Looking at 55

In German double and triple digits are called a Schnapszahl (schnapps number). A Schnapszahl is a lucky number. Barack Obama is the 44th U.S. president. Turning 55 I’m hoping for a lucky year.
Yesterday I found four pennies and two dimes. I interpreted for a German writer at the Pen World Voices festival—something I had never done before. Tomorrow the filming of New York Memories starts. I wrote the script; Rosa von Praunheim will direct. After a hiatus of more than twenty years I will be acting again.
This morning as I sliced bread I almost cut off the top of my left ring finger. For two hours it bled profusely. I’m hoping for Glück im Unglück which is not the same as a blessing in disguise. The Yiddish Massel im Schlamassel comes closer.
I feel lucky that I can still write with my right hand, lucky to sit under a regal London Plane in Bryant Park. The park is a miracle of an urban oasis: Paris-style park chairs, promenades, woody shrubs, bright red triumph tulips surrounded by skyscrapers. A large green lawn where pigeons and sparrows strut with confidence. No need to fly fight over crumbs. The 11, 000 people who use the park on an average spring day leave plenty.
I’m in good company. Goethe’s bust is in front of me; the statue of Gertrude Stein and the Public Library, the most exquisite temple of books, are behind me. I listen to the unique New York soundtrack. The steady hum of car traffic blends harmoniously with birdsong. An occasional siren of an emergency car seems to belong to a futuristic sci-fi movie. The children on the carousel’s horses shriek with delight. I look over to the dark, masculine Bryant Park Hotel with its delicate golden figures and imagine a middle-aged couple from Hanover on the terrace of their room. I imagine how amazed they are by the New York spectacle.
Here in Bryant Park the 19th-century smashes into the 21st. As if Marcel Proust was writing for the Wall Street Journal. I’m opening my notebook. My left finger still throbs with pain, but I move my right hand and start writing. No need to create stories. I just have to find them.
How lucky I am to live in the greatest city in the world.