Entertaining Men

When I think back on the time when the boys were little, what I remember most is a feeling of being trapped, a sense of impatience, constraint, sometimes even desperation. I remember standing in the kitchen with both hands in the dishwater feeling simply lost and hopeless: Christopher must have been about four years old, and he heard something on the radio that caught his attention, leading to more questions and more questions and endlessly more questions, until I couldn't even imagine where this discussion could possibly be going. How does one explain Stalin to a four-year-old? What kind of an insane mother would even attempt to discuss Stalin with her four-year-old? Then there was the French Revolution at some point when Christopher was in kindergarten and the hopeless absurdity of hearing myself – wanting only to be able to drink my coffee in peace in the cold early morning – finally snapping and announcing to Christopher, "I have no idea why someone would invent a machine specifically for the purpose of chopping off people's heads. All I can tell you is that you have your pants on backwards. Again. The zipper has to go in the front." What kind of conversation is that for an intelligent, educated woman to be having with a kindergartener before the first cup of coffee in the morning?

This evening, however, I took my three men out for a nice dinner to celebrate the publication of Art and Revolution. Now I have the feeling that being able to spend an evening like this in the company of my three favorite people in the world is more than just compensation for the years of frustration and limitations. Christopher and Patrick both have such a wonderfully wicked sense of humor, a great appreciation of the absurdities of this world, but they are also interested and interesting, and it is a delight to hear what they are thinking about. The stories they tell about school leave me helpless with laughter (although I must admit that I have some misgivings about parent-teacher conference day coming up soon – I can only hope that their teachers have a sense of humor as well), and I am most grateful that they have their father's gift of not taking themselves too seriously. Some of their most hilarious stories relate to their own mishaps in PE, for example. They have their own views of the world and current events as well, surprising well informed sometimes, but never humorless.

Even though I feel I worked very hard to earn this privilege, it is indeed an amazing privilege to be able to spend an evening like this with my three men, to simply enjoy the exquisite pleasure of their company.

It's a book!

Art and Revolution
Originally uploaded by aderieg

Today I actually held it in my hands for the first time, and it is a real book. All the letters of all the words are distributed neatly across some three hundred pages as though they had always been there. For over a year, though, those words were not neatly printed on pages, they were jumbled in my head and scattered through countless files on three computers, many of them marked with different glaring colors. Green was the worst. Long quotations from and references to Hegel were marked with green, and sometimes I still have nightmares about Hegel, where I am accosted by words glowing poisonous green. The words were accompanied by long lists of bookmarks for online resources and background information, and most of the books that are listed in the back of this book as references followed me from home to the office and back again in tall, unstable stacks.

It took me over a year to translate the book Art and Revolution by the Viennese philosopher Gerald Raunig. In the end we went through the whole book together, discussing it chapter by chapter via Skype, rephrasing sentences, debating about single words. After we rephrased the last sentence and I read it again, Gerald said, "We're finished." I was still scanning the page and talking, but Gerald interrupted me and said again, "We're finished. That's the end, we have finished the book." For a moment I was speechless. I had worked on it for such a long time, always alongside all my other translation work, so that no matter how many pages I produced each day, I could never be finished, because I always had to keep working on this book. I couldn't even grasp the idea of being finished. It was only today when I held it in my hands for the first time and saw the words on the pages that I was really able to believe for the first time that it is, in fact, finished.

Of course, this is only the beginning of its new life as a book. It has been well received in German, so I am very curious (and also a bit nervous) to see how the English translation is received. In my office I have a special glass bookcase full of books with my name in them, and it isn't even big enough for all of them. This is different, though. For me, this is a very special book.

When we all finish working this evening, Christopher is going to share one of the tiny bottles of champagne with me, and on Sunday I am taking my three men out for a nice lunch to celebrate, because I couldn't have done it without their support as well. They lived with this book for over a year too.

My Lost Men

In a way, it feels a bit like living in a zombie film. I just hope this is a spoof zombie film, and not a real horror film. At first, it just seemed a bit odd, or maybe it was just that Peter was sick and unable to work .... But then the telltale signs started multiplying, and now I am realizing that it is not only my three men: countless people all over Linz have already been infected.

First there is a flurry of furtive text messaging, phone calls, then suddenly DVDs start appearing. Like an astonishing number of our friends, all three of my men are hooked on this idiotic American TV series called "Lost", and they have detailed mental map of Linz to keep track of who has which DVDs from this series. I have no idea how many seasons of this show have already been released on DVD, but it goes on endlessly, literally day and night. And somehow my three men have this pact that they have to watch all of them together. Anyone who misses out a number of episodes due to irritating interruptions like school and work, has to catch up as soon as possible (even if it 3 am), so that they can continue watching together. I have no objections to father and son bonding, but I really feel left out now. I don't like TV series under the best of circumstances, and they have certainly convinced me that I never want to watch this one. The reasons that they all come up with for why they have to continue watching this series – not only my three men, but also very intelligent and critically thinking friends – are really quite impressive. Not quite plausible, I think, but nonetheless impressive.

I would like to be able to rejoin the conversations, however, so I sincerely hope that the supply of DVDs currently circulating in Linz is not really as endless as it appears to be at the moment.