Something With Happiness

On my way home from the bookstore, I saw across the street the beautiful Turkish butcher standing in the doorway to his family store, leaning against the side, wearing his thin, white, cotton "lab" coat. That image seemed to represent to me just then all of life itself, or maybe just of spring. It's about 10 degrees celsius in Berlin, warm enough to run in shorts. It almost makes me want to cry, though at the same time it's too bad, I thought approaching home, I missed the snowstorm in New York a few days ago. As always, I want everything, or maybe just both what I have and what I don't have, but not necessarily everything else.

I had gone to the bookstore to pick up the latest novel by Wilhelm Genazino I had ordered a week ago. Both last week when I ordered it and today when I picked it up, I couldn't remember the title, but knew only that it had the word "Glück" (happiness) in it, and I referred both times to the title as having "something with happiness" in it, "irgendwas mit Glück." While looking for the book on the shelf, the woman at the store today said, "Genazido," "Glück." "Genazino," I corrected her. Then she found it and read the title aloud: "Das Glück in Glücksfernen Zeiten." "Glücksfern" is the kind of word made possible only by the lego-like quality in German of constructing words by putting words together. I can't translate it. But the title means, roughly, "Happiness in Times When Happiness Is Far Away." That seems to me just now to represent all of life itself, or at least of my life right now.