Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
Says Rumi in A Community of the spirit, to be found on p. 3 of The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks.
Or as Rainer Maria Rilke put it in his Stundenbuch,
Ich kreise um Gott, den uralten Turm,
und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;
und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm
oder ein großer Gesang.
There I was in deep space talking to this god with stuff wrapped up in white cords, or ropes of twisted linen; a civilization's-worth of stuff he had, buildings and other structures, rocking chairs, you name it, pulling it all along and we were chatting.
Frustrating in a way - finally encounter a god and talk and then forget what you talked about. We talked for a long while about interesting things, I'm sure. I needed to use the restroom and so I walked over to the restroom, through this lobby-type area and along this brown carpeting towards this corridor (in a large convention hotel I visit often in my sleep); just before the corridor was this glass door. Above the door was a sign that read "AUTHOR" and inside sat Brendan. I planned to go in and talk to him after taking a whiz, cause cool, B. is The Author! I had no idea!
I had no problem finding the restroom, this long hotel-type restroom with a lot of clean, white porcelain urinals lined up under bright lights, including the long multi-user type you used to find. Only you know how hard it always is to turn around in a dream? How uni-directional they often are? So not only did I not see The Author or the god again, the entire dream turned into something else and quickly ended and I woke, needing to pee, and thought, yay, I didn't wet the bed and I talked to a god. Not to mention B. etc.
That Christmas classic, The Nutcracker Suite, at Raising Hell.
Woman: You could be a famous singer, you know. [Sips coffee.]
Man: [Chews cornflakes.] Say what?
Woman: I mean, you have a great voice.
Man: Aw.
Woman: And you're good-looking.
Man: Aw.
Cat: [Looks up in anticipation.]
Woman: Your problem is the personality.
Man: ...
Cat: Heh.
Woman: [Sips coffee, turns page of newspaper.]
All I can say is, lucky for us my alarm went off at ten to six this morning, because the world was in the process of ending. It was made of dirt and huge, round boulders, and an earthquake was tearing it apart.
It was fabulous.
In the midst of it all, I was trying to do something typically dreamlike, like thread a needle or something (not literally thread a needle; I was trying to accomplish something in the dream, but cannot now remember what) but it wasn't particularly frustrating.
I was sort of disappointed that I woke up when I did, because I wanted to see things go kaboom.
And on Saturday, Gamma and I bought scratch tickets at the store and I won fifty euro. Gamma claimed she'd won it, so rather than argue I let her cash it in and collect the money, then pocketed it. She basically forgot about it after that.
Guys, I have a great idea for a holiday present, but it's absolutely got to be a surprise, so women please don't read this or you'll spoil it, seriously.
You'll ruin it, honest, so don't look.
Really. Please. Don't peak.
No peaking now.
Just trust me for once and don't look. Guys only.
Ok, hi guys. I couldn't think of any other way to keep women from reading this. Listen, the "blue balls" myth and the "semen is good for your skin" myth seem to have been debunked lately; it's really too bad, we got a lot of mileage out of them. We're still doing pretty well with the "assembling Ikea products is hard" myth and the "it takes six hours to have your oil changed" myth, I hope no one blows them.
But something needs to be done. We need to start some new myths, and that's what I want to talk about today. I would do it myself, but everyone already knows I'm a lying weasel.
Here are a few suggestions, please add more in the comments:
Any other ideas?
Since the US Navy is going to use Windows 2000 on a carrier, does this meansn Clippy will now be saying things like, "It looks like you're trying to fend off a torpedo attack! What would you like to do? etc etc".
If you think this is a lame quiz, then you may have a superiority complex.
As we all know, one of the most painful aspects of maturation is coming to terms with the realization that one is an asshole and a disappointment. At least it was for me.
An evolutionary psychologist might say that the Superiority Complex arose as humans evolved from your apocryphal caveman into the slicker social beings we now are, in order to spare us this painful epiphany.
Other symptoms of the Superiority Complex would include deriving deep satisfaction from finding typographical errors in the newspaper or other publications; experiencing simultaneous pain and pleasure when a television or radio announcer misuses a word; feeling a diffuse sensation of "slumming" almost anywhere one goes; a general feeling of misanthropy. One might add to this list secondary symptoms such as feeling extreme distress in the vicinity of schools one has attended, often to the point of feeling nauseous merely at the smell of cafeteria food; avoidance of one's hometown and especially high-school reunions, often to the point of moving to a whole nother continent. Tertiary symptoms could include such behavior as habitually giving strangers nicknames spontaneously ("Monsterhead", "Baloneyfingers") and allergic reaction to trigger stimuli such as white socks with dark trousers, shoes and purses that don't match, or bad haircuts; likewise various other improprieties in the subject's area of expertise; good knowledge of trivia.
I don't know what the proper treatment would be, but I think it would begin with a good mirror.
She: and the vet said, cats can't cry.
He: [eyes narrow to slits in reaction to what sounds like an apology for cats.] ...
Cat: ...
She: and so they have to do other things.
He: [has an image of himself standing next to the tub, pissing onto the bath mat] ...
Cat: ...
She: [leaves room]
He: [looks at cat] ...
Cat: [looks at man] ...
He: [looks at cat] ...
Cat: [looks at man, then licks own asshole] ...
He: [waits for cat to finish, then places it gently on his lap] Kitty. [pets cat affectionately] Little kitty-witty.
Cat: Prrrr.
He: Good little guy at heart, aren't you. We never thought about that did we. [continues petting cat.]
Cat: Prrrr.
He: Daddy's little kitty. Good little guy. C'mon. C'mere. Yeah. You like that?
Cat: Prrrr.
He: Prrr. Yeahhhh. [whispers] Listen, you ever cry on the bathmat again, I'll give you something to fucking cry about, you unnerstand?
Cat: ...
He: [scratches cat under chin] Good little kitty.
Cat: Prrr.
Last night, although in this case the last night in question was over ten years ago, since I quit teaching ten years ago (I should throw a party to celebrate ten teaching-free years) after my English class got out I walked to the subway as usual but stopped by the produce stand on the corner; no, wait, the class got out at like nine-thirty at night, so this must have been in the evening before class started, say five-ish or six-ish; it was getting dark, so say sixish - I went into the produce shop on the corner and the bell over the door tinkled and the Kurdish man who ran the place greeted me as he greets all of his customers and I marveled at all the artfully-arranged fruit and the peace and calm the owner radiated calmed me down and I didn't want to leave. He asked me whether he could help me select something and I asked for him to recommend an apple. Jonagold, he said. They are a big, sweet, juicy greenish apple with a lot of red and yellow. They are a recent sort, a cross between the Jonathan and the Golden delicious. He didn't mention that last fact, I stumbled across that years later on the Internet, which didn't even exist, for me, at that time. At that time I was still typing stories on an electric typewriter while staring out the window at the fog covering the hills outside my in-laws' house.
I bought two. They were crisp, juicy and sweet, with a strong, delicious apple aroma. Excellent for eating fresh, although you would want something sourer for baking a pie. We chatted for a while longer, agreeing on many things, such as the importance of children.
A kid rolled past the office just now on one of those little scooter things. My youngest daughter has one. She likes it a lot. She insists on riding it to the local store when we go shopping. It complicates shopping immensely. Well, not immensely. Slightly. It is a small joy to watch a kid scoot, with a smile on their face, like a dog with its head out the window of a car speeding down the road.
Isn't the sunrise fine, any time of year?
Last night I was trying to decide whether life on this Earth is heaven or hell. I originally decided heaven, since everything works so well, natural-law-wise. There is nothing one could alter without fucking everything up totally. Like, you need gravity and friction. Even death, since without that, who cares about life?
But then I thought, if it were really heaven, there would be booze trucks. Little white vans with tiny wheels that would drive slowly through your neighborhood with a simple little tune playing on some bell-type instrument. Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle. It wouldn't be loud, but it would carry and even sitting in your house, waiting for dinner say, you'd be able to hear it. "Uh-oh, dad: Booze Truck!" your children would shout with a smile. And you'd run and jump into your garden clogs and your wife would stick a few bills into the pocket of the jacket you were pulling on as you dashed out the door. You'd catch the booze truck at the corner and the driver would have a friendly greeting on his lips and he'd open the back of the van and you'd stand there, trying to decide, gin or whiskey? Macallan or Oban? Lagavullin or Jamesons?
I would like to add an "archives" function to The Bug blog (link over there at the right) but don't have the spare mental capacity at the moment to figure out how. Can someone tell me, in an e-mail or in comments to this post, whether it is possible to arrange the entire blog in a way that when you go there, the latest post shows, plus links to the previous/next posts? i.e. make it browsable by clicking a link to previous or next? And/or a link to an archives page, which would be simply a list of titles, which are links? What I don't want is one big page where all the actual posts are displayed; rather, I want the one-by-one thing. What code do I insert where? Thanks.
Hussein Captured Trying to Masquerade as Times Foreign Correspondent John F. Burns
Is DEBKAfile legit or a bunch of crackpots? Would it change anything if Saddam Hussein had been held captive and sold to the Americans rather than courageously captured by them?
They're spreading a great deal of salt on the roads and I'm low on wiper fluid and budgeting it, cleaning the windshield just a little and only when absolutely necessary, waiting for melting ice to run down the glass and using that to clean off more salt, saving fluid for the ride home when the roads could be really hairy who knows with the result that the world is seen through a thick grey film this morning.
A streetcar sparks and I think of Poland now.
Girl: MGwulggwul.
Dad: [translating] Her mentor said...
Girl: Mgwulggwul.
Dad: She's going to France for a semester...
Girl: Mgwulggwul.
Mom: Look, would you please just take out the retainer so I can understand you?
Girl: Mgwulggwul.
Dad: She says, Dad understands me.
Mom: Take out the retainer.
Girl: Mgwulggwul.
Dad: It has spit on it.
Girl: Mgwulggwul.
Mom: So what, it's your spit.
Girl: [removes retainer, wipes finger on dad's pants] Still...
Mom: I mean, it's not like when your father peels a tangerine and then licks all the sections so no one else steals them from him...
Dad: Mgwulggwul.
The temperature plunged, rain changed to snow, thunder rumbled over our house. It was wonderful. Not so great to drive in however. You'd think Austrians would have figured out driving in snow by now. But the freeway was slowed to a crawl.
My boss grabbed me this morning and dragged me away from my desk and twisted my arm and made me accompany him and an attractive lady from work to the picturesque easternmost province of Austria, namely Burgenland, where we had to visit vintners and taste their products and buy some for receptions at work.
Burgenland typically produces some of the best wind wine in Austria, maybe the best, and we went to some of the best winemakers. Buying from the producers themselves, it is relatively cheap. I picked up a couple cases of this and that for home consumption too. Well, home drinking. Now that my cleaning lady might have been exposed to TB, I hate to say "consumption" anymore.
After making such a big deal of it during November, I suppose I should report in on the results of the Metamorphosism Challenge. As you will recall, the challenge was to write two novels in a single month under hardship conditions for a minimum of 93,000 words.
I just made it. Here's my profile at nanowrimo. If any of the other Metamorphosism Challenge participants are reading this, please leave a comment about whether you finished. I doubt it. Very few people are so full of bullshit that they could ever actually do this.
Unfortunately for me, the quality of the finished product leaves some room for improvement. I'm working on completing the stories, on rewriting them, adding such essential elements as cohesion, coherence, plot and character development. But it was fun. Well, not exactly fun. In fact, I'll never try this again. I never want to see another word of fiction as long as I live, at least not mine. I'm currently reading Santaland Diaries to clean out my head.
We will need a link to a Caspar David Friedrich seascape for this post.
Where are all the Caspar David Friedrich seascapes this morning?
Here are a couple. Not the one I mean though. Imagine this one without the people, painted all only in brown. Oh, here's a nice one of Andromeda by Gustav Doré. Off topic, but pretty, goddess in chains etc. Here's a Friedrich, Seascape in the Moonlight, that's maybe a little closer, but still too colorful. Abbey in an Oak Forest comes closer, mood-wise. Another moon rising over the sea. Two men by the sea at moonrise, for a change.
Feh. The bastards at the Albertina don't have the image online, the one I'm looking for. This is nice, not what I'm looking for though. Ah, here it is. Arkona. Shoot, that one isn't working. Look, the painting is called Arkona. Here's a photo of the Cape of Arkona, which is apparently on Rügen, Germany's largest island. Thanks to the Teddy Bear Museum in Rügen for that one. Imagine a picture sort of like that, with more beach and more waves, at night, painted all in brown by a Romantic painter, namely CDF.
End of exposition. On to the story.
Wait, just a bit more exposition. On CDF - normally I don't like the Romantic painters, because they often dive off into kitsch and look like something that should be hanging over a sofa in a furniture store. I do like them, however, when they're at their craziest, or when they keep away from painting people. This Friedrich painting was like that. Painted all in brown, dark brown, and pencil; hanging on the wall at the Albertina when we were wandering around there after looking at the Dürer exhibition (which was, I must say in retrospect, disappointing; not Dürer himself, although he too was a bit of a disappointment in the painting department, although we all knew that, right, that he was a great printmaker, not such a fantastic painter. But the exhibition just presented the usual works in the usual German hero-worship way; I would have liked more biography, more of Dürer the celeb, more self-portraits. The Rhinocerous I would have liked to see. A more critical, newer approach...) hanging there on the wall, and it was just brilliant. The moon over a stormy sea at night, all in brown, each individual wave lashing without looking anal-retentive. Wonderful. One of those Stendahl syndrome moments. I see I've been mispelling it. Stendhal Syndrome. Just stand there and look and look.
Driving to work this morning before sunrise, same feeling. Dark brown deciduous woods, sky going from black to purple and pink, grey-brown clouds catching the first sunlight; frozen brown fields. It was a Caspar David Friedrich moment.
Something made me think of my dad, and that was another good thing. He's a guy I like a lot. No one's perfect, and your mileage may vary, but if you stop trying to accept someone as your personal savior and just forgive them for their shortcomings and love them for who they are, sometimes that can be good. I forget exactly what reminded me of him, in the way that I forget my dreams; I am in a dream state when I commute to work, which is scary when you think about it.
Anyway, set your sliders for this scene to display properly: Deer all the way to the left at "0", Fog=0. Cat smell from collar about a 10, traffic way down around =25, warmth from heater=70 and Caspar David Friedrich =100.
What the hell was I talking about?
Monsterhead.
Okay, here's how my father comes into this, I remember now. When I was a kid he was describing another bus driver to me, a large man with a German surname. "He had a head shaped like a German WWII helmet," my father said. As if the German helmets were designed that way not because it was just a neat design, but because that shape fit the average German skull. Monsterhead reminded me of that. He had an oversized cranium, high bulging forehead.
Like someone Leonardo da Vinci may have sketched in a study for a background character in some painting of purgatory. This guy, say, if his skull were twice as large.
Moreover, he is bald. She is standing there, minding her own business, and the man is looking her over, up and down, up and down, really giving her the eyeball. Hey baby. Not just undressing her with his eyes, you know. The wheels were really turning in that large skull of his. Monsterhead had her undressed and trying on various new outfits. Maybe he had her posing as Andromeda, chained to the rocks naked. Who knows.
Anyway, on account of my good mood, this made me smile widely. I laughed, laughed at him, and at all of us, waiting there for my light, and when the laugh was finished I kept grinning broadly. I couldn't see the woman's eyes because my rear-view mirror was in the way, but apparently she had seen me smiling because now she was smiling too and looking my way. And when they got the green light and started crossing the street, she looked over at me several times until I finally made eye contact and she gave me a big smile just for me, and I gave her a big smile just for her, and she gave me a wave and we had a nice little time right there for a few seconds. As if Amor were hovering about, firing rubber-tipped arrows at people.
The epiphany, or maybe just realization, for me was, you can flirt with people simply by smiling at them. This may sound obvious, but I had always assumed that it would be frightening and icky if I were to smile at someone.
But lo.
Guess not.
Look out, world.
Thanks, Monsterhead.
One difference between Mig and Marcel Proust:
Proust writes:
Setting: Family house during holiday season.
Characters: Man, cat.
Man: You fucker.
Cat: ...
Man: You fucking little bastard.
Cat: ...
Man: You know what this means, don't you.
Cat: ...
Man: It's your way of saying, I want to be an outdoor cat tonight.
Cat: ...
Man: "I want to get my ass kicked by the neighbor cat tonight," is what you're saying.
Cat: ...
Man: I just cleaned the litter box for you, you know. You have no excuse. What's your problem?
Cat: ...
Man: [unlocks door, throws cat out, closes door before cat can dash back inside.] Take that. I hope he kicks your ass.
Cat: [mutters under breath] Just wait, human. You have to sleep sometime.
Man: [Carries bath mat into laundry room.] Feh.
His wife returns tomorrow from her business trip. He will pick her up at the airport. He will tell her he doused himself with diesel fuel. He imagines her saying, "next time call the Crisis Hotline first when things get that bad."
The anorak seemed relatively dry this morning, and relatively fluffy in a limp and lumpy way. He wore it iceskating. "What smells like a dog. It's you! You smell like a dog! Your coat does!" the oldest daughter said.
"Oh, is that the coat you got diesel on yesterday?" The Friend asked.
Younger daughter, enter stage right. "What smells like a cat? You smell like a cat! You smell like M! Hahahahaha!" M being the naughty red cat that jumps up onto kitchen counters to lick cutting boards, and pisses on everything.
They skated for a while. Round and round. Nice day for it. Sunny. Cold. Then they had lunch. Then they, what? Cleaned house a bit due to tuberculosis scare. Then harp gig at church somewhere: drop harpist and instrument off, drive home, do a little housecleaning, return half hour later (it's a 23 minute drive each way). They were great again, he thought, wiping a tear from his eye. "When are they finally finished," asked the little one.
Priest invited them to stick around. Go to the pub across the street, he'd pay. But they, alas, had to rush to the next engagement, Xmas gulash party at the rowing club.
By now the anorak had been dried to a fluffy crisp in the drier and he wore it because it no longer smelled like dog or cat.
You know what a Rhodesian Ridgeback is? One of his favorite dogs, for sure. Beautiful, elegant animals. There were two of them there, all over his anorak from the second he arrived. Sniff sniff.
Sniff sniff.
Teen girls grab 3-CD sampler box of 80's rock and quiz him, giving him names of songs and he has to give the artist. He gets nearly all the US/UK bands right, except for one he never listened to in the 80's. He misses all the Euroshite bands.
Not a single punk or new wave number on the three album set, either.
The gulash was good too. Then they left. Bye, they said. Merry Christmas, some people said. Sniff sniff, said the Rhodesian Ridgebacks.
He woke with an earache and a sore throat. The radio said cold, and storm winds and snow in the mountains. He didn't know about the snow but the radio was right about everything else.
He fed the cats. He got the big girl up and then he got the little one up and fed them and loaded them into the car and drove the big one to the train station. He drove the little one home and she said what shall we do and he said what about eat a proper breakfast and she wasn't interested. She wanted to play a game. She had money burning a hole in her pocket and she wanted to go to the local store and spend it so they dressed warmly and went to the local store.
"I sure like this brand-new goose down anorak," he said. "It sure is warm."
He got a newspaper and a lottery ticket and she got some sort of yogurt product with crackly chocolate bits and probably pink glitter. Everything she gets has pink glitter. Then the low-fuel light came on in the car and he drove them to the gas station to fill the tank. He filled the tank with diesel and was topping it off, getting a drop more in and another drop and when he pulled the nozzle out of the tank it was dripping fuel and a gust of wind blew diesel fuel onto his brand-new goose down jacket. Just a few drops on the sleeve.
He said, fuck.
He went into the station to pay.
The lady rang up his purchase. "Get some on you, did you?"
"A bit."
"Better soak that fast, or you'll never get it out," she said.
He said he would. On his way out, he noticed he'd gotten more on himself than he'd originally thought. It was all over the front of his anorak. It was all over his Doc Martens.
Fuck, he thought. He could really go for a cigarette right now, he thought.
Then he thought, maybe not such a good idea.
He drove them home and hand-washed his anorak in warm water with a gentle soap, as per instructions. It was the first time in his life he'd ever paid attention to those instructions.
It still smelled like diesel so he moved the jacket upstairs into the bathtub and washed it again but it still smelled like diesel. At that point he noticed he had diesel on his jeans and on his sweater. He got undressed and found diesel on his t-shirt as well. His socks and underpants were okay, though.
He washed his clothes. He washed his anorak again just for the sheer fun of it. His mother-in-law and father-in-law came over to pick up the little one and asked why he was washing clothes. He told them the truth, taking care to frame the story in such a way that he looked as intelligent as possible.
He blamed it on the wind.
After they left with the little one he didn't have much time to go shopping so he just went back to the local shop and bought a few things, forgetting things like toothpaste and floss, and hair gel and after shave. Then he had to hurry to the local school to pick up a friend of the big one -- yes, that friend -- and rush her to Vienna to meet the big one who had bought three tickets to the Albrecht Dürer exhibition at the Albertina museum. Dürer being his all-time favorite artist and the friend being artistically-inclined and talented, for a 14-year-old.
She was no where to be found at the school. He stood in the cold wind and looked around. Three day weekend coming up and tons of parents picking their kids up at school for outings. Chaos. He called his daughter in Vienna and asked her to call her friend and find out what was up. She called back and said her friend was not answering her phone.
He looked some more and found her getting onto a bus. He asked her, want to go to the exhibition? Didn't anyone tell you we were taking you today? You didn't even know? Want to go anyway? We have tickets already.
Okay, she said.
He thinks, I'd be a pretty good kidnapper. At least of my children's friends.
Turns out, the misunderstanding hinged on different understandings of the word "mention." His wife had mentioned the exhibition, and going today, to the friend a week before. The friend had thought mention meant mention. Wife thought mention meant, you know, mention the car's dirty and it gets warshed. Mention the garbage is full and it gets taken out, or else.
On the way into Vienna he tries to think of something to talk about that's not stupidly school-related.
"You can put in a different CD if you want," he says.
"Oh, that's okay," she says.
Only 45 minutes later, they're ready to pull into the parking garage at the State Opera. Red sign flashes, "FULL". He thinks, man.
No other parking far and wide. But then someone leaves the garage and they get a good spot.
They meet daughter.
They drink coffee at Strabucsk.
They go look at pitchers. Long line waiting to buy tickets. They jump line. People grumble. He thinks, fuck you bitches, I have a ticket.
The ticket-holders' line is about 25 minutes long. They get inside. Another line. Dürer is the big German-language master, right. This is the second-to-last day of the exhibition. Everyone who'd been putting it off is here today. It's like the Louvre in front of the Mona Lisa, only everywhere.
He learns three things:
You have any idea how many pretty art books there are? Humans are a prolific race, art-wise. Or, at least, art-book-wise.
But he makes it out with a single postcard of the Dürer etching "Melancholia" and a single small gift to send a friend for Xmas. He's always liked "Melancholia" and the exhibition mentioned something about Dürer/the artist making it through melancholy to artistic creativity and he thought, I can relate to that. Dürer was depressive, according to some people who may have been simplifying things.
They drop friend off at her house, pick small one up at grandparents.
He checks his new goose-down anorak in the dryer. The goose down has formed, like, golf-ball-sized balls of wet down in each compartment. He tries to break up the balls and sticks it back into the dryer, on low. Tumble. Extra-gentle.
After the little one is in bed, he does a little housecleaning because the cleaning lady couldn't come because she said, I probably don't have tuberculosis but a work colleague has it and should I come or not and he said, nah.
He checks his anorak in the dryer. The balls are looking a little fluffier. He makes an aspirin drink for his earache.
Some CD in the player this morning, some heavy-duty band; me wondering just how loud will this thing go. Stereos used to go up to 10. This goes way past. 10 on this is barely audible. 10 is not good enough for us anymore. 15 is the default "mute". The women in my life start making noises when I turn it past around 26, noises like, loud enough. Or, not that CD again. Nevertheless, 32 is minimum listening level. Just how high will it go, I wonder, now that the car is empty but for me? It goes way past 50 I'm sure. Maybe there is no end to the scale. An infinitely loud car stereo brought to you by Blaupunkt. The woofers start flapping and saying Uncle around 44, depending on how much bass the band is using. There is, surely, a sonic level beyond which one would need some sort of auxilliary amplification. A level beyond which so much energy would be drained from the car's system that it would decelerate until it was ultimately just crawling along the freeway going THUNK-THUNK-THUNK with a long line of cars behind it. Maybe that's what that senior citizen was doing this morning. Testing his stereo.
It's the same with people. I dated a perfect woman for a while. She was a 10. A genius, for one thing, and a body like a Playboy Bunny for another thing. So, except for my wife, she was the closest thing to a 10 ever to whisper my name, until one began subtracting the hidden deficits, like her husband was getting out of prison soon, she smoked menthols and wore false eyelashes that resembled gothic centipedes. Also she thought a meal wasn't a real meal unless it included Brussels sprouts, no offense Belgium. But she was what she was.
Now that is insufficient. Now one must inject various substances into the face to puff this up and paralyze that. Thread golden wires in here and so on until everyone eventually converges.
I thought I'd heard everything until I met Brandy. I was driving a diplomat somewhere and waiting outside a hotel she was just leaving. She asked me for a ride and I shook my head. "Sorry, I'm already waiting to pick up a guy," I said.
She looked at her watch. "That's okay. It's too late now anyway." She lit up a cigarette and leaned against my Mercedes and blew smoke straight up. She held her pack of menthols in my direction and I politely declined.
"They go in through the mouth now," she said. "The advantage is it doesn't leave any scars."
I looked at her like, what?
"Of course you have a sore throat for a while. Worse than a tonsilectomy."
"Who goes in through the mouth?" I said.
"You have to go to Brazil for it. It's not approved anywhere else yet. But it works. Just look at me. I know you were looking. Does it work or does it work?" And right there in front of this posh hotel, just around the corner from one of Vienna's busiest streets, she unbuttoned her ankle-length fur coat. She was stark naked underneath. Her hairless body reminded me of one of those smooth white grubs various natives roast, but it was perfect, like she said. Pointing out her features, she reminded me of a luxury car salesman. "Of course as long as they're going in, I thought, I'll have them do the rib reduction and not only the breast replacement." She had a tiny waist. "I had them take out my appendix while they were at it, and correct my navel. Look, no scars anywhere. None in the armpits, none around the nipples, none underneath, see for yourself."
"Do a lot of people do that?" I asked.
She was digging in her purse, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth and she just nodded. She removed her hand from her purse and waved something small and silver at me. "Come here and look for yourself." She handed me what turned out to be a dental mirror and opened her mouth wide. I held the mirror inside her mouth and peered down her throat. Sure enough, there was a fine white scar.
"Endoscopic cosmetic surgery. If you could buy stock in it you could retire tomorrow, it's the coming thing."
"You run around with this in your purse all the time?" I returned her mirror.
"I'm a dental hygienist," she said. "Look." Her purse was full of sharp metal probes and scrapers, and fluoride foams in assorted flavors, tubes of flavored anaesthetic gels; she had various toothbrushes and rubber-tipped picks, latex gloves and plastic bibs.
I was about to ask her for her card, but then my diplomat came out and I had to go.
Lacking a nano-tape-recorder into which one could dictate blog entries during the commute to work -- the most fruitful time for the imagination to fuse with the dream-consciousness and compose creative and fanciful, yet deep, stories (and which, on further consideration, is just as well, since 99% of said dictation would amount to brief bursts such as, "oh, ride right up on my bumper, you think that's going to make me go any faster, you fucker," and "slow lane, slow lane you moron that's where you drive when you want to go slow that's why they call it the slow lane, fuck!" and "shit where'd I put the other goddamn ACDCCD?") -- I am doomed, instead, to just forget them. Amazing the brilliance without which the world can still survive. Or, maybe, mildly interesting how the world zooms past insignificant people sitting on the side of the road trying to remember something they thought was funny, splashing them with muddy water.
So anyway, my mother-in-law. She and the father-in-law are watching the girls while Alpha frolics in Tokyo this week. The grandparents are indispensable. My life would grind to a halt, and fast, without them.
But still, but still.
I love them, they're great. They just need to learn to relax a little. Do a little yoga, a few breathing exercises. Shake out all that bad chi. Ask me first if they want to cancel orthodontist appointments. Stop fucking telling me how to raise my kids.
No, seriously, they rock. I don't have any problems with them. They're sweet and mean well. They're just not getting any younger. It's only a week. We'll survive.
They celebrate name-days here in Austria. The saint's day of the saint who shares your name is your name-day. Sometimes you get a card, usually just a "happy name-day". Rarely a gift, except maybe little kids. Or maybe it's just me.
My MIL lit a candle for the nameday of a deceased relative. A large Christmasy candle. Then forgot about it. She lit it in the morning in her house, and remembered it in the evening at our house.
The kids and I were all like, "relax, Oma."
"Go lie down. Take a load off. Opa is checking on it."
"It's only five miles away, you'd see smoke if there were a big fire."
She continued, however, to serve us food. She couldn't relax until she knew whether her house had burned to the ground, or not. Sheesh.
Four more days.
...not only are you an asshole, you're a multipurpose asshole.
Melissa is talking about all of us. I dunno. I was going to leave a comment on her site. I probably still should. It's not nice to talk about people behind their backs. She's talking about the asshole nature of being human, which sounds like a title that would make Milan Kundera go, "Hey... that's pretty g... nah."
I pretty much agree with her, if I am understanding her right. If what she says about asshole nature is what I think about when I think about our inescapable culpability in everything.
I was at a big conference this week, of a large, very large international organization dedicated to development aid. Where a very eloquent American gentleman spoke in a very critical tone of changing priorities, of how a billion people live on less than $2 a day, of how the the United States, for example, but other developed countries are not necessarily doing better in this regard, spends so and so much on "defense" and so and so much on development aid and the "war on poverty" and how the two figures are shamefully out of proportion.
I spend $15 a month for hosting for my blog empire. What some people spend to live for a week, or two weeks. So I'm culpable too, as are you.
And asshole nature, yes, I'm ashamed of things I have done, of other things I continue to do. Less so, the older I get, partly because I grow more shameless, partly because I grow less shameful, I hope.
All you can do is move towards the light.
Recently I was wondering when I would be able to play on some sort of amateur orchestra. Stuck way in the back, say, hidden well away, but playing still. Today my cello teacher asked whether I'd be interested in playing on the music school orchestra, for some concert in May. Nothing difficult, and lots of it. I said okay, barring conflicts with previously-scheduled stuff. Yay.
This little cat might think it queer
To shit without a catbox near,
But fucking does it anyway...
I vote Eeksy-Peeksy for Poet Laureate.
And start lobbying now for the 2008 Nobel Literature Prize.
We went to an international bazaar last weekend. Xmas gifts, national foods, etc. Many people, many families milling about.
I couldn't find the Irish stand right away, so instead of buying a can of Guinness I went to the Belgian stand and asked the man to recommend one of his many beers to me. He had cherry beer and raspberry beer and Weizenbeer and light beer and dark beer. I forget the name of the one I had. It's the strong, dark one. Joeri probably knows which one I'm talking about.
Then I saw a guy drinking Guinness and asked him where he got it and went and got one for myself. It's the best way to experience the world, all concentrated into a single convention hall like that, with a Guinness in your hand.
Then I heard bagpipes and went to investigate and it was the Scotland stand, where Alpha had a tea and scones, and I had a shot of Macallan's fine single malt whiskey. I think Macallan's is my favorite to be honest. I'm partial to the Islay whiskies, but Macallans is even better, I think.
Then my wife said I was drunk and we got into a big fight and she went off into Vienna to hang out with friends.
I wasn't drunk, though.
Justice is, I think, the one thing all our souls hunger for most. Justice applied to other people, I mean. Especially Germans. We realize this on those rare occasions when we witness it in action.
I commute to work by car five days a week. On my drive, there is one spot on the freeway with an extra-long off ramp leading up to a bridge that is usually congested, meaning the cars on the off-ramp are backed up, sometimes for a mile, waiting to get off. And every day, some asshole jumps the line and merges into the off-ramp traffic at the very last moment, right at the end, where it veers off to go onto the bridge.
This requires you, usually, to slam on your brakes to avoid rearending them, and every week one sees glass on the road there, or sometimes even two smashed up cars where someone didn't quite make it.
About once a month, you also see a police car parked on the emergency lane between where this offramp veers off, and the freeway. Watching for people taking cuts. Far too seldom, but whatever. They also have bankrobbers to catch I guess.
As an American, I learned only one thing in school: you don't take cuts. Austrians don't learn this lesson. They learn Latin instead. Europeans in general, except maybe the British, and even there I'm not sure, are not big on waiting their turn. Although, never having traveled much in Northern Europe, I might be leaving someone out, sorry if that's the case.
I've also lived in Austria long enough to internalize the slight antagonism many people here feel towards their larger neighbor to the north. So when a BMW with German plates (Munich) took cuts right in front of me this morning, and I had to apply my brakes robustly to avoid an accident, I was doubly miffed. For some reason, though, I neither flashed my brights at him, nor availed myself of sign language. I just sighed and turned 9 Inch Nails up another notch.
Maybe it was the good karma points I earned by not reacting with anger; we'll never know. But there was a policeman waiting on the emergency strip. And he flagged the BMW over. And he stopped me and when I rolled down my window, he asked, "Did that guy take cuts?" (actually, literally, he asked he in fine Austrian dialect "if that guy had pinched in front of" me). To which I could only nod, and say, "Oh, totally."
I wanted to hug him.
