To listen to an audio version of 'An Uncertain Country' click the play button To near the coast in April is to stray into uncertain country. At times a hot sun bathes the orange groves until they glow. Then the lashing rains return, hurled by the wind across the hills like ragged grey sheets. Mist … Continue reading An Uncertain Country
Tag: history
A Family Affair: Szczecin, pt.1
To listen to an audio version of 'A Family Affair' click the play button "All origins become mysterious if we search far enough into the past. And almost all peoples, when we look at their earliest origins, turn out to have come from somewhere else." -Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History A fierce north wind … Continue reading A Family Affair: Szczecin, pt.1
A Sort of Homecoming
And you know it's time to go Through the sleet and driving snow Across the fields of mourning Lights in the distance And you hunger for the time Time to heal, desire time - U2, 'A Sort of Homecoming' Whenever I monitor birds on the lower hills I pass what is left of the village. I stay … Continue reading A Sort of Homecoming
In Memoriam: Berlin, part 2
On the night of November 23rd, 1943 Allied bombers destroyed much of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church at the heart of Charlottenburg, Berlin. Built by the Kaiser at the end of the 1800s in honour of his father, the church lay largely entombed by its own fallen stone. All that remained was a shattered shell and … Continue reading In Memoriam: Berlin, part 2
City of Glass and Other Dreams: Berlin, part 1
"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
Julian Hoffman 