"Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be." - Karl Scheffler, 1910 Perhaps no other city has taken up as much imaginary space over the last century as Berlin. It is a city forever in flux, not in the gradual, accumulated ways of most urban spaces, but with sudden, violent reinventions. Berlin … Continue reading City of Glass and Other Dreams: Berlin, part 1
Author: julianhoffman
I'm a writer living beside the Prespa Lakes in northern Greece.
Glimpsed, In Passing
As the year wanes I'd like to mark its end with a few photographs. While place can be dense with the layers of our living, with the accumulated histories of wild creatures, cultures and faiths, the tightly knit webs of ecosystems or urban architecture, sometimes we're afforded merely a glimpse of it. These images are such glances. Photographs remind me of … Continue reading Glimpsed, In Passing
Journey to Ithaca
After last week's deluge the river ran wild with rain. It had transformed overnight from a sinuous set of bends where kingfishers flared like blue flames to a wild and churning tempest. The mud-brown water was washing off the mountains and cascading through steep granite galleries to roil across the plain towards the lake. The thrum and roar were recognisable, storms having altered the shape … Continue reading Journey to Ithaca
A Way Within
A few days ago our winter warmth arrived. Eight tons of beech were unloaded at the foot of the garden, having been hauled from the mountain forests behind our home. It's now been bandsawed by the woodcutters who do the rounds of the village with a tractor-mounted blade, the rising metallic whine starting with the light each day. They worked on into the dark, sawing their … Continue reading A Way Within
The Long Ridge Down
Empires of any kind eventually slide, having risen within the shifting and fickle orbit of political, social, economic and religious realities. It's in the nature of things to fade so that what once seemed eternal exists only as memory, or as a scattering of stones. The traces mark the land with ruins and clues, half-hidden or submerged, … Continue reading The Long Ridge Down
Julian Hoffman 