Up Until Now
Hope you don't fall off your seat to read an email from me! Your phrase lazy correspondent is apt for me, although it is never for want of want to write, but a pedantic desire to have everything I write right.
I can learn from Janey there - she's marvellous at getting things done rather than contemplating how one should do them, and she does not agonise over the perfect response only to realise the time for it has passed anyway.
I have, for example, a letter for dad on my desk in honour of his birthday, slowly drafting itself into staleness and irrelevance.
So, with less ado: here's a brief summary of what I've been up to since I met you in South Africa.
Since leaving I've managed to vicariously alienate Diane and Alan which was unfortunate: were it not for the distance the thing would merely have been a minor spat at dinner and part of what I believe to be a typical South African meal: full of politics and opinion (at least our meals with mom and dad were always so). I've also fallen out of contact with Martin and Lee which was inevitable given the distance and the vast difference in our lives. Since my trip to SA I've also offended Jane Halford, with a few arrogant observations following a childish and brief fascination with the 'Radical Honesty' movement which was at least instructive to me: being blatant and unconsidered is not necessarily honest, just as platitudes are not necessarily kind.
During this masterful tending of the Muil reputation in our South African garden, I traveled further in Africa and then quite a bit in northern Europe. I met a young German girl, fell in love with her, ran after her to a little town, ran out of ideas to get her into bed with me, ran away to Switzerland, ran promptly out of money, ran to England with my tail between my legs, and ran even more out of money. Sent a 'no mun, no fun, your son' letter home to mommy and daddy and got a decadent undeserved reprieve over the wire for Christmas. So I bought myself a feast of bananas and bread-rolls, ironed my shirt and got a job in NY where I then went, via a little serenade in Hawaii, to work and marvel at People for two years.
The young German girl came back to me and succumbed to my entreaties, allowing me to drag her around the upstate back-woods where we scared each other into giggles at the toothless folk in the little towns through which we tented, then back to the city and into the glitzy restaurants where I soaked in the delicious delusion that the glitz was partly my glow (a delusion she was refreshingly able to dispute with a sort of delicate directness). I'd realised at this point that I'd either have to leave NYC soon or never leave it again - it was changing me, in a way I liked but which would have made me incompatible with anywhere else (in fact I might have left a little too late).
I quit my job and sent a ravingly naive letter of bright-eyed optimism to a uni asking to be admitted to cognitive science in a town called Osnabrück which was just up the road (ha!) from where Bel lived (her German nickname is Bärbel and didn't like my shortening of it to Bel for its closeness to 'belle': she disliked people thinking I was romanticising, I loved it). I arrived back in Germany on April Fool's day, a little foreboding, but Bel took me in her characteristic way she had of a seriousness that was part of her delightful humour which always reminded me of Dad's. 'Up the road' was not, so I settled in Osna, started the studies, hated them, loved them, lost my optimism, gained a good deal of love for other things, went through a profound time with Bel, basked in my laziest and most beautiful summer, my most hectic holiday - biking through Poland - and the most extremes of my emotion (although Brad is a contender to Bel for his ability to take me through the gamut of painful laughter through rumpelstiltskin rage). Then we separated, and I went through a rather horridly difficult period, came out of it with an undying respect for her, and a strange strength in myself.
I got a job at the uni, stretched out my thesis for an impressive time even by the standards of the endlessly educated Europeans (don't mean to suggest I am actually educated, just that I took the appropriate time to suggest it), I've been thoroughly liberated from my naive optimism but also my petty pessimism: I know now how little I'll ever know. It's a chortle to realise the truth of that truism. Got myself into a comfortable rut in my work, met another young lady whose life merged with mine for a while: a beautiful moth that fluttered into my office one day - or rather slid in with her sand-shoes on the linoleum - and who dragged me into other worlds and opened eyes I thought were already open. It was a dream, for its delightfulness but also for its feeling of unrealness and sure enough it became dark and the sporadic destructiveness started overshadowing the unadultered fun, and we ended, as good friends gone away from each other
I pottered away at work, had a few abortive affairs, got involved in an amateur theater group and have been playing the fool with sincerity for a while now. I love the attention, and it is teaching me things about me that I could not find out otherwise, for better or worse, about who I am (in the many trivial ways that actually make up a person: like where you puts your hands when you're nervous and whether you laugh or stare when you're offended) So, now I'm searching for the next point in my unplanned itinerary: it looks to be Berlin or Leipzig, will find out in the next months and I will be sad to leave my lovely room and flatmates here in Osnabrück and some truly good friends, but I cannot wait to return to a big city again.
I'll stop there.
During this masterful tending of the Muil reputation in our South African garden, I traveled further in Africa and then quite a bit in northern Europe. I met a young German girl, fell in love with her, ran after her to a little town, ran out of ideas to get her into bed with me, ran away to Switzerland, ran promptly out of money, ran to England with my tail between my legs, and ran even more out of money. Sent a 'no mun, no fun, your son' letter home to mommy and daddy and got a decadent undeserved reprieve over the wire for Christmas. So I bought myself a feast of bananas and bread-rolls, ironed my shirt and got a job in NY where I then went, via a little serenade in Hawaii, to work and marvel at People for two years.
The young German girl came back to me and succumbed to my entreaties, allowing me to drag her around the upstate back-woods where we scared each other into giggles at the toothless folk in the little towns through which we tented, then back to the city and into the glitzy restaurants where I soaked in the delicious delusion that the glitz was partly my glow (a delusion she was refreshingly able to dispute with a sort of delicate directness). I'd realised at this point that I'd either have to leave NYC soon or never leave it again - it was changing me, in a way I liked but which would have made me incompatible with anywhere else (in fact I might have left a little too late).
I quit my job and sent a ravingly naive letter of bright-eyed optimism to a uni asking to be admitted to cognitive science in a town called Osnabrück which was just up the road (ha!) from where Bel lived (her German nickname is Bärbel and didn't like my shortening of it to Bel for its closeness to 'belle': she disliked people thinking I was romanticising, I loved it). I arrived back in Germany on April Fool's day, a little foreboding, but Bel took me in her characteristic way she had of a seriousness that was part of her delightful humour which always reminded me of Dad's. 'Up the road' was not, so I settled in Osna, started the studies, hated them, loved them, lost my optimism, gained a good deal of love for other things, went through a profound time with Bel, basked in my laziest and most beautiful summer, my most hectic holiday - biking through Poland - and the most extremes of my emotion (although Brad is a contender to Bel for his ability to take me through the gamut of painful laughter through rumpelstiltskin rage). Then we separated, and I went through a rather horridly difficult period, came out of it with an undying respect for her, and a strange strength in myself.
I got a job at the uni, stretched out my thesis for an impressive time even by the standards of the endlessly educated Europeans (don't mean to suggest I am actually educated, just that I took the appropriate time to suggest it), I've been thoroughly liberated from my naive optimism but also my petty pessimism: I know now how little I'll ever know. It's a chortle to realise the truth of that truism. Got myself into a comfortable rut in my work, met another young lady whose life merged with mine for a while: a beautiful moth that fluttered into my office one day - or rather slid in with her sand-shoes on the linoleum - and who dragged me into other worlds and opened eyes I thought were already open. It was a dream, for its delightfulness but also for its feeling of unrealness and sure enough it became dark and the sporadic destructiveness started overshadowing the unadultered fun, and we ended, as good friends gone away from each other
I pottered away at work, had a few abortive affairs, got involved in an amateur theater group and have been playing the fool with sincerity for a while now. I love the attention, and it is teaching me things about me that I could not find out otherwise, for better or worse, about who I am (in the many trivial ways that actually make up a person: like where you puts your hands when you're nervous and whether you laugh or stare when you're offended) So, now I'm searching for the next point in my unplanned itinerary: it looks to be Berlin or Leipzig, will find out in the next months and I will be sad to leave my lovely room and flatmates here in Osnabrück and some truly good friends, but I cannot wait to return to a big city again.
I'll stop there.
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