Metamorphosism

Poor little tamagochi

So my cell phone conked out last night whilst I was explaining to Alpha that I would be home late seeing as how I was stuck in a large traffic jam just outside our town. Totally died. I figured this was the end, as I had just recharged it the night before. Charged it again, all night, and tried to revive it this morning, but none of the buttons I pushed got any reaction.
Dead as a doornail.
Showed it to a few people at work, Look, my new cellphone is dead!
They laughed, as people do at the picayune misfortune of others.
Cooling my heels at a conference, I showed it to another colleague.
Just press this button, she said.
She pressed a button. It lit up.
Hrm, I said.
All Nokias start that way.
My other one didn't, I said.
Whatever. I still didn't have the PIN code memorized. Then I remembered that my nice friend who gave me the phone also recently emailed me the PIN. And luckily there was an Internet corner at this particular conference, to which I snuck out and logged into my webmail and the PIN was still there.
So now I exist again.

CHAKACHAKACHAKA

Woke up in a good mood. Not exactly woke up. Got up a few times during the early morning, set alarm ahead half an hour each time, finally got up around 5.30, 6.00, made coffee, ate some cereal, had a crap/read the paper, showered, shaved. Had a great BM this morning, maybe it was that. By the time I went upstairs to get dressed and wake Gamma, I guess I was in a good mood, because I was singing a song about underwear that I was making up on the spot, out of one of those off-Broadway musicals that run in our heads, belting it out, much to Gamma's amazement. Then I rushed her to finally get up so I could take her downstairs and give her breakfast, a slice of toast with Nutella if she hurries, get up finally, get up, get up, I said. And each time she tried to get up I let her fall back down, or dropped her onto the bed, or flipped her over. Get up! Get up! Quit messing around, I'm serious. Quit fooling around! Do you want breakfast or not? Get up finally! So she was laughing by the time I finally really picked her up and carried her downstairs, fooling around on the stairs, pretending to drop her etc. Her grandmother was surprised to see her in such a good mood that early in the morning. She always just gives us dirty looks, she said.
Put my CD of Vivaldi concertos into the player on my drive, hit some ice at a stop sign, felt the brakes doing that CHAKACHAKACHAKA thing new brakes do nowadays when your car is on the verge of sliding out of control but managed to stop in time, took it easy on the rest of my commute.
Vivaldi cello concertos make me feel like I'm in one of those car commercials, it's totally car commercial music. Shiny new car swooping through some swooping landscape with autumn foliage on the hills or purple mountains majesty or waving fields of grain or a coastal landscape in the background, filmed from a swooping helicopter. And some resonant voice saying something poetic in the background like, of course you want one of our cars, you're a type one car buyer, you want a new car that won't start nickling and diming you to death right away and will be almost happy when something rare goes wrong and it's still under warranty, something arcane and electrical, and won't think to ask for a loaner car while we hold it in the shop waiting for an organ donor because this is really rare, what went wrong, rare and electrical, maybe your wife is right when she says you have an electrical field that causes electrical problems with your cars, and new cars nowadays, they don't even have distributors? They have some other shit? I could explain it to you but you'd forget it immediately because, you know? So you just want this car, believe me. Says the voice. And Vivaldi makes everything good and you can just smell it.
And I drive to work, alone because Beta stayed at a girlfriend's place in Vienna last night, I'm taking her word for it, and I drive along and think or don't think. Don't hit a traffic jam until the very end, some road maintenance truck in the left lane and some Mercedes delivery van with Polish plates in the emergency lane on the right, and a police car behind him with his blue lights flashing. Various things go through my head, nothing useful like I imagine other people think when they drive, like how to be a more efficient employee, or how to actualize their true potential, or realize their deepest desires, or land that important account, or finally get that task done, or things like, "Moldova is the weak link: all I have to do is get the asbestos miners to strike, and then unrest will spread throughout the region, and the nuclear warheads will be mine mwahahaha," actually, I did think that, come to think of it, but I mean, more things like those "100 things about me" lists, bits of telling dialogues, bits of information. Things like,

1. "You just have bad luck with cars," my wife says.
   
2. "You can take your cellphone into the consulate with you," says the guard, "you just have to turn it off first." "Actually, I'd rather leave it with you," I reply, "a friend gave it to me and I don't know the PIN code to turn it back on." It's like a damned tamagochi, I'm always making sure that it's properly charged, otherwise I'll have to look for the paper she gave me with all the account information on it, including the PIN, to turn it back on. And who knows where I put that.
   
3. The flashing blue lights remind me that I always notice them when they're behind me, and make room for emergency vehicles and cops and get worked up over people who don't, but rarely notice them in time when they're in front of me, as if I take a martial arts approach to driving, always ahead of myself, always visualizing the punch through the opponent, or my car already through the intersection before I even enter it. In recent months, one ambulance and one firetruck have had to wait for me to pass through an intersection. So far I haven't been one of those unlucky flakes who actually crash into one. I always swear next time I'll notice them in time and let them through, but then I don't.

Then I got to work, and there was a space right in front of my building, just like in the movies.

Happy etc. etc.

What are you thankful for?

Harsh and exciting

So I ended up looking at this poem by Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

It goes on for a bit. I'm no judge of poetry. I can like a poem without knowing, would a critic laugh at it? Laugh at me for liking it?
Tell me about despair, yours, she writes, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

Sitting at the dinner table last night, fucking tired, my mother-in-law says, "what's wrong? You... I dunno."
I said I was tired.
"Sad. He's sad," she said. "He's sad," Gamma repeated, and asked me why.
I don't know if I'm sad. Am I sad? Do I miss my wife? That would be okay, since she gets home tomorrow. Because my new car has been in the shop all week and I was too stupid to insist on a loaner car and am now too embarrassed to raise the issue with them? That's actually okay, I've been able to hang out with Beta on the train, mornings, and chat a little, and training is more relaxing than driving, and I get a nice walk in the morning, and there was a pileup on my route yesterday and the freeway was closed until 10AM, so the train hasn't been all bad, actually.
Maybe it's November. Maybe it wasn't the usual fog that was depressing people, maybe it's simply the month, and you're depressed in November because the days are shorter or something, whether or not you have nasty fog or pretty snow, like this week.
Probably I just need coffee. Or to see a formation of geese fly overhead, if I could manage not to think about avian flu jokes. Harsh and exciting.
There's more to it than all that, of course. It's just hard for me to access sometimes.
What do you want, soft animal? What do you love?

Not that soft animal, man.

Gamma on Sartre

While Alpha is in Japan this week, Gamma gets to sleep in the big bed and kick the covers off all night. Last night, I read her a story and turned on the lava lamp as a sort of nightlight for her and tucked her in and she said, "Sartre's slogan derives from a sentence in Heidegger's Being and Time: 'Das Wesen des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz,' which Macquarrie and Robinson translate, 'The "essence" of Dasein lies in its existence'. In 1946 Heidegger maintained that Sartre had totally misunderstood the meaning of the claim, but certainly some of what Sartre develops from it can be found in Heidegger too. For the latter, the question of existence is not first of all a philosophical one but rather the question raised by any human being: 'Who am I?' The fact that we raise such a question is not, for Heidegger, an accidental feature of our psychology but a essential feature of our being: I am such that 'in [my] very being that being is an issue for [me]'. A philosophical inquiry into existence, then, is a kind of meta-inquiry into 'that which one inquires into when one asks the question "Who?"' This, in turn, leads him to distinguish sharply between 'categories' and 'existentialia' — i.e., between the philosophical concepts used to characterize entities that answer to a 'what' question and those that answer to a 'who' question: 'Existentialia and categories are the two basic possibilities for characters of being. The entities which correspond to them require different kinds of primary interrogation respectively: any entity is either a "who" (existence) or a "what" …'."

Of course, being eight, she didn't phrase it exactly like that. The above quote is from here.

What she said was, "I don't know who I am."

Alpha had been telling me about this. Gamma has been very distracted in school, and I had been thinking ADD, short attention span, that sort of thing. Cut back on the sugar, maybe. Then Alpha told me Gamma had said, "I always have to think about who I am. My head is full all the time of wondering who I am." Maybe you could call that EDD, for Existential Distraction Disorder.

"I know about this much about who I am," she told me last night, holding index finger tip and thumb tip close together. "Mom says she knows about this much," she said, fingertips a little further apart. "Maybe you know this much," she said, fingertips yet a little further apart.

"Nah," I said, "about this much," and my fingertips were no further apart than hers had been the first time.

"I mean," she said, "I know my name is Gamma and I live here and I am eight and I like dancing and I am learning piano. But who am I? I always have to wonder about it."

"You're not alone. It's a fundamental human question."

"Of course, some people don't even know that they are," she continued. "They just sit in front of the mirror all day, looking at themselves. Saying, 'Oh, a tangle in my hair, I have to brush that out.'" She pantomimed brushing her hair. "'Oh, just look at my fingernails. I have to file them.'" She filed her fingernails.

"Yes, they have it even worse," I said.

This morning, getting out of the shower, I looked at myself in the mirror. "Just five more pounds," I thought. "Or, maybe, five more kilos. And a little exercise to firm things up."

+-

The engine warning light is coming on in my new car. My father-in-law, who is a retired mechanic, offered to take it in to the dealer for a checkup. So I took the train into town with Beta this morning. We happened to get to the station early (Alpha rushed us in before returning home to finish packing for a business trip this week) and got an earlier train that, although it stops at every station on the way, got us into Vienna earlier than the later but faster train. That means we had more time to sit there and talk. Coincidentally, Beta prefers, like her father, to sit on the fold-down seat near the doors of the train, which is colder and noisier but 1)closer to the doors when it's time to get off and 2) you don't usually have to sit with or otherwise deal with other people. No idea why she prefers sitting there, her father prefers it because of both 1) and 2). So we sat there and talked about stuff. It was very nice. I enjoyed it. She is a pretty girl, and smart, with an appealing, intelligent sense of humor and I am awfully fond of her.

Then she got off, and I got off at the next station and walked to the office. It is about a half-hour walk, nice exercise and time to think. It was a little drizzly and quite cold, and there was slush on the ground from a recent snowfall, but I was bundled up. I get all sorts of good ideas while I walk. This time, I decided I ought to write down stories I told Beta when she was little, and stories I have recently told Gamma. And I also decided I really ought to get going on the new Bgu comix in my head, and pick out the best old ones and make a book and sell them to people.

So all in all, so far, good thing my engine light came on.

Beatles reunite

I read an article a day or two ago. Women and men have different responses to humor. Women devote more brain power to determining whether a joke is actually funny before they decide whether or not to laugh, while men tend more to just laugh at whatever they recognize as a joke, since if it's a joke, then it must be funny. And they have different expectations; women expect to be disappointed by a joke, whereas men expect it to be funny. So if the joke turns out to be truly funny, women are happier about it, whereas men are like, of course it's funny, it's a joke.

So what I'm wondering is, did you just laugh at this photo, assuming it was funny? Or did you first evaluate its humor content? Did you expect it to be unfunny, but were pleasantly surprised? Or did your low expectations cushion you from being disappointed by a yahoo news photo that wasn't all that inherently funny? Or is it funny? And does this extended text save an originally lame post, or not?

DVDs

The woman at our local DVD rental place confirms the videos when you check them out, to make sure you're getting the right ones.
"Jet Li The One, The Demon Hunter, Pegasus Barbie," she said.
She may as well have shouted, "Alpha's away on business this week."
Jet Li was okay. Kind of crappy, but not his fault. Demon Hunter really sucked, now I know what it means when the box quotes Quentin Tarantino ("Great!"). Barbie, there was a bit of a problem dealing with the 3-D glasses, but otherwise it fulfilled all our expectations.
In one scene, Barbie enchants the evil sorcerer with the magic wand of light. Many magic sparkles. Then she rises up into the air, Glenda-like, in a big sphere of more sparkles, which expands and enchants everything.
"Wow, this is really maximum glitter," I said.
Gamma agreed.

Alpha comes home today, Gamma was away at her grandparents, so Beta and I watched more DVDs last night. We watched a French detective film, both Vincent Cassel and Jean Reno were great in it, we agreed. Then I went to bed and I guess Beta watched Alexander all by herself. I assumed she wanted to see it because of what's-his-face's wiener, but she claimed she wanted to see Angelina Jolie.

What I meant to say

About the law of nature thing I mean. I was trying to describe the exact feeling I had, being me, standing there with a passport in each hand.

It wasn't nostalgia. It was the uncomfortably clear sensation of time passing, irrevocably. Something I normally try to distract myself from perceiving. You know how that goes? You always feel like the same person, unchanged, inside. It's like one big day, over and over.

The irrevocable passage of time - and I'm not talking about the transience of all things, not precisely - has always crushed me. I can clearly remember the moment I figured it out. I was somewhere, with someone, doing something, back when I was a boy I think.

It was late December 1964, I think. That would make me five. I was in my parent's room bugging my mother as she made the bed. She said next year would be 1965 and I asked when it would be 1964 again and she said never, that's it for 1964.

She might have even been relieved. I, on the other hand, threw myself onto the bed she was making and wept for 1964, which I would never see again. She said something soothing, like, Get off the bed, would you, I'm working here.

Linear time has horrified me ever since then. Why can't it be circular? Even cooler would be spiral time, where if you are good, on the next spiral you automatically have a driver's license, for example, and don't have to take the test again. Or you don't talk to that person at that bar who ended up getting you evicted. Whatever.

DIY

Shower's dripping again, she said.
Feng shui came to his mind. Leaky pipes = chi, or money going down the drain. Literally, when you think about plumber bills. He went to the bathroom to see if there was anything he could do to fix it, without making things worse. He gave the knob a twist. It turned a few degrees and the dripping stopped.
Fixed it, honey, he reported.
How'd you do that? she said.

On an unwritten law of nature

Went down to the consulate to renew my passport. The lines were short and everyone was very polite and friendly. Got a call a few days later that it was ready so I swang by and picked it up before work. Got there early, as always, and stood around in the lobby for a few minutes watching two Austrian employees smoke cigarettes with an Austrian policewoman under the no-smoking sign.

Didn't look at the passport until I got home that night. First off, there was a typo in my name, which meant I had to go back, get there early, hang around waiting, bump into the nice lady who had processed me earlier, mention it to her, receive her sincere apologies and confession that she had been the one who typed the typo (how rare is that, for someone to be so honest?), say No problem whatsoever ma'am, listen to her offer to take my passport right there, outside the consulate, not even making me wait until it opened, and call me when it was ready, which I did, or she could even mail it to me should she mail it to my work address or my home address, home address I said, and with words of thanks (from me) and reiterated apologies (from her) zoom off to work, getting there on time not even a little late as I had expected.

Second off, I violated the law of nature I had not been aware of until then, which is, if you are over 40 and you get your passport renewed after 10 years? You don't compare the two pictures? Unless you want to get introspective and retrospective (they have, like, retrospective art exhibits or retrospective film festivals, don't they? I wonder if they have introspective ones) in a bad way; philosophical and everything in just the time it takes you to stand there, only an instant, 1995 passport in left hand, 2005 passport in your right, comparing hair color, hairstyle, face shape in the two photos, causing (in all cases, or at least mine) a mad rush of melancholy, mortality, megalohepatia, monohybrid monogyny, myrtillocactus geometrizans and monic polynomials, which is bad enough but following hot on their heels you get the memories, or rather the maudlin memorialization of the past ten years, not memories, because you discover that you, on the one hand, have almost no memories about the past ten years on the first go, which makes you feel even older and more senile and on the other hand, with that monumental round number, ten years, which is 3650 days give or take, (3650 X 24) hours, (3650 X 24)60 minutes and so on, a decade in other words, an actual decade with all its symbolism, you know, a decade, you are tempted to take stock, compare, and the symbolic significance of this is where the memorialism part comes from, not remembering but memorializing the time past, the things that have happened, the differences between that guy in the first picture, no sag visible anywhere in his face, presentable from all angles, beginning to go grey but not as grey as you always remembered already being at that age, you, a guy who got his first grey hairs at the age of 7, or 9 or whatever, you always say 7 it makes a bigger impression in conversation but it might be 9, actually very probably is 9 but you'll keep on saying 7 for stylistic reasons, and the guy in the second picture.

Your wife might see you looking, look herself and say, "your hair is not really that white," and think that takes care of the matter, but you will catch yourself at those moments that used to be empty, free of thought, like shaving or showering or driving or standing gazing off into the distance or waiting in line or listening to someone talk to you, you will catch yourself comparing what that first guy had or didn't have with what the second guy has or no longer has. And it will just get too sweet and emotional. Not always in a good way, not all the differences are positive, but actually listing them all would so sink a blog post.

Like, okay, the first guy did not only not have a cello, he didn't even have the idea of getting one, he was 5 years away from starting cello lessons. He had one daughter, 6 years old and no musical instruments in the house at all. He had two cats. He drove a beater. He hadn't heard of blogging. The second guy still has the same job as the first guy, still wants to be a writer (which is a sad thing, better to just say the hell with it and write rather than wanting to be a writer, which, to be honest, he is doing, actually so, you know, big improvement there), still has two cats albeit replacement cats for the first two, has two daughters now, several musical instruments none of which he can play with competence but making progress, has had a new car, drove it to death, got another new car with an even better stereo. Things are great, you know? It would get icky if I went into any more detail. Of course, there are a few things the first guy had that the second guy no longer has, like a couple more friends and relatives (actually, the second guy has more friends, I'm just saying that some of the first guy's died, see), younger, healthy parents, a belief that the U.S. government was above torture, various things like that.

Things aren't all that bad, as long as you don't think about the third guy, the guy who'll be renewing this passport, if he's lucky.

Just take it day by day. Live in the eternal present.

That reminds me, I was talking to Gamma about living in the present. She started it. Or I did, I can't remember who had the first line. I said something about living in the present. No, wait, she started it, she said, you know, there is no now, it's all either past or future. There is so not any now, it's an impossibly thin slice of time, so thin it doesn't exist (I'm paraphrasing). And I said something like, quit stalling, Finish brushing your teeth, it's past your bedtime.

And in my car driving to work today, I thought, that's the same as the way I see it, namely that there is only the present, past and future don't exist. It is all only present, the past, the future are all only the present. That's all there is, permeating us, surrounding us, we float in it, the present. Actually, I guess it's not the same as what she said, but you know. I had exactly the same thoughts when I was a kid.

I actually worry about the future quite a bit. My living in the present usually involves me denying the future, or suppressing it, which has more to do with ulcers than it does with any form of enlightenment probably.

Beta did a test on us. She made Alpha and I sit there, eyes closed, relaxed, and did this thing she learned in school. Are you an in-time person or an on-time person. She laughed when we did it, because it had turned out so well for her - one of us was an in-time person and the other was an on-time person.

I forget which is which. Alpha was the person who lives in the moment, with little thought for consequences. It is a common criminal trait, Beta said. I think that was the in-time person.

That would make me the on-time. Someone who always carries a bit of past and a bit of future around with him. Thinking about the effects his actions will have on people. Probably less fun at parties than the in-time person, but more popular with insurance companies.

Needs more animal rape

As a bear raper I can say that the idea of turning the tables was quite erotic...

Spiro Agnew's headless corpse

A guy walks into a bookstore

I am on this diet that makes you stupid. Last time I was on it I swore I'd never do it again because afterwards, you just gain all the weight back, but you stay stupid.
But, eh.
Down 9 pounds so far.
During voluntary starvation, also known as fasting, or dieting, the brain is receptive for, you know, spiritual ideas. I was getting my passport renewed and afterwards stopped by an English bookstore in Vienna to see which books jumped out at me, because sometimes they do. Sometimes you find the best books that way.
This time, it was like walking into the dog pound. They were all over me, yipping and licking my face.
I had to put several back onto the shelf, in the end, because I had so many. Too many. Plus, I couldn't find any of the ones I wanted to buy for Alpha. The number of books I can get away buying for myself is a function of the number I buy for Alpha and the kids. If the latter number = 0, I can buy a maximum of 2 for myself. And the kids' books all sucked - nothing against magic, but all the fantasy/magic/pseudopotterish books raised my hackles. We already have the Potter books, and some Narnia books, which the kids don't really seem to like, and have all the Dahl books we need, so I decided to wait until I'm there with Gamma. No idea what Beta is reading nowadays, or even if she has time to read, she's so busy with school. So same there, will have to go back there with her someday. And same with my wife, none of the books I wanted to buy for her were in stock, and wasn't sure about the other ones there. Surely some good ones, but which?
So looks like a family trip to the bookstore someday.
So, 2 books. This spiritual book jumped out at me and although it said it had been recommended by Oprah, I bought it anyway. And Neil Gaiman's latest, and this other spiritual thriller thing about secretive godlike types saving the world from other evil godlike secretive types. Which made three books, so I put the latter back on the New Releases table because I wasn't crazy about the flat dialogue I saw leafing through it.
I figured, Beta can read Neil too if she wants.
I finished that first when I got home, but turns out she wasn't interested. It's really good, what's it about, it's about Ananci's sons, Ananci the trickster from West African mythology, and they have this problem and um and these adventures and stuff.
Who reads their dad's books, I guess.
Gamma was more interested in trickster stories. She asked me to tell her some. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of the Anaci book I could share with her, and turned out I don't know any trickster stories by heart. And none of the Coyote stories in this book we have were interesting either so I told her I'd have to take a rain check.
The other book, all about living in the now. Not the future, not the past.
In my frame of mind, the perfect book for me. First of all, being has been on my mind lately (which I suppose is ironic), just being, as opposed to worrying or regretting or fearing or feeling guilty and so on.
Which is why the book jumped out at me in the first place.
I tried to share some of its wisdom with Gamma. I figured little kids are pretty much in beginner's mind all the time, aren't they? Kids and Zen, perfect match, I thought.
What's the book about, she said.
Okay when you think, I said, when you think, you're thinking. And you think that's you thinking, your mind, you think you're your mind. But try stepping back and listening to yourself thinking, listening to your mind, observing your mind. So there's what you thought was you thinking, your mind thinking, then who's that listening to your mind think? If you're thinking, who's listening to you think.
Me, of course.
Then who's thinking?
Me, too. They're all me. It's just one me.
No, but...
But what?
Let me read some more of the book and get back to you.
We played pick-up-sticks after that. And I started reading her "Big Friendly Giant" by Roald Dahl. We're both enjoying that a lot.
My goal is ten more pounds before Thanksgiving.

H5N1

Park car. Get out. Look at all the dirt on it already. Leaves. Scratches. Nicks.

Actually, no scratches yet. Not really any nicks either. Couple small, really small ones, from pebbles bounced up by other cars. One... that's a big one. Is that a nick? Or dirt?

Scratch at it with nail of right index finger.

Bird shit. Apparently bird shit. Not a scratch.

Carry mineral water and banana into work.

Bird shit. Wasn't very big. When they say "migratory bird," they mean like swans and stuff, right?

Sign in at work with pen chained to counter.

They don't mean like wrens and blackbirds, right?

Push button for elevator.

Or tits and finks and stuff. They're not migratory, are they?

Wash hands good before taking a pee, just in case.

How to write a catchy blog entry, #1

Imagine my surprise when I poured myself a cup of coffee Sunday morning and opened the newspaper to see, on the front page, a picture of myself the previous night, tie askew, dorky expression on my face, staggering out of a Viennese bar with my arms around the necks of two skanky starlets. Journalists work so fast nowadays, I thought.

It is important to write a catchy opening paragraph. The internet is a busy place, and you have lots of competition. When I first started blogging, back in 1868, there weren't so many blogs, but nowadays there are more. So you want to snag your reader's(s') eye(s) right off.

To this end, it is totally allowable to stretch the truth a little. If you feel compelled to be ethical, you can just straighten out any "misunderstandings" in the opening paragraph in the ensuing ones.

Like, I wasn't really wearing a tie. And the picture was taken in the afternoon, not at night.

And it wasn't in Vienna, it was in another town. And it wasn't a bar, it was a concert hall, and I was sitting in the second row, not staggering anywhere.

And I was sitting beside an eight-year old girl, with pigtails. My wife was on the other side of me, but she got cropped. But even if she hadn't - neither one of them bears a remote resemblance to a skanky starlet.

And it wasn't on the front page, it was buried in the local section.

But I totally had a dorky expression on my face. Luckily, there was another guy in the picture with an even dorkier expression on his face, so I looked relatively un-dorky.