Life is a Kabarett

Daily life in Leipzig has settled into an enervating pattern. Lenore is out the door early in the morning to iDiV, the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, where she is a visiting scholar. I spend a few hours on my writing project before heading out to do the day’s errands. Six flights of stairs down to street level affords me the opportunity to rehearse the script for the day, memorized from Google Translate.

Once in the market, I engage perfect strangers with a hearty “Hallo!” and then force myself to verbalize a stream of what sounds like absolute gibberish. The events that follow often are mysterious to me except that they contain elements from the German theater tradition of the Kabarett, which relies heavily on cynicism, sarcasm, and irony.

Today’s script was “Ich hätte gerne einen Haarschnitt.” It was over quickly, and it did not cost me too much.