I was thinking yesterday - as my bicycle nearly got toppled when it hit a small unseen pothole on a back Maine road near to chez moi - of an incident that happened in Berlin in 2008. It was the autumn of that year. I was in the middle of a difficult juncture in my life (a divorce), and left my apartment in Prenzlauer Berg after a long morning’s work on my new novel (‘The Moment’), heading to a local cheap and cheerful Italian restaurant nearby. As I turned into Prenzlauer Allee, suddenly the pavement disappeared and I was falling. Fortunately I was carrying a shoulder bag stuffed with reading material and notebooks. It broke my fall and saved me from grievous injury. For I had walked into an open manhole which some municipal worker had left often and forgot to put protective notices around. I did end up in the hospital with a badly bruised shoulder (which they initially thought was dislocated). I remember thinking at the time: Prenzlauer Berg is a district several square kilometres in size. And I manage to walk into the one open pothole in the entire damn quartier. Life is random and unfair, n’est pas? And we often forget to cast a cold eye on what is right in front of us and could send us into freefall.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 13:11:40 +0000
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