Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Reading Culture Clash



Returning books to my local library (Michael Connelly! William Boyd!) and picking up new ones (Michael Ondaatje! Alice Hoffman!) I overheard a conversation between the librarian and another patron. “May I bring in books at anytime for the second-hand sale?” inquired the other book-lover. “Anytime, ” the librarian assured her, “but they must be in good condition.” Of course, I thought, no missing pages, reasonably intact cover, no signs of having been dunked in the bath or a puddle of cocoa. But the librarian was continuing, “The edges of the pages should not be yellowed, or people won’t buy them.”

Never in my life have I even noticed whether the page edges were yellow, white or pink and green striped. I’m not reading the edges. Not for the first time, I thought how different is the leisure reading culture in different societies.

Brits and Amis scarf books. The food for the brain and the spirit is
important; the vessel in which it is served up is not. New or used, pristine or a trifle tattered, it’s all the same to us. Our books make the rounds of friends’ mailboxes, are schlepped onto the train and gently steamed in the bath; they acquire the marks of loving handling. We snap them up at sales, loan them out to our social circle. Even the small-town library enjoys the same opening hours as the grocery store and the gas station. Book clubs and reading circles abound.

 Compare this with the approach to reading of a Dutch friend. There are no dog-eared paperbacks lying about on her coffee table. But when a philosopher appearing on television impressed her, she went to the bookstore and bought one of his books, in the original German. Hardback, full price. She read it with absorption, then placed it reverently on her bookshelf with a few other such treasures, some also in German, some in Dutch, some in English.

And here is the other side of the reading culture clash: do we Anglos check out media in other languages, German for example? Do we read Durrenmatt, Hesse, Luise Rinser and Martin Suter at all – never mind in the original? Rather few of us, I fear. Something about our way of life makes us cling to the language and literature of our homelands. Something about European society, by contrast, opens its citizens not only to the cultures but also the language across the English Channel, the Atlantic Ocean and in the antipodes.  

An article appearing in a Zurich newspaper a few years ago mused on just this topic. The author opined that English language literature weaves the most profound life lessons into the good read and the whodunit, whereas German-language literature, for example, is either serious and heavy, on the one hand or just for fun, on the other. The two seldom mix. Perhaps this is why so many of the titles on the German and Swiss best-seller lists are translations from the English. Perhaps it is why my local library features a bookcase and a half of English-language paperbacks. It’s not only we Anglo expats who read them; they are popular among the Swiss as well.

For an Ami living in Switzerland this makes for stimulating contemplation, and I muse about it from time to time as I go about my expat life. But now I must do a resorting of the paperbacks I plan to take to the library sale. I’m afraid a great many of them have yellow page edges, alas.     

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Yoyo flu


It’s been donkey’s years since I have had the flu. When I woke up a month ago with rather vague symptoms I didn’t even think about it. Only a week later, when I had only the same very mild symptoms but felt rotten, did I go to the doctor. “Oh, I’m seeing this presentation a lot this year,” he said. “Typical of the present flu. Here’s some symptomatic relief”.

The symptomatic relief finally brought a return of health a week later, although I was very tired. I enjoyed 3-4 days of feeling good and beginning to get a little exercise. And then – back again. The scratchy throat, the cement in the sinuses, the feeling that my head had become much larger. And increasingly, a weird pain in the ear. A short stabbing pain, or a pain that came on with certain movements of the head or the jaw. I inhaled steam, which helped, but a couple days later the pain was back and getting worse.

Accordingly, I made a second doctor’s appointment. My physician will retire in the summer, and his replacements are already working part time at the practice. So I was not too surprised to be greeted by a slight young woman who looked about 20 – a mere child from the perspective of my age. I told her my symptoms. She painstakingly typed in the computer, asked questions, typed again, asked more questions. She looked in my ears, nothing. Then she just stared and frowned, the picture of perplexity. I assured her that I realized the symptoms were weird. She probably thought I was pretty weird, too, but discussed possible medications and I left with two little boxes.

It’s been several days, and my symptoms come and go. The ear
behaves for the most part, except once in the middle of the night. Naturally I saw a gloomy scenario in which I would call the ENT specialist, who wouldn’t have an appointment for ages, and I would end up on the weekend in the ER of the local hospital, where I would have to explain my weirdness to a callow intern. You know how it is in the middle of the night; worry, worry.

But then I began to hear from friends who have the same story to tell of improvement, setback, improvement, setback. If it is not this very strange flu it is a cough and sore throat, equally debilitating and difficult to shake. One has a picture of especially virulent viruses and then feels ashamed, remembering Ebola, bird flu, SARS. It is not the severity of the illness, which is mild, but the strange behavior of viruses that do not follow the pattern that makes one feel uncertain. Will their behavior get even less predictable in the future?

It was then that my negative thoughts were interrupted by a friend with the cough and sore throat affliction who said that she was quite accustomed to this yoyo effect and assumed that it would play itself out in time. Do not expect constant improvement. Take it easy. Have confidence. Spring is coming. Few things in life climb steadily upwards, most processes proceed in an up and down fashion, in fits and starts. Don’t panic. Forget the gloom, go with the flow.

How different are our experiences with real life and our neat picture of constant, steady improvement! One can philosophize for quite some time about this and apply it to virtually all aspects of life. Something to think about while convalescing.

Perfection or Not



One of the joys of retirement is that one can do things just for fun. Top performance is not necessary. One is no longer acting to please the world but rather oneself. To be sure, one can do a volunteer job after retirement that calls for competence and responsibility, and very satisfying it is too. One begins to feel, however, that part-time performance is quite enough. One wants to spend time pursuing a hobby, developing a new interest or just enjoying an activity during what used to be working hours.

I knew that writing would continue to be a vital area of my life after retirement, but according to my own schedule; deadlines were out. I also had a stimulating volunteer job in which I learned many skills in an entirely new area. When it came time to leave it, I wanted to continue learning new skills but increasingly just wanted to have a good time. My puritanical background balked at this, but it was impossible to ignore. So in addition to taking painting lessons – new skills! – I decided to take a dance class.

Perhaps I was harking back to my childhood, when I desperately
wanted to join a ballet class, but dancing was frowned upon by my parents as a waste of time and money. I used to accompany a friend to ballet, where I sat crying in the back of the room. At my present age, ballet was out of course, but ballroom dancing seemed a possibility. To be sure, I have never been able to follow a partner, but I would be joining an Everdance class, in which each person is on his or her own, all in a line or in a circle.

Everyone else had been in the class for some time, so I was able to look at my first class hour as stumbling about because I knew less than they did. By the second week, however, it was clear that I was just terrible at this activity, possessing neither the grace nor the physical acumen to pick up the new steps so beautifully demonstrated by the teacher. I have not even two left feet; two or maybe more left hooves is more like it. Everything moved too fast as well. I was always lagging behind. Disciplining the hooves was not working.

So did I put it down to experience and leave the class? No way! I haven’t had so much fun in ages. Just watching the teacher, a fiery woman of Spanish background, was a joy. My relative success with the waltz helped, but it was the very imperfectly performed salsa and the cha cha that made me feel zingy.

A few days into the course I regaled a friend with a tale of this experience. A perfectionist, she just shook her head. No way could she take such a course and not perform perfectly. As this is a woman of world renown in her professional field, one would think she would not need perfection in a fun activity as well. Oh yes, it would be necessary.

I am well aware that it is perfectionists who produce most of the
excellent work done in the world. But does this have to carry over into fun activities as well? Yes, they tell me, it does. How exhausting! And I feel for their inability to celebrate the basic imperfection of mankind. Imperfection is not always something to moan about; sometimes it is something to appreciate. As in my dance class.