“This situation is over-the-top in its f-cked-up-edness…”

… therefore, I can´t worry about it.”

The epitaph with which Periphery recently consigned a certain relationship to oblivion, on the logic that the situation had escalated from upsetting to absurd.

While I can´t say I´ve reached the same degree of resigned serenity in my own current trial, I keep telling myself the same thing.  It kind of helps.

Amerika*

America comes up in conversation here *all the time*, including conversations that I’m not participating in, or lectures I’m attending where the speaker doesn’t know there are any Americans in the audience. And that it seems to be regarded as archetypal, it’s the superlative against which other examples are compared … and not just concerning wealth, power, arrogance, disposable culture, and starting pointless wars, which I expected.  Also things that the U.S. doesn’t necessarily have a corner on, like our health care system.  In particular, though, people also seem to regard the US as the fountainhead of coolness, of modernity (meaning what’s cutting-edge and current), and of relaxedness.

(I know “relaxedness” is an awkward noun but I can’t think of a better one – people here, while speaking German, use the words “relax” and “relaxed” all the time; the German counterpart is “locker.” And while relaxedness wasn’t a concept I thought about much before I came here, except to acknowledge my own high-strung-ness and a general attraction to people labeled “intense” as opposed to “laid-back,” it’s something I’ve come to appreciate a lot in the past few months. Yes, we are more relaxed than Germans, and I love that about us! But not in the sense that’s the opposite of stressed-out – most everyone I know at home seems more stressed out than people here, to give them their due. What people mean is openness, friendliness, absence of visible suspicion or reserve, ability to make small talk, and much more freedom in terms of what we wear and how we carry ourselves. And willingness to live and let live if it doesn’t cause major problems, rather than needing to make and enforce a rule for everything, like “keep the laundry room door shut at all times” and including in the dorm rental contract a clause that residents will participate in, among other things, the annual Christmas party.)

To go back to my original point, I’ve been *shocked* by the amount of English I hear every day, among Germans speaking to Germans: not just youth culture words like “sucks” (and I’m still searching for an adequate German translation for this), and “whatever,” or even words from the business world like “worst-case scenario,” and “feedback,” but also expressions that they already have perfectly adequate and commonly-used words for, like “spotlight,” “compassion,” and “what you want.” Then there are the pseudo-English expressions made up by Germans, like “Handy” for cell-phone (someone was recently surprised to hear that we don’t call it that in English), “Beamer” for projector (did they get it from “Beam me up, Scotty”?) , and a store selling purses and bags called “Body Bag.” (Ha!!)

What’s so surprising here is that it doesn’t seem like there’s a finite, if large, number of English words that have passed into the language, as I think is the case, for example, with French words in English. I could totally be missing something here, but it seems like almost any English word is up for grabs, depending on the inspiration of the moment, which says something about the degree to which it’s penetrated the linguistic terrain.

Also, people seem enamored of English cuss words … there was even a book published here about it, called “How to curse in English.” I’ve been asked to confirm that the proper way to use f–k is “What the f–k” or “f–ing [Noun].” The other day as I was attempting to buy airline tickets online before they sold out, my companion said, “You curse just like they do in the movies!”

*Disclaimer: I usually say “die USA” or “die Staaten,” so as not to give the impression that the rest of the Western Hemisphere doesn’t count, but most people here, Germans and non-, just say “Amerika.”

update 24/1/09: I recently put my question about the presence of English words in German to my roommate C., a linguistically like-minded English and Computer Linguistics student from whom I always get a sensible answer to my questions about these things.  She confirmed that, at least in certain circles, any English word is up for grabs, not just those that have passed into the  language and would be in a German dictionary.  And that this often results in misunderstanding, since not everyone is fluent in English, but that the point is more to display cultural capital than to be understood.  She recently read an article for school that showed that Germans frequently don’t understand the English slogans that are so common in advertising here.

How I am / How I want to be

There are tendencies within us and forces outside us that relentlessly reduce God to a checklist of explanations, or a handbook of moral precepts, or an economic arrangement, or a political expediency, or a pleasure boat. God is reduced to what can be measured, used, weighed, gathered, controlled, or felt. Insofar as we accept these reductionist explanations, our lives become bored, depressed, or mean. We live stunted like acorns in a terrarium. But oak trees need soil, sun, rain, and wind. (pp. 3-4)

[The Revelation of St. John the Divine takes] place among persons who dare to live by the great invisibles of grace, who accept forgiveness, who believe promises, who pray. These people daily and dangerously decide to live by faith and not by works, in hope and not in despair, by love and not by hate. And they are daily tempted to quit. St. John is their pastor, who says, “your brother, who shares.” (7-8)

Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder

Lemonade from lemons: Meditations on our glorious language

I think I’ve finally found the verb I’ve been looking for to describe the effects of sleeplessness on every aspect of life: blight. Runners up were corrupt, molest, taint, and mar. In fact I like corrupt and molest better because they convey how rotten it feels, but I think they imply a stronger sense of agency than can accurately be attributed to a state of being. Mar, on the other hand, is accurate but not nearly forceful enough.

The German word I use in my mind for this is verderben, which again, I think is not right (as it seems to be reserved mainly for food and morals)….