<3~~

O shell yes!

Bwahha I was just being stupid. The name Girls is ironic. So it's an iron joke. Okay let's do it. Tell me when.

It's an iron joke.

That CD was meant to be a frisbee, not for listening.

sweaters, zooey deschanel, miranda july, tina fey, good music? yes yes, we can be friends!

India is very interesting. It was the topic of one semester of my English course. We watched "Passage to India" and had to read "Heat and Dust" by Ruth Prawer- *insert weird Indian name here*. I'd really like to see a culture different from western civilisation, I have never been anywhere else than Europe and America. I am so curious about what studying will be like. What living on my own in the big city will be like. San Francisco Gay Pride was just great. It is very different from what it is like in Germany. The German gay prides are mostly just big parties. When I arrived in San Francisco, leaving the BART station at Powell Street, two lesbians passed me by, one looked at me, smiled and said: "Lots of lesbians around here." She was so right.The whole cíty was full of gay and lesbian people. An amazing experience, it almost felt as if we were the majority. The concerts, the rainbow-flags, the parade... Would have been more fun with some friends, though.

Sure I remember you! It always makes me happy when people discover artists I adore. I saw Kaki King live in March. Probably the greatest concert I've ever been to, and definitely the most life-changing. Well... I am still waiting for the universities to either accept or deny my applications. Stuff will start in october, which means that I still have a month and a half for my favourite activities like... well... hanging around, basically. This is what I've done for the past 6 months. All my life, actually. I took a break from hanging around to see San Francisco Gay Pride and San Francisco Dyke march, furthermore Yosemite, Sequoia and King's canyon national parks and Los Angeles. I've been to Cologne and to Belgium and Hamburg Gay Pride. I was very much impressed by the Murals in the Mission. Guerrilla Art is so fascinating. And you? What have you done/ seen/ experienced? Greetings and... Peace! ;)

hello :) the "Heads Will Roll [Instrumental]" is real? do you have the complete it's blitz?

I also agree with your 'about me' section. Funny enough I'm in Portland right now. I've spent the last week in a vegan co-op/interning at the rock'n'roll camp for girls. It was quite possibly the best experience of my life. If you'd like to talk more just message me!

But if you had prevented it from happening, you wouldn’t even have known it could happen that way, right? So you can’t know how often you already succeeded. I have déjà-vus sometimes, but that’s a different category I guess. Iced green tea is good as well, but I like the whisky-like color of Earl Grey better, somehow. Well, most importantly, it should be cold. In Germany, you are allowed to drink beer when you are 16, but most people start consuming it when they are 14. Beer is the national beverage here, it is the basis of every party. I usually prefer wine or gin tonic, but on hot summer days, beer is more refreshing. I’d like to ask you if I’m allowed to ask random, but meaningful questions as well. Sounds like an interesting idea to me, and I have some on my mind. I hope you had enough sleep tonight, as I know that being tired can be awful both for you and your environment. I wish you all the best, and I hope that this day is different. Greetings.

I can translate Swedish newspapers to German but can’t really speak the language which I think is kind of sad, but I’ve never had the energy to really learn Swedish, and it is probably more useful to improve my French and English. Plattdeutsch is not a dialect, it is a language of its own that is spoken in Northern Germany, but is unfortunately about to become extinct. However, I can speak it fluently and I love the sound of it. It also makes it easier for you to learn English, because the grammar rules are quite similar. What you talk about is what I meant by “your thoughts become disconnected and concentrated on that person”. I know that as well. And the rest is just longing, isn’t it? Longing is such a nice feeling. It’s bittersweet, like melancholy, but somehow brighter. And, different from melancholy, it can also be positive. Makes you smile from time to time. Your dream is strange.

I think I can imagine what that feels like. Just when you want sleep so badly, you are kept from dozing off by thoughts that keep wandering through your mind. In that case, I just turn on the TV, usually some lame documentations, telenovelas or political talks. If possible, in a language I don’t understand, so I can be sure that it doesn’t keep me awake (usually some programs from the Netherlands or Spain or Poland work really well, German regional telestations are also uninteresting enough). Another thing I do when I can’t sleep is listening to classical piano music. I can only recommend Frédéric Chopin. If nothing works, I start counting prime numbers, a little bit more interesting than just counting imaginary sheeps. A friend of mine counts backwards from thousand, all even numbers in German and all uneven numbers in English. Swedish just sounds cool. I’ve already been there five times and know a lot of words.

I never had such a dream. Well, I usually remember dreams when I wake up, but they never influence my conscious life very much because they never show something to me I’m not already aware of. Sometimes they leave a feeling that will stay for a day or two. If this is what you call “infiltrating”, the last time I had such a dream was tuesday night. “The Shipping News” by Annie Proulx is probably the rainiest and greyest of all books I know, the film by Lasse Hallström fails to transport this atmosphere. My preferred drink on the hottest summer days is iced tea, Earl Grey with exactly three ice cubes and lemon, but no sugar. A cold beer would be fine, too. Peace.

What makes it such a bad day for you? I hope it's getting better. Bad days just pass, and then maybe a good day arrives. I'd sure like to answer your seemingly random questions. I would have liked to be born with Swedish as my mother tongue, because I like the sound of it so much and it is like a mixture of the languages that are always around me and influenced me most, German, English and Plattdeutsch, just with a pronunciation I think is cute. When I fall deeply for someone, I have this classical strange feeling in my stomach whenever I see that girl, it is extremely hard to describe. It is almost like the feeling you have when you are drinking alcohol or very hot tea or coffee, just stronger and deeper. It makes your fingers shake, your voice tremble and your thoughts become disconnected and concentrated only on that very person. And I start to be afraid of losing that person. Especially this fear will make certain to me that I am falling deeply for that person.

not particularly good at it. Well, I guess someone has to do it, right? ;-) I'd really like to know what makes you like math. People who don't have Abitur and also people who have Abitur but don't want to go to university start an apprenticeship. I also think that best-ofs are not optimal to get to know a musician, especially because I think the album's flow is important. But "Canon" was the only stuff by Ani DiFranco I could get because I'm short on money all the time and can't afford buying CDs. Apat from that, my bad internet connection makes it impossible for me to download a lot of data. I'm not sure whether you're going to find stuff by Amanda Palmer at a public library, because her lyrics are what Americans call "explicit". Some radio stations in Great Britain refused to broadcast "Oasis", a song by her about rape and abortion. To me, Amanda Palmer is one of the most fascinating musicians that ever lived. I'm so glad I could see her live last year. Well, peace then!

text was not - as promised by the copyshop - printed out when I arrived there at 9 am, tired and close to crying. But everything worked out in the end, and I'll have to present my work next tuesday. After school was over, we drove around town with our cars, honking and blocking the treffic circles. Riht now, I'm hanging out at school again, because I had to talk to my German teacher and I can use the internet here, which is faster than at home. I'm not so foucussed on the future, mainloy because I have no idea of what I could do with the rest of my life. All I know is that I'll go to universtity this fall. I had literature and medicine on my mind, but there are lots of opportunities. I used to be quite good in school, so chances are that I will be able to study anything anywhere, a fact that doesn't make the choice become easier. Your about-me section tells me that you want to study maths, which seems strange to me, because it would be my last choice after law. I hate maths, and I'm

My last days were not so good and I really regret that I left school that way. Here, school is practically over in early march, after that, you just go to lessons of your "Prüfungsfächer", which means that on most days you go to school only for two or three hours and then leave again. You do that for two or three weeks and then you don't have to school anymore. In this free time you are supposed to learn, which some do but most don't. I had to write a scientific work which I had to hand in on our last day of school. I had one year to write it, but lazy as I am I started two weeks befor the ultimum. In the last week, I slept overall for just about 10 hours. I was in an extremely bad mood those days. The day before I had to give the work to my teacher, I saw Kaki King live, it was a wonderful concert, one of the best I've ever been to, but unfortunately my work was still unfinished, so when I came home (3 o'clock in the morning) I had to work till 6 am and got into trouble because my

How were your last days? I can asure you that Abiturklausuren are much worse than anything you experience in American High Schools. In America, usually everyone gets his high school graduation, right? Here, only about 30 % make Abitur, the only certificate that enables you to go to university. I'd recommend you to listen to Amanda Palmer. That woman really is a phenomenon. Few like her, and those who do worship her. Her music isn't that far away from what you listen to, especially her solo stuff. You should give her a chance. I really like Ani DiFranco's music, but I only got "canon" which is kind of a best-of, I suppose? I don't know what text I would have chosen for that essay. WHen I think about that, lots of books come to my mind. Symbols are everywhere! I'd probably wasted my time chosing a topic and wouldn't have written anything. The good thing in Germany is: They give you two different texts and you can chose between them which is usually easy to do. Peace.

I don't have a lot of time, and I'll send you another comment another day, but there's some advice I have to give to you: Enjoy your last days at high school. I had my last school day in the end of march and I already miss school terribly, although I would've never believed something like that could happen, as I never really liked going to school. Enjoy all the things you did every day for the last years, all the rituals that you find annoying, the lessons that always bored you and that characteristic smell that seems to be in every school. There are few changes in a person's life that are as dramatic as leaving school, believe me. Enjoy school as long as you still go there.

There are few things that are inexcusable on the internet, so don't worry! First: Yes indeed, I know very well what AP tests are. It is called Abiturklausur in Germany and it takes not just 4 hours, it takes 6. I just wrote mine and am waiting for the results. That one's a very fine line. Could you chose what you wanted to write about or was it coincidence that Waiting for Godot was the topic? And how were your AP tests? Second: I downloaded three or four tracks by Mirah some weeks ago and really liked them. I can see that you are obsessive about her, 114 times scrobbled this week! Furthermore, our comaptibility has improved a lot since I saw your profile the last time, probably because I discovered Ani DiFranco? Third: There's few about "The Story" that you can't like, and that's in my opinion also its greatest flaw. Let the CD spin in the background and you'll probably have a nice day. I got it from a friend and haven't listened very attentive so far. Peace.

Going to San Francisco all alone would be very much different, even though I would probably do the same things just with a worse hotel and less money to spend. Like this, I can erase one thing from my "things to do before I die"-list before it is unaffordable due to increasing gasoline prices. I'm really looking forward to that. I was just wondering whether I'd be allowed to go to clubs and concerts, because I've heard that in the USA you have to be 21 to drink alcohol. And as I'm only bloody 18, I'm a little bit worried. Was that book you read a good one? It sounds quite interesting, and I want to learn as much about SF as I possibly can. Peace, greetings und Tschüss, bis bald!

alliance sounds pretty cool. We don't have such a thing and it isn't really necessary as I am the only queer person at my school (with about 1000 students, poor, isn't it? how big is your school?). America must be a cool place to live. More freedom, even for mentally ill homeless people. But at least the state cares about them: They don't just lock them up, they are really trying to help them. They give them food and shelter, medical and psychological treatment and help them to find appartments. Those who live in the streets are either illegal immigrants, drug-addicts and alcoholics that spend the money from the state on drugs and alcohol or people who decidedly spend their life on the streets because they don't want to depend on the social system. But to talk about better stuff: Travelling with my parents is a very pleasant thing to do, they let me do whatever I want, so it won't be of any disadvantage. The only problem is that this feeling of independence is a little bit damped.

it either ends in the middle of nowhere or becomes nonsensical again. We are all repeating things over and over again, you go to school every day, you brush your teeth, take a shower and drink your morning tea or coffee. Every day is the same for everyone, more or less. What is so threatening in "En Attendant Godot" is the continuity, whereas in "Fin de Partie" it is the atmosphere of the nearing end. I always thought of the homelessness as a metaphor for rootlessness and neglect of bohemians. Well, the play is so extremely open to every kind of interpretation, not to speak of the religious and psychoanalytical ones, that you can't come to any conclusion. I don't believe in Valentin Temkine's theory. It sounds logical at first, like any conspiracy theory. But once you are looking close enough, all of the "evidence" turns out to proove nothing at all. I don't know if all of this comment makes sense, but it's a hard thing to explain in English, so please forgive me. Ths straight and gay

It's really crazy, you're going to a European coffeeshop whereas here in Germany Starbucks is expanding and opening branches all over the country. We both seem to have a passion for staying up late, it's 10 minutes past midnight again where I live. Since I don't go to school any longer (I'm in this vacuum between school and university right now, that kind of sucks) it's getting later and later every day. BUT I thought about Godot today (well, yesterday, actually) and I know now how to put my thoghts in English words: What's so dissatisfying and disturbing about the dialogue (and the multilogue with Lucky and Pozzo, but especially Lucky's monologue) is, apart from the fact that it is balancing on this line between rationality and madness, that it leads nowhere. Everything will stay the same. The end tells us: Godot will not come, neither the next nor any other day. It shows us how we all are filling time and words with emptiness. Every time the conversation comes close to making sense,

translated, not "Frieden". We actually say "Peace". It's hippieesque, was used in the late 60's and now has a revival, somehow. But it lacks any meaning here, you just say it to be cool. They obviously don't use it the way you do. I suppose I'll better stay in San Francisco, my parents would be angry if I left them alone in california. Well, I know that travelling with parents is extremely uncool, but they are my parents and they offer me this great opportunity to see california, so off we go! I'm going to see the pride parade in SF, which is another exciting thing about this trip, and I've planned to climb the half dome in Yosemite National Park. I'm not sure whether I will make that, but I'm working on it. I'll come back to Godot when I've had a little sleep. It's half past one o'clock in the morning, the moon is shining through my window and I can't think properly anymore. So, peace. And a good night or whatever time it might be in Iowa.

cling to the bars of the train, he would rush past the engine driver, "flying like a dead eagle". Then the other one started to damn the society and say latin phrases without any connection. This was repeated over and over again until they finally left the train. Is this the kind of conversation you were talking about? It's an awful thing to experience, that's for sure. Usually, the mentally ill in Germany are very easily put into closed psychiatric wards, so there are no mentally ill homeless people, just those who are drunk. No, I didn't mix it up with those coloured sweets, I believe now I mixed it up with toffees! They're brown and sticky. Those caramel sweets. It would be an honour to me to have written a book that is standing next to yours on a bookshelf. Maybe not so far away from Beckett? And I sure would write you a letter in my best handwriting, but it would make this conversation a little bit slower, even via air mail ;-) "Peace" is a common saying here in Germany. Not

We should probably get rid of our prejudices, but they make life so easy! The way you described your life in Iowa, it seems to be much more urban and alternative than mine. My description of Iowa fits the place i live in pretty much, if you replace soy with grass or wheat. At least it's close to Hamburg. I used to work at a library, too, but in my school's library you usually don't find homeless people. You won't find any homeless people within a radius of 60 kilometres, so I can't tell what it's like, but I think understand what you're getting at. A friend of mine and I were returning from a concert in hamburg, when we met two probably middle aged, but old-looking men (smelling, wearing worn-out clothes, with gaps in their teeth, homeless? i don't know) who were extremely drunk and carrying an empty beer crate with them, in a train. Their conversation was as dissatisfying and empty as the one of Estragon and Vladimir. One of the men was describing over and over again how, if he didn't

I didn't know anything about Iowa, only that it is in the mid-west, that its capital is Des Moines and that the opening line of "The Lost Continent" by Bill Bryson is "I come from Des Moines. Someone had to." That is pretty much everything the common German citizen knows about Iowa, in case he has ever heard of that place. But what you said sounds indeed interesting and contradicts every prejudice an ignorant European like me could have. I just googled Iowa, and the German Wikipedia says: "The state is in the middle west and commonly known for its corn production and wide nature". So you see, I'm not the only one! But it is not only Iowa that has a bad reputation here. Actually, the only states with a good reputation are Massachussetts, Connecticut, New York, Oregon, California and probably Louisiana. The rest is said to be populated with extremely religious Sarah Palin-lookalike hockey moms, their weapon-owning and SUV-driving husbands and their fat, stupid and baseball-playing kids.

Valentin Temkine and his theory about "En attendant Godot"? He says that it wasn't absurd at all and that for the past 50 years people had simply not understood it properly: That Estragon and Vladimir were french jews escaping from their occupied country to italy, as many people did at that time, and that Godot was a man who was supposed to help them to pass the border. And somehow this theory fits the details, but I don't feel comfortable about that. Beckett himself stated that the great success of "Waiting for Godot" resulted from a huge missunderstanding. I'm not sure, what do you think about this? Apart from that, you don't need a letter from a famous writer, you are already receiving shouts from someone who is certainly going to write the "Great German Novel" in some years. ;-) What's a banana fudge? Aren't fudges these sticky sweets they sell at those retro sweet stores? Greetings, peace and stuff!

Wow, and I always thought of Iowa as one of those typical bible belt-states where there's just corn, soy and narrow-minded people as far as one can see. Would be nice if they'd do something like that in Germany, but there is something in the constitution that is called "protection of the family", so it won't happen I think. There is "eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft" (how could this be translated? this term is so awfully German), but it is not equal to marriage at all, meaning that you can't adopt children and don't have certain financial benefits. Only the Green Party is for gay marriage, all the other parties (meaning about 85 % of the Bundestag) are against it. So it's rather difficult in Germany although we are a relatively liberal country. Good for Iowa. I used to believe that California was the origin of the Hippies and the gay movement etc., but seeing Schwarzenegger and his policy makes me think of rather going to Iowa than to California this summer ;-) Have you heard of

open than in Europe. And in New York it was like I could actually sense the creativity in the air. Surely not at these typical tourist stations and not where the great economy is, least at Tiffany's, I guess. It was an amazing experience. Walking down one of these gorgeous avenues and thinking that you were at home in your small village with only 200 inhabitants just some hours ago is just... incredible. I like the way you are thinking. You seem to have a great taste both in music and literature. I think I'll spend some time looking up more poetry by Adrienne Rich, that one's getting better every time. And to wrap this up: 1) I'm not so sure about David Byrne. It's just an option. 2) I loved the Bell Jar, left a kafkaesque feeling iside of me, but Ariel is extremely tough. 3) I guess that was all. Excuse my long answer, I just enjoy this intercultural conversation. Don't feel obliged to answer as extensive as I did.

I'm very glad that you aren't from Texas, because I thought that I could might hurt your Lonestar-patriotism or something like that. Might I ask where in the US you live? I've basically been to two cities in the USA: NYC and Portland, Maine, but I didn't count that as a real city, and to Montreal and Toronto in Canada. What is really astonishing is this simplicity. You don't have problems to find your way, it's so easy: numbered streets and avenues, everything in simple quadrants. But this was the thing that felt a little bit uncomfortable, too. No surprises awaiting you behind hidden corners, no narrow and contorted backstreets. No marketplaces. This uniformity and the high-rise buildings (there are no high-rise buildings in Germany except for four or five in Frankfurt, imagine that!) were the only things I didn't like about these American cities. But apart from that: You have this "American dream" kind of feeling when you are as a European in the USA. People appear to be much more

Abitur, that's our exams. Everyone in lower saxony, which is where I come from, has to read Auster's novel "Moon palace". Our excghange student and even our exchange student's mother, a highly qualified English teacher from New York, didn't know any of his works. I think that this is symptomatic. Thank you very much for your compliments concerning my ability of writing in English, but I doubt their credibility. I think my English is too German and too simple in its structures. I use too many nouns. That might sound strange, but that's one of the big problems about English-speaking Germans. The German language always sounds like something engraved in stone. It's lacking this agility or vitality or whatever that is typical for English. It is too exact to be playful. Maybe one of the reasons why Germany today is better known for its technological know-how (apart from this awful past, of course) than for its literature or music? Or what's your image of Germany?

Joyce Carol Oate's poem was actually a very nice one, one of these poems where you think: Yeah, that was simple, got the message. But it was not like a revelation. That's another problem about poetry and school: they'll only give you poetry without ambiguities or anything without a meaning that's so simple that the last redneck in Texas would understand it. They don't leave the interpretation to you, maybe they can't due to the necessity of giving you marks. I believ that it isn't unusual that we have to read stuff in English that is not at all known in the US, because most of the English teachers in Germany have studied in England, not so often in the US or Canada because England is much closer - I guess you know that? Your geographical knowledge can't be THAT bad ;-) - so ou'r classes are much influenced by English literature and American literature that's popular in Europe. For example Paul Auster. No one has heard about him in the US - have you? - but it's an issue for our Abitur.

people don't really think of Bavaria as a part of Germany. Bavarians are generally more conservative and religious and have a strange dialect and a very different culture of which foreigners usually believe that it is typical for Germany though it's not. If Germany was the USA, Bavaria would probably be Texas. Unfortunately, I've never been to Munich, so I can't really tell what it's like. What's generally nice about European cities is the way they've grown over centuries and sometimes millenia. Those fingerprints of history that American cities are lacking (well I can't really tell, as I've only seen NYC so far, just trying to sound intelligent). Have you been to Europe? I read that San Francisco is the most beautiful town in the world, do you believe that's true? I'll visit Frisco this summer, I'm very excited. And, by the way, what do you think of Sylvia Plath?

Sulamith is a jewish name, in contrast to the (at that time) very popular German name Margarete. I didn't know Adrienne Rich, but google spat out that poem. I like it, it's got a special, yet reduced kind of atmosphere. I doubt that my English is good enough for describing poetry. It's so hard to write in a foreign language about literature and especially poetry because your figurative vocabulary is very limited. That's something you don't learn in school: You're just analyzing and tearing all the sentences to pieces instead of finding the atmosphere or the imagery that makes the poem special. We do that in German lessons, in English lessons we don't deal with poems at all. The only two poems we ever examined in English were one by Edward Fields and another one by Joyce Carol Oates. I like "aquainted with the night" very much. Does that mean that, if I lived in the USA, I wouldn't like Frost at all? That would be sad. And Munich... well, it's in Bavaria, and where I come from

Thought this could be of interest for you, somehow creepy but in a beautiful way. http://www.artofeurope.com/celan/cel8.htm Good translation, this one.

Paul Celan wrote in German, although he lived in Paris for quite a long time after having survived the concentration camp. He originally came from Romania. And Rilke... Everyone is made to read Rilke at school in Germany, which somehow kept me from truly liking his works. Still, I must admit that he is a true genius at composition of language. But sometimes it's a little bit kitsch, I think. Generally, it should be easier to translate from German into English than from french, as German and English are much closer related. For the last three months I've read "The Waste Land" over and over again, probably one of the most wonderful works of modern poetry. I'm fascinated! Once tried to read Baudelaire in french. Didn't make it. You have to be able to think in a language, otherwise its poetry is useless to you, and I couldn't, even though I've been learning French for 7 years now. Have you read anything else from Germany? Greetings!

I didn't know that! Thanks for sharing this wonderful little fact with me, I'll remember it when I read the play the next time. It seems as if his own life had been some kind of theatre of the absurd. By the way, have you also read the prose? I'm trying to read Molloy right now, but I'm not really getting into it. It is very tough stuff, it is so deeply depressing I can't read any further at the moment. I doubt that Paul Celan is a good read in English, as translation can do horrible things especially to poems. And a big hooray to globalisation!

1) you understood the insinuation concerning Beckett (most think of "Estragon" as nothing more than a herb, as Estragon is the French/German word for tarragon), 2) your "about me"-section is awesome (see below, although my favourite poet is Paul Celan), 3) you shouted at me. For these reasons, I answer you. Funny, how you find people reading the same books, listening to the same music and with extremely similar names all over the world, isn't it? And hello, by the way!

Hahaha. Well I'm glad to know there are other progressives in the world.