Metamorphosism

Motivational tip

Child reluctant to go to school? Try setting it (the school) on fire. Big trucks, sirens and flashing lights capture a child's interest 9 times out of 10.

There were a couple firetrucks outside the kindergarten next door to Gamma's school, which is about 100 feet up the street from our house, this morning. On a normal day, she likes to go to school; today, she ran there in her nightgown before breakfast to see what was going on and came home shouting the news.

Flirting tips

Speaking of flirting, here's how I usually handle it when it comes up:

1. Pretend I'm invisible. And if that doesn't work,
   
2. Pretend the other person is invisible.

tics

So she's having a bad time lately. Squints eyes, snorts, pinches nose, blows on fingers as if she's blowing out a match, brushes hair back behind her ear, little cough. Everything in pairs. Can't get through a song practicing a piano without doing it. So he talks to her.

I did stuff like that when I was a kid, too.
Yeah?
Squinted. Made bubbles with my tongue and blew them out. Opened my mouth real wide like a big yawn. Like this.
Heh.
You should have seen me. I was a mess. Drove my little sister crazy at dinner.
Hahahaha.
Did this thing with my fingers, if I touched one thing with one finger, I had to do it with all my other fingers, to be fair or symmetrical or something.
Heh.
And this other thing with my fingers, tracing around the nails of my fingers with the tip of my thumb. Both hands of course. And this little prayer I'd repeat in my head.
?
Hundreds of times a day.
Wow.
Some of them I still find myself doing.

What about you?

Pink, pink, brown, pink, blue

Pink, pink, brown, pink, black, brown, pink, pink, pink, brown.
The gathering was international.
There was even a blue man.
Imagine someone with blue skin: that's what he looked like.
Pesticides will turn your skin blue. Always wash your grapes.

Job Coach

Woman, Roughly My Age: SO WHAT DID THE JOB COACH SAY?
Woman, Younger: WHAT IS THE RIGHT JOB FOR YOU?
Me: Eh, it was just the first session, guys. She had to find out what I was there for, exactly, and what I...
W,RMA: WHAT KIND OF JOB COACH IS THAT?
W,Y: SHE CALLS HERSELF A JOB COACH? FOR €70 A SESSION? I COULD CHARGE PEOPLE THAT AND SAY, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD.
Me: Hang on. How's she supposed to know what I want if I don't?
Both Women: SHE'S A JOB COACH!!!1!
Me: [sigh] Something with writing, she said.
W,RMA: THE LAST TIME YOU STAYED HOME TO WRITE I WORKED 60-HOUR WEEKS AND YOU NEVER PUBLISHED ANYTHING.
W,Y: WHAT SHE SAID:
Me: No one said anything about staying home. We're still at the beginning of the process.
W,RMA: HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE TO GO?
W,Y: SHE CALLS HERSELF A JOB COACH?
Me: I don't know, a few times. I'm supposed to keep track of my dreams etc. Except I can't remember any lately. Just, like the usual nightmares about killing people who are impossible to kill because they are so stubborn, and I am killing them inefficiently, with my hands and found objects.
W,RMA: JOB COACH.
W,Y: JOB COACH.

Gotten today:

Yelled at, sad, hungry, sandwich, two bananas, rained on, money from the cash machine, no cellphone, in roughly that order.

I've been without a cellphone for some time now. Maybe I give good emergency, because I am regularly told I should have one so I can be called in an emergency. Have an emergency? Just call me. I'll say, Oh that's too bad. And, What sort of an emergency are you having, and You, of all people.

I'd have gotten a replacement long ago but the very idea makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to go into an electronics store and weigh my options. I want someone to go, Here is your cellphone.

The money is for a job coach. I have made an appointment to meet with a job coach, recommended by a friend. That is, this particular job coach was recommended; the idea to see one was my own. It has to do with my idea that if one knows exactly what one wants, one is unstoppable to the extent of one's abilities, resources and luck. And the fact that I don't know exactly what I want.

I don't even know approximately what I want. Do I want to punch my irritating co-worker in the face or push her down a short flight of stairs into a dark cellar? Or just let her step into an open manhole? The possibilities branch endlessly in life in even the simplest things; when applied to a person of my looks and talents the options are daunting.

Actually, that was a bad example, the open manhole is it, 100% sure. But you know what I mean. I was eating bananas today as I walked around in the rain; it was all I could do not to drop them onto the sidewalk and stand across the street waiting for furniture movers to carry a piano past. But like I said, it was raining, who wants to stand around in that?

I have been taking the train more lately, until my newish car is delivered. I didn't feel like sitting with strangers so I stood by the door and stared morosely out the window at the grey morning sky and the near-autumnal landscape whizzing by. I tried to think of a word for what trains do when they go past besides "thunder" or "rumble". A dam went by and some freeway bridges and I saw the old painting of Bob Marley someone had done there - some self-taught artist - was still in place, it must be fifteen years old now. Someone else had more recently tagged a small prefab concrete office building with "ASSHOLE" in black and white letters taller than a man.

End of an era

My mechanic has a big barrel in his office he has you lean over when he tells you what's wrong with your Dobló. In this case, it's not the thermostat, it's the head gasket and it's not only that, it's a cracked cylinder head as well, if that's what it's called in English, I'm translating on the fly from the German.

I.e. repairs will most likely cost more than the thing is worth. After work Alpha is taking me to a Mazda dealership where she found a demo car, almost new, we can have it as early as November! that costs only two thousand whatevers more than we have in the bank.

I'd be tempted to just pay for the repairs instead, as that would cost less, but then I'd still have the Dobló, and be waiting for the next thing to go wrong, whereas if I pay a lot more, I can have a new car and be waiting for the next thing to go wrong, instead.

Also, we've had better luck with Mazdas.

I'll still get to see the Dobló now and then: my father-in-law wants to have it repaired and buy it. Or, he'll pay for the repairs and he gets it for father's day, to be accurate. He's a retired mechanic, it'll keep him busy. Something to haul his garbage in. And a harp now and then.

Mental exercise

What was I doing last night?
I walked to the train after work because the Dobló is at the mechanic's until some Italian sends a part. The car is 5 or 6 years old now, and who makes spare parts for cars that old?
Then Alpha picked me up and rushed me to my cello lesson.
Which went well. I basically sat and talked to my teacher the whole time and at the end said I'd like to do more Bach and he said okay and gave me a piece to start with.

Somewhere along the line, last night, or maybe earlier, sometime during the day, I felt bad. So I invented a coping mechanism, a mental exercise, which I give to you for free.

It works like this:

Imagine you died, and it really fucking sucked, and this is your second chance at life. What do you like about it most?

The best thing I ever ate

Nice place, Venice. We took the night train down, arrived 8 in the morning. A few minutes later Alpha was showing me around the market there, crabs and octopi and fruit and all that good stuff. We sat by a canal and drank €5 cappucinos (which I thought was expensive until we had coffee at St. Mark's Square the next day, sheesh).

We sat by the canal and had coffee and watched various boats go past. Brides and grooms in gondolas. Gray-haired/grey-bearded George Lukas-looking guys, there were a lot of them when we were there, maybe something to do with the film festival over on the Lido, which was ending that day. Various transport boats. Police boats, one with its siren.

People walking around. Venetians. Tourists. Mostly tourists.

For a city that has made its living from ripping people off commerce for centuries, for all of its existence, Venice is a nice place. You know this.

We had a hotel on the Lido. Nice place. Gave us an upgrade for a discount, as I mentioned. I had to pay the difference in cash, which made me think this wasn't going onto the books. Any of you in the hotel business? Is this a common thing?

The Lido is quite nice. Cleaner than Venice proper, with streets instead of canals, and cars instead of boats of course but otherwise similar. Plenty of movie stars that week. People in the stores were all very kind to us. Everyone was nice. Later, we heard George Clooney had been there that same weekend so maybe they were being nice to us in case I was him.

Big hotels along the beach, with private beaches that Alpha shamelessly crashed, and little huts on them and stuff. Hotels on the Lido cost about half what they do over in the Venice part of Venice, but they're actually cleaner, which has its pros and cons if you're one of the people who goes to Venice for the slime and decay, like me.

We got cleaned up at our hotel and took a boat back to Venice where we went to the Danieli for a drink and to scoff at the American tourists. The Danieli is a very, very beautiful and classy hotel. We briefly considered staying there last weekend, but they had no rooms available and if they had, they would've cost around €600, give or take. So we sat in the bar, Alpha drinking a prosecco, me drinking a dry martini, watching people come and go. No idea what nationality they were, but a great many of them were dressed in short pants, tee shirts or polo shirts, baseball caps, drank water out of plastic bottles in the middle of the lobby and spoke loudly with American accents. They can afford that hotel and yet they dress like that? Where's the fun in that? Don't they care about how we are perceived abroad? Iraq and Afghanistan are bad enough, but this is unforgiveable.

We walked past St. Mark's. It was closed to tourists and there was a guy turning people away. Alpha told him she wanted to pray and darted inside. I waited outside for her. She was just too quick for me.

We went to a restaurant Alpha likes. Everyone else there was speaking Italian. We ordered various things and ate them. Seafood. A sardine on cornbread covered with sauerkraut. Half a little octopus stuffed with something I was afraid to ask what. Little crunchy round things, which I figure were tiny crab bodies. Really hard to eat, I tried cracking them open and then eating whatever was inside, but they were mostly shell so I just cracked them open and moved them around on the plate so it would look as if I had made an effort. Rings of calimari. Other things. Alpha and I were splitting it, the antipasti plate, and the recognizeable things were gone pretty fast and it was up to me to finish the other stuff.

All in all it was pretty good. The wine was good and luckily not too strong. Not too expensive either.

The next day, Sunday, before taking a day train back to Vienna we went to see the Lucian Freud exhibition at the Museo Correr. I like Lucian Freud, he is one of few painters whose paintings I actually recognize when I see them, but the man inhabits one cold universe. Afterward we had our expensive St. Mark's Square coffee. Did a little shopping. Walked back towards the train station.

What is that bridge near the station, the Rialto? Nearby is a pizzeria you'd not notice walking past. We went in there for a glass of wine before leaving town, on impulse, and it was there that I had the single most pleasureable experience of my life.

Just like that. We ordered a bit of cake to go with our wine, this nut torte thing they had. It didn't look like anything special. I won't tell you what it was like for me, not exactly, because my kid sometimes reads this. It was like, I guess, think of the most desireable person you know. And they are in love with you. And you are doing whatever your favorite sex act is with them, and it's significantly better than it ever was with anyone else, for both of you, and you're feeling both parts at the same time, the physical and the emotional components, for both people.

I was going to ask them for the recipe, but I figured they bought it from a bakery somewhere, and we had a train to catch.

The nail-clipper and the dead earwig

The mechanic says it's the head gasket and not the thermostat, a big difference in his favor. It's sort of at the point where I have to decide whether to have the repair made or just junk the car, but it is just slightly cheaper to have the repair made. Thank you, Fiat corporation.

Yesterday I got a pay cut. Anyone out there with money-making schemes, ex-members of flakey governments for example, I'm all ears.

This morning, the Hans Christian Andersen story of the nail-clipper and the dead earwig played itself out in my downstairs bathroom.

You remember that one, don't you. How the nail-clipper in the drawer and the dead earwig in the shower drain are in love but can't figure out how to get together? And this guy taking a crap and cutting his toenails at the same time drops the nail-clipper guess where?

Kerplunk. Only, unlike the little tin soldier who ends up going down a drain, getting swallowed by a carp, found in the carp's stomach by the cook and reunited with his beloved ballerina figurine, this guy reaches into this filthy toilet and digs out the nail clipper and washes it off, because being a home-owner he knows how narrow the diameter of the plumbing is and cannot afford a plumber on top of everything else just now; he had no choice. Plus, he's fairly inured to disgust at this point in his life, having pets and children and a passing interest in politics. He washes off the nail clipper and finishes clipping his nails with the goddamned thing. And then he takes a shower, but first he gets a piece of tissue and removes hair and the dead earwig from the drain, that drain basket thing. Throws that into the trash.
Typical Hans Christian Andersen, unhappy ending.

The cool thing about an experience like that first thing in the morning, though: your day can only get better.

I figure I got some money coming to me in tomorrow's lottery.

A small eye of calm at the center of the universe

Car still being reanimated so caught a ride into town with my wife, later in the morning than I usually leave. Because of this, I had time to walk Gamma to school. She was ready on time, didn't need any nagging at all. She was awfully quiet at one point, upstairs in her room. It turned out she was watering her plants.

Are you ready to go, I asked her.

Look at you, she said. Are you sure you're not a secret agent?

What are you talking about?

Look at yourself in the mirror, she said. I looked. I was wearing new sunglasses I had picked up in Venice. Maybe I do look a little like a secret agent, I thought. My mood elevated significantly.

We walked past the neighbor's house with the stupid dog on the way to Gamma's school. It came out and barked at us. Go to hell, you stupid moron German shepherd, I said. It kept barking and snarling and heaving itself against their fence to get at us.

Hello Gypsy, Gamma said. How are you today, Gypsy? Everything okay Gypsy?

The dog stopped barking. Do you know what the dog's name is, she asked me.

I'll bet it's Gypsy, I said.

Knowing what you want

On my mind lately has been the possibility that, when one knows exactly what one wants, then no one can stop one, to the extent of one's ability and resources. This I have observed in Gamma wheedling what she wants out of me, and Beta relentlessly working to achieve what she wants to, and Alpha of course etc etc.

Last night as I put Gamma to bed I grabbed a book off the shelf at random; actually, I was looking for a particular Dahl book, couldn't find it and instead went looking for something else in English, and stumbled across "Fantastic Stories" by Terry Jones and let Gamma pick to stories out and she chose "Ship of Fools" and "The Fast Road".

"Ship of Fools" is about a boy, Ben, who runs away to sea and finds himself on a ship of fools. They lose the ship in a storm, despite Ben's heroic efforts.

By dawn the storm had died down, and Ben was exhausted, but he'd managed to save everyone. One of the fools, however, had thrown all the oars overboard while Ben hadn't been watching, so they couldn't row anywhere. And now the First Mate was so hungry he'd started to eat the lifeboat!

Overall, it was nauseating how closely the story matched the antics of the Bush "administration".

The second story, "The High Road" was about a magical road that took you where you wanted to go, very quickly. The only catch was, you had to know exactly where you wanted to go, otherwise it took you nowhere, equally fast, and you end up in Nowhere, wandering around among other people also wandering around, trying to figure out where they are.

The Dobló broke down on the way home from work. I figured I blew the head gasket, it lost power and so on. My mechanic father-in-law had a look at it and figured the same thing. I only guessed head gasket because I had the same thing happen to me with the first beater I ever owned; it felt the same this time. Head gasket = expensive. My FIL later amended his diagnosis to possibly only a thermostat, which would be a lot cheaper so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. At any rate, I'm home from work today.

So my wife had me help cook, which is no problem. Since I am such a good cutter, I peeled and cut a squash for squash soup, and some vegetables as well. I also cut my thumb deeply with a small paring knife (always cut away from yourself), and my ring finger medium-deeply with a large chopping knife. Later on, while telling my wife about it and simultaneously coring a pear, I stabbed myself in the ring finger.

I also went for a long bicycle ride because I thought maybe some exercise would straighten me out. I rode until my penis and testicles fell asleep, then turned around and rode home, about one hour in all.

Looking at pictures of my America trip last night with Beta, it occurred to me that I scowl in every one of the pictures, nearly. Scowl, squint or have a double chin or a crooked face. But mostly scowl and squint. And out on the bicycle today, I noticed I squint all the time. It has nothing to do with needing glasses. I'm trying to figure it out. Alpha's theory is I'm a cranky old man. The age of 50 is approaching me like a truckload of pig entrails speeding downhill toward a nursery-school tea party with no brakes in short, hot pants but I don't think that's it. I don't know. You'll be the first one I tell if I figure it out. I concentrated on not scowling, and my face enjoyed the attention.

Alpha and I leave on a night train to Venice tonight, to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of our first kiss. We not only found a hotel room despite Film Festival hijinks, I even accidentally got us upgraded by mentioning that it was our "25^th anniversary".

Alpha knows exactly what she wants to do. She wants a cup of coffee at the Danieli and she wants to visit St. Mark's Cathedral no matter how long the line is. And I for once also know exactly what I want to do: I want to wander around aimlessly and get totally lost, which is one of my favorite things to do, as those of you who have visited me in Vienna are aware. Venice is a very nice city to do that in, as long as you haven't just watched "Don't Look Now".

Image

There are times a certain, specific image grabs you like a space leech from a science-fiction film, and not just any science-fiction film but a very specific science-fiction film, namely not, say, a B-movie with teens running around the 1950s and not some modern Hollywood CGI spectacle with ferrets flying up Darth Vader's ass, but rather a hypothetical film made in Kazakhstan by a young Kazakhstani director several years ago but only recently discovered and distributed in art-houses in the West with grainy, odd subtitles; based on a script, an old script, so old it was once supposed to be filmed by Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein but was ultimately shelved after disagreements on changes to the script when Eisenstein, for example, especially after seeing a performance by a Japanese kabuki troupe in 1928, insisted on synthesizing all the elements of his film -- gesture, sound, costume, sets and color -- into a single, powerful, polyphonic experience and was, personally and sadly for the project, unconvinced that certain elements of the script as it then was would allow for this; so that the script mouldered on the shelf until, decades later, it was rediscovered in an archive by the aforementioned young Kazakhstani film director who saw in it an apt metaphor for the state of society in the post-USSR republics and turned it into a powerful statement ultimately shown at a Sundance Festival and picked up by Miramax, maybe, or someone else, you'd know that better than I would, and that, anyway, had these leeches, which although they were very in-your-face physical bloodsucking leeches, about the size of an omlette with rows of gripping barbed teeth and the power of flight over short distances did not play a central role in the film. That's the sort of leech I'm talking about. And you have to get that image out, so your train of thought can finally pull out of the station, whether it makes a goddamned bit of sense or not.

Shipment

On the news this morning, they said 25,000 body bags were being shipped to the site of the hurricane Katrina damage. "So body bags they can organize," my daughter said.

Small government

Just in case anyone was wondering, America's not looking too good from here.
(For visitors from the future, I'm referring to the hurricane Katrina aftermath and scandalous government inaction and official ineptitude in September 2005.)
How does one explain this? I am occasionally called upon to explain this. People think because I still have an American passport I must know something.
Usually, it's just a rhetorical question, accompanied by a sad shake of the head. But some people really hope I'll be able to give some explanation.
You don't leave people on their roofs for a week, do you. That was an assumption, until now. It appears you don't, unless they're poor or black. If they're poor and black, then they're really fucked.
If I had time for a long answer, although I have no answer, only conjecture, I'd say more than a small part of the problem seems to be that people are stupid and let conservative politicians talk them into program cutbacks. Programs, like disaster preparedness programs, and infrastructure investments, anything that benefits the common good, postal system, school system: they're in place for a purpose. They serve a purpose. You can't gut them for decades and still expect everything to function, especially not when the system gets a good squeeze.
Francis links this article, which I suppose is a beginning, answer-wise.
Basically, though, when people ask me, I just say, sorry, I don't know either. I'm as puzzled as you are. And ashamed.

Dirty martini

This is best if you have an actual martini glass to drink it out of. You shake a bunch of gin, a little vermouth, a little olive juice and a couple olives and ice in a shaker. Strain it, drink it with the olives.

Caution: not a good idea to drink a bottle of red wine on top of it and then try to play your cello, because you might get the bright, drunken idea to just, you know, lean your cello against the chair while you look for some sheet music. If you do this, your nice new cello will slide over and fall onto the floor, which is tiles laid in a layer of cement over concrete over brick. If you're lucky, it will only get a couple dings and a scratch.

Glamour

Gamma, as you know, is eight years old. She reads various princess magazines and wears the glittery costume jewelery that comes vacuum-wrapped on their covers. Her hair goes down to her waist. The hair in fact is a bit of a problem as it is very fine and she being eight rarely brushes it and it tends to dreadlock in the back. But we have detangling spray and she and her mother manage to get the rats' nests out after I threaten to cut it off.

Gamma has wanted earrings for ages. When we were in the United States, against her mother's wishes we had her ears pierced at this stand in the aisle of a mall. Her mother wasn't there with us, having stayed behind in Austria for that trip; and we didn't ask her permission, figuring it would be easier to be forgiven for getting the ears done than to get her to agree to it.

Alpha, you see, thought Gamma was too young for it. She thought she tended to fester and infect. She thought, since Gamma's big sister Beta had such problems when she got her ears pierced at that age (they somehow got ingrown and we had to take her to the doctor to have them removed, after which she waited until she was a teenager to get them pierced again), we ought to wait longer with Gamma.

I told this all to Gamma, in a solemn voice. I said, we'll have to disinfect them twice a day and rotate them daily. She swore on god's grave she would do all that was necessary. I said, tendency to get infected, we'll have to be careful. She swore she would be. I made her pay for it with her own money, to make it seem that much more serious. She had a ton of money from somewhere and everyone was buying everything else for her anyway, it was a symbolic thing. It's not like I'm cheap or anything.

She sat bravely and seriously for the piercing. The lady got the gun out and put one in each lobe.

We disinfected them twice a day at the beginning, until it looked like they were healed. I asked her daily if she had rotated them. She said she had. Somedays I rotated them myself just to be sure.

She bought extra earrings and looked forward to the day she could switch them. To be safe, she asked me to do it. That day was yesterday, the day before school restarted.

I looked at them first. They weren't ingrown. I popped them out. One hurt just a little. The other she screamed bloody murder. And it bled like a, well, like a headwound.

I disinfected them and tried to put new earrings back in. More bloody murder screaming. I started with the painful one just to get it over with. The post went in okay, but I couldn't find the exit hole. I feared it was badly infected inside.

Around that time, she decided to let them grow back shut. The hell with earrings. She'll give it another try when she's older, she said. Just don't come near me with those earrings!

Alpha is taking her to the doctor today to have her ears looked at. If she's lucky, maybe she'll be able to re-insert earrings. Or at least save her earlobes.