~good times~

June 12th, 2010

A couple mornings ago I woke up with Rappers Delight in my head, (a bottla ka-o-pec-tate!) which was confounding, as I don’t generally do the disco edition of musical self-torture. I realized it was because they sample the riff from Good Times by Chic, and that is a summer song to me, and it had been sunny that day for the first time in eight months. That song has always had poignancy for me, in the big picture of 1979 everyone was dancing and nearly no one yet knew about AIDS, and in the small picture, I was ten years old and crossing my own threshold. And there’s Captain Sensible’s Wot playing off both…

Today is my last day in sometimes sunny Berlin, possibly for a long while. I am going to New York to pack up our apartment after 2.5 years of half-thinking we’d return, and slowly realizing probably not. Then to Los Angeles, to see the fambly and the ocean. Then, it’s not clear what will happen except I will find my honey again on some land mass or another after six weeks apart.

Last night we took a boat ride on the river Spree. All of Berlin was sunning and hookahing and grilling and kissing in the grass. Today we do and see all we’ve meant to and haven’t in the last year, in case it will be some time before we get the chance again. The bridge below was divided in half during the Cold War. I crossed it each day to go to work in the building on the right.

A time of big change, some doors closing it feels, the adventure in Europe for the time being suspended, the near decade in New York, also really, truly done. Waves of time, goodbye… goodbye… goodbye…

Kindly be reminded by Chic, These are the good times.