Tag Archives: James Smoker^*++

The building where our Peter Bergmann, with two n’s, stayed the last nights of his life was called, generically enough, the Sligo City Hotel, soon changed to The Address but with the same one. Interesting that a sign pointing in its direction on the other side the street from the bus stop — where it just so happened Bergmann wrote his mystery word or sentence or whatever he subsequently ripped up — is positioned directly above that hand-with-pen in this June 2018 Streetview screenshot.

Switching back to the 2024 Streetview photos of that mural, the most recent as I write this, we see the pen pointing directly to a bicycle in the parking lot before it from this perspective, specifically its seat. Personal sync here: the wife and I were just playing around with adjusting a bike seat at a local gym the day I found this pen in a Sligo mural pointing to same. I instantly recognized the connection. I’d started going to the gym, and taking up stationary biking in particular, to attempt to heal a fairly long lingering back issue, longer than usual in my history of such ailments. Set your rear down here to get healed, the mural seemed to indicate in a queer triangle of associations. And as I write this, the back seems to be healing up. I can move on — by staying stationary? Also time to get on the move again, as in moving outdoors from the gym.

But not before strengthening the CENTER.

(to be continued)

The pen he used to sign in to the hotel registry produced not his actual name, though, but a pseudonym, not quite a pen name since, as far as I understand, he wasn’t an author on the sly, although he did write down something else later on at the town’s bus station and then promptly rip it up, in all likelihood not even classifiable as a tiny poem so brief was the scribbling. Peter Bergmann was not the real name of the person standing before the hotel clerk jotting that name down. Nor was his address “Ainstettersn 15, 4472, Wien (Vienna), Austria”, which he also claimed through the same pen on the same piece of paper. Instead here we have someone who wanted to remain anonymous, bound to perform a task that would complete a life no one in the public eye would perhaps ever find out about, set aside these final 4 days. Beginning here — actually beginning in Derry where local CCTV footage also recorded him entering the bus that would take him to Sligo 135 kilometers away in the west of Ireland.

Peter Bergmann never existed, or, better, never existed as the person who came to Sligo, Ireland from his native land to die. And he made darn well sure no one would ever know his real identity.

What happened next? Among the most interesting events: 13 trips out of the hotel carrying the same purple bag which left full but came back, well, not even empty but even visible.

Purple. Hiding something. Keep that in mind.

(to be continued)