What does it realy mean to learn German in your … ahem … older age?
Dear Auntie SAM: But you’re going to learn German … right!?
I read a lot as a child. By candlelight & in my bed after dark; when I shouldn’t have.
When in town, the library was my baby-sitter &, rather than give me two ice creams with my dinner, I was let upstairs: to the grown-up books while still only in single digits. Running my fingertips along the well-worn spines of books rated to remain outside my reach aroused in me sensations I still attempt to duplicate.
Needless to say, I’ve always been a naughty girl 😉
Because of frequent, lurid night-time indulgences, your dear Auntie needed glasses before she turned twelve. But she was too vain to get them until her mid-twenties.
The turning point was: I got an opportunity to attend university, yet I couldn’t read the board. And I sympathized with my poor husband white-knuckling through what he called my „Driving by Assumption“.
(Whatever. I’m still convinced they make signs too small to read.)
Riding home in the passenger seat, from the optométriste, I watched the world through corrective lenses & bawled. I saw blades of grass for the first time. Blades! Jagged edges on stones. Like they wanted to cut you.
My new world was harsh & unforgiving. Dangerous. Tears couldn’t stop falling while inside I feared: what if I had been soooooo wrong?
What if all my philosophies about life & human nature had been based on astigmatism? What if the art I adored – Picasso’s Woman with Crow – was ugly? How could I awake every day, for the rest of my life, into a reality in which the tenderness I saw throughout every living thing – and, even stone – didn’t bear true?
On a bed, one lazy afternoon, I heard the birds sing after fierce summer rains washed away the previous night’s oh-so satisfying sins.
„You say ’sing‘? We say they ‚whistle‘.“
„Birds whistle?“ This thought amused me.
„Yes, but ’sing‘ is much more romantic.“
Indeed.
Lawrence of Arabia once remarked that unilingual adults go mad learning a second language. The way one’s mind must contort not just to a new vocabulary with unusual sentence structure but to re-defining life – a new way of viewing even the actions of birds – is akin to schizophrenia.
Us adults of this century would never take that madness lightheartedly. But I trust we can accept his point.
That we’re all mad here, Darling.
Especially those of us who say „Yes“. Those of us trying to learn.
XO
AS
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FRIDAY FLY AGARIC with NU JAZZ sounds of & SWISS MUSICIANS from GERMANY & VENEZUELA. At the Schoolyard Genossenschaft, Tramstrasse 66, Müchenstein. 8 PM FREE.
SUNDAY CHEER FCB at one of your dear Auntie’s FAVORITE BAR in BASEL. FCB v FCZ at IRRSINN. 4 PM FREE: