I recently went to my second trip
to the former GDR in Germany.
And having grown up during the Cold War era,
I felt like in a lot of ways that I
had this psychic landscape of East Germany
and had mythologized it.
And it was very interesting to actually visit it
and to come to terms with it in a whole new way.
So I've spent the last year and a half watching German films
and trying to somehow inhabit that era.
"An Autopsy of an Era."
That's how it was then, a knife through cartilage,
a body broken.
Animal, and animal is mineral ash.
A window smashed.
The collective howl as a general alarm followed by quiet.
Boot black night, halogen hung, tape snaking
through a stealth machine.
Later, shattered glass and a checkpoint charm.
The clasp of a tourist.
Trap bracelet.
An arm.
A trinket.
Snap goes the clamshell.
The film in the brain case preserving the sense
of the drench, the angle of the leash, the connecting collar.
A tracking long shot.
The descent of small town darkness.