How's the work for exhibition going? Yes you may well ask. The paintings are just having all those tiny last touches. That yellow one has been redone and the blue one finally, finally, has that really difficult bit finished. At least I am not looking at it any more in case I see more that has to be changed. With my eyes shut they feel right anyway.
Tom helps me put up the last painting and off we go in the afternoon to the Tier Park East Berlin Zoo. Wow. What a place. How come it is such a secret that it isn't even in the guidebooks? It is huge, practically empty of visitors, and so wonderfully spacious, mostly only with open moats instead of fences. Animals in all their exotic splendour were revealed. Chubby furry Red Pandas, a clan of elephants playing with sticks, giraffes and my ‘own' animal even: porcupines.
As a child I had always said that if I were to be an animal as in the game that people play, I would choose to be a porcupine. My reason was that they don't hurt anybody, neither flesh eating, nor attacking, they are vegetarians eating bark and plants. At the same time they have sharp quills that they can shoot if they themselves are attacked, insuring their inviolability. So they can live a peaceful existence without fear. And there they were before my eyes in this wondrous zoo. I have a photo to prove it, and of the large manatees, the original inspiration for mermaids, swimming lazily underwater in an enormous open pool. This is definitely the place to go for contentment, fresh air, Nature and awe.
