My German Life

How did I get here? How did it come to this language course, living in this country, knowing Straßenbahns?  

The other day I was about to cross the street and had a strange moment of awareness. I paused on the edge of the sidewalk and stared into the scene that really wasn't meaningful, but it signified how  this strange bundle of circumstances gradually crept up on me.

I moved here. It was my own decision. Gave up my appartment, quit my job without a shadow of a doubt and came to live in Germany. It was an appartment in the center, and a good job, both in an incredibly beautiful country. And here I am. Translating a book, in Germany.
Having a "daytime job" and translating makes me feel like I have two lives. It's nonsense, of course, but I'm torn. Whenever I'm doing one, I feel like I should be doing the other. I take it as a phase. For a long time, this book was a silent dream of mine. I guess now it's too late to hide it - in fact, I should be working on getting the word out! Why can't I be so decisive about it as I was about moving here?

The time and energy spent on deciding is time and energy wasted. 

It took me a long time to compose a response to the author of the book. Too long. Too much thinking about what's better and not enough trusting. However, now that I've clicked the "send" button, I can enjoy the needles and pins again while waiting to hear back. It's quite romantic. =)

In the meantime (they don't call it MEAN time for nothing), it's time to focus. It's time to forget the three snowflakes that fall every day here, to be an adult, and bring my two lives together. In Germany.

Because not making a decision is a decision in itself. A bad one.

Know Your Promised Land

Every Promised Land begins with shaking off the mediocre familiarity and stepping into the desert.

I've had a dream on my heart that sounds a little utopic, but I haven't been able to rationalize it away for years. So I've started translating a book. It's like opening Pandora's box - if I don't finish what I've started, or at least give it my best, it will haunt me wherever I go.

Dreams can have the most peculiar hold on us.

I believe in this book. It's about life and what we do with it. It inspires and moves me. It's written in the language that only about 2 Million people speak, and even some of them not so well, because it's so complicated. Yet in its complexity, rich with delicate shades of atmosphere, and above all else, beautiful.
My dream is to translate this book into English and publish it.

I wanted to start the blog earlier, but I chickened out; here's why. I knew the first step would be acquiring the authors permission for translation and publishing. Looking back, I can see how mindboggling that idea was to me - it confused me as to where to start, it seemed like a lot more work than writing an email, it almost felt like this personal Jordan of mine is but too close and I was postponing crossing it.

Last Friday I finally sent the E-mail to the author. Yesterday he replied. He's OK with it. Now I'm sitting here wishing that I had shared this story so I could also tell about the euphoria of reading his kind reply, but I was too much a coward to take the risk of having to post that the project had finished before it really started.

It can be hard to have your wish come true, when you're not used to it.

So there. I'm far from reaching the goal of this journey. The challenge: to keep perspective. I've already started with the translation btw. I know that some of my ideas are too original for a wider audience. Still, I have this gut feeling it will turn out well.