2024. 8. 31 Sat
Fra is back on my sofa after almost two months, laying back. (Mum came 23 June, the bugs 18 July).
I look at him and say, “Do you live here?”
He looks back and says “I do,” as if we were exchanging vows. And we both smile.
Ivan said that he had applied to sh a couple of weeks ago. I remembered that he had written to me around that time, only that I had been travelling and had forgotten to reply. I wrote a few words to Mareike on his behalf the next day and got a reply this morning. Apparently he had already been marked for an invitation, but the communication had got lost somewhere between the holidays. I was happy to pass on the good news, and a few hours later he got an interview on Monday. Although his portfolio was no doubt excellent in its own right, I could not help but feel minimally responsible. And I was happy to be too, to recommend him genuinely; his aesthetic as a visualiser was already well established when we graduated together. Now he wants to be an architect. One comes as the other goes...
As I was having a drink with Nelson after work, F sent me a photo of the sunset at Klunker, which made me think of A for a moment. Then we talked about the long-distance relationship Nelson had during his Masters. It ended after three years because she wanted him to come to NY and he wanted to come to Berlin. N was talking about a book he wanted to give me as a going-away present, Atlas something. He seems to be more into science fiction in general. He asked me if I had any books to recommend and I told him I hadn’t read for about two years. I mean, not really - including his impressively engaged exchange with his teacher, who apparently is an architecture critic. He once explained the concept as something like the letters Rilke wrote to the young poet. I didn’t think it presumptuous at all, just slightly taken aback by the ambition regardless of the quality of its content, which was then our next topic of debate. When he first sent me the endless Word file of these dedicated letters, I fished out a phrase from one of his, which sounded nonchalantly poetic to me - some statement about everyone trying to find themselves in Berlin. As I repeated this to him, he asked whether I thought it was good because of its content or form. I said because I liked the way it sounded. Hence now we were talking about writing, which for me is this diary. And so I said, very presumptuously, that I am rarely as interested in the content as I am in the way it is written, and that I strive for the same in mine.
