from the beautiful archives of mr. & mrs. mahler, founders of ostkreuz

sights and observations from the past month or so

collectors are people with a tactical instinct; their experience teaches them that when they capture a strange city, the smallest antique shop can be a fortress, the most remote stationary store a key position. how many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches i undertook in pursuit of books! … now i am on the last half-emptied crate, and it is way past midnight. other thoughts fill me than the ones i am talking about — not thoughts but images, memories … for a collector — and i mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be — ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to things. not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.

walter benjamin

ask me how my year has been and i’ll tell you that i have grown up; i felt it as it was happening. i look out the window now at two in the morning and fall in love, time and time again, with the sky still glowing at this odd midnight hour. sometimes i relish staying up late for this reason alone. other times i stay up late because my thoughts and feelings are nocturnal, so i accompany them for a bit. i lay them to rest on a piece of paper, or otherwise write them on my hand if i want to wake up with them on my mind. usually they end up as blurry traces of words the next morning, like bruises of an unfamiliar hue. they shared the same canvas of skin with the big burn mark on my forearm. it hurt like none other when i got it and throughout all of winter i tried very hard to hide it away. now when the wind brushes against it i wonder, as i do with faded ink and the eternal blue hour sky, how a mere shade of colour can affect me in such palpable ways.

…

and so i leave with at least one muted scar, a thousand volatile musings, and a penchant for sapphire nights…

everything else i carry with me in my brimming heart.

new edition of ten minutes is up, and a huge thanks to danica for featuring us on kitsune noir recently :)