The irony of last week’s conversation was that I got your latest a day after we spoke, but was just as excited to see your handwriting as I was when I heard your voice on the phone. People will say we’re in love.
Today I want to answer your question about living overseas. You asked what it was like to live in a place for a long time where no one speaks your language. As I said, it’s lonely and certainly isolating in a way. I talk out loud to myself a lot more than I ever have, but that could be a result of growing older and more—gulp—eccentric. One of the things that drove me mad about living in California was the sickening amount of talk I heard every day that added up to nothing. Everybody talks out there, especially in the business. Everybody has lots and lots to say, but too often at the end of a conversation, even when I thought hard about it, I couldn’t remember what they’d said! And if you don’t watch out, you become like them—both your tongue and brain click onto that deadly L.A. mental cruise control. Know what I’m talking about? When you’re awake and aware and not stoned and your lips are moving normally—but what’s coming out of both your head and mouth is oatmeal? No, right now I prefer the rigors of this goddamned German language. It’s a nice challenge, staggering around my short moronic sentences and being proud when I get them right.
I’ve lived here six months now and think I’ve convinced both my body and spirit that I am staying; this is not just another pit stop in the race to some finish line far away from here. I have no idea whether I’ll spend the rest of my life in Austria, but I do want some years here. That’s certain. At first, I didn’t like the aloneness caused by my not speaking German well. Oh, sure, I could go into the local Feinkost and chat slowly with jolly Mr. Patzak behind the counter about this butter being more billig, but that doesn’t count as real conversation—it’s more kindergarten or beginning German class. Yet at the same time, the words you do know and understand take on a hundred times more importance and meaning.
Put another way, living away from home is like being in a hot air balloon hovering over the ground, say forty feet or so. Thirty—a little closer down. The perspective’s completely different, though most things down there are still recognizable. You float over people talking and can make out scraps of their conversations, distinct words here and there, even whole phrases, but never the whole thing. And the world does become different when you experience it from a completely new perspective. In this case, being forty feet away from the existence you knew. In America among English speakers, I was part of, so I didn’t watch closely. Here I’m forced to watch rather than listen, and like the blind person, I have a greater ability to “see,” but in a wholly different way. Hear too, only different things now—things other than language.
On the other side of my life, I’ve been in and out of those depressions we talked about before. There’s something terrifying about pulling up all your stakes and moving to new territory. Some days you admire yourself for your spunk and courage; others, you wake up in the morning thinking, God, what am I doing here? And there’s the constant question of what to do with the rest of your life. Looking down the corridor of months and years that you hope are still left, you have to wonder sometimes, How am I going to walk all that way? You ask the question no matter where you are, but it goes deeper when you’re far from home and can’t lose yourself in a familiar culture and years-old daily routine. Or else I’m only being self-indulgent.
Sweet Weber has been very good about sending over books he thinks I’ll like. Lots of novels and collections of poetry. I’m amazed at how he finds the time to read with the schedule he keeps. One poet he likes very much and has now addicted me to is Charles Simic. Listen to this, from a poem called “Evening Talk”:
Everything you didn’t understand
Made you what you are. Strangers
Whose eyes you caught on the street
Studying you. Perhaps they were all-seeing
Illuminati? They knew what you didn’t,
And left you troubled like a strange dream…
That’s how I feel so much of the time, especially when I’m depressed. There must be people around who know the big answers. If I could just find them I know they’d help in a million ways. Is that silly? Is it silly to think someone’s out there who’ll know just the right thing for me to do to find love and small peace? Sounds optimistic, yet I never think of myself as an optimist.
In one of Weber’s early poems (which I’ve also been rereading), he wrote, “When we’re old and held above the earth only by the hammock of our memories.” But what kind of memories will we have if we don’t live fully right now? How come so many old people look shriveled not only by age, but also by hate and failure and disappointment? And how did you, my best friend, end up with a good man who loves you and a healthy child? Was it only luck, or living correctly, or was there something else going on?
I went to dinner at the Easterlings’ the other night and had a terrific time. I like them. Both have a sense of calm and solidity that’s deeply reassuring. And they’re funny! They told stories that cracked me up and I swore to write them down so you could enjoy them too.
Maris’s first. Apparently her father was a grade A bastard and the whole family lived in fear of him. Lots of slaps in the face, mean punishments, speak only when spoken to—that sort of bully. Our dad the shit. Mealtimes were always silent unless Dad had something to say or asked you a question. Even when they were eating, the children would keep their heads down because just raising their eyes and looking at him was an act of defiance as far as he was concerned.
One night the fam sat down to dinner at the regular time, but Dad wasn’t home yet, which was very unlike him. About ten minutes later he walked in, looking as if he’d been bitten by a snake or had had a religious experience. His eyes were as big as hubcaps and his hair stood straight out from his head. His lips were wet and his hands were shaking. It was so strange to see him this way that Maris couldn’t resist asking what had happened. “I was just struck by lightning!” The guy had been walking down the street when it started to rain, and suddenly a bolt zapped down and sizzled him on the spot. But he was so awful that even lightning couldn’t kill him! It’s a terrible story, but Mans described him as such a skunk, and living with him such a reign of terror, that when I heard what happened and what he looked like that night at their dinner table, I laughed.
Later we were talking about high school and Walker said he knew a woman who went to a big gala party at the Palladium in New York for Liza Minelli. All the chic’y-mickeys were there in their finest and the place was really hopping. Scene scene scene—meet you at the bar. That sort of party.
After she’d been there a while, this woman had to go to the ladies’ room. She found a toilet, did her thing, then stood at a sink putting on fresh makeup. A very beautiful woman wearing a tight, tight dress and looking totally glamorous came up next to her and started staring.
“Birgit Thiel! My God, it’s you!” Birgit looked over at this goddess at the next sink but didn’t recognize her. Not at all. To help her out, the other squealed, “It’s me, Richard Randall! Don’t you remember? Mill Valley High School, class of ‘Eighty-six? We were in drama class together!”