On German Prepositions and the Promise of Portuguese Verbs

I am writing this at midnight because I gotta get up and go again to the hospital. Different doctor. 60 bucks. I will see him every two weeks. He is like my diabetic shrink. We talk about whatever I want, but I think our focus has grown to include all the things that make me feel different. Diabetics do feel different (hell, I am a freaking black, middleclass snob, bisexual, diabetic . . . when in the bloody hell do I not feel like I am sitting at the bottom of a well and the party is going on above me?!). It is an identity. The first guy to write about the identity politics of the physically ill and handicap should get tenure at NYU really fast. And I think that that bitch would be "useful". Hell maybe someone has already written something about it. I should google it tomorrow.

The thing I realize about this blog is that I am going to have to edit. The sad fact of the matter is that since I have left NYC, I have not been writing. I have been busy learning German. I learned it well enough to translate a cookbook, but I must say that I did not like the experience. Trying to write a PhD, teaching a class on German History and translating a book did me in for sure. It is probably the reason I got sick and my sugar went out of control (drinking beer after my Bossanova Choir practice every Monday probably did not help things either).

Anyway. Edit. Edit. Edit.

I have noticed that since I have learned another language writing is a bit more taxing. I need more time to find the right word, and I am not comfortable with some of the underlying things in the English language that I used to be able to manage like a man on the flying trapeze. I can't turn a curve or switch a gear the way that I used to. And I have become less erudite. I don't know why. Maybe because German is a different way of being all together linguistically. Prepositions are murder . . . the dative and accusative articles are used depending on whether the object is moving or static. I get it right speaking, because I probably learned the whole sentence in the office or from a student. Also writing in German is a child like experience for me. I kind of get around to it, the heart of the matter is not something I sketch with great detail. I just make crude sentences with the super glue German conjunctions that I know, and concentrate on getting dependent clauses to look half way decent.

This blog is an exercise in and of itself. I write everyday now in the hopes that one of my friends read it and in preparation for the real writing I want to get back to. A novel, a play, a thesis . . . all have swung under the roof of my cranium, but my fingers are not very responsive. They are waiting for the right syncopation, syntax, turn of a phrase, mixture of sentences, allusions or that sentence that has seven words that begin with the letter T, etc . . . It just does not come so quickly.

Plus. Today I should really get started on those Portuguese verbs and grammatical rules. I think I have learned as much at the resturaunt as I will. I like the people there, but my year of rest is almost up. And I want to get on the hunt for that new professional life. Maybe it will be stateside. I will save some money, and be off again.

I read a piece on Ghana recently. And it would be nice to see Africa again. I don't know why I long to go back. Maybe it is a sense to go home. Europe is fine for everyday, but the possiblity of building a community is difficult if you are always seen as exotic.

Plus, I want to see the Atlantic at that latitude again. It is so muddy and dark and flat. It seem so vast, like I could just run into it. It doesn't crash like the Atlantic on the coast of Portugal. It doesn't roll like a jelly roll on Venice beach. It does something else completely. Like you can stand on its edge naked and wash with some soap made from plant fat and the hot ash of a palm tree, or throw a net out in the middle for lunch and simply walk back. The contradiction to this picture, its opposite mental pole is that is somehow still violent. It flows like a mighty river with no banks. There is nothing stopping it from running all the way into the middle of the continent except a verbal agreement, a handshake, a nod of heads of sorts.

It just might have to be.

For now at least.

But I gotta clean this blog up. Too many mistakes.

But I feel better.

Listening to Os Mutantes and Maria Bethania now.

Feeling back to normal after a Bush induced session of manic depression.

Thinking about a trip to Atlanta.

It is impulsive I know.

Maybe it won't workout, I gotta other plans for this money.

But I do want to see my cousin and be in a city.