Samariter Str 3am

After the gig. Around 2 or 3am I found myself at the bar on Samariter Str. I never knew the name of this place. I came here once or twice five or six years ago. Candlelight gutters in its back room as the patrons nod out on the ripped sofas. A red curtain partitions the room. Behind it, across the hall, is a disco but not tonight.

Tonight I will sit in the guttering candle light, my notebook propped on a table scratched and graphitised. Attempting to catch fragments of conversation, attempting to describe the scene but really, lost in thought again. Lost in the constant double take of recording what is seen and the act of recording it. Little fissures in time are beginning to open. The past leaking into the present, the present into the past.

I close my book. Embarrassed by the intensity of the conversation of the couple I am sat behind, “Was willst Du, Was WILLST Du,” she keeps repeating to her friend as she shakes him. I had tuned it out. Writing – it’s easier to do when its not your language.


one man's 'patina' is perhaps another's 'tagging'.