The Acoustic Commons

Every Sunday, and every day between 22:00 and 6:00, Berlin is peacefully quiet, or is at least supposed to be, yet sounds remain. Some recklessly, and some with permission. Construction halts, but the birds step in to fill the empty sonic space. Trams hum. Outside my window voices carry on. I wake up many a

Leonardo

There were new points of pain now, the body speaking verses so decisive and dense, Claudia could no longer understand the sensation. It was not a knot in the belly or a blinding headache—no, it was aches occupying the edges of words and images, unrefined and unpronounceable. Some afternoons when the winds were not so

Monsoon

The vast flood  Rolls onward But yield yourself, And it floats you upon it – Ikkyū Sōjun, tr. R. H. Blyth The first drops were sweet against his hands. They tapped at him gently, first at his wrist, then his shoulder, then his face, as though to get his attention. He had expected them; the

Even the Clean Ones are Unclean

It’s that time of summer: when everyone’s everywhere doing everything when days are longer, happinesses stronger when the green grass looks like it’s been told I-love-you. Six past six o’clock. Evening. The sun is effulgent, the wind mildly turbulent. At a field, around a neighborhood, in Berlin, on a sunny summer Sunday, three friends meet