German Optics

10:35 AM Thursday, December 9, 1999

I'm starting to adjust my time while flying around the world so these entries seem compressed but they're not. I'm just following the sun and as time goes by, it doesn't get much later. That's while they all have the same date.

This summer, when I sent my aunt Em two framed pictures of my mom and also included one picture that I took of Em for my mom, my mom called and asked me, "They're very nice, but David, I think you have it backwards, you wrote that the pictures of me were for Em. Why would Em want a picture of me? She knows what I look like. I see her almost every day." I replied, "Why do you want a picture of yourself? Usually, one keeps pictures of other people. How's it going to look if you have a big, framed picture of yourself sitting on your mantle?" "Well, I don't know, I just think it's silly, that's all." That's the point where conversations with my mom usually ended.

I'm remembering this conversation in the Frankfurt airport. It's a lot like the Hong Kong airport that saved my life last year. Using my Rolleiflex (German genius), I just took a couple of pictures of the toilet in the handicapped bathroom. Spent about a half an hour in there. They have a rope ladder and silver handrails everywhere and you get it all to yourself. If my mom couldn't figure out what to do with a picture of her sister, what do you think she'd say to one of a toilet in Germany?

frankfurt bathroom 11212 bytes

Could they have figured out any more unappealing sounds to make a language out of than the ones that stink up German? It's even worse when they take the form of those pre-recorded letters and numbers that are supposed to be able to be combined in any order for use by a computer, like in automated airport gate information: You know what I'm talking about, (this is translated from the doych) "Gate Dee.......Zero...One.........Five....now ready for boarding".

A guy wearing a silk bomber jacket from the Middleton Texas Sheriff's Department just asked me about my purple laptop. I'm looking at the people who are being exchanged between Germany and the US. I'm trying to guess which country's getting the better deal. I just went to the duty free Hugo Boss store and bought a fuckin badass silver/gray suit and a raspberry/blue iridescent shirt and a tie that was the same fabric as the suit. I woulda got the shoes also but there was a strange lump in the sole of the left one and I figured I could get it in the states. Just in case your curious, I happen to be a perfect size 98 Hugo Boss suit. The shit was made for me.


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