View from the terrace of the family's Brooklyn Heights apartment

Monday, February 28, 2011

It's not me--it's the language!

"Do you know, Jim, you have a different personality when speaking German?” my wife Bobbi asked with a smile. Two months before, we’d moved into a tiny house in Trüdering, a village just outside Munich, and she was struggling to learn enough of the language to buy groceries at the Lebensmittel across the street and to chat there with cheerfully plump Ingrid.
“A different personality? How so?”
“In German you’re more peremptory, more abrupt.” 
“Maybe that’s because with you I use simple sentences and speak precisely.” I made an effort to use cognate words and speak clearly with Bobbi while helping her learn the language. But Bobbi wasn’t buying that explanation.
“No,” she said, “It’s the same when you talk with Hermann or Rudi, or in the city--at a restaurant, for instance.” Herman was the college-age son of the imperious Frau Wendler, who rented us our one-room house, once a dentist’s office, and Rudi Maier was Ingrid’s husband. We got to know the Maiers since they had a little girl the same age as our two-year-old son Chris. Could I really have a different personality when speaking another language?
The first thing I considered was what Bobbi had said about my behavior in restaurants. I’d learned that slinking into one and sitting at the first available table didn’t work. You could sit at that table for fifteen minutes or more before a waiter came by to dispense menus and then disappear or become oblivious for another twenty minutes or so. Observing natives, I learned you had to walk in, nose in the air, parade about, and then sit at a serious table, as if you were an important personage, used to the best of everything. A sharp command--“Herr Ober!"--if pronounced with the authority of a colonel, would usually stop the waiter in his tracks. This maneuver violated my egalitarian sentiments, but it worked.
Bobbi once again said that my silly routine in restaurants wasn’t what she meant either. 
Could it be languages themselves, I wondered, or even dialects within a language that have personalities of their own? When a colleague of mine returned after a summer down home in Carolina, he seemed different. Was it the lingering pleasant drawl? My Yiddish-lilted New York pronunciation was schmoozier, I felt, than the plumy variety of an Oxford don. Even at the university, where I was (belatedly!) doing research for my Ph.D., there were differences. The precise, baroque Prussian contrasted with the rougher, more rustic Bavarian, so much so that it took our babysitter, a student from Hanover with a von before his surname, all of two elaborate sentences to intimidate the overly curious, formidable Frau Wendler! These, of course, were impressions. Was there any objective evidence that languages had personalities?
Yes, I realized. In multi-lingual directions for using gadgets, in announcements, and in   signs addressed to the public--on trains, for example. At the train station on the border between France and Germany a sign asked/ordered patrons not to cross the tracks: In French it said, Please do not cross the tracks; in German it said, Crossing the tracks is strictly forbidden, with an exclamation point! On Swiss trains, passengers are cautioned not to stick their heads out the window--in three language. In French it says, Please don’t; in German, once again, It’s strictly forbidden! But the Italian made me smile, as it said that it could be dangerous to stick your head out the window.
When it came time for us to return to New York, Bobbi and Ingrid said goodbye with a tearful hug, and we made our way to the M.S. Berlin at Bremerhaven the long way around, via Paris, where we stayed at the same inexpensive hotel and the very same room we’d had five years before on our belated honeymoon. The hotelier remembered us, patted Chris on the head, and engaged Bobbi in a lively conversation. “You know, Bobbi,” I said, “you have a different personality in French.”
“Oh?”
 “You’re much more animated--and convivial!”

Saturday, February 26, 2011

Garibaldi in the Park

Garibaldi despises pigeons
rats with wings he calls them
       and what would you think of pests
       who dawdle, primp and poop
on your signature poncho in bronze?
Garibaldi no longer minds the tired joke
now told by twelvish girls
       that he always draws his sword
       whenever a virgin passes by
cute, he finds them, and disarming
Garibaldi has heard rumors:
after banishing buskers, canines, and chess
       a new Moses will flatten the arch 
       and pave-over the fountain
to make way for a bus terminal and heliport
Garibaldi has enjoyed it all:
militia musters, urban troubadours, beats
       the old paisano plucking his quiet mandolin
       up-scale bohemians, joggers, jazz fests
sweet toddlers splashing in their underpants

Garibaldi has a plan:
when the bulldozers come for him
       he will at long last 
       draw his doughty sword
to deliver one final clanging stroke
for the lackluster denizens of his park.

Friday, February 25, 2011

How can I get to...?

People--in New York, where I grew up, and wherever I’ve traveled--are forever stopping me to ask how to get to the post office, a museum, the zoo, or wherever, and I’ve often wondered why. 
I first became conscious of this phenomenon riding the New York subways, when in addition to the usual inquires in English about whether the train stops at a particular station or where to change trains to get to, say, Astoria, I was asked for directions by a woman speaking Puerto Rican Spanish. As my Spanish is muy primitivo, an improvised linguistic hybrid did the trick. Why me, I wondered? I don’t look especially Hispanic.

When I was an exchange student in Bern, Switzerland, one chilly morning on my way to the university, I was accosted by a beaming middle-aged man in a tweed jacket and touring cap who asked, in weirdly pronounced German, how to get to Mövinpick, a popular café. Assuming he was a Scott, I answered in English. “Yer a Yahnk,” he concluded after thanking me for the directions. “Ay c’d tell bi yer aksent!” Did I just happen to be passing by when he realized he had no idea how to get to Mövinpick?

Once in Amsterdam a young couple stopped me to ask for directions to one of the canals that circle the inner city. I told them it was straight ahead--in Bavarian dialect, which worked. “Gerade oous,” I said, pointing. Because my German is functional, I could manage some Dutch, but I instinctively had replied in German. I’ve noticed that people when addressed in a language they don’t readily understand will respond in any foreign language they know. I recall an American in the Paris Metro who replied to an onslaught of French with a barrage of Mandarin Chinese.
As I was walking along a road heading for a park in Munster, Germany, a Mercedes pulled over, and the driver asked me for directions to the zoo, where I’d been the day before. Not only did I give him directions in the best Prussian I could muster but suggested they go for a boat ride as well. They had pulled over and parked the car just to ask me directions? It was as if I carried a sign that said Tourist Information.

The piece de resistance took place on a fashionable street in Rome. Hitchhiking during the semester break, I had just arrived in the Eternal City from France. With three-days growth of beard and wearing a ratty black raincoat with yesterday’s Le Monde sticking out of a side pocket, I looked as if I had slept under a bridge. An old man, dressed as raggedly as I, approached tentatively and asked for directions to the nearest post office. Though I didn’t know much more Italian than to count, order a beer, and find the WC, I understood his question, happened to know where a post office was, and somehow managed to give him directions in Italian. This time I understood why I had been selected: like him, I was a shabby sojourner among the elegant and nattily attired.
But why am I always being asked directions? After considerable thought I have concluded that I look exceptionally intelligent and well informed. Since my daughter also is always being asked how to get to this or that place, there may be a gene for being knowledgeable. My wife has an alternate explanation. She says I have a transparent Celtic countenance, an amiable expression, and a totally unthreatening demeanor. Though I prefer my explanation, she may have a point.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Bluejay

The jay has sacrificed everything
       for bright plumage 
       and a taunting squawk
Listen to him squabble and kvetch
       with a clutch of his mates
       to the derision of disapproving crows
See him flutter in a blur of blue
       to alight self-importantly
       on a prominent perch
Though he can cackle and curse
       or resemble a flower in flight
       no creature takes him seriously
except the winsome early worm.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

How to Play Golf Like a Pro

As anyone who has ventured onto a course is sure to know, golf can be--and on a busy weekend usually is--a humbling game. Unlike practitioners of other sports, the golfer has no one but himself to blame. The little white ball sits helplessly on a tee, and whatever happens or does not happen to it is completely the fault of whoever cranks the club. There are no spitballs, bad calls, or goof-ups by teammates to mitigate the humiliation. 

I picked up the game, which then seemed silly to me (Why chase a little white pill all over the landscape?) upwards of half a century ago to have something to do with my father-in-law besides talking baseball, which I’d lost interest in when the Dodgers abandoned Ebbets Field. Despite my miserable initial performance at the Dyker Beach course in Brooklyn,  a 14 on the first hole I ever played en route to a score of 147, not including mulligans and gimmes, I immediately got hooked--it only takes one or two good shots--and have been a happy if lackluster hacker ever since. So it was a  disappointment when, on the far side of 75, because of my back and other problems, I could no longer get out on the course.

What to do?
Last Christmas I watched my daughter’s kids, Ben, 10, and Kate, 7,  playing a brisk game of tennis using their television screen and the Wii game package Santa had brought. My experience with virtual games was limited to penny-arcade ventures when I myself was a kid, and I vividly remember a  marble-sized, metal ball being pitched and swinging a bat with the push of a button in an arcade on Surf Avenue in glorious Coney Island. But the Wii was even more intriguing. Perhaps I could play some sort of virtual golf on my Mac desktop at home? Google took me to several sites, one which gave direction in Japanese, but I quickly happened upon GL Golf, and downloaded a free demo and ultimately a package with thirty virtual courses, including the old course at St. Andrews,  Augusta National, and Torrey Pines South.
How does virtual golf compare with the real thing?
 
Instead of humbling me, online golf pumps up my ego. At my local course my best drive on a good day, downhill and with the wind behind me, might go all of 200 yards. Online I can easily drive the ball an additional hundred yards! And on screen the shot always goes precisely where I aim it, rather than into the woods or onto an adjacent fairway as so often happened at the club. At the push of a button I can draw or fade the shot, apply backspin or extra loft, feats that were dubious or impossible for me on the course. Instead of sinking two of ten eight-foot putts, I now sink almost all of them! Rather than scoring in the high nineties or worse, I finish with sub-par rounds like the pros on television. In fact, I recently humbled the famous old  course at St. Andrews in Scotland by finishing with a stunning 14 under par! It’s a different game when you can drive the ball 300 yards or more!
But is it anything like the challenge of real golf?
Of course it is! Just because Tiger Woods can drive the ball more than 300 yards doesn’t men the game no longer challenges him. Despite the added distance and the much more predictable flight of the ball, I find myself still watching anxiously while it descends gracefully, at times landing in the rough short of the green or in a bunker. Many of my online courses seem to have more water than grass on them, and I’ve gotten used to the splash and the plop of an errant shot; and if I cut the corner of a dogleg too close, I  get to hear the crack of the ball against a tree and wonder just how bad a lie I’ll have for my next shot. As in real golf, I have to read the greens, some of which are surprisingly tricky. Most interesting, I find, is the three-dimensional quality of the virtual landscape, especially on courses with cliffs,  deep troughs, and hills. I frequently find myself wondering, Can I hit over that clump of trees? Will the slant of the fairway throw the ball into the rough or the water? Should I play a longer club because of the wind or because the green is elevated? Should I go for the green or play it safe?
For anyone who can’t get out to a course, virtual golf provides many golf-specific pleasures. When I hit a five iron 200 yards straight at the flag, and the little white ball carries the bunker, lands nicely on the green, bounces, rolls to within a foot of the cup, and the virtual crowd goes Ooh, I feel like Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods at the Masters--almost.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Green Lady

used to hope I’d inspire a symphony
     or an epic 
but that damn Bridge gets all the accolades
     not that I take it personally
When your complexion’s gone
     and no one’s 
about to immortalize you
     it’s time for a girl to take stock
I’ve surely done my part
     lacking Aphrodite’s charm
     the Virgin’s innocence
I stand here in this outrageous garb
lifting a torch in the night
     mortal metal 
bearing wishful words, flickering light.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Better Late Than Never

When I retired from teaching, I felt I’d done just about everything I’d looked forward to as an eager undergraduate who’d been turned on by poetry, fiction, ideas, and the life of the mind--everything except write the Great American Novel.

I’d spent two semesters as an exchange student at a Swiss university studying Chaucer, German classics, and even the New Testament in Greek; I’d been the first teaching assistant in the English department at Boston College; after doing a stint in the artillery, I married the love of my life, taught literature at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and took courses at night at NYU;  and with a year of research at the University of Munich, I (finally!) finished my Ph.D. and found a home at Eastern Connecticut State College, where I chaired the English department and directed the honors program

But what about writing?
There were of course book reviews, academic articles, a chapter in a book, papers read at American studies conferences here and in Germany, as well as articles on an avocation, sailing. But the Great American Novel, after a meager false start, was abandoned. In the 70s I did somehow manage to publish a novelette in Galaxy, one of those garish pulp magazines that flourished in the heyday of hardcore science fiction. But publishing fiction in an ever-dwindling market began to seem much like expecting to win a lottery.  

A lot changed when I retired. I found I was no longer interested in reading serious classics--lengthy accounts of a young man’s sentimental education, the plight of adulterous lovers, or the pathetic fate of the humble. What I now enjoyed, I discovered, was sprightly entertainment that kept me alert relishing characters I’d begun to root for and a story that moved forward with twists and surprises.  

Mysteries and novels of detection, which I’d thought trivial, now seemed just the thing for me. When I discovered a writer I enjoyed, I read everything by him, or more often her, available at my local library. My problem was that I could not help but notice opportunities the author had missed or neglected to develop, implausible episodes, and forced or unsatisfactory endings. Maybe I could do better myself?

So I gave it a try and learned in the process.    
 
I learned that characters in a novel take on a life of their own. I found myself writing to find out what my characters would do next. It is something like not knowing what’s going to happen in a dream. Whatever orchestrates dreams became the co-author of my book. The unconscious? Too tepid an expression. Das Unbewuste? Though that sounds a bit more mysterious, I prefer the Greek myth of a Muse or a Daemon. Mozart, after all, felt his melodies came from heaven.

What else did I learn? I learned why there’s usually more than one murder per book. Why? When your story threatens to bog down, there’s nothing like another corpse to stir things up and reduce or introduce   complications, and if the victim is the reader’s prime suspect, even better! I also learned why so many good reads have far-fetched, disappointing endings. Why? Because the author is trying all too hard for a thumping conclusion (Ha! You never thought she did it, did you?) or is having difficulties pulling all the strands together. I learned that the unraveling of the mystery ideally should take as much time as constructing the initial complications. I also decided that any reasonably alert reader should have a good idea of who-done-it before the sleuths do. And finally I realized that all the twists, surprises, and suspense--even the mystery itself--depend upon revolving point-of-view characters and manipulating time sequences. 

I began writing with two images in mind: a character knocked overboard when a sailboat is forced to jibe suddenly; another character thrown from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade into the traffic on the expressway below. I discovered my title, Double Trouble, and my plot only after writing about seventy pages. As it worked out, I used the image of the sailboat jibe, but in the book the plunge took place not from the Promenade but from the 18th-floor terrace of a hotel room in Washington, D.C. 

So, did I write the Great American Novel? Of course not. But I did write an entertaining page-turner that is cheerful, romantic at times, and full of surprises. And I learned, half way through Chapter 3 of a sequel, that writing mysteries is addictive!