'a shaped romance'

On the walk this morning from The New Apartment to the Tagesmutter's house, the sidewalk was even more covered in fresh dog shit and buzzing with flies – RJKY weaving her Laufrad around the piles like flags on a sunny slalom course.

We kept passing people carrying household supplies: a giant sack of packages of toilet paper, armfuls of sponges, a jug of Allzweckreiniger. We are nearly run down by a woman on a bicycle loaded with four or five industrial-sized boxes of powdered laundry detergent. As we round the corner onto Kottbusser Damm, ach so: the Schlecker there is having some kind of going-out-of-business sale. There is a crowd of people waiting to enter – a thick line winds through the entire store from door to Kasse. People are cleaning this place out.

An old man sitting outside makes an apparently humorous observation about RJKY and her papa. We smile uncomprehendingly into the sun.

In the courtyard of the Tagesmutter's building, there is a man – in mask and apron – welding a grocery cart. The courtyard is shared with a cafe, movie theater, and Turkish grocery store. He seems to be working for the store. Is he simply repairing the cart? Or is he reinforcing it for some unique task? It goes without saying, I think, that we do not always see people welding grocery carts on our way to daycare.

A workman enters the building behind us and then, with smiles and mumbles of encouragement, patiently allows RJKY to go first up the stairs. She reaches the door and knocks. He stops. Ah: he is also going to the Tagesmutter's. Something about the plumbing.

RJKY's friend N has worms.

While receiving this news, a phone call (and somewhere, a star fall, I suppose). My telephone never rings. I am not at home. It's the company installing a faster Net connection in The New Apartment. The call is dropped. They are kind enough to call back. I forget to collect the Laufrad from the courtyard and have to recross Kottbusser Damm.

Other workmen have left a trailer full of dirt blocking the door.

I squint into the sun as I pass an already bustling La Femme.



As the great, if utterly unknown, Charlie "Cassidy" Cohen is credited with saying (to Janis Joplin maybe): "Spiritus Mundi? Willy Butler Yeatsy ain't got nothin' on me, man."