Chicago, as you can see here, is impressive. It is the archetypal North American urban landscape. It is a majestic and impressive and awe-inspiring urban landscape.

Still, Chicago is like those cities I used to make with Sim City 2: it looks neat and tidy and gritty in well-proportioned parts. However, or maybe, this is why, it feels very artificial. It has character, what with the lake and the elevated railway and the parks and its landmarks. But this character also feels artificial. Maybe I spent too much time downtown — but no such issues ever arose in, hm, Manhattan.

Speaking of which: Where are Chicagoans? Well, they drive around and they ride the trains. But they don’t walk a lot, do they? Unless they are destitute. Or out-of-towners.

I liked Chicago, I admired Chicago, I enjoyed Chicago. However, I felt no real buzz. Nothing like the invigorating pretense and pretentiousness that, according to St, fuels New Yorkers.

All in all, great buildings and urban vistas don’t make a city — people do. Otherwise, Dubai and Shanghai and other nowhere places would make great cities.

At the end of the day, despite its breathtaking backdrops, count the films taking place in Chicago. I can think of two: the Blues Brothers and — hm — The Matrix. The latter is not really Chicago, either. And it was filmed in Sydney. So, there.

After the abundance of rain last September, we dared believe that autumn would be coming on time this year. We were, of course, bitterly deceived: for the eighth year in a row I have to trudge through a hot (highs of 29 to 32 degrees), dusty and humid October, with relief coming only in the evening. It is so tiresome, so disheartening, so grinding, this thing, this cruel summer from early May to late October, year after year after year.

Tonight I saw again a film that was in my top five during my youth, Wings of Desire. I hadn’t however seen it for years, out of fear that time and experience would discredit it in my not-so-young-anymore eyes.

Partly wanting to see Berlin as it was before, more than 20 years ago (already!), I played the DVD tonight.

It’s still one of the films that appeal to the sensitivities of my generation. Or it could be just me.

Oh, well…

Quite unexpectedly, this being my eighth autumn here, it has been rainy for the last week or so: a true foretaste of autumn. On our way to Aerosol to see eV in her new flat with the spectacular tropical view, what will all the palm trees and the beach, the weather was tropical too: balmy, then windy, then pouring down on us, then humid again, then with gusts of wind and dark clouds racing against the wind (!) — with silent flashes of faraway lightning never ceasing. The memory of the summer still lingers on, is still a topic to talk about — especially in the face of a tough season ahead.

eV’s film collection (in VHS and DVD format) is also impressive. I wish I had more appetite for watching films. But appetite is not in great quantities: tonight I skipped two potentially interesting gigs. However, Rite of Passage, a psychedelic rock band, were truly good last Friday. I also liked the crowds they attracted.

AW, a colleague, was taught at school by Haruki Murakami’s father.

Although one of those “irrational and disturbed” characters I have written about earlier came back with a vengeance before the weekend, it seems that I have developed some defences against them, by now. It is a matter of priorities, I presume, and of my determination to work hard and to generally get things done this autumn. I can’t afford stressing out anymore, can I?

Overstressed, overworked, underindulged and tired Glau visited for the weekend in order to relax — although in constant contact with her office. The slice of our life she was served here was quite fun and impressive to her. She went to restaurants and bars, she stayed in a relaxing flat, she saw us living next to a faultline of sorts, she went to beaches (she however had fantasies of bombing Big Resort with hand grenades), she met cool and exciting people who care for us: eV, Dancer and — naturally — What’s-his-Name, the distinguished member of the Russian nobility. She also told us what we have been suspecting all along: Outpost lifestyle is alarmingly and disturbingly close to Compatridos’ ideal lifestyle by now.

During the summer that nominally finished hours ago, I read Miller’s A canticle for Leibowitz. It is an impressive book in multiple ways. It is also a (sci-fi) writers’ sci-fi book: published in 1959, it seems to have had parts of it lifted by people as diverse as DeLillo, Kubrick (in his Doctor Strangelove), the folks that gave you Mad Max and — surely — Neal Stephenson (in Anathem, more precisely) and Mary Doria Russell (in her underappreciated Sparrow).

This leaves me now with just the two Gore Vidal’s books, a mere four years on.

No matter how glorious our summers are, they draw to a close on a plane making a right turn over Capital to land in Outpost International. Every single year for the last seven years.

This summer has been especially cruel to part with: seeing friends, going on holidays, fun (the sex! the cities! the beaches! the alcohol and the food!) and — above all — the Abode. Every year I would tell myself and Jod that we are at least going back home in the Outpost, where we will be able to be together and close the door behind us. You realise how the existence (and general pleasantness) of the Abode radically changed that.

By the way, weatherwise, too, this was the best summer of my life: no heatwaves, no humidity, just clement breezes and reasonably summery temperatures, with the occasional July downpour.

The state of our Outpost home was not rosy, either: still no hot water — not that it is particularly needed, dust accumulated over weeks of absence, unpaid bills, unanswered very official letters demanding our “immediate response” (thankfully, the worst was averted), half a kilo of sand draining through the washing machine filter (I have no idea how it got in it in the first place), and — above all — some extremely distressing news about a colleague’s cancer diagnosis. This last news somehow put things into perspective, as they say, in death’s unmistakably blunt and forceful and banal way.

Anyway, now that I am here I am looking forward to seeing Dæmion,the Dancer, eV, One of the Seven and What’s-his-Name — that distinguished member of the Russian nobility.

Back to the Abode from Cologne. I met the Great Wizard and, even, Jorge, who was visiting a friend in Wuppertal — we coincided in the area by accident.

I think that by now I am a germanophile. I keep wondering what my life would be now if I hadn’t got into a plane to London in 1996 but to Berlin or Cologne instead. Yes, water is nearly impossible to get and, even if you do, it’s expensive and usually full of fizz. Yes, eating out is a tough enterprise: slow service, haphazard quality, German food is indigestible and I even found hairs in my food twice within two weeks. Yes, Germans are moody (like the Dutch and Compatridos) but can be incredibly sweet, courteous and civil (unlike the Dutch and Compatridos). And everything else can be really wonderful, as simple as that.

I felt affection and immense admiration for this fragmented and regionalistically minded people. I enjoyed their cities and their bookshops (Walter König: the only awe-inspiring bookshop I’ve been to in my life — Strand in New York is ‘just’ overwhelming). I appreciated their fun-loving side. I leered at the women. And so on.

More later. Maybe.