Hin und Her

There was a German man whom I befriended in prison. His name was Gerd. He liked to hang out with me because I was willing to talk slowly so he could understand what I was saying. I liked to hang out with him, because he was willing to hang out with me.

I just thought of him because I was thinking of the phrase "back and forth", and I remembered a conversation we once had about why in English we say "back and forth" but in German they say the equivalent as "forth and back". Hin und her.

In Germany, they go forward first, and then backwards.

In English, we go back and then forwards. Why do you think that is?

I thought about how this week I have failed to post on two separate days, Sunday and Thursday. I thought, that's okay, that's justified, I've been out living and gathering fodder. I've been working extra, too, which is nice because I can use the money. It's summer, it's almost embarrassing to have such a boring life that you have time to blog every day.

Forth and back. Now back and forth.

I helped Ronny finish planting his garden. What a thing, to plant a garden! It is beautiful, magic even, how seeds become plants, and then the plants grow and grow. I thought, I have traveled this same journey, from just a seed to something else entirely. "I am like you, tree!" I said to a tree. I was on a walk later with Warden and Regrette and said the same to them. "You were once just an egg and sperm, Regrette, and now you are a giant dog, and you too Warden! It's like magic!"

A little girl, maybe four or five years old, heard me saying this to my dogs. "Magic!" the little girl repeated, in an almost too adorable way, and right then and there I could have burst out crying. At times like that, when I am so full of happiness and everything, I wonder how I can ever be sad.

Hin und Her. The next day, Belle Star abused me verbally all day, and I scraped other people's garbage into trash cans, which is what I do for a living. I got home and didn't have the emotional energy to eat, or blog, or vacuum my filthy one-windowed basement apartment.

"People just poop, and flush, and think that it disappears," I said to Belle Star angrily at one point. "No matter what it is, somewhere down the line, somebody has to clean it up."

Gerd was kind of like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, gentle but not very smart, but also large and capable of horrible things. I'm not sure what he did to end up in prison, but I know that he would not speak of it for anything, and got angry if pushed. I half-jokingly thought to myself at times about Gerd and I buying a farm someday when we got out of the joint, and living off the fat of the land. He had tattoos all over his arms and back, including one of the Town Musicians of Bremen, Bremen being the town in Germany where he was from. He got the tattoo when he was 13.

I'm no George Milton, if you want to know the truth.

Gerd was very upset about the idea that English speakers said "back and forth". "It's negative," he said. I tried to change my speaking habits and said "forth and back" whenever I was around him. It seemed like a little thing to me. It never stopped sounding awkward.

I worked fifty hours this week because one of the other dish washers was on vacation. Fifty hours is a lot of time to spend washing dishes. Every once in a while I would get to mop up some vomit on the overnight shift when one of the drunks would get sick after the bars closed. Belle Star said she wouldn't tolerate any whining from me because she has to work eighty hours a week just to keep the place from going under. "You want me to make it happen Jimenez," she said, "the whole staff'll throw you a goddamn pity party at the end of the week, but right now I'm up to my a** with bulls**t, and just shut up and scrub the f**kin' dishes, k?." I wrote that quote down verbatim because I thought it was a good one. When she asked what I was writing, I changed the subject and told her about how in Germany they say hin und her. She responded with a horrible joke about how she performs fellatio. I don't know if I should tell you that in the blog, but it happened, so I will. That's my work life, for worse or for better.

I wonder where Gerd is now. He got out a couple years before me. I bet he moved back to Germany where they do things in the right order.

Her und hin. He's right, it just sounds wrong.