we spent yesterday afternoon getting extravagantly & barely-revocably lost in south pittsburgh, & despite all the growing fear rising up into my neck, i couldn't get rid of the urge to lean my head out the window & smile hugely at all the damn hills. living in ohio has made anything
vertical instantly the most gorgeous thing i've ever seen. (i think fond thoughts of tokyo, which i hated when i was there: overstimulating, before i knew how to block things out. mmm skyscraper.)
in the car (but not when we were lost, just on the interstates) we listened to about half of the professor & the madman which, predictably, made me want to ditch my job & become a lexicographer. which is infinitely more in line with what my family & friends would have predicted as a good career choice for this antisocial girl, word-heavy & wide-eyed. not spending my days talking to strangers in crisis.
some days i just decide to be mirrorlike. it usually works. but this is probably why i can't carry on a conversation with more than one person at a time. why in groups i do best to shut up.
anyway also in pittsburgh (we did not go to andywarholland because m______ hates andy) bean & i sat in this chinese restaurant waiting to take our carryout back to the hotel. we did something we had, surprisingly, never done before: we spoke to each other in spanish so as to make disparaging comments about someone in earshot: the restauranteur, who was worthy of having incomprehensible & disparaging comments made about him. he was very rude. he was also, as i pointed out, the same rude man whom we experienced the last time at the same restaurant while waiting for carryout to take to the same hotel. except the last time, i was waiting with m______, who doesn't speak spanish. although i bet we speak the same fairy-tale german.
as far as i am concerned, the best things i got out of studying german were formulaic fairy-tale sentences & an ability to yell along to good industrial music.
Spiegel, Spiegel, an der Wand, wer ist die Sch�nste in dem Land?
jane will correct me in any errors.
yes i am this much careening, my feet shaking as i write all this down.
sitting in the car, staring straight ahead-west at the road as the scenery got flatter & flatter i tried to imagine how i could possibly begin to make a list of all the words i know. i have to stare to pay attention.
