Hamburg 26.10.11
I keep considering on how to give my fiction a Germanic edge I feel it should have some quality to it that will make it stand out it should be more than just name dropping a few street names or saying quite casually how I tripped up outside Rödingsmark station in Hamburg or how the Balzac coffee shop across from the station induced a moment of embarrassment when the girl didn’t give me the correct change, Pushing me to the point of guilt at pointing out someone else’s mistake. Or to share my bemusement at the amount of objects that people or a person has spray painted smiley faces with odd swirls behind it.
But noting observations and anecdotes isn’t really fiction never mind German fiction, I’ve read some
Hesse and some kafka who are both German authors but I’ve not read Goethe, perhaps in the next paragraph a bear could attack me while I write in public no not in Starbucks on a fancy machine waiting to be discovered but with paper and a pen but siting out front of a library full of books I can’t read .
Other neurosis I feel like sharing today is that I’m not settling into the cold or that I’m getting fat as I’ve started to feel claustrophobic while wearing my jacket tightly buttoned up, Also over the last few days I’ve started to think that I recognize people who I’ve never met mostly TV people, two options so far are that my loneliness is fighting it way out to try and force me into a conversation where I have to explain that I speak klien deutsche which I’ve found so far kills most conversations or the other option that these people just happen to look like those people or a third option is that I’m just passing these actual people.
The original hand written version of this story goes on for another 4 pages however it goes wildly all over the place jumping around without much sense due to a few many beers the only line I feel worth saving from the rest of the story is as follows.
Have you noticed how comfortable your teeth feel in your mouth after a dozen drinks?
and i continue
I arrived back at the hotel after my train ride back to berlin and stayed in the bar for one more drink while I finished off last chapter of the book I’m reading, I wish I could claim it to be a great German novel however it’s Gogol’s dead souls, making brief eye contact with two women across the room with a polite smile, I’m tired and I chicken out of making any sort of attempt at a conversation with them and I go back to my room to delete the junk emails that will have been received in my absence, I turn twenty four in 2 days’ time, I still feel like I’m 4 years old looking up at the attractive women who’s starring alongside me in the television advert for some supermarket, I think I wore a light blue t-shirt that day.
