Part I

Shorty after Halley's Comet last banked round the sun, shooting back out of the plane of the solar system, a rather unremarkable event took place on the west coast of North America, in a town called Eugene. A small, squirmy little larval human was born. Well lots of them were, but one of them was me, or at least would become me at some point. I scored a 10/10 on the APGAR test and I probably fucking cheated.

I don't remember anything about Eugene, but I am told that it rained for months and months and there were many bums and many hippies. When I was around six months old, my father was offered a post-doctoral position at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology at Starnberg south of Munich. We all packed our bags (except me: I was a bag) and hopped the pond. My cat, Miss Kitty, had to stay in my aunt's basement in Waukesha, I wouldn't see her again until I was five. I don't think she ever really forgave us.

Erling (the village we lived in) is the first home I can remember. We lived in a few houses there but I'm fairly certain I can only really remember the last one. Here is the address:

Panoramastraße 6

82346 Andechs, Germany

I think that's it.

Some of my earliest/most pleasant memories revolved around the strawberry patch in our back yard. The strawberries must have been planted there for a long time because they were abnormally small and sweet, the way that strawberries that have been planted there for a long time sometimes get. I would sit on my ass and eat those things like candy right off the plants. One day, I waddled out to my strawberry patch to discover that it had been picked clean of all its berries. I guess my landlord must have been in the backyard too, because I remember asking him where all the strawberries went. He replied that an albatross had eaten them all. I accepted this as a plausible explanation. In retrospect, that motherfucker lied to me. What a lie to tell a child.