I left many things when I departed from Zürich. And Guangzhou, and Taipei, and… Things come together again. All my Melbourne/Adelaide impedimenta in one place, and… perhaps I have lost much of the asian bits and pieces for good, but last night Cornelia and I dug out what remained here.

Two and a half years, three moves to different apartments, and in the bowels of my old backpack that travelled so many times with me, a Migros bag within a Migros bag stuffed to overflowing with books. My memories of living in Wipkingen and Seefeld and… with Anna, I wonder if I forget any beds?

Orel Füssli was a place I spent many evenings after rehearsals, a run into town, along the Limmat, then along Bahnhoffstraße to this strange conjunction of roads, and there was three floors of books in English. I discovered Charles Stross here, on the sole recommendation of a rather seductive cover, and read much Iain Banks, with an M. and without. Harry Potter on my birthday. Some I look on knowing I only bought them from the desperate need to read something. William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition that I read over and over, my traveling book, a twin of Iain Banks’ The Business.

One I never finished, Tricia Sullivan’s Double Vision, it was too creepy to consume while performing in a piece in which I slid along playing mental derangement while going through rehearsals that at times were a torment.

My Berlin shelves of books is already most of one full.

I wonder if and where in Berlin I’ll find a bookshop suitable to my peculiar needs. I was in Orel Füssli a couple of days ago searching for Stone Butch Blues, and failing, and know whatever else I had my dirty eyes hovering upon I wouldn’t find it here.

And now I must buy another suitcase as I can no longer close the lid on the one I bought not so far from here when the inevitability of departing became unavoidable.