2005-12-10, 12:39 p.m.: The me-in-history meme. 20 years ago Fall semester, fourth year, at Oberlin. When the French boy from the summer calls, I instruct my housemate, the voice major Ann G. (she of the thousand perfectly ironed chinos and the million LL Bean turtlenecks - her favorite colors were powderpuff pink and kelly green), to tell him that I had died: Elle est morte, elle est morte! I am now a full-fledged German major but so appalled and intimidated by my Age of Goethe instructor, the Frau (who threw chalk at 101 students for incorrect conjugations, who kicked the shoes of men sitting with an ankle perched on a knee - because this was not seemly in Europe), that I stop going to her class completely and make a last-ditch effort to get out of the final paper defense by pretending on the phone in a gravely voice that a bomb had been planted at the president's house. I take my friendship with Eric with a K too far (he now a footnote in a poem) and we become an item, me destined to disappoint him. He had been one of my closest friends, alas (and wrote me vitriol-fulled, extended hate mails for several years thereafter). But I am a German literature major, and I love it. We live in a basement apartment next to a gas station, from which I enjoy an excellent view of the air pump and the dumpsters. The next spring, nearly in real time, we sit in the no-window living room and watch the Challenger burst into flames and go down, again and again and again. In my Children's Lit class, which I adore, we can turn in a final research paper or a creative project. I choose the latter and write my first abecedary, painstakingly illustrating each page of the poetry manuscript in watercolor (with my paltry visual art skills) � 27 pages in all, of course, including the cover - on my knees on the floor of Susannah's dorm room. Nobody much likes it except me as it is clearly intended for neither adults nor children. I am still cribbing lines from it to this day. 15 years ago The Wall had fallen the year before, and we celebrate that anniversary. Translation and Interpretation school in California. Translation like a drug to me, interpretation a chore, and something you must do out of peer pressure (we all did both, except Dan who interpreted both German and French and Matt who translated both German and Spanish) and to impress the others. I am sure I will be a translator for life; I am sure I will no more be an interpreter � a stressful, tedious job � not a glamorous job � punctuated by many moments of terror � than I will be a talk-show host. I write no poetry and pretend never to have lived and died for science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, �The Lady of Shalott.� In high crushdom with Martin, West European politics professor extraordinaire whose eyes would light up at the very idea of Willy Schmidt, who was married to his former student from Ann Arbor. But no longer in love with her. I confess my love and languish, disappointed, lonely, alone, wating. For nearly one year. I swim for one hour every day, five days a week, and am the skinniest and healthiest I've ever been. I party. I wake up an hour before class to go running along the ocean in Carmel. I come home to my tiny, tiny basement flat and, into 1991, watch the first Gulf War on TV and despair at the seeming end of all good things. I read The Economist and the New York Times and Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and some novels but no poetry, and can�t imagine that my thesis (translations of four short stories by Andre Kaminski) will ever be done. 10 years ago Germany. Working. Translating and copywriting and copyediting 60 hours a week. I am happy. I love the city. I love the working salary. I watch all the Star Treks with Ruth and live alone in my most perfect apartment ever (except Greensboro) with my IKEA and flea market furniture. Out of contrariness, out of spite and to keep from dying from advertising and commerce and PR, I begin writing poetry again. I begin reading poetry. I begin to think of going back to school, an MFA, returning to the States after so long. I wear city clothes, nice Italian shoes, ride the tram into the Old Town to go drink Alt beer and sit on the steps of the Rheinpromenade, swallow countless German coffees, take the train to Amsterdam on Saturdays just for the day, to scour English-language bookstores and buy postcards. I am in a �writing group� with Allen, but neither Allen nor I am prolific, and so we spend each Monday night discussing yet another of Lindsay�s (LindSAY�s) dull short stories. I am happy in my perfect little apartment with the Wohnkueche. I mourn only the lack of a Sunday paper. And Mexican food. That�s it. I am writing writing writing. 5 years ago Greensboro. I tell WP: Prepare yourself. In six months I am leaving you. 1 year ago Pregnant. Morning sickness all day, every day. I make five dishes for Thanksgiving but can�t myself eat a bite of one. Not writing, but reading everything. Not submitting, but detailing all of it in one or another journal. I will be the mother of two sons, no daughters � this is something I never would have imagined for myself my whole entire life. Att is a joy, but I still can�t imagine anything about this new little creature who is the author of all my physical torment. I live in Colorado now, with the love of my life, my childhood sweetheart. I guess I have loved him since he was 14. Who else can say that at 41? 0 comments
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