I'm sorry for my German.

Two winters ago, I read an article about Haruki Murakami's routine of sitting down to write every morning for several hours, even if he had nothing to write and indeed wrote nothing at all. I was inspired to do the same and started a story called "I'm sorry for my German," which began with the mistaken reading of a sign on the other side of the river I used to run along that said "Anlegestelle." For weeks I had thought it said, "Angelnstelle," which I thought to mean a place for fishing, and wondered why I never saw anyone fishing there. Somehow the story developed into Otto wandering aimlessly in Vienna and then abruptly ended when, being driven nearly mad by the noise from the neighbors above me, I fled to New York to stay at my grandmother's empty house, where I discovered the terrifying loudness of solitude.

I don't remember what I meant by the title, "I'm sorry for my German," but I liked the sound of it, and that's approximately how I felt at the time, or maybe more accurately sorry about my German, and sorry about many other things as well.

But now I remember. I thought that my writing would inevitably contain some German words and phrases for which I couldn't find appropriate English translations and, knowing that this might be annoying and even come off as pretentious, I wanted to apologize from the get go. At the same time, it is true that here in Germany I often did feel sorry for those who had to endure my imperfect German and wanted sometimes to tell them, "I'm sorry for my German."

Today, while walking home from the U-Bahn station where I had sat for a while listening to the cellist, I thought that the inclusion of German words and phrases in my posts could be a theme for my blog. Thinking of the cellist, whom I gave 10 Euros, I thought of writing that maybe "das war ein bißchen übertrieben," although I actually don't think so at all. This time he didn't play any Bach, but what I once paid $10 for at The Stone, I thought, wasn't at all necessarily better.

Genazino, again.

While waiting for my eye exam on 78th street, I looked at books at Barnes & Noble on 82nd. I stuck my nose in several different "recently arrived" books and became sick with the impression that everything not only sounded the same but seemed to be singing the same whining song with the piercing chorus, "yes, of course we know there's no point, but what else is there to do?" No one seemed to be presenting things anymore as unbearingly grey, flat and numb as everything actually is most of the time.

Then I remembered reading Genazino's Die Ausschweifung on the plane to New York. As I was crossing Broadway toward the bookstore, I had imagined describing Genazino to someone who had never heard of him, that is pretty much everyone I know, as being so plainly convincing that it's irresistible on the one hand and devastatingly tedious on the other. After 30 or so pages of being entrenched in his off-white, muted world, I sigh deeply, close the book with a finger keeping the page, and wonder what it's all about anyway.

Having seen nothing by Genazino in the quite vast fiction section on the second floor, riding the escalator down to the ground floor, I imagined translating him and thereby introducing him in the United States as, perhaps, the next sensation. Then I considered that there might already be American versions of Genazino, in, say, someone like Richard Ford, whose writing repulses me, maybe only because I actually know people like his characters and don't think they're worth devoting any story at all to. Maybe, I wondered, part of Genazino's appeal is that his characters are too foreign to trigger any prejudices in me. And yet, underneath the level of consciousness infected with prejudices, he describes lives that I can relate to poignantly enough to even learn from.

By the time I reached the ground floor, I decided that the project of translating even a single novel of Genazino would be beyond my competence and, therefore, an utter waste of time. With that settled, I went toward the cash register to pay for a pocket Moleskine music notebook, in which I wanted to transcribe old English songs to play on my clarinet. Standing in line, I noticed that one of the cashiers was occupied with a woman who had already completed her purchase but lingered to talk. She kept talking and talking, and I finally said under my breath, "Sie steht da und quatscht ohne Ende! Es ist ja nicht zu fassen, eh!" Of course, I noticed that I dared utter the criticism aloud only in German, a language I doubt anyone in earshot could understand, and wondered at my cowardice. Now I wonder whether German is simply the more appropriate language for that kind of criticism, directed at noone in particular and lacking any practical effect. In any case, I can't imagine saying something like that in English - "She's standing there and talking endlessly! It's unbelievable!" It sounds translated, like something from a Kundera novel. I think in English, or at least in New York, we would say, "What the fuck is she doing?"
I can imagine something like that being said in German, but only from an alcoholic impatient to pay for his beer.