Gespräch mit einer Freundin aus der gegenwärtig gelegenen Vergangenheit. Diesem bemerkenswerten Mensch begegnete ich im Lauf des Gehwegs. Im Kopf. Die Freundin nicht der Gehweg. Der Bummel war echt, wenn auch diesmal ein gezielte Runde.

 

War grad vom Strich gekommen. 'Schuldigung, ich meine Abstrich. Da erfährt man ob man eingesperrt und ausgesperrt werden soll. Oder frei bleibt. Negativ macht frei. Kleine Ironie beabsichtigt.

Zum Glück ist es easy, meinen sie. Einfach registrieren und testen lassen. Für Legastheniker im digitalen Bereich kann es schwieriger werden. Für einige einfach unmöglich. Die Menschen, die sich vorstellen, dass die Impfung ein getarnter nanotechnologischer Peilsender wäre, sollte mal drüber nachdenken, was bei solchen Registrierungen abgeht.

Du kannst also ausatmen. Das heißt einatmen, du bemerkenswertvoller Mensch du. In meinem Bereich wird auch die Ungestochen nicht angesteckt.

 

Bei meiner nächsten Begegnung, freue ich mich drauf, erzählen zu dürfen, was die Berliner CDU im Wahlprogramm anbietet. Ohne Witz, nehme ich an, will sie einen „Masterplan Sauberes Berlin“ vollziehen. Ich hätte mir gut vorstellen können, dass sie nicht glücklich damit würde, wie die BLZ im dementsprechenden Bericht mehrmals das Wort „Dreck” im Verbindung mit dem Vorhaben der CDU verwendet, wenn auch ohne Gänsefüße.

 

Wie drecksorientiert! Nach dem Motto Tendenziöses Innuendo hätte sie sich beklagen können. Invers-Hundepfeife, oder so. Aber ein „Masterplan” gegen „Dreckecken” zu haben ist schon harter Tobak, denk ich. Und Dreck ist Dreck. Und man soll was vorstellen dürfen, weißt du? Kleine eingebildete Ironie beabsichtigt.

 

Drück die Daumen. Wenn ich Glück habe, sagt mir mein zukünftiger Gesprächspartner wie clever ich bin.

 

Gabriel-Max-Straße 15 - 1929/2021

 

__

xxviii. << -- >> Kapitel xxx.

A Full Empty Floor, Space, & Story between Us

It's not a reference to Hitchcock, though downright plot cockian with a hitch, and has nothing to do with getting someone to stick their head in the oven, though it wouldn't rule that out as a possible desired result, and it doesn't mean blowing out a pilot light so that the victim dies of carbon monoxide inhalation, though it would with an ancillary "I can assure you that I don't smell anything" — by which the goal 'd be glee at stories of their desperate uncertainty the last time they were seen alive.

 

Intent is the key. Intentionally dropping a shoe at 1 a.m., for example, and then later in the day, while bringing down the garbage, insisting that you too'd heard it, it's clearly something in the attic, I'm not toying with anybody, and don't call me Shirley. Can I get you anything from the store while I'm there? I wouldn't ask if I weren't going anyway. I know that a simple little thing like having to "mask up" can alter whether or not we feel like it's worth making the trip for just one thing.

 

I've been told I'm a ghost. It came by way my roommate's recognition that a series of sounds belching from the entryway and through her bedroom door could not have been from me. An expected guest with a key had arrived in the middle of the night and there was hardly a move made by this creature that wouldn't have seemed (to me) like anything but demonstrative noise making: DOOR, STEP STEP SHUFFLE STEP, DOOR, SHUFFLE SHUFFLE, KEYS JINGLE, KEYS DROP, OTHER OBJECT SLAM, SHUFFLE SHUFFLE SHUFFLE STEP, SLIDE, SHOE DROP, SHOE DROP (no dramatic tension there)...

 

My dear sister appreciates the opposite of this behavior. So I'm a ghost, apparently, who appreciates in an "I know, right, wtf!" kind of way her rhetorical "Why can't you just put the plate down without slamming it?!" Seriously. Some people are oblivious. Some are aggressive. Some are both. And some just exude passive-aggression with every breath. Their essence is not just inconsiderate but downright hostile. Could it be attributed to troll-like behavior that seeks out angst wherever it trolls?

 

Most of us, I think, go forth unwittingly in life, barely paying attention to details that stub our toes, dammit to fucking hell. Gurdjieff talked of multiple levels of being asleep such that waking up would require a significant portion of a lifetime, even then in a mode of dedicated attendance that cannot be understood with just those two words.

 

The hateful troll just wants to be loved, probably, and is akin to a bullying monster with a wingspan the width of the school hallway gathering everyone in its path on the way to the principal's office where it will show how unafraid it is. The smaller the audience the less necessary the demonstration.

 

But what of the small peeper who wouldn't troll a bug? No, not me, would were that so. Not that I'm not a small peeper. Sure I am, sort of. But I have my breaking point, where it's like that certain someone who snapped, but is justified by those who recognize that it just had to have been brought on by the extremity of the other actor. Absent the attendant jury who know my ghost? Could be a problem.

 

Where I come from this would be the fifth floor. The one beneath my shoes has been unoccupied since the nice young woman who came up to offer me all the wood bricks from her cellar space when she was moving out, with the polite request for advice on how best to empty it out, so that she not have her deposit appropriated by her lettor, and the suggestion that there were enough wood bricks to share with the whole building.

 

In other words, she found herself in need, but in assessing that need realized she had something to offer that others could use. Was she being considerate of others? I guess not directly, but she was friendly. Only had she known that I'd feel guilty for not helping her should one consider her to have been using me. She was pretty. So there's that. But I don't think her beauty should count against her, and anyway her aspect had the sex-neutral strength of an otherwise entirely self-sufficient person who could use a hand. If you imagined her a  manipulative hottie, you're projecting. Or I'm gaslighting you. Or both.

 

I had my doubts that her idea of just leaving her cellar space open for the weekend with a neighborly note to take what you will would be enough to clear it out by her Monday noon key return deadline. So I just as sort-of selfishly took everything I could, which involved schlepping the bundles up the stairs of one basement of spaces and back down into my own space below the other wing. I left an ample, but less ample, amount of bundles in rows outside the doors of both places along with "help yourself" hints all along the way.

 

All of this to say that the flat below me has been unoccupied since. Since I'd already said that, I don't guess it's relevant except for as an examination of the human potential for interaction so complex that you can't know where someone's coming from, especially in real time, where the time to think rules out much that's not reactionary. I'll leave it to you to figure if your own whys and hows are any less mysterious. I don't think mine are, yet still would like to think so whenever it's comforting.

 

I am going to withhold from you even the slightest evaluation of the physical appearance of the next woman to have ascended to my story unannounced, for this time I'd like to avoid planting the insidious seed of prejudice. Sorry about before. I didn't mean it.

 

So ascend the stairs this other buzzer of my door did, and her tale was just as, if not more, involved, this time involving, ultimately, a concern about the sound that descends from up here, to down to where she would again return as soon as she'd finished with the purpose of her visit. Just to get it out of the way, she would say, it was through some investigation of her own that she'd determined the story above hers, which was the story below mine, to have been devoid of moveable beast for an adequate enough timespan to rule out her concern's being the result of someone in the flat above hers.

 

A number of things might occur to you at this point, few of which, I doubt, have not already occurred to me, even if not in real time at the time of the event of this telling. I can't tell you now how many of these occurrences of mind occurred then versus subsequently. Nor can I tell you how much of their detail was detailed in the explanation of my neighbor's stopping up to recount what prompted them. I can assure you that the detail of the anecdotally decisive uninhabited apartment did bridge the cognitive gap separating us as we stood on opposite sides of the threshold of my doorway.

 

S-Bahn Warschauer Str, Berlin - 1987/2021

Yon, you are.

Straßmannstr, Berlin-Friedrichshain - 1905/2021

Der Parkbank Pinkler: Drecks & Dreisich: Folge: verrückte Mehrtuer

In denen die Abschiedsworte einer Mordopferbeziehung zugunsten unserer Chefermittlerin wiedergegeben erklingen, in denen die Abschiedsworte einer Beziehung zwischen Mörder und Opfer für unseren Chefermittler nacherzählt wird, wobei das Metauniversum zu einer reinen Sammelbude oder einem Rattenkessel erklärt wird, wenn man so will, und wenn man nicht so will, dann eben nicht, denn das Universum ist weder Sammelbude noch Rattenkessel, abgesehen davon, wenn es so ist.

...

Ich war in der Zukunft, sagte er. Und er sagte, dass das stimmte, aber nicht wirklich, denn es stimmte irgendwie, und zwar auf eine Art und Weise, die schwieriger zu erklären war, und so war die Art und Weise zu erklären, dass er in der Zukunft gewesen war und die Fehler gesehen hatte, die er gemacht hatte, und er hatte viele Fehler gemacht, und er war mehrmals, unzählige Male, in der Zukunft gewesen und hatte unzählige Fehler gesehen, und er konnte dies daher zu seinem Vorteil nutzen bei jedem Schritt auf dem Weg, der gekommen war, um sein Leben als Vorbild für ein erfolgreiches Leben zu gestalten.

West 19:31

„Wichsreich, aber richtig geil.“

Anlässlich einer Umfrage des Meinungsinstituts Forsa führt diary von davidly heute ein Interview mit Berlins Betonbockminister Faust Baubereit.

dvd: Herr Baubereit, letztens scheinen die Berliner und Berlinerinnen doch eine Randbebauung des Tempelhofer Feldes zu wollen. Kippt die Stimmung oder ist es ein Fall vom launigen Volk, herumgeführt von einem tendenziös formulierten Fragebogen?

Baubereit: Scheiß drauf! Öffentliche Meinung hin oder her, Herr des Tages heißt Nachfrage und er sagt sofort bauen, bauen, bauen! Also her mit den größtmöglichen Wolkenkratzern, und zwar nicht nur am Tempelhofer sondern auf Tempelhofer! Da  können Sie mich ruhig in Großbuchstaben gefolgt von drei Ausrufungszeichen und elf zitieren.
[Anm. d. Red. können wir ruhig nicht]

dvd: Wo wir gerade dabei sind, war ich letztens beim Spazieren durch Volkspark Friedrichshain. Da gibt es eigentlich sehr viel unbenutzten Raum. Hat Wachstum auch nicht seine Grenzen?

Baubereit: Ach was! Das Dammbruchargument? Okay. Ich spiele mit. Seien wir mal ehrlich, Strandvolleyball braucht man sowieso nicht. Man könnte schönere Anlagen im Gesamtwohnendkonzept mit einbauen, samt Klimaanlagen.

dvd: Irgendwann muss denn auch die BVG mit einbezogen, oder?

Baubereit: Öffis sind für Ewiggestrigen! Gesamtwohnen heißt auch, sich die Ausfahrten der Untergrundparkplatzgaragen direkt ans neue Untergrundstraßennetz anschließen. Dadurch stört eine sonst dafür benötigten Straßenausweitung auf Bodenhöhe nicht unser Verdichtungskonzept.

dvd: Das würde massive Ausgrabungen benötigen! Berücksichtigen Sie die vielen entzündenden Weltkriegsbomben?

Baubereit: Kollateralschaden. Alles hat seinen Preis.

dvd: Zuerst muss man das Gesetz ändern. Diesmal eins, das doch direkt vom Volk ausging. Wenn die Umfrage stimmt, eventuell auch eine neue Abstimmung?

Baubereit: Bedeutet nichts. Ob Forsa wissenschaftlichen Fakten gleich steht und damit alle vorhersehbaren Konsequenzen in Betracht zieht bedeutet weniger als nichts. Das Volk kann nicht einerseits sagen, es will bezahlbare Wohnungen, andererseits keine unbezahlbare Folgen.

dvd: Klingt nicht gerade ökologisch. Kann man ihnen zumindest versichern, dass die erschwinglicheren Mietpreise den vielen Neubauten folgen?

Baubereit: Da die Wirtschaftslehre die Lage bestimmt, bestimmen die Bauherren was ökologisch ist oder nicht. Im Endeffekt kann man ohne neue Wohnungen solches nie erzielen.

dvd: Keineswegs könnte Hausbesitzer versuchen, die Lage auszunutzen, wobei das Neubautempo inzwischen nicht mit dem Einwohnerzahl mithalten kann? Immerhin hat die Hauptstadt ihre Geschichte mit Bauherren, die mit schleppenden Schritten arbeiten.

Baubereit: Ich sehe das Problem nicht. Aus solchen Angebotssituationen schlägt Chancen! Dementsprechend können locker auf höhere Rendite von ausschließlich bestimmten Klientel gezielt werden. Davon profitieren alle!

dvd: Letztendlich nebenbei: Wird man keine andere Wahl haben als sich in irgendeinem Zuhause zu befinden?

Baubereit: Na, und? Wie gemütlich! Da muss Berlin seinem Ruf als ach so tolerante Stadt endlich mal gerecht werden!

Kino

I.

Am ersten Oktober fängt er an zu lesen. Er ist hundert Jahre alt. Er hatte nichts zu essen und zu trinken. Es regnet. Er hat kein Geld. Er hat es vergessen. Er kann das Buch bis kommenden Freitag behalten. Er lies weiter. Sei ruhig! Stell das Radio ab! Heute morgen hat er einen Brief an Emm geschrieben. Er stellte ihr seine Frau vor. Emm interessiert sich für Pferde. Rosen sind schöne Blumen. Bitte nichts berühren. Berlin liegt am Fluss. Er geht durch die ganze Stadt. Können Sie mir bitte ein Taxi rufen? Welche Junge ist ihr Sohn? Hatten Sie eine schöne Zeit?

Corpses in the Courtyard, 1, 2, 3: ascensionem columbæ

The assumption would have been alone by way of the stumps on the one end and the felled lying about on the other had I not seen for myself the red-robed ultimate arbiters of arbor taking to their task. What I had happened upon appeared by my interpretation — as accurate an estimation allowed by my years of experience about this abode (as well as one of those profound, coincidental catching of a moment where the caught caught my having caught them) — to be precisely when they had realized they were ill-equipped to literally uproot these nesting quarters. Therewith would the hacking commence.

These days or not, experts are not engaged. There are no experts. There are bidders who send their promised cheapest to accomplish things deemed necessary by someone or another who would rather not spend more, making an already needlessly terminal arrangement more malignant.

What I assumed (in spite of contrarian ken) was that it was to be just the one tree that would be coming down — the oblique one, which had come to be so as a result of the last time cheap labor'd been loosed in the yard, erecting and de-erecting the scaffolding. During those assemblies this one tree ironically had become a convenient resting place, a brace for the heavy parts of the support system built for the next cheaply subcontracted wave of labor. The heavy bars and battens would lean against that once not leaning tree, if only temporarily, to, if not damage, permanently disfigure it.

Where my assumption'd lain false by a third I discovered upon my return. It was a visceral visual assessment, for sure, but it was not until the following morning that the implications of the three felled trees would ascend to the auditory cortex by way of the vacancy of the Columbiform'ed cooing.

__

Kam von drüben ab.

Zug trauer Knecht lieb - Petersburger Straße, Berlin-Friedrichshain 1900/2018

A Share of Realty : prologue

You can lay the prevailing currency on it, raze, excavate, develop to build upon, rent seek, lobby, litigate, evict, neglect, ignore, and/or place the name of your pop atop in all capital blocks. You can bundle it all up and pass off your scorching rotten fruit of the earth as a too good to miss opportunity. As appearances prove deceiving whenever deception appears, you can bank on polity to back the renewal of your project with revenue raised from the people who were already punching your clock to pay your rent and drink that poison juice you produce – o' which, you can construct on top of all that proprietary rights to force anyone else to cease and desist their own form of existence. What does it mean to prevail? Only a reflection of conquest. Nothing but a name. The thing itself? You can't own that.

Warschauer Str. 64, Berlin-Friedrichshain - 1920/2017(hover)

Reunited: How the West was One

You might recall from last year's hoo-hah that the whirled's had a full generation to digest the reunification of the German state. Let's take a look at the fascinating colour schemes as seen this morning compared to how it looked for the fifty years the sides were split. On the left you see the results of yesterday's election- on the right, the city as parcelled out by the confederacy of belligerents at the Potsdam Conference:

       Berlin Election 2016                         Berlin 1949-1989

As H. Ross Perot might say, "Innerestin' idn't it?" For most, the obvious has long been that the old east-west west-east divide maintains an apparently solid mix of loyalty toward the respective parties of traditional influence. Well, I mean traditional insofar as peoples who were formed out of the decision to choose one kind of government over another that lasted a period of two generations, in weak contrast to the generation in time that followed during which the putative opportunity to rid oneself of the supposed shackles of socialist indoctrination played out in all its glory glory hallelujah. Of course the second part of that last sentence was written from the perspective of a westerner, not because I am a westerner, born & bred, but because the West are the ones who ultimately conquered the city with $oft power ('First we take Manhattan', anyone?).

The more striking reflection is how the western sectors districts vote, with the former British controlled areas going mostly SPD and the French and US territories trending Christian Democrat. As an aside, it's interesting that the blue chosen by the keep your stinking refugees AfD matches nicely with the shade someone selected over't the Wiccapaedia for the American sector.

I suppose in order to accurately analyze these tendencies, one should look at the literal outliers in finer detail:

First there's the oft mentioned fact that no-apologies ultra-right wingers do well in the former states of the GDR, but like so many places where this is the case, it's a lot more obvious the more rural and/or 'burbier you go, where they encounter multiculturalism mainly through the distant deigning of demagoguery. This is evident when you visit the concrete reaches of Buch, Marzahn, and Hellersdorf.

That black upholstered armchair perched upon the last eastern peninsula is another story altogether: Mahlsdorf. The biggest difference occurred when the district it's in, Mahrzahn-Hellersdorf lost PDS candidate Gregor Gysi, who in 2001 had garnered half the vote. The CDU had already been running a pretty strong second to Gysi's PDS, at 27 percent. However, in 2006 without Gysi, and with the PDS already dubbed Die Linke on the ballot (as part of the official fusion with the WASG that would take place the following year), they only managed 23 percent. That big a drop within one election cycle must be attributable to the absence of the face of the party during a contentious name change.

Still, part of the CDU's ongoing ownership of Mahlsdorf in spite of poor showings in the rest of the district probably mirrors that of anywhere you see black: people believe they own their shit because they're entitled to it and want it to stay that way (as opposed to the baby blue constituencies' knowing they don't own shit but wanna keep whatever it is they think they got out of the hands of Arabs, Persians, and Africans specifically as a good place to start).

This'd be a little too like the lazy demographic analysis of social scientistic punditry if I didn't mention the more detailed reality regarding the latter group's encompassing, as well, those opposed to big money war profiteering. It's just that you almost only ever hear them bitching about the result and not the cause. This they have in common with adherents to almost all parties' factions of loyalty.

But it is in fact Die Linke — running along the former East all dressed in pink — who have consistently taken aim at capital's war machine and associated investment class. With the exception of Sahra Wagenknecht's mentioning that "of course there's a upper limit to how many refugees a state can handle" and that an honest government might want to include that as part of the discussion — which might have deflated a key part of the AfD's argument, which was part of her point — they have only urged immediate acceptance of asylum seekers from all corners.

As long as I'm tying former districts of the GDR to The Left, I should mention again that in about two-thirds of the time it took East German border guards to snipe 200 would-be escapees, the Yanks murdered a million Vietnamese. I'm sure both estimates are kind. The GDR took in about 10,000 Vietnamese emigres by the mid-seventies, 60,000 by the time the Wall came down.

Speakin' o' the Wall
The Potsdam Conference established the partitioning into US, British, French, and Soviet zones seen in the map above right. Coincidentally, it's at the lyrical heart of the death strip at Potsdamer Platz (the place named for the road to Potsdam) where the codified corners converge. After the fall, these adjacent spots became the property of Daimler-Benz, Sony, Otto Beisheim, and ABB/Roland Ernst Städtebau.

Daimler-Benz had snagged the largest parcel for so cheap that the stink it caused led to the European Commission's ordering an additional payment of 34 million Deutschmarks to the Land of Berlin mere months after the initial sale had been completed.

Otto Beisheim was a former Nazi stormtrooper. Did you know that before the war they were the Freikorps (having been renamed after the first war)? Beisheim erected a center in his name, which housed the Ritz Carlton and the Marriott International. Imagine building a hotel tower complex with your own name on it.

Sony built the biggest monstrosity on their place and were rewarded another 4,500 m² by the Berlin Senate as remuneration for having to relocate some of their completed structure, even though it was due to their having disregarded conditions of the contract.

All I can find about Roland Ernst Städtebau is this article in German from 2011 regarding his arrest on suspicion of graft and fraud.

For Berlin, the massive construction on Potsdamer Platz was their first use of public-private partnerships to get shit done. The Berlin Senate made a show pony out of its design competition, while the players they brought thru the back door would subsequently use threats to get their way around perceived limitations. It was win-win for somebody — in the same way that CETA and TTIP and TISA and whatever subsequent names they may carry will be a win-win for corporations jacked-up on autonomy.

In other words: the politicians will always pretend they don't know they're being played as a sure way to hide the fact that they are playing along. That Corporate is seeking to make its authority official should be instructive. It was, already, to the at least 30,000 who took to the streets Saturday in Berlin. But that won't likely change the outlook of the new senior partner in any coming coalition, the SPD, whose functionaries have, in op eds and on polit-talk shows, newspoken the necessity of precisely these kinds of agreements to any civilized society.

Now the Greens say they are against CETA as well. But if you know the German Greens, well, like I've said, coalition building makes for erratic bedfellowing – the subconsci-equences of which might help explain the last odd trend in the electoral map above: The Greens in the middle. They seem to have the strongest constituency in the area where most of the green has made way for concrete.

Speakin' o' the Wahl
So how 'bout the numbers? Well, I am proud to say that at least in one ward in my district the satirical party Die PARTEI beat out the AfD for second to last place. Unfortunately in the ward west of me AfD got just about 11 percent. With any luck, they'll go the way of the Pirates, who made a big splash last time round but have all but disappeared.

The Berlin breakdown looks like this:


As predicted, the SPD benefited in spite of their bleeding a seat more than the CDU. Unexpectedly, the Left edged out the Greens – but their seat numbers will be the same. Even in light of this, however, I would urge Die Linke not to build a coalition with the SPD and Grüne. There goes the way of losing everything they won here. If they demur, the Greens will go willing with the fake Reds and form a coalition with the CDU just so they can have an office in the administration. And like I said, there goes the way of losing everything they won. But they've been doing that cyclically for thirty years now.

Because the only coalition coming from this will have to be more than two parties, the Berliner Zeitung is declaring the authority of the Volksparteien for toast. I think they're smearing butter.

In closing, here's the best shot I could get of Die PARTEI walking the opposite direction through the demo Saturday, followed by a hover image version of the maps above:

Those who walk in the other direction are STUUPID  -and-  KETA instead of CETA

Move your cursor over the image for extra fun.

Ist doch geil, oder?

10l plastic watering can by Geli (sprinkle attachment not pictured)

fast geiles Zeug - 2016