May 17. In some old stacks of paper I miraculously discovered the original copy of my birth certificate, which I had sent to me from Germany eight years ago. You have to look very closely to see that the stamp and signature are not printed on the paper. Even this does not provide proof that I am who I claim to be.
May 16. Conversations in the freight elevator that I have to use when I ride my scooter to work. “How fast does it go?” somebody wants to know whose hoodie is a lot cooler than my dress shirt. “Good investment?” he asks before he gets off, and I don’t quite know what to answer. The elevator operator, now alone with me, can’t calm himself down. “This is so unsafe!” he shouts, listing cases of people injured while using scooters, his own son among them. “You’re 90% unsafe! About 10% you might be able to do something, but 90% you’re unsafe!”
May 15. Wrote to the passport office of the consulate. Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren! I have a feeling they find this is as funny as I do because they live here too, after all. Thursday morning I have an appointment to get an emergency passport because my old one is almost falling apart.
May 14. We have the agreement that we can take a two week vacation with the kids, in June and July. I am completely confused and almost want to cry.
May 13. Yesterday’s entry is one of the first I wrote in English initially. This is even worse than writing in German and then translating into English. In that direction, I always feel “but one wouldn’t say that in English to begin with”. Yet, if it’s from English to German, assisted by the translation engine, I am revulsed: “but this is not anything I would ever write”. I cannot even correct the automatic translation attempt into something I would say, since the machine output obscures what I would start out with in the first place.
May 12. Surgery to lower my eye pressure, using a laser to widen the relief canal in the eye. This is no magical laser that tracks my eye faster than I can move it. Instead, it is a rack very much like the usual examination apparatus. I lean my head on the rests for my chin and forehead, the doctor holds a lens into my eye – which my eye doesn’t mind, since it’s been numbed with drops – and through that lens, the doctor points the laser. He uses a foot pedal to fire it. All I see is a yellow light – not even a flash, mostly just a light that switches on and off. He does it a hundred times in each eye. His assistant, who also controls the power of the laser, tells him when he’s reached a hundred. Every once in a while I feel a tiny sting, or something more like a slightly painful pressure, and moan a little, because with my chin resting on the rack, I can’t speak. Then the doctor apologizes: That was a nerve. I’ll stay clear of that area from now on.
May 11. In a confused train of thought I suddenly remembered that there are glider planes – and I found a world in which there are such aircraft very surprising.
May 10. Met with B. in the evening. I have the impression that he is much more at home in the world than I am, and strangely enough he wants to meet with me of all people.
May 9. During the run it smells like May.
It seems strange to me to speak of a disease when it comes to my brain. That’s just what my brain is like, it has never been different.
May 8. J on the scooter in the light of the halogen headlight of mine, the fabric of her trouser legs fluttering in the wind.