HITTING A WALL
Yesterday both Susie and I hit a wall. It was our wall and had nothing to do with Germany or the people Kathe felt at home with or the people we had come to feel at home with. It was much more like jet lag or the feeling that I had for the days before I began this trip of being in Swannanoa and at the same time not being in Swannanoa. This is a shift that is about to happen to Susie as she realizes that this time next week she will be back in the routine of Sheldon Laurel and Marshall and Hot Springs. In ten days I will be going through a similar transition. None of these transitions have anything to do with the people that we have come to feel at home with here.
I think it is the sudden realization that Winsen is Kathe‘s home and Kathe‘s way of doing things and as much as we want to fit in completely and to be accepted completely that we are different. We can‘t fit in completely. This is a feeling that I am sure Nora felt at times during her year in Texas, that Elke has felt at times with her best friend Kathe in Swannanoa that I have felt at times in Virampur and in Varanasi.
Yesterday, after trying so hard to fit in and to join in and return the affection that was being given to us by so many people, we hit a wall and simply tuned out. And it was the very things that we had been delighted with the day before which became too much and overwhelmed us. It was the brotchen, that was so delicious, that suddenly our stomachs, not used to so much bread couldn‘t stomach any more. It was the Kuchen, so wonderfully light and creamy and sweet that we couldn‘t take one more bite of. It was the fact that even though we could understand five out of seven words of German, it was those two words that tripped us up so that we never quite understood. It was our own ability to indicate that the weather was good and the food excellent and that we liked being here but our total inability in German to say anything significant that we really cared about because it wasn‘t the weather or the food that we wanted to respond to. It was our ability to understand the general facts of a joke but our total inability to catch the punch line. It was the total exhaustion of trying to keep up with the conversation but never quite understanding what was going on. And of course the reverse was true. Whenever we would say in English, because all German‘s speak English, exactly what we felt then we could tell from the look in people‘s eyes that they didn‘t quite get it.
We enjoyed seeing Ulla’s son Jens’s paintings which needed no explanation. We fooled around with hats.
We looked at old photographs.
But on both sides we stumbled over words and then found out that the English or German translation wasn‘t quite exact enough. We exhausted our hosts whom we wanted to connect with, they exhausted us when we couldn‘t quite connect. And finally they settled into a comfortable conversation in German about daily happenings in Winsen or told stories that had a punch line that everyone laughed about as we sat their numbly, tuned out, until asked a question and revealed that our minds were far away.
This didn‘t happen in Greece. Efi understood almost nothing that I said in English and I understood absolutely nothing that she said to Wolfgang in Greek. I didn‘t pretend to be in their conversation in Greek. I could blissfully tune out completely. I was relaxed and in my own world.
But not here. Here we all want very much to understand and to express ourselves. We can concentrate for awhile or can have great conversations with people like Henny, Eva and Maria who speak English fluently. Maria directs movies in English, Henny lived for years in Portland, Eva loves to learn languages, Nora spent a year in Texas.
We are told that our German is very good. We know it isn‘t good enough to really converse. We tell Elke and Heinrich that their English is very good. They know it isn‘t isn‘t quite good enough to say what they really mean. When we were here with Kathe, in her village with her friends and her relatives, she was fluent in German and fluent in English and she could lead the way and we could sit back and listen and ask her when necessary just what was going on. But she isn‘t here.
So this is what happens when people of different cultures, who mostly understand each other’s languages, get together, who very much like each other and want to share feelings and viewpoints. At some point the effort becomes too much and exhaustion sets in, the effort to communicate becomes too much and you hit a wall and simply tune out.
But today Susie and I are going to get in the car and drive, we don‘t know where. We are going to be outsiders floating along not trying too much to see the right thing or do the right thing but just letting go and seeing what happens. Because outsiders see things and feel things that insiders don‘t feel, things that are hard to translate because they depend upon a completely different set of assumptions, things like solar water heaters or flat or peaked roofs or the hundreds of written and unwritten rules of German life that make Germany so orderly and beautiful and also, to Americans, constraining and unfree. These things are very hard to talk about or explain. And of course the same is true of Germans visiting America. The guy who came to fix the electricity in Elke and Heinrich‘s house with the power went off, and charged 200 euros, $250 for an hour‘s work, apparently has a yard full of discarded electrical equipment. Elke and Heinrich are not sure he is quite sane. His behavior is inexplicable. But half of Madison County has old cars or other equipment in their yard along with Trump or Confederate flags. They are the norm in Madison County. They are all completely sane and their behavior needs no explanation. It is Susie who is bizarre when she comes into a gas station wearing a mask to protect herself and them against Covid.
Years ago when I came to America after seven years of grade school and high school in India I had the feeling that everyone at Wooster College that I attended were moving single file between invisible wires. They could sense the wires and knew exactly how to act. I didn‘t. I kept running into the invisible wires. My fellow students seemed almost robot like in their movements. I realized that to fit in I had to get in line and follow them along and do just what they did until I, too, began to sense the wires. Then I would fit in.
In Istanbul every girl and woman covers her head with a colorful scarf. In Moslem sections of Varanasi women wear a burqua which covers them from head to toe with a criss cross opening at the eyes to look out of. In Winsen and Swannanoa the girls all seem to have several worn tattered holes in their very tight jeans. In every culture all the girls have a costume that to other people looks strange, in every culture all the girls dress exactly alive. And yet the head coverings insult some people in France or in the United States. They are an affront, just as much an affront as tight jeans with holes in them are in Varanasi or Istanbul.
It is these invisible wires that we are running into in Germany and which Germans run into in the United States. It is language that is the ultimate communication tool, more than clothes or food, and until we completely feel at home in the other language and can express ourselves fully we will continually have times when we lose concentration and tune out, or worse than that, blame the other culture for being odd or strange or even stupid and an affront to us.
But yesterday, at Ursula‘s (or Ulla‘s, since I can‘t spell Ursula) beautiful house and elegant tea party, where we very much wanted to be, we liked each other too much to do that. We accepted each other. But Susie and my concentration simply hit a wall and we tuned out, irritated with ourselves, but needing to let go and needing to sleep this off so that we could try again today as we take a day off from trying to be German and simply wander by car and explore. And then on Tuesday we will go out to lunch at Hartman with Heinrich and Elke and have a great time being German again.
Just a reminder. This entry is a discussion with myself, my attempt to get my head straight after crashing out last night. It is not a lecture to anyone else on how to see the world or how to get along.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 