Woe is Me

As one can tell from the title, I feel a lot like complaining today. I have no reason to complain of Berlin (despite the unwholesome heat), but I do feel like complaining about the situation in general.

We've been without our belongings for twenty-three days now; they're still stuck in the container in Hamburg, if I understand matters correctly. I try not to let that get to me, because I think that I shouldn't suspend my life because of it, but it still affects me, and it certainly seems to affect my parents. I wish I could play the piano. The violin is nice too, but I hit so many wrong notes and my technique is so bad and I feel too lazy to correct it -- moreover I always worry that the neighbours, etc., will be annoyed by it. Here evidently my common sense has deserted me.

The main problem is really boredom. It's not pleasant to walk anywhere if I begin to perspire profusely after half a block, and at home I can only read, write, sleep, eat, and play the violin if someone else isn't playing anything. T., Ge. and J. resorted to throwing rolled-up socks at each other yesterday while giggling hysterically, which amused me too, but which I didn't feel like joining. Mama listens to the radio and reads the newspaper, Papa reads books or helps Ge. with his flight school reading, Ge. does the flight school reading, J. is working on a powerpoint presentation, etc., for an imaginary airline, and T. is immersed in War and Peace (where Prince Andrei has just died). Gi. is at Muenchehofe.

At the same time, I feel pressure (magnified by my bored state of mind) to do something, research about the college that T. and I will be attending, and get a job. I'm not looking forward to the college, because somehow the last year at university has left me with little energy and the belief that I will never write essays, etc., the way I truly want to. As for getting a job, I would only get it because I don't want to be a financial burden. I've looked in the job listings in the newspaper, and I'm unqualified for basically all. As for the only job that would work out, I don't want to distribute flyers on conscientious grounds -- I find them a nuisance.

Yesterday I felt like crying when I woke up and at other points during the day, and I'm usually disgruntled and disagreeable.

That isn't to say that I haven't had fun, too; for instance, I've written a short "eighteenth-century novel" in three "volumes," which was truly amusing, though without literary merit. Before that I began to write a short story entitled "Friedrich von Tautzick." I've also been downtown twice, once with my brothers and once alone. The time I was there alone I made a huge detour, going in exactly the wrong direction along the north bank of the Spree, but enjoying the scenery and the adventurous sense of having made a stupid mistake immensely. I walked past the new main train station (Hauptbahnhof) and various buildings of the Bundestag, past the Reichstag, through the Brandenburger Tor and the Tiergarten, and down Unter den Linden past the Komische Oper and the Russian embassy and the stately Staatsoper and the beautiful building of the Humboldt Uni to the museum of German history. I've been to the Volkspark at the Rathaus Schoeneberg often, and I've walked twice in a lovely, shadowy graveyard where the composer Max Bruch is buried.

Anyway, now that I've poured forth my egotistic lament, and probably shown myself in a highly unflattering light, I feel much better!