Independence Day

I am in row 93, as though such a row could exist on a plane. I think this is the A 380, the super-huge tribute to man's affinity for carbon footprints. I can't say it's much different from the sardine tins usually reserved for economy, but there is more legroom and since it's Lufthansa, the food is actually halfway decent for us poor plebeians down here on the main level.

For the entire flight, one of a set of twin babies has been voicing its intense discomfort--something like colic, that's what it sounds like. We receive reprieves of anywhere between 2 minutes to half an hour, enough time to fall asleep, and then sweet baby reminds us that if he can't have peace, then neither can we. After all these years, I am still amazed at the amount of noise such a tiny packet of humanity can make. They (I am assuming the scientific community as distilled through a kind of urban-legend game of telephone) say that a baby's cry is of such a pitch that it can't be ignored, at least not for long. Pity that nature couldn't distinguish between one who needs to pay attention to a baby's cry, and one who doesn't. Let's not get into that whole "it takes a village..." thing. Every once in a while, the baby upsets his former zygote partner, who then chimes in and creates a chorus of crying children. It's been special. They are about five rows in front of me.

At the beginning of the flight, when the baby started crying, I spent a moment in intellectual wankery, thinking about the opening of Die Ehe der Maria Braun, Fassbinder's film about a woman who strikes out on her own after the second world war, becomes quite prosperous, losing her humanity in the process, all, ironically enough, in order to maintain a marriage that actually never existed, despite the piece of paper that says otherwise. Typisch deutsch. During the opening credits, which pop up in a kind of Wiederaufbau brick-laying pattern, we hear a baby cry, which some interpret as a sign of new beginnings, of untapped potential, of starting over from scratch, from the ground up, on a Tabula Rasa, but with the options of making the "right" choice this time. The desire to seek meaning is sometimes really annoying, that I want somehow to link my "new beginning" to the wailing, pooping Petrie dish five rows in front of me. Don't get me wrong. I like kids. I used to be one. But sometimes...

It's not really a new beginning but a continuation of something I started six years ago. Only, now older and more apprehensive thanks to watching the economy bottom out, suffering through four years of underemployment but the same amount of debt as before, I take it all a bit more seriously, see myself as having a bit more at stake this time around. The last time I moved to Germany, it was a lark, something I wanted, needed to do, to recover from a pretty horrific separation and it's attendant nervous breakdown. I always go to Germany or Austria when I need to recover. Normal people choose warmer climes, Tahiti, Mexico, Paris. I choose the land of sausage and embittered, anxious people who tell each other that their gardens are overgrown and they really should tend to that.

Growth has always been a nice by-product of such trips. Now, the trip is about growth, with recovery being a necessary part. I've got about four years of sleep to catch up on.

In the last four years, I have worked as a commercial baker, a pastry chef for a restaurant, an English teacher in "the 'hood" (at the end of the semester, one girl came up and apologized to me for originally wanting to jump me in the parking lot), a German Studies Lecturer, a Composition teacher, a writing in the sciences instructor, honors adviser, language instructor. I have consistently held at least two jobs for the last 7 years, holding three jobs for a year or two of that. I am, as the Germans say, "erschöpft."

After waking up day after day at 4:30, 5:00 in the morning so that I can work as wage slave and academic whipping boy, and realizing that nothing had changed for me financially or job-security wise in five years, I decided it was time to go, to try something new, to change.

They (again) say that Freud defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. If this is the case, I should have been 51-50'd a long, long time ago. The country should have been 51-50'd a long time ago. We are doing it wrong, and we keep doing it wrong but keep hoping for it to somehow work out.

I chose to land in Germany on Independence Day. While all my friends are going to enjoy a nice day off, eat well-grilled Bay Area food, drink lovely wine and beer, consume other products that make them giddy, be they "edibles" or Serrano ham, I am going to topple jet-lagged and punch-drunk off a plane, one of the last people off the plane probably, and make my way to Aachen, schlepping two suitcases and a fencing bag. I chose to land on the fourth because leaving on the fourth would be too hard. I wouldn't make it to any cookouts anyway. Even if I did, I would sit there and wonder, in the idyllic weather and on a comfortable chaise lounge, if I really need to go to Germany, if I really need to move there. I had to be gone before one of the nicest days in the year for me.

The great thing about saying goodbye to people in this fashion, last dinners and outings before my departure, is how wonderful everything is. How much typical Bay Area stuff you get to do: drinking Chardonnay in the Los Gatos Hills at 2,400 feet, looking at the little winery tucked into the valley below; receiving farm-fresh eggs from someone's coop in Los Altos Hills; doing elderflower-liqueur-champagne shots and eating like kings during my going-away fencing tournament; French meals at tiny bistros, perfectly fashioned cappuccinos by our favorite baristas, sampling barley wine and eating tapas, cocktail bar crawls and gourmet fusion French fries. A ridiculously comfortable life. It's deceptive. Because you get this false impression that your life is always like this, but it's not. Mostly friends don't have or make the time for such outings on a regular basis. We have jobs, spouses, children, pets, plants. I only have the jobs, and I don't even have those anymore. These perfect Bay Area days before I leave, something I've experienced before, can be real red herrings.

We land soon, time to go brush my teeth, freshen up, figure out if I'm going to get a "Navi" for my rental car. I probably should. But the idea of some polite female German voice telling me hours in advance that I should prepare to turn right might be a little too much.

Tja...

-manchmal reicht ein Blickwechsel.