While living in Hessen, I traveled to schools throughout the state, giving a creative writing workshop during students’ English classes. My lessons were inspired by my previous experience as artist in residence in Wisconsin schools and also by Herr Ohlwein’s suggestion that I present my writing process and my poems. My writing is image driven, and so I begin there.
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My first 3 weeks in Germany whenever the phone rings, which is almost every hour for a couple of days, I eagerly answer, thinking it’s a real person wanting to talk with me. Each time, the same cheerful lady asks me something in cheerful German, and then gives me time to reply. I have tried to tell her “Ich spreche nicht Deutsch,” but she doesn’t seem to care. She hangs up, and then tries me again later.
It makes me anxious that someone is trying so hard to tell me something. I think maybe it’s a warning about a tropical storm or a tornado. Perhaps I’ve won some bratwurst or Berlitz lessons. I try to record the phone number, with my German phrase book in hand, but she’s too quick for me. I can’t understand what number I should be calling. But then, neither can I understand why I should be calling it.
One day my phone suddenly fails to work, and it hits me. My telephone friend has been warning me about shutting off the connection. The digital message on the phone comes up “suche” something. Because of high school French, I suspect the word has to do with something sweet, as in “sucre.” I imagine the German phone system has been playing a joke on me and, at the point of disconnect, is saying “Sweet!.” All of the employees of the company are gathering for a group high five, knowing they got me good.
Then I think perhaps the letters “suche” represented the German form of the word “suck,” as in “this phone line sucks.” But maybe not. I ask a native speaker about the word, and he said it means “search.” I think the context has to do with the slang expression “search me!”—as in “you got me” or “it’s anybody’s guess what’s going on here,” with an accompanying shoulder shrug gesture to indicate incomprehension. Does it matter that my phone is shut off? I’m in the silent business of writing. I’m here for observation. I’m not looking for a major discovery or treatise, though I do find the absence of dachshunds to be a curious phenomena. I’m content to see how people move across the square; I like that there is a square, and that people are out, walking in the streets at what seems to be all hours. Any time that I venture out- for a stamp or some fruit or just a walk, it’s buzzing with people of all ages.
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