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Signed, Sealed, Delivered: It’s not you, it’s your opinion
As previously mentioned, at one point this weekend I found myself with some friends in an Irish bar in Heidelberg. One young man brought up the topic of gun control. “What do you think of that, Emily?,” he asked, half-jokingly, knowing full well what my opinion on gun control is. And, because I think that people should know that they shouldn’t poke a bear (yes, I just likened myself to a woodland carnivore), I told him. And we got into a discussion that was an argument—but an argument, I thought, that was about gun control policy, not about who we were as individuals. And another friend, also a male, joined in, agreeing with me.
“How did we even get started on this topic?,” the first male friend asked.
“You turned to me and specifically asked for my views on gun control,” I replied.
“You hate me,” he said. And said and said and said.
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I know, dear regular readers of this blog (so, my parents), that I went radio silent without explanation this past week. For this, I am sorry. I know how you count on updates from this social media platform on those most pressing of subjects, my life and thoughts. But I had good reason!
Paula, one of my best friends from college, with whom I lived all four years, was visiting me (from China!) for the past week. She saw Bremen (and saw Bremen, and saw Bremen) and a bit of Hamburg, and met some of the people about whom I’ve been telling tales all year, and ate German food and drank German beer, and told me of life in China and the people she knows there, and of the trials and tribulations and triumphs of her professional life and expat experience. And the whole thing made me realize 1) that I like Germany so much more than I admit to myself (only in showing it off six weeks before leaving and, at times, finding myself defending it did I come to appreciate what this country has come to mean to me this year), and 2) that, in friendship, I have been tremendously lucky. I’ve written before (many, many times before) about the importance of strong friendships with other women, and this post is going to end up being meandering enough without a digression on the subject once again, so instead I will just say that those who dismiss female friendships as petty or superficial clearly do not have female friends with whom they can boozily debate which of Henry VIII’s six wives came out on top (the answer, after much deliberation, turned out to be Katherine Parr).
Anyway. Because there are only so many days on can spend in Bremen as a tourist, and because I needed to visit Jill in Heidelberg before leaving Germany, Paula and I ventured down to Heidelberg for the weekend (we also ended up seeing Tom, the other of the two Marburgers based in Heidelberg for the year; Charles, the one Marburger in Marburg for the year; and Raphael, our beloved Marburg program leader who was in town for a Germany bachelor party)(aside: this was the second of two German bachelor parties in which we found ourselves this weekend). And so there was, from various parties, a lot of walking down memory lane to be done, and a lot of memory lane forging to do (for example, my life’s ambition of sining “Summer of ‘69” at karaoke amidst Germans in an Irish bar was finally realized). Which is how, after a weekend in a city so beautiful (all of Germany should look like Baden-Württemberg) and perfect with people whom I love so much, I found myself at yet another sad Sunday morning German brunch, preparing to say goodbye for who knows how long, because the year is drawing to a close, and there will be no more weekend trips to southern cities and collective reminiscing about seven weeks in Marburg.
And some of us will stay in touch. Also at this particular brunch table, after all, was a person whom I had not seen for a year, but with whom it seemed nothing—or nothing that mattered, anyway—had changed, or, if it had, it had changed for the better.
But regardless of what’s next, there was this weekend in Heidelberg and the hills (alive, as they were, with the sound of karaoke music). There was who we were and who we are, and there is who we will be. And there was—for all of us, however varied our experiences may have been—this year in Germany.
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I’m going to confess that I did not really want to go to Copenhagen.
Partially for logistical reasons (I had just been there with my family this summer (I realize what a gross person I am for listing this among my complaints, but bear with me), and it was a long train ride there and back and involved riding on a ferry, which I remembered hating); partially because I was nervous about the soirée and the interview and, as always, about what people would say or think about my Russian; but mostly because this is a sort of strange point of the year for me. I’m still researching, but I’m done with most of the substance of my research. I’m presenting a paper at a conference in June, but I’m submitting it next Tuesday. I’ve written the more casual article in the hopes that some foolish publication might want it (so, stay tuned for its publication here in the summer, good reader), but it’s already been written and sent out. I have, as of this past Monday, two months left here. I’m sort of in limbo between what I came here to do and what I’ll be doing next. I’m ready to go home, but I also want to savor what this year has been and will continue to be. All of which is to say that I was moody and mopey and did not want to set off for Copenhagen.
But I did. And the weekend, in its way, reminded me why I did. Not just for Copenhagen, but why I’d set off in the first place. Why I came here. What I’ve done here. Whom I’ve met here. Who I’ve become here.
And that, if one gets the chance to walk around Copenhagen on a beautiful, sunny, blue skied day (and see the site of the Danish parliamentary drama Borgen, no less!)—if one has that in one’s life, one doesn’t get to complain. One is lucky.
I am lucky.
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Bold Realization!: St. Elmo’s Fire
“Jules, y’know, honey… this isn’t real. You know what it is? It’s St. Elmo’s Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them… there was no fire. There wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you’re making up all of this. We’re all going through this. It’s our time at the edge.”
I was in high school, I think, when I watched St. Elmo’s Fire. Or maybe early college. But somewhere in the range of 15 to 20, because that was the period in which my best high school friends and I met regularly to watch and make fun of movies. And St. Elmo’s Fire, which is a Brat Pack movie about recent college graduates, was perfect for that. Like, why is Demi Moore’s character trying to bury her step mother in a cat costume? The fun that could be made of St. Elmo’s Fire! And that’s what we did. I did. I made fun of the movie and didn’t think of it much again.
But I did this weekend. I just finished reading Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of advice columns originally published for The Rumpus, which is this literary-ish website that I sometimes read. Anyway. I will blog more about the book later. The book is not the point. The point is that the book, and the advice given in it, made me think once more about St. Elmo’s Fire, of all things. And it did so for this reason:
The above quote is said by one incredibly screwed up character to another after the latter lists all of the things that are wrong in her life. All of her problems. And this is the response. And it is so perfect, I think. Because no, Demi Moore’s character, these aren’t problems. These are things that you are clinging to because it makes you feel better, in some strange, painful way.
And that’s what I do. That’s what I do all the time. I was going to detail examples of proof that this is what I do, but instead I will just say that you need to believe me when I say that I am almost 23 and lacking in perspective and that I have been following St. Elmo’s Fire.
But the truth is that my problems aren’t problems. Not in the grand scheme of things. Not even to me.
And none of this means that I don’t get to be sad or mad (or none too glad), because I do, because everyone does. But it does mean that I’m going to get through this. We’re all going to get through this.
This is our time at the edge.
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Written Wisdom: Fakeup
In high school—and maybe also earlier on in college, come to think of it—I used to say that I was having “an ugly day.” Not every day, obviously. But if there was a day in which my hair wasn’t doing what I wanted it to or I felt my nose looked particularly large or my skin was blotchier than usual, I’d anticipate the criticism. “I’m just really having an ugly day today.” “Oh, today’s such an ugly day.” And the response, without fail, was that there was no such thing as an ugly day, and that I looked pretty much as I did every other day. And then I’d mock offense (or actually be offended—I can no longer really remember). And eventually I stopped doing things like saying that I was having ugly days, because I realized that that was bad for my self-esteem (and also really awkward for everyone). And, though I may have still believed in ugly days as a concept, I hadn’t really thought of them since I stopped citing them until this very evening.
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I spent the past week—from Sunday through Thursday—in Berlin for the “Fulbright Berlin Seminar,” which is actually not a seminar at all, but a five day conference for all Fulbright grantees in Europe (though most of us were from Germany, because the conference was, for us, free, and because the German Fulbright commission is one of the better developed, better funded ones). I was really lucky because, in addition to “networking” (Fulbright’s word, not mine, because I think it’s utilitarian and gross), I got to spend time with my friends from Marburg and friends of friends from Munich and my dear, sweet Soviet sister in arms, Katie, who’s in Ukraine on a Fulbright and came to Germany for the conference. In addition to inside jokez and fun timez and a mug and a chocolate bear (because I volunteered to speak twice in front of everybody, because I am a big mouth), I took two main things away from these five days in Berlin.
1) I love Berlin. Different people connect to different cities for different reasons. I connected with Berlin, as stupid and schmaltzy and saccharine as it sounds. I can’t wait to go back in June. And, though I don’t think, realistically, that I’ll ever live in Germany after this year, if I did, it would have to be in Berlin. (The point, for those of you just joining us, is that I was extraordinarily happy to be in Berlin.)
2) My friend Rachel, who’s based in Munich this year (that’s her reading in the bookstore picture), said that, before this conference, she was looking forward to what comes after this year. To be on to what’s next. But that this week reaffirmed for her what a special year this has been in terms of the experiences we’ve had, yes, but also in terms of the people we’ve met. The network we’ve made. And I realized that that’s why Fulbright keeps using that word. A network isn’t necessarily, like, a set of professional connections you make and keep out of selfishness or whatever. It can also be—and, in this case, is—a group of people who you know and like and are interested in and who, ideally, feel the same about you.
I’ve come to know a really special group of people this year. And I know that this past week was the last time I’ll see many of them, at least for quite a while. And we say things like, “See you!,” but, realistically, for many of them that’s not true. And we’ll go on and live our lives and do our own things. And we should. We can’t, as one person proposed this weekend, all live together in Berlin forever.
I kept thinking, as I said my goodbyes, of what Liz Lemon says to Tracy Jordan on the series finale of 30 Rock (oh, shut up), which is this:
“We were forced to be friends because of work and we’re probably not going to hang out after this…But because the human heart is not properly connected to the human brain, I love you and I’m gonna miss you. But tonight might be it.”
We were friends through circumstance. Because we all studied and researched in Marburg and/or throughout Germany this year (the darkest the country’s seen in the past 43 years, obviously). Except that, in the case of these beautiful, bizarre, brilliant people, the human heart is perfectly connected to the human brain.
I love them, and I’m going to miss them.
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To Do List: To DONE (Part I)
Well, it took almost six months, but I finally submitted the first draft of my Fulbright-sponsored article to the professor who’s sort of supervising me here.
I really hope that she likes it, obviously, and thinks that I was worthy of an invitation to this institute, but honestly? I’m sort of proud of it. Like, yes, I know that there is still work to be done on it, and that is work that I still intend to do. But it’s longer (and better, I think) than my senior thesis, and I submitted it by the deadline that I had set for myself (to my great surprise), and I realized, reading it over, how much research I’ve done for this, yes, but also how much I’ve learnt and grown as a student of this region and, for that matter, of history and politics and this world.
And I know that this post is insufferable, but I’ve worked on this paper every day since coming to Bremen, almost, in some capacity or another, so please, just for today, and before I hear back from my professor and see everything that’s wrong, let me just feel that I did this year thus far right.
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To Do List: Thoughts I Had Before, While, and After Making Chicken for Dinner
- Gosh, cutting raw chicken breast is so gross.
- In Munich the weekend before last I said that I can basically only make pasta, eggs, and grilled chicken, and that I’ve been trying to grill the breast whole but that doesn’t work because the chicken never cooks all the way through, but it’s just so gross to cut it up raw, and then one of my male friends likened it to cutting up human breast (i.e. boob), and that was such a weird conversation that I wish I hadn’t had.
- I hope this chicken cooks all the way through.
- I wish I knew why I was so homesick today. I’ve been here seven months. I should be over that.
- I wonder if homesickness will just come and go in waves for the rest of my life.
- Okay, flip the chicken pieces over.
- I just miss having that shared understanding with people. With friends. No, I miss the friends with whom I can have shared understanding. It’s like that Joan Rivers quote. How does it go?
- “All I want you to do, if we are sitting down and it’s after 6 p.m., is tell me the truth. Because we’ve all lied to each other all day long in business and we’ve all had these lunches and we’ve all ass-kissed to the point where I carry Chapstick. If I am going to sit down and eat with you, just tell me the truth and let me say to you, ‘Things are lousy and I’m sad.’ ”
- That.
- Also my family. And my dogs. And drip coffee.
- I wonder if I’ll ever get married.
- Not if I don’t learn to cook things other than this stupid grilled chicken and frozen spinach.
- I should really go back to buying non-frozen brussels sprouts.
- Man, this is taking a while.
- The homesickness will pass, though. The nostalgia for the place I’m not in. Maybe I was never in that place.
- Actually, this chicken turned out pretty well.
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Written Wisdom: On goodbye (or, thank you for being an acquaintance)
She said something in Polish. “Do you know what it means?” she asked me in English. I shook my head. No, I didn’t. “It means, ‘I will be missing you.’” We hugged again and I walked away, out of the bar and down the street to the tram stop, where I realized, to my surprise, that I had teared up.
I’ve been saying goodbye to people a lot lately, as the Erasmus kids who were only here for one semester pack up and leave, making room for next semester’s. And, while most of the people whom I would consider actual friends are staying for the year, I knew and liked a lot of the people who have gone. And so I went to their goodbye parties and hugged them and wished them well and said, “See you,” realizing before I’d even gotten the second syllable out that, no, in all likelihood, I wouldn’t.
I was friendly with the aforementioned Polish girl. We’d had a language class together, and met up occasionally in smaller groups for beer, and chatted when we both happened to be at the same larger party. I’d met her boyfriend and her roommates. She had other, closer friends, and so did I. But we saw each other around, and we won’t anymore.
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Written Wisdom: In defense of striving
On Sunday, I read an article on an online website—I cannot remember which—that was a compendium of tweets saying, essentially, “Anne Hathaway is looking into the mirror and practicing her speech all day today.” And yesterday, I read many an article on many a site mocking her for getting up on stage, saying, “It came true!,” and continuing to deliver what was clearly a very well-rehearsed speech.
It isn’t that I don’t get irrational actress hate (i.e. “I hate her face!”). I, for example, find Emma Stone, with whom everyone seems to be in love, quite cloying. And don’t even start with me on “adorkable” Zooey Deschanel. And I get that Anne Hathaway is a theatre kid all grown up, and, as someone who spent some time with theatre kids in high school (you can’t have a bit part in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing without getting to know your fellow players, you know?), I get that that’s a bit unsavory. But there’s something about this specific round of Hate-thaway (I’m so proud of that pun) that bothers me. And it is this:
Why do we care that Anne Hathaway clearly cares?
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