{"id":54796,"date":"2025-07-26T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/?p=54796"},"modified":"2025-10-17T20:14:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T19:14:58","slug":"i-breathe-when-the-city-breathes-when-i-breathe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/?p=54796","title":{"rendered":"I Breathe when the City Breathes when I Breathe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/a>
Sometimes when you’re inside, you’re out.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you have a desk?\u201d<\/p>(Anon)<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

>>Warning: the following text contains an excessive amount of footnotes.<<<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Wednesday starts much like my Tues(1), with a jaggy(2) of sound from the window. I make coffee slowly(3), break fast, and look inwards. This last\u2019s an act of Sleight of Mind, Phase 3 of the writer\u2019s Ocular Occupation: 1 Eyes open, 2 Look outwards, 3 Look inwards. (You can call it \u201cThe Looking Thing\u201d if you want to sound more Anglo-Saxon, but a certain sort of Mensch is jazzed by Latinate words(4). You know who you are.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jaggy happened during Phase 2 \u2014 opening the window to Redstarts, Sparrows, trams, and cars, the sun on my face, the scent of Linden and tang of fume in my nostrils. With 3, I\u2019m off to find me some Gewisse(5). With ample research and three drafts of a novel set in the early 7th century CE, it\u2019s not that hard a task. I see the clay-rich fields, see the river, see the halls and hardy folk. I follow one to a hearth and hear German daytime TV. Jarring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pop back into the real world, close the windows (which additionally keeps out the fag smoke), and look inward once again, leaving a little of myself hovering around my hands to record what I see \u201cover yonder\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time passes in intervals of hours, if I\u2019m lucky. If not, I\u2019ll pop back and forth, that millisecond marathon over 1400 years and 1200 kilometres (Foxley to Leipzig) which is, frankly, exhausting. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tell myself I\u2019m the moon of my own tides, but I\u2019m not \u2014 it\u2019s the city and its pull. So in that way, the modern moulds the past (in more than one sense).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a seed in a tooth I can\u2019t stop tonguing, the city wants its way. Petulant brat. Fine. It\u2019s shoe-donning time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I amble over to Steinplatz under bright skies and walk to the west end where the lion that guards the door of the house across the street looks out over the play park. I\u2019ve seen it yawn before, heard deep roars at sunset the way I once did in Marwell Zoo. It doesn\u2019t look at me now. I\u2019m less interesting than the old 19th century mages that used to pass beneath it to some well-lit, tome-rich suite of rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, of course, is make-believe, but when you\u2019ve borderline hyperphantasia, the \u201cmake\u201d part\u2019s merely a prompt. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pass the oval window by Heinrich Sch\u00fctz Platz, the trees of the park reflected on its dark pupil. Here there\u2019s an actual wizard\u2019s head, with more souls ensconced on the walls besides. I can\u2019t tell you how my mind begins to race when I walk past(6). <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The balconies are gorgeous. Plants fill many and sit sipping carbon from the air. I have to smile at the sound. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wander down to Fichte and pass a woman perching on her windowsill, reading a book. It\u2019s not one of mine, but maybe one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day I walked past the corner of Shakespeare and Bernhard G\u00f6ring and saw a young couple, he with his bike set upside-down, at work on the gears, and she sat beside him, reading aloud from an e-book. It was like seeing deer in the early morning \u2014 you can neither believe, nor avert, your eyes. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m caught in the current of imagination and drawn north-west, old buildings and byways blending with birdsong and bark as I drift. I wash up in the music quarter on the corner of Haydn and Schw\u00e4grichen, right by the house with the most amazing arched and iron-wrought balconies. Bankers and lawyers occupy it in the real world, but I dream myself in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve a library. I\u2019ve a desk. I\u2019ve a chair. It\u2019s heaven. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slightly less divine\u2019s the number of times I\u2019ve been asked \u201cDo you have a desk?\u201d when I tell people I write. (This is the second most popular question. The first is \u201cWhat do you write? Krimis?(7)\u201d I\u2019ve even had questions about what kind of chair I sit in, or whether I use pens<\/i> like some eccentric anachronism. (I use a Faber Castell 0.5 mechanical pencil.)  <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I get back to my desk, the city\u2019s fallen silent. We\u2019ve been in each other\u2019s air long enough. I return to Foxley, far in the past, and look for Cyneburg, the hero of my tale. She tells me it\u2019s time to make dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(1) And MonSunSat, all the way back to Thur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2) Jaggy: opposite of smoothy. A blend of disquieting ingredients, unwillingly consumed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(3) Boiling water\u2019s a bean killer. Got to wait for that kettle to cool if you didn\u2019t splurge on a variable temperature model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(4) Not me. \u201cSo why foreground it then?\u201d you might ask. *Shrug* It\u2019s a cadence thing \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(5) The people who would later be renamed the (West) Saxons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(6) I can, but I won\u2019t. That\u2019s for another project. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(7) Krimis \u2014 crime thrillers. Germans ask me this, and often. The answer\u2019s \u201cNo\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m trying to write but the city won’t stop talking. Only by going outside can I make the inside quiet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[213],"tags":[84,214,257,209,221,215,256,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-54796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cf","8":"tag-city","9":"tag-city-fables","10":"tag-hyperphantasia","11":"tag-leipzig","12":"tag-urban-exploration","13":"tag-urban-nature","14":"tag-walking","15":"tag-writing"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54796"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54894,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54796\/revisions\/54894"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/54795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanmole.is\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}