Metamorphosism

Time

Stop me if you've heard this already, but just in case an electromagnetic pulse has put the media in your town out of commission, the Oxford Dictionary says "time" is the most popular word in the English language. Apparently channeling the collective unconscious, or maybe even the collective conscious, I was recently, like this week, thinking how time was the one thing that has bugged me most during my life.
Since my childhood. I can still remember (I've said this before) throwing a fit at the age of five when my mother told me one December that 1964 wouldn't be coming around ever again. This idea of permanence and irrevokability and transience is disturbing.
Time is, for me, a slit in things through which all the lightness leaks out.
Time is death nipping at your heels. Time is the monster in the nightmare where your feet are stuck in tar and you're running more and more slowly and it's gaining on you.
An old lady once said, when you're little you have so much time. So much time. And as you get older, things go faster and faster. And when you're really old, fucking hell, probably.
I find myself missing more and more deadlines.
On the radio they interviewed some old people yesterday. One was 103 years old, or will be on her next birthday*. They were asked things like, are you envious of today's kids for all the toys and entertainment gizmos they have, like Gameboys and computers etc? And they said, in general, not for a single fucking minute do they envy today's kids.
And I think of things like play dates and playing Mozart to babies to make them smarter, starting in the womb, and all the extra classes some kids get, and summer camps and workshops and good schools and bad schools and mobile phones and ringtones and Internet lists of p3d0s and suspicion and juvenile onset adult diabetes and war on 200 channels and corn syrup and pandemics and so on. And I remember digging holes in the filbert orchard near my house, all day, building forts and looking at Playboy magazines, and I think, not for a minute.
I think if one can manage not to let time freak one out, one is in a good position.
If one can somehow, you know, flow. Leaf in the river.
Let time buoy you or something. But how does that work?

________
*knock on wood

How to escape from a cemetery

1. Wander around the cemetery next to the place you're waiting to meet the bus bringing your homestay guest, which is late.
2. No idea why they made an out of the way cemetery the meeting place. Maybe because it had a big parking lot.
3. Be way over in some remote corner when the cemetery manager person locks the gates at closing time.
4. Rattle the gate for a while, in vain.
5. Stack garbage cans by the wall, climb up, jump out.

Also, a brief note on Gamma. Gamma has discovered a new pasttime: stirring shit. Sowing the seeds of discord, whatever you like to call it. Typical little sister, what can I say, although she doesn't limit her shit stirring to her big sister, she likes to get Alpha and me riled up too. More on this later.

Last night, my wife and I

sat in the living room in the dark,
with our feet up on the dining table
or on the sills of open windows
drinking wine and talking because
we so rarely have time for that
and watched a rottweiler
kill the neighbor's calico cat across the street
in the front yard of the house the pig farmer's
daughter built.
the cat was 13 years old and belonged to the
old lady on the corner.
it was just minding it's own business.
a minute before the dog killed it,
i saw it out the window and said "meow, meow"
and it glanced over and quickened its
pace like a shy girl walking past
construction workers at lunchtime.
i even made a joke about it.
it turns out that's what you do when a
dog like that kills a cat: watch.
we heard a noise like a shopping cart
falling down stairs into a garbage can.
we looked out the window and there four
people stood, one being a man with a leash in his
hand. it was coiled up, not attached to
anything, including the dog with the
limp cat in its mouth. shaking it good.
i yelled at them. i yelled at the dog.
the man told the dog, he told it "you
idiot." the dog put down the cat.
the cat lay in the grass the pig farmer's
daughters had mowed only that morning,
for the first time, having seeded it
a few weeks ago, month maybe.
it lay in the grass, and shook a little, then
it was still. "you idiot," the man said.
to the dog.
we told him where the owner lived and
he went and told on himself.
my wife called the neighbor just to be sure.
the neighbor came out in her nightgown.
the dog blocked her way. she told
the owner to move it. "he won't do
anything," he said, the leash still coiled
in his hand. the dog sat in the middle
of the street like a good dog.
the woman carried her cat home by
the legs.

Beta came to a fork in the road, and took it

Beta had a 24-hour EKG test this week. She came home from the hospital and said, Hey look, and I was all like, Okay, Uh, What, Carrying case for your iPod? because she had this device hanging around her neck, and this mesh undershirt thing, and it wasn't that far from what she usually wears but apparently it was the EKG machine and not an iPod. Same size, though.

She wore that around and I haven't heard the final results but then I've been busy with the pool (today's shopping list for hardware store: wooden stakes*, teflon tape, duct tape, rust-resistant paint, Valium); I was even busier with it but then we opened the boxes in our cellar and discovered that they had not included the pool liner, meaning we couldn't assemble it or we could assemble it just not add water because that's the job of the liner, holding the water, and without the water the pool has no structural integrity, but there's still plenty to do because it turns out one must dig 5" trenches, three of them, for part of the frame, discovering which fact made us happy we had not made a concrete slab for it as the hardware store pool guy had suggested (although, on the other hand, it would have given me an excuse to finally use a jackhammer) but instead I spent all day Saturday (with the exception of a brief siesta during the hottest part of the day, because, man, it's been hot all weekend) as well as Sunday (except for when we visited some friends for a barbecue, everyone else was doctors (or little kids); just doctors, and us, the patients, and the rest of the time I was in the back yard with a collection of shovels, rakes, hoes, boards, wheelbarrow and a level and growing quite depressed at the Sisyphean nature of it all; I finally realized it didn't matter that the liner was missing, I wouldn't have got that far anyway, as spending one weekend leveling the ground and spreading sand and leveling that, and the following weekend digging it all back up to put down the framework, taking breaks to read the instructions in English (correct, but confusing) and German (simpler, believe it or not, but for the wrong pool) and ...

Dead Horse: So Beta's okay?

I was getting to that. I hope she is, she's on a school field trip to Southern Italy, Naples and Pompei, and boy is it hot there right now.

Dead Horse: Thank you.

Our general assumption that this Beta thing is, you know, an opportunity to sit back, take a breath, and reevaluate our lives. Decide whether we want to continue putting pressure on ourselves and each other, or what.

But the kid seems okay. It was the scaredest I've been since the day she was born**, almost 17 years ago. Walk into her hospital room, you know, early morning, everyone's sleeping, she's so gentle and young and relaxed there on the bed, wired up to a machine, and I think, I've seen this before.

____
*to put through the heart of the pool company guy
** 3 months early

Language update

Owned

A dip in the pool, II

Men generally do not like pools, my wife tells me. She is incredulous.
I am in bed. My head is on the pillow. For good measure, this cylindrical buckwheat Japanese thing is crammed up under my neck as well; we have them and they are exotic so I use it, even though I fear it will give me a stiff neck, which it however hasn't yet done.

I say, Gosh.

I am hoping to sleep, because I spent the evening vibrating dirt in a corner of the yard where our old pool used to stand. Shoveling, raking, leveling, and finally, vibrating with a device that looked like a cross between a lawn mower and a hovercraft, the color yellow, and weighed about 100 pounds, which was good for vibrating dirt, but less good for heaving it out of the truck and manhandling it down the steps into the garden, and even less good still for fighting it back up the steps after I finished and heaving it back up into the truck.

I say, How can that be?

I had to get my wife and daughter to help me heave the yellow dirt vibrating machine back up into the truck. I couldn't do it on my own, because it was oddly-shaped.

My wife tells me of another man who was opposed to a pool, his wife told my wife about it. But luckily, his parents had built a pool, and now the man and his wife lived in the parents' house, so they have a pool now, even though he opposes pools.

I say, how lucky for them.

Our new pool is in the cellar, in several boxes. It is an above-ground pool, a foot deeper and a meter and a half longer than our last pool.

The directions say it can be assembled right on the dirt, it doesn't need a concrete slab. But the dirt must be perfectly level, and solid. If the soil sinks after you put it up, the pool will lurch to one side, burst and flood your house.

The boxes in the cellar weigh a ton and appear to contain several thousand parts, including screws. The pool was made in Canada. Length can vary, the pool company fellow told my wife. Canadian pools are like that.

The instructions are in several languages, including English, French, and Spanish. The English instructions were so confusing and written in such arcane pool argot that I asked my wife to have the company send us German instructions.

And Gerhard, my wife tells me, his wife said he was so against the pool.

He didn't want a pool, so my wife, who is in marketing, offered them our old pool in front of his wife and children, little blonde girls with big blue eyes.

My wife tells me she met Gerhard somewhere and he told her proudly that he'd been able to assemble the pool all by himself, and the kids were already swimming in it and having the time of their lives. He seemed happy that he hadn't needed to ask me for help putting it together, my wife tells me.

Not as happy as I am, I say.

Note to Evco staff

Communication by email until technical difficulties sorted out. metamorphosist {AT} gmail.com.

Father's Day, II

Beta came home today. She choked an orderly with a heart monitor cable, stole his uniform and skated home with a metal bedpan on each foot, spraying sparks all the way, and now I have to go apologize.

She seems okay, given the circumstances. I don't know any more than that.

Father's Day

Yesterday was father's day here in Austria. We celebrated like thousands of other Austrians, by going to the women's 5K and 10K race at Vienna's Prater park, a nice place to run. 12,000 women were registered for the race. Gamma ran in a shorter kids' race the day before and got a medal, like all the other kids who finished.

12,000 women, most of whom brought more than one spectator. It was crowded and noisy. Gamma and I watched the start, then hurried to a spot we had picked out about 80 meters before the finish line to scream at Alpha and Beta when they would run past, to give them a little extra spurt of energy, and to take their picture.

My wife and eldest daughter were in the "C" group of starters. After we had been there about 10 minutes, it seemed, the first starters zipped past, the professionals. Eventually, more A's ran past, and after them a few B's, a few more A's etc.

Alpha was wearing the official race t-shirt, a light blue running shirt. As were about 10,000 other women. At times, hundreds were running past all at the same time. Imagine looking for a blonde woman in a blue shirt when that describes 80% of the participants. I looked for Beta too, a young dark haired woman in a black tank top, but never saw her either.

Gamma and I stood there for nearly an hour waiting for them. Since it only takes them less than half an hour to run 5K, we knew something must be wrong. We went to the place we had arranged to meet, but they weren't there. I didn't know if we had missed them running past in one of those scrums of blonde women in blue shirts, or if something had happened.

Then my mother-in-law called me on my mobile phone and told me Beta had collapsed 600 meters from the finish line.

So Gamma and I walked that direction. I stopped an ambulance and asked him what he knew, he gave me a number to call, which I did, in an attempt to find out where Beta had gone and whether Alpha was with her.

Gradually, as we called around, the park emptied out. We arrived at the spot Beta had collapsed around the time I finally learned that she, together with her mother, had been taken to a certain hospital.

Gamma and I walked about a mile to the parking lot where we had stowed our car. On the way we stopped to buy her a sandwich and take a pee. Then we drove to the hospital.

They kept Beta overnight, and will keep her there tonight again. I don't know yet what is wrong. I'm going to go visit her again on my lunch break.

Pedal Car

Little-known facts about the sunfish

• The sunfish goes by many names, including "ocean sunfish" and "mola mola".
  
• No one has ever actually seen a sunfish, but marine biologists assume it looks like in the picture, which is an artist's rendering based on descriptions by old sailors, because if the sunfish didn't exist, we'd have to invent it.
  
• Sometimes the sunfish forgets how to walk and staggers all over the path, even if it's sober. It is a slow walker and doesn't like trying to keep up with others.
  
• No matter how bad things get, the sunfish thinks, At least Richard Simmons isn't trying to cheer me up.
  
• When a sunfish's relationship is on the ropes, it goes for a walk with its partner at sunset and a beaver swims up the creek and waddles up the bank and chews down three little trees and sits by the water chewing on them and the sunfish watches the beaver, and watches its partner watching the beaver with wonder, and the sunfish knows, at the very least, we can be good friends.
  
• Sunfish often dream of flying.

Surviving Venice

We took the night train to and from Venice on the weekend we just had, which was a day or two longer than normal. We did this so we could sleep on the train and save a night or two in a hotel. Plus it's something different. We thought we had the compartment to ourselves one way, but the ticket guy had lied to us because we had to share it both ways. At least we didn't wake up to a guy going through our stuff like last time, crazy fucker. You know how when you take a sleeper train somewhere, when you have to share it, it's always some person who snores, or some kid that coughs and falls out of her bunk in the middle of the night, or are otherwise noisy? This time, we were that family. To the two quiet, polite young women from Korea traveling from Vienna to Venice, and the nice, quiet, polite mom and young son traveling from Venice to Wels in Austria, I apologize.

The cake shop was closed. Everything else turned out well. There was a George-Clooney-looking guy on one of the boats with us, who had less hair than I do, for now. Gamma ate gelato three times a day. When she wanted spaghetti, all the restaurants served only pizza. When she wanted pizza, they served only the wrong kind, or when they served the right kind, she wanted only spaghetti, which they didn't serve. But she survived. She complained very little.

We stayed in a hotel on the Lido. It had been sort of our habitual hotel for trips there, but next time I think we'll try a different one. They messed up our reservation, the bathtub drain malfunctioned, and the breakfast buffet wasn't what it used to be, among other minor things. It was fine, I just guess we'll look around next time.

We rented a little four-seater pedal car while at the Lido. I highly recommend doing this if you ever go there. Seriously. Trust me. We rented it for an hour. We'll just pedal for a half hour in one direction, then turn around and pedal back and be there in plenty of time, I figured. At the end, of course, we were sprinting to make it back in time in order to avoid paying another 12 euro for the second hour. Pedestrians were leaping out of the way at crosswalks, baby carriages went tumbling down steps Battleship Potemkin style etc.

But we made it. Getting out at the end, I half expected an endless line of clowns to emerge from the car.

We really lucked out with the weather. It was cold and rainy in Austria while we were gone. It was warm and sunny in Venice while we were there. As we left, clouds started moving in, though. Now we're back in the drizzle, but it's okay.

Seriously, though, rent one of those pedal cars when you go to the Lido.

Live from the secret giant limestone cavern hideout

So apparently no one is interested in an 1nternational c0nspiracy, gee, too bad.
Gosh, there's a real echo in this place.
Gloomy too.
At least these blind salamanders are cool. Hey there little guy, who's your daddy?
Guess I'll have to throw Beta a party at McDonalds or something instead. Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Well, I'll be offline for a few days, going to the Lido and Venice with the family for some more of that cake. See you um Tuesday.
Gotta run, the red phone's ringing. Probably Cheney again.

Oblomov the fearless

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is, I think, the goddamned book I've most enjoyed reading, as far as I can remember, and I can't find my goddamned copy to reread it. I'm thinking now would be a good time to read it, for some reason, and I must have fucking lent it to someone, pressed it upon them, Here read this you'll love it it's great, and they're all Whatever okay and now it's gone.

I like the Russians. Viktor Pelevin, "The Life of Insects" I dug. Good combination for me, Russian and insects. God talks to me through insects, maybe that's why I feel this affinity for them. I see two firebugs fucking in my back yard, and hear God saying, It's all about the fucking, Mig my boy. Fucking in the broader sense, God says. For some people, it's eating or painting or music or the kids or canoeing or rock-climbing or cooking or writing or, for some, like my one uncle who seemed fond of Portland hookers and died of something vague, something hushed up in the family, a few years ago, literally fucking. Whatever, God says. It's the creative urge, I'm creating through you, baby, that's what it's all about, you think you're in the driver's seat, but you're the car.

So, liking the Russians, I am surprised at myself that I have never read Gonchorov's Oblomov, especially since the main character must be like a total slacker hero. I say this because I'm currently reading a 1961 book called "Grundformen der Angst" by Fritz Riemann. The title means, in English, something like "Fundamental Forms of Fear", which I found appealing.

It's the sort of book I wish I would've read 30 years ago, or even 35. At least, that's what I say now, after reading the introduction and skimming a bit of the rest. Fear is a fundamental aspect of life, and there are four kinds of fear, basically, and we can react to fear in one of two ways. That seems to be what the book is about, stretched out over a few hundred pages.

You probably know all this already. Maybe you're thinking, Doh, Mig, the way the nice violin teacher did when I told her, Gee, this year I figured out that if you practice more, you get better faster.

Fear cannot be eliminated from life, it can only be dealt with, or avoided. If we deal with it - confront it, we develop. If we avoid it, we stagnate. I was thinking about Oblomov, lounging around and doing nothing -- either he is fearless, or he is avoiding fear and stagnating. I'll have to read the book, I guess.

All of human culture is an attempt to deal with fear by whatever blah blah blah. From magic, religion, science, politics, collecting Pez dispensers, pimping your ride, you name it. "Love", whatever. Society itself. Banding together. Being a hermit. Organizing scavenger hunts. Pick any abstract concept.

So, I suppose, my method was avoidance, for a long while. Stagnation: I called it fermentation, aging in the bottle, whatever. Ripening. And what I think is better is to follow your creative urge, the fucking God was talking about, and deal with whatever fears or scary situations arise along the way. There is nothing necessarily heroic about this, it's just what you do or don't do, I think.

Like me and the cello, there is getting over the fear of bowing, the cautious bowing that squeaks so much. Squeakophobia as it's known in the business. Face that and it sounds better. Or, the annual recitals that churn my stomach. They're getting easier, and christalmighty, they're only recitals, they're no big deal, really.

I sat down near the back of the room at the recital, two evenings ago, and looked at the program. Dang, I thought, they put me near the end, amidst the good cellists. Following a girl who plays much better than I do.

Everyone else, though, played badly. Played like kids at a recital, that is. Some weren't nervous or scared, most were. Most had bad intonation and squeaked and so on. Even the good kids before me made mistakes. A handsome young man was quite nervous and mad at himself while playing at all the boo-boos he was making.

So by the time it was my turn, I was in a very much What-the-hell who cares mood. I was quite happy as I sat down, as happy as you can be when you are as nervous as I was, nervous but calming down rapidly.

I smiled and if not exactly throwing caution to the wind, at least thinking, the cautious playing of the kids before me sounded like crap, I'll loosen up and if it sounds like crap, it won't be because I was too timid.

Let me mention here my state of mind: quite fragmented. My picture of the actual playing looked as if it were viewed through a long, shiny tube reflected in a jagged construction of small mirrors assembled with superglue by a crazy person; kaleidoscopic, in other words, and disorganized.

I hammed it up on the vibrato, though. I got vibrato on maybe half the notes where I should have. The others, I was more careful and passed on the vibrato because, like, tricky passages immediately followed them and so on. The first half of the piece (a Romberg sonata for cello and piano) repeated, and although I had been dreading the repetition, it turned out to be fun, and a second chance to go back and get right all the stuff I screwed up the first time, which wasn't that much, it turned out.

Whenever I made a mistake, I just grinned and played through it. Playing in the orchestra this year really helped with the playing past mistakes issue.

In fact, the hard parts I got right, mostly, and got tangled up over some of the easier passages. Best of all was this dramatic exit at the end, this series of fast, dramatic notes that I had been batting .500 on in practice. I got it right, and knew as I was playing it that I was getting it right, and thinking, I'm getting it right, man, this is fun as hell.

The applause seemed quite heavy, but I was still kaleidoscopic. A friend in the back row yelled Bravo, which was to be expected, he is a funny person, but then some stranger also did. And my kids were proud of me, and Beta, who knows her music, said some nice things, and my inlaws were very proud too, and friends congratulated me for having the nerve to get up there, and my cello teacher said, Great you didn't lose your sense of humor, whatever that means.

So I suppose, if one faces a fear, it can pan out, although if you are like afraid of a lion, then you get fucking eaten, so use your judgement.