dream_german e_o_i I'm at supper with my real parents and my German host parents from immer_immersion. In dream_Germany, at a dreamily long table. Dad pushes his chair away from the table. Arild jokes that being the first to do that comes with a penalty. I'm inspired to invent a German compound word for this: "Abendessenpflegetaxen!" Abendessen = supper (correct) Pflege = care (correctly recalled as a German word, though not very sensical in context) Taxen = my dream_mind running out of the language, at least temporarily; tax in German is "Steuer" Anyway, no one at the table seems greatly amused, so I add apologetically, "I'm just being silly." Another man - not Arild, younger - smiles and says something like, "You're just talking to hear yourself talk" in German. I resent that. He has the same smugness as the grad student who flirted with me at the university S-Bahn stop and then laughed openly at my clumsiness in his language. (Hypocrisy: years earlier I laughed at Jurgen, though not to his face, when he advised me in an email to watch out for "sleepery" ice. But the laughter was also because I found this adorable...as I indeed (mis(s)) took his statement for romantic sentiment rather than friendly practicality. Either way, Pflege.) 260222 ... epitome of incomprehensibility But that last part is in the desert, the just desert, of the real. Flee I now to dreamality: years years years YEARS ago, I had a dream where airport in German was "aerotahn." (I blame chocolate and Kraftwerk.) 260222 what's it to you? who go blather from