#87 | Non-compliance
“It is good to know that out there, in a forest in the world, there is a cabin where something is possible...” — Sylvain Tesson
“Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut.” — Tiziano Terzani
I've been in Berlin for a week and will be here for another three. Throughout the city, robust concrete architecture peers over the tranquil canals like a responsible parent; you're never more than fifty meters from a good cafe (in London, you're never more than five metres from a rat); the people are cool. The fierce heat is consuming. Every bar serves alcohol-free beer, although few coffee shops serve decaf, and the wifi is rarely free. There is very little traffic, and cars are kind to you. Young people read in cafes rather than doom-scroll their lives away. I like it.
Being in a new place, I'm making hasty observations: I've observed that Berliners are more compliant than Londoners and Nairobians.
However, with this observation, I was wrong.
Unlike in Kenya, where there are no zebra crossings (but plenty of zebras), Berlin has a ton. Berliners wait patiently for the marching green man to flash up before crossing. (Doesn't this indicate compliance?). Similarly, cyclists stop at red lights and obey traffic laws, unlike in London, where cyclists spin up one-way streets, crash past prams on pavements and generally are a nuisance. Moreover, if you're a cyclist in London, you're treated like a second-class citizen because — more often than not — you act like a Belmarsh criminal. In Berlin, however, cyclists go slow and are appreciated; there is no lycra and few helmets (they're unnecessary for cruising).
On Thursday, I hit traffic while cycling from Neukölln to Moabit late in the evening. Traffic itself is pretty unusual, as is honking (this honking was the first honking I'd heard all week).
The drivers had been stationary for some time. After undertaking forty of them, I reached the junction. A stream of literally thousands of cyclists blocked the road, merrily riding past, ignorant to the chaos. Books about writing often instruct the writer to avoid unnecessary words like 'literally', but here I can't — there were literally fucking loads of cyclists!
The cyclists were in rapture, most pinging their bells and whooping. Some more well-prepared cyclists played music from boomboxes taped to their pannier racks. A few had just left work; others looked like they had been out of work for some time, perhaps forever. It was filthy hot, so some were topless and rolled spliffs while riding — no hands! (I stood there, at the junction, impressed).
The Indian Hindu mystic Ramakrishna tells us, by way of parable, of two ways to salvation. The first is the kitten's way: The mother picks up her kitten from the scruff at birth and carries it on. The kitten surrenders entirely. The second is of the baby monkey, which, when born, has to hold on to its mother's fur (using all its strength). The mother is, of course, destiny. The mystic advises taking the kitten's way because the baby monkey will fall if it wearies, but the mother cat (the dam) continually holds the kitten.
Do we hold on to our destiny with the strength we can muster? Or do we surrender entirely to fate?
Well, in this case, I surrendered. I hesitated and then silently slipped, from being an individual, into the stream of cyclists. I was instantly invisible and at the whim of this mammoth peloton.
The peloton swept on. Tiziano Terzani wrote, 'the first step in any form of knowledge is the awareness of not knowing': I don't know what knowledge I'd glimpsed, but I was aware of not knowing anything. After ten minutes, I asked a neighbour where we were off to: Are we going far?! I said 'we' because I was going with them: I was now a salmon swimming downstream, a flocked sheep. My commuter-friend said he had no idea (such compliance! - I thought).
So on we peddled, unspeaking. Zig-zagging from Schöneberg to Witzleben, and then off towards Scheunenviertel. Cyclists blocked every junction, and the echo of horns was extinguished by bike-bells chiming and boomboxes booming. Hadn't we already passed Spreestadt Charlottenburg? Was it the first time we'd crossed the Spree or the third? Its water had turned night-black, like an empty motorway lying asleep under the bridges. It was perhaps 11 pm, but I never checked my watch; there was too much to see.
Two more hours went by, and cyclists threaded their way ahead and behind me. Were we headed to a rave? I hoped so, but I was in my running gear and not ready for one. And the crowd at this rave would be very mixed; there were children among us. How would we all lock our bikes up or find them again after all the mandy?
This mandy, of course, was illusory. I was disappointed as the police presence flashed in the distance. We had reached our destination. Finally, we joined the vast roundabout under Victory Column in Siegessäule, and we rolled around it dozens of times (the chiming and booming maxed out at this stage). The polizei did nothing — but what could they do? "All I Want For Christmas Is You" played up ahead, bringing me to tears.
This enormous demonstration, which culminated in a loopy-loop, not a rave, was the opposite of compliance. It was standing up for cycle safety, and it caused chaos for hours by doing so. I've been told it happens monthly worldwide (but perhaps not by those awful London cyclists). In fact, across Germany, all political demonstrations and expressions are tolerated and supported by the state, even neo-nazi rallies (the polizei were there in support of our ride!). It's a culture of peaceful, responsible, and expressive non-compliance.
My week in books
The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh. Is anyone else being dragged, as if by Fate, to learn more about Buddhism? I feel I am. This book presented itself to me at St Pancras and is very good. “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Do you have any other recommendations in this genre?
Live well,
Hector