Wall Flowers - Tattooed City

At the playground next to the cafe where I get internet, I watched two children, a boy and a girl, climb up the chainlink fence as far as they could. The boy made it all the way to the top, about 12 feet off the ground, and the girl stayed a couple of feet lower and laughed up at him. The same day, I walked along the River Spree where one of the last remaining segments of the wall stands. I am in east Berlin here (I know because the little men on the Walk/Don't Walk signs wear hats). but as soon as the wall came down and the zone in between was cleared of sand, the people all came out with spray paint. The graffiti is astonishing. Phrases in every language, mostly appeals for Peace and Love rather than walls, a huge wrinkled face repeated over and over again in surrealist overlapping forms, eyes on eyes, for about 50 meters, a great rendering of Gargamel from the smurfs, a huge mandala with what looked like Native American symbols, and of all things, a stencil of Matt Damon's face. I haven't even begun to describe all I saw, and it would make a good book if someone where to simply catalogue all the images on the wall. But they must work fast because the plaster is peeling and flecks of the paint fly in the air. You could walk off with Gargamel's nose. The wall itslf is very tall and cold and rough to the touch. Along the sidewalk there is much broken glass and the air smelled of rain that evening and maybe sewage. The river is still lovely, flanked by willows and linden trees and it runs by unaware. There is a gap in the wall behind which they have built a makeshift beach, a covered pavilion and on either side a bar. We drank Erdinger on an old boat, still equipped with a rickety mast and a life-boat and watched the sun set into the river behind the East berlin skyline, which consists of a huge TV tower, the Berliner dome and the new town hall, a red-brick angular building that squats below the tower. The aesthetics of this city, especially East Berlin, are singularly austere and so I am coming to understand all the graffiti. Makes guerrilla poetry seem tame, but what better way to rebel than with color and broad strokes and surreal images. It is a tattooed city -- pain and art.