I approached the intersection just before Mollstr. becomes Torstr. and held for the red light, which in Berlin means bring a book with you. I have ridden this path frequently, if not worn it. It is not unlike Clark Street between Belmont and Addison in Chicago in this regard, though it stretches a bit farther and only feels my feet at intersections. It is probably more like the bike path just inside the fence in Angeles City in the Philippines: Slightly uphill on the way, slightly downhill on the way back. I was on the way.
As always, despite having stopped pedaling at the corner, my right calf muscle maintained the rigidity required for sustaining my verticality in a seated position. As always, I looked to the left and spotted the Fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz. Rather unusually, perhaps ominously, I was struck by the spatial relationship between myself, the tower, and certain buildings lining both sides of the street from widely varying distances and heights, respective primarily to the era in which they were erected.
This time my physical surroundings and I felt more at one, yet, in spite of this somehow seemed to be emphasizing their independence of one another. Maybe it was just a symbiotic struggle for supremacy. The most distant in this scenery, the Fernsehturm, appropriately, towered above the rest - I, conversely, was the sole observer of this observation, with the power to end it whenever I wanted.
These buildings and I are all creations, I thought, looking back forward to the traffic light, which was at eye level for the cycler's benefit, immediately to my right, and close enough that I could have spared my calf and propped myself up by grabbing it with my hand or leaning against it with my forearm. Artist vandals had blackened out all but a heart shape for the red signal. I concentrated on this briefly and then scanned the area further to my right where the gargantuan granite Lenin had once stood, back through the intersection and toward my left again, and, again, I thought about the various decisions that went into the placement of the structures on the one hand, and on the other, the collective decision-making process which'd led to my having arrived at that particular crossing at that precise moment.
My concentration was then drawn beyond the loftiest of these constructions by the sound of a low-flying, tiny passenger plane. Its backdrop in the misty cold night sky was a three-quarter moon.
As always, despite having stopped pedaling at the corner, my right calf muscle maintained the rigidity required for sustaining my verticality in a seated position. As always, I looked to the left and spotted the Fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz. Rather unusually, perhaps ominously, I was struck by the spatial relationship between myself, the tower, and certain buildings lining both sides of the street from widely varying distances and heights, respective primarily to the era in which they were erected.
This time my physical surroundings and I felt more at one, yet, in spite of this somehow seemed to be emphasizing their independence of one another. Maybe it was just a symbiotic struggle for supremacy. The most distant in this scenery, the Fernsehturm, appropriately, towered above the rest - I, conversely, was the sole observer of this observation, with the power to end it whenever I wanted.
These buildings and I are all creations, I thought, looking back forward to the traffic light, which was at eye level for the cycler's benefit, immediately to my right, and close enough that I could have spared my calf and propped myself up by grabbing it with my hand or leaning against it with my forearm. Artist vandals had blackened out all but a heart shape for the red signal. I concentrated on this briefly and then scanned the area further to my right where the gargantuan granite Lenin had once stood, back through the intersection and toward my left again, and, again, I thought about the various decisions that went into the placement of the structures on the one hand, and on the other, the collective decision-making process which'd led to my having arrived at that particular crossing at that precise moment.
My concentration was then drawn beyond the loftiest of these constructions by the sound of a low-flying, tiny passenger plane. Its backdrop in the misty cold night sky was a three-quarter moon.
