I think this qualifies as "a tad surreal". No introduction this time, let us just go straight at the heart of the matter. I was jogging in the park, a Sunday not long ago. It is a pretty big park, and it is full of winding roads, some paved, some made of dirt, some just paths trodden more often by people who go out for a barbeque, to walk their dogs, to do outdoors stuff or Berlin stuff (a combination of the above which no language known to man can fully describe).
I never really bothered measuring how big the park really is, but it turns out it is the third biggest park in Berlin: 52 acres. You can fit a lot of stuff in that much space. So, I jog my 40 minutes, following what I thought would be more or less an arc, starting at the Am Friedrichsain bus stop, arching through the park until the north end, and ending roughly behind my house. Wrong.
I get sidetracked some ten times by this or that turn of the road, a corner that looks mysterious, a mossy step behind a fern, a silhouette of a statue at the far end of a pond, and I go on, and on, and on, all the time deluding myself with the notion that, by and large, I was keeping to my "arc". It was more like two letters "Y" joined by the stem, I later found out by drawing my path on a map. And here comes the fun: policrosalus. Yeah, it is just a fancy word for THIS. Boy, I am sucker for that stuff! So here we go, on to the parallel pullup bars, after all in my mind I though I was just stretching a bit the second part of my arc, so let's jump, climb, pull, push, crawl, skip, hop, duck and roll. At this point I am 50 minutes into this fun galore and I am starting to feel sort of winded, but then again, home cannot be far, I run leaving the last obstacle behind me. I run for five more minutes (time +55') and bam! the pull-ups bar appears again. "Ah, Berlin, here you go again, collecting tax revenues from all over the rich and productive rest of Germany so you could instal TWO identical policrosalus(es?)" in the park. Oh, what the heck, let us do this one too..." jump, climb, pull, push, crawl, skip, hop, duck and roll.... "weird, the sequence of games is EXACTLY the same...oh, I must be simply tired" , I thought, as I headed for home. Wrong! (again). We are now close to 75' (I am slowing down) when I see the pullup bars appear again. "Boy that sure feels a bit weird, what are the odds?" I ask myself as I try to pull my weight up. I get to touch the bar once, maybe twice, then my hands go f-off! and spontaneously open. Ok, enough of this, now I am REALLY going home. And then I notice them, the clues....
The climbing boulder, it has been there the whole time. Like those weird renaissance paintings, portraits of autere Saints and church scholars, one hand on a massive tome, one meter to the side, goat-skin and iron bound, the other pointing at you, yes, you! sinner that you are!. They look at you no matter where you are in the church, as you pass by them, by some trick of light, position or paiting technique, they always follow you with their gaze. Like the climbing boulder. I did the lap three or four times, I was tired by then, but I thought: that boulder, it is always there, no matter where I go, whether I emerge from the bushes, or I pass a bend of the road, it always shows me the same face; I almost believe I am seeing the same people climbing it, like a tape stuck in a loop. Weirder and weirder. The light is failing at this point, it's dimmer, and also there is not much blood left to oxygenate my brain and power my eyes. It's all in the liver, completely trashed with fatigue toxins. Coming up to 90', boys. Then the kid. Oh, the kid was too much. I could take the boulder, and the copy paste pull-up bar, but the kid playing football by himself was too much. The fact that he looked just about the most innocent creature on Earth only made it weirder. Say, "Steven Spielberg" weird, sort of "children of the corn" weird too. I had a recollection of running by him once, or twice, always in the same spot, always kicking the ball up in the air and talking to himself. Now all I need is to run into some peasant with a pitchfork who will be benevolent and kind and will offer me to drive me to his farm, where I can use his phone and call the sherriff...TIME TO GO HOME! Ok, I tried them all, but I was clearly stuck in a loop myself. A warped zone. A twilight zone of some kind, no way out. I tried to move away from the path at a 90° angle. No luck, either the kid, or the boulder, or the pull-up bar. It makes no difference whether I try to cleave through the park in a straight line (hoping to hit ONE side, but hey, it is 52 acres, so if I plot this one wrong, it might be hours before I am out) or if I look for landmarks. They are all far and away, and well beneath the tree-line. Trees are massive. The fountain? Disappeared. The bell dedicate to Hiroshima's victims? Like it never existed. The statue of "One mother holding her child?". Three meters of granite, must have imagined it! The sky has a definite indigo hue by now, only streaked with light near the horizon. Berlin's mono-cloud sky males it impossible to say where the West is. It is "sort of that way" on an arc which is easily 60°. That is, pretty useless over a distance of more than one Km. I ask a passer by (they are fewer and fewer, these bots put there by "The Matrix" know their way out, of course) and she utters directions in Ze Tchermanik Lankuaj, YA!? Useless, no, worse, counterproductive. I take no heed, but she says a word "Kniprodestrasse". Man I have heard this one before, I swear. All right, point me the direction. Left. Cool. I go.
Then I see it. I have a tear of joy in my eye as I pull a Theseus, and see the perimeter! It could be on any of the 82 sides of this freaky polygon (you thought Jordan's shape on the map was funny? Think again). The perimeter! Lo! Behold! I can barely make it out, as it is night and the street lights are far, and it is the time of the day when the shadows are the most confusing. I literally cling to it, hug it, never let go, and follow it in a pretty random direction. It is coasted by a path (good for goats, and beagles perhaps) but I make do. Then I see the monument: to the Polish soldiers and German anti-fascists. YES! YES! I HAVE seen you before! You are...10 blocks away from home? Er...ok, whatever, not the time to be picky, I know where I am. Far, but in the right direction after all. It is night by now. Coming up to 2h into the park, and my legs feel like dead marble, if marble could die and be any colder and heavier than living marble. The shambling takes a solid extra 20', but hey, I am home. Time to take a bath. A very long bath. That was surreal...
I never really bothered measuring how big the park really is, but it turns out it is the third biggest park in Berlin: 52 acres. You can fit a lot of stuff in that much space. So, I jog my 40 minutes, following what I thought would be more or less an arc, starting at the Am Friedrichsain bus stop, arching through the park until the north end, and ending roughly behind my house. Wrong.
I get sidetracked some ten times by this or that turn of the road, a corner that looks mysterious, a mossy step behind a fern, a silhouette of a statue at the far end of a pond, and I go on, and on, and on, all the time deluding myself with the notion that, by and large, I was keeping to my "arc". It was more like two letters "Y" joined by the stem, I later found out by drawing my path on a map. And here comes the fun: policrosalus. Yeah, it is just a fancy word for THIS. Boy, I am sucker for that stuff! So here we go, on to the parallel pullup bars, after all in my mind I though I was just stretching a bit the second part of my arc, so let's jump, climb, pull, push, crawl, skip, hop, duck and roll. At this point I am 50 minutes into this fun galore and I am starting to feel sort of winded, but then again, home cannot be far, I run leaving the last obstacle behind me. I run for five more minutes (time +55') and bam! the pull-ups bar appears again. "Ah, Berlin, here you go again, collecting tax revenues from all over the rich and productive rest of Germany so you could instal TWO identical policrosalus(es?)" in the park. Oh, what the heck, let us do this one too..." jump, climb, pull, push, crawl, skip, hop, duck and roll.... "weird, the sequence of games is EXACTLY the same...oh, I must be simply tired" , I thought, as I headed for home. Wrong! (again). We are now close to 75' (I am slowing down) when I see the pullup bars appear again. "Boy that sure feels a bit weird, what are the odds?" I ask myself as I try to pull my weight up. I get to touch the bar once, maybe twice, then my hands go f-off! and spontaneously open. Ok, enough of this, now I am REALLY going home. And then I notice them, the clues....
The climbing boulder, it has been there the whole time. Like those weird renaissance paintings, portraits of autere Saints and church scholars, one hand on a massive tome, one meter to the side, goat-skin and iron bound, the other pointing at you, yes, you! sinner that you are!. They look at you no matter where you are in the church, as you pass by them, by some trick of light, position or paiting technique, they always follow you with their gaze. Like the climbing boulder. I did the lap three or four times, I was tired by then, but I thought: that boulder, it is always there, no matter where I go, whether I emerge from the bushes, or I pass a bend of the road, it always shows me the same face; I almost believe I am seeing the same people climbing it, like a tape stuck in a loop. Weirder and weirder. The light is failing at this point, it's dimmer, and also there is not much blood left to oxygenate my brain and power my eyes. It's all in the liver, completely trashed with fatigue toxins. Coming up to 90', boys. Then the kid. Oh, the kid was too much. I could take the boulder, and the copy paste pull-up bar, but the kid playing football by himself was too much. The fact that he looked just about the most innocent creature on Earth only made it weirder. Say, "Steven Spielberg" weird, sort of "children of the corn" weird too. I had a recollection of running by him once, or twice, always in the same spot, always kicking the ball up in the air and talking to himself. Now all I need is to run into some peasant with a pitchfork who will be benevolent and kind and will offer me to drive me to his farm, where I can use his phone and call the sherriff...TIME TO GO HOME! Ok, I tried them all, but I was clearly stuck in a loop myself. A warped zone. A twilight zone of some kind, no way out. I tried to move away from the path at a 90° angle. No luck, either the kid, or the boulder, or the pull-up bar. It makes no difference whether I try to cleave through the park in a straight line (hoping to hit ONE side, but hey, it is 52 acres, so if I plot this one wrong, it might be hours before I am out) or if I look for landmarks. They are all far and away, and well beneath the tree-line. Trees are massive. The fountain? Disappeared. The bell dedicate to Hiroshima's victims? Like it never existed. The statue of "One mother holding her child?". Three meters of granite, must have imagined it! The sky has a definite indigo hue by now, only streaked with light near the horizon. Berlin's mono-cloud sky males it impossible to say where the West is. It is "sort of that way" on an arc which is easily 60°. That is, pretty useless over a distance of more than one Km. I ask a passer by (they are fewer and fewer, these bots put there by "The Matrix" know their way out, of course) and she utters directions in Ze Tchermanik Lankuaj, YA!? Useless, no, worse, counterproductive. I take no heed, but she says a word "Kniprodestrasse". Man I have heard this one before, I swear. All right, point me the direction. Left. Cool. I go.
Then I see it. I have a tear of joy in my eye as I pull a Theseus, and see the perimeter! It could be on any of the 82 sides of this freaky polygon (you thought Jordan's shape on the map was funny? Think again). The perimeter! Lo! Behold! I can barely make it out, as it is night and the street lights are far, and it is the time of the day when the shadows are the most confusing. I literally cling to it, hug it, never let go, and follow it in a pretty random direction. It is coasted by a path (good for goats, and beagles perhaps) but I make do. Then I see the monument: to the Polish soldiers and German anti-fascists. YES! YES! I HAVE seen you before! You are...10 blocks away from home? Er...ok, whatever, not the time to be picky, I know where I am. Far, but in the right direction after all. It is night by now. Coming up to 2h into the park, and my legs feel like dead marble, if marble could die and be any colder and heavier than living marble. The shambling takes a solid extra 20', but hey, I am home. Time to take a bath. A very long bath. That was surreal...
