1 May - The Life of Others
Went to see the movie with D. who is from one of those countries (Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia etc). Great film, you don’t need my review. We come out and she says ‘That’s how my life was’. I say ‘No, it was never as bad where you grew up as it was in East Germany’. (hell, like I lived there? But that's one of the nice advantages of dealing with Eastern Europeans, they're not that sensitive and meet your comments head on instead of merely taking silent umbrage). She acknowledges this – we’ve previously spoken about the black market for food and the having to forcibly study Russian etc - but she never said that the same culture of spying and grassing on each other was rife. Well actually it was and from before the Russians, when her elders didn't oppose the nazis sending the Jews to Aushwitz ...
She tells me it’s just recently been discovered (and widely publicised that) her paternal grandfather, quite well known in the art world had been an informer for 20 years. This has rocked the family, but granddad is dead so cannot be offering any explanation on why he gave away all his friends to the authorities. So now her surname is notorious and she’s not happy about it. She’s married so her kids don’t carry that surname but still, back home they don’t register her English surname, they know who she is. I say maybe grandad wasn’t so bad, maybe he tried to give relatively harmless info but she must know more than she’s telling me, she’s practically livid. Apparently her government now wants everyone who was an informer to sign some kind of confession to apologise, but what good could that do? It would only lead to retribution on the heads of relatives of the ‘baddies’ and the whole cycle keeps in place.
The conversation turns to who we’d be grassing on, and how many secrets we know. I maintain that it’s all so… pointless, nobody can resist torture, and then you just get killed in any case. Weak, moi? Do it to Julia is my motto. But we can’t seem to stay on this track. We hope it’s hypothetical but hey, the Wall only came down in ’89.
The conversation that we switch to is even less to my liking. She wants to leave her husband and this time she sounds serious. She’s put up with a lot over 15 years or so - endearing as he is, he’s also useless under very many headings and I’d have killed him long ago as what’s the point of living with a genius for example if the genius is always distracted and never, ever takes out the trash? But why now I want to know? But I come out with the answer by myself immediately, ‘Girl you turned 40 only six months back. It’s your little watershed year, but don’t throw it away, please, please don’t. Leave the kids at home alone, tell him he has to look after them, go take a month in Thailand, kick your shoes, do the usual detox/retox, hell take up yoga and meditation, that universal panacea for urbanites on the edge (my favourite would be potato picking in some poor country), have the affair with the fitness instructor or someone else 15 years younger than you, come back and pick another job, but don’t throw it all away….’
Me, I’ve left the watershed year behind a while back. I did a combination of the above and plenty more and for much longer, but I conveniently had no husband to chuck. However, I’m convinced that I could set up in business holding it together for people who’ve come to the end of their tether at 40. I wonder how he’s doing or if he knows it’s going to hit him, this probable tragedy that could also be a rebirth of some kind. After all I never believe that forever is fore more than a few years at a time. Maybe I could fly to LA?
She tells me it’s just recently been discovered (and widely publicised that) her paternal grandfather, quite well known in the art world had been an informer for 20 years. This has rocked the family, but granddad is dead so cannot be offering any explanation on why he gave away all his friends to the authorities. So now her surname is notorious and she’s not happy about it. She’s married so her kids don’t carry that surname but still, back home they don’t register her English surname, they know who she is. I say maybe grandad wasn’t so bad, maybe he tried to give relatively harmless info but she must know more than she’s telling me, she’s practically livid. Apparently her government now wants everyone who was an informer to sign some kind of confession to apologise, but what good could that do? It would only lead to retribution on the heads of relatives of the ‘baddies’ and the whole cycle keeps in place.
The conversation turns to who we’d be grassing on, and how many secrets we know. I maintain that it’s all so… pointless, nobody can resist torture, and then you just get killed in any case. Weak, moi? Do it to Julia is my motto. But we can’t seem to stay on this track. We hope it’s hypothetical but hey, the Wall only came down in ’89.
The conversation that we switch to is even less to my liking. She wants to leave her husband and this time she sounds serious. She’s put up with a lot over 15 years or so - endearing as he is, he’s also useless under very many headings and I’d have killed him long ago as what’s the point of living with a genius for example if the genius is always distracted and never, ever takes out the trash? But why now I want to know? But I come out with the answer by myself immediately, ‘Girl you turned 40 only six months back. It’s your little watershed year, but don’t throw it away, please, please don’t. Leave the kids at home alone, tell him he has to look after them, go take a month in Thailand, kick your shoes, do the usual detox/retox, hell take up yoga and meditation, that universal panacea for urbanites on the edge (my favourite would be potato picking in some poor country), have the affair with the fitness instructor or someone else 15 years younger than you, come back and pick another job, but don’t throw it all away….’
Me, I’ve left the watershed year behind a while back. I did a combination of the above and plenty more and for much longer, but I conveniently had no husband to chuck. However, I’m convinced that I could set up in business holding it together for people who’ve come to the end of their tether at 40. I wonder how he’s doing or if he knows it’s going to hit him, this probable tragedy that could also be a rebirth of some kind. After all I never believe that forever is fore more than a few years at a time. Maybe I could fly to LA?
Labels: mid-life crisis
posted by Lisa Taylor @ 8:31 AM
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