My Very Last Life

Claus died – one of my best friends, a writer, we went drinking nearly every Saturday and bullshitted about life ... he took with him a thing I had that I can never replace ... a part of myself that was real, perhaps the realest part of myself. 

I've been struggling all year to get an online project off the ground and not even my friends thought there was money to be made in it. This week, I wrote my first invoice. 

If I had to name some of the things that really had meaning in my life it would be love, family and friends, God or some kind of search for meaning, my cats, American and German and then on that same level, great books. Not all books, just the great ones - they stand out like giants, they have followed me like true friends, and I want to live and die among them – more, I want to be - or write - one of them.    

If you've gotten this far, you have the distance to look back on the decisions you made in life and ask yourself: What was I thinking? 

I came to Germany, I stayed here. Whart was I thinking. 

Maybe it was my way of trying to erase myself. But now it's different: I no longer want to be erased. 

My Very Last Life - my unedited thoughts about my life at and after 60 and making something out of it I could never have done earlier. 

You want to know what I'm thankful for on Thansgiving? I'll tell you what I'm thankful for – I'm thankful for one goddamned minute of peace and quiet without something going wrong or the wife needing help or food smoking and setting off the fire alarm or the doorbell ringing or some deadline coming up quick and passing without being fulfilled or the cat meowing incessently for attention, that's what I'm thankful for. And for this goddamned peant butter cocktail. I'm actually very thankful for the goddamned peanut butter cocktail.  

How I came to seek a "last life," a final self-invention, upon turning 60, what I hope to accomplish in my next and last 20 years of life, and how. Wish me luck! 

Late night rant after it became clear that Biden had won the election – I thought I was going to be more mjoyful than I was, and there are reasons why ... maionly because the central problem of the last four years has not vanished, naemly, us. But still – it's good to say goodbye to Trump and thank him for his service and wish Biden luck and success for the next four years - and the same to us. 

Last Episode of Great German Words –

Over 2019, I discussed 52 Great Germans Words, sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, all of them words I love. It was a pleasure and an honor to be able to speak about nothing so complicated and controversial as simple words, and in that time I realized how much of the world and life is buried deep within those simple collections of letters and sounds.

For all of those who listened, thanks – I appreciated and enjoyed it. Here's wishing you all the best for 2020 and for all the rest of it too!

Guten Rutsch! 

To Christmas, the verb