Metamorphosism

Helianthus something-something

Thanksgiving

There was a special harvest mass at church in our village last Sunday. Gamma and her classmates all brought wicker baskets with vegetables, nuts, fruit and flowers. The priest blessed them and I suppose us as well.

The church has an old-fashioned cross-shaped floorplan. When mass was over, they opened the exits at either side. The one on the right led to the cemetery. The one on the left led to a sort of square where tables had been set up and decked with wine and open-faced sandwiches spread with Grammelschmalz, which as I understand it is the lard and crunchy bits left over after you cook a roast. It tastes damn good.

We went out that door.

He says he's from Holland

I have begun to scratch backs.
Family members only, so far.
I find doing so increases the likelihood they will scratch mine.
This morning, for instance, Gamma was all, Left. Left. Higher. Yes. Now all over.
We took a delivery of wood this morning. A man driving a tractor backed a long green side-dumping trailer into our driveway at 7 AM and side-dumped three cubic meters of firewood. It made a real noise. Our cats were skittish for quite some time afterwards.
Gamma didn't want to listen to my recording of Anner Bylsma playing Bach cello suites before school, so we played a few hands of rummy instead. Then we debated the pros (whee!) and cons (against the rules) of her riding her scooter to school. I walked her to school scooterless and drove to work.
I listened to the classical radio station but the music was boring so I listened to Anner Bylsma playing Bach's cello suites because it is nice music and I am trying to learn the prelude.
I listened and listened and had to smile because you know what? Parts of what I play now are beginning to sound remotely like parts of what he plays. Or, when I listen to what he plays, I can now understand parts.
Only parts; other parts are still all WTF? But still, now it's like listening to a language one speaks badly spoken fast, rather than a language one speaks not at all spoken in a train driving the opposite direction from the train you're on.
I listened for quite a while, until I had a feeling I hadn't had since I was 19 or 20 and in a cheap hotel room in Vancouver BC with thin walls next door to a man seemingly dying of emphysema but determined to cough out lobes of each lung beforehand. Coughing and coughing, non-stop.
It was that same feeling, the feeling of being next door to that guy in the crappy hotel room, except instead of the dying guy it was Anner Bylsma playing the cello.
Otherwise, the same.
So I turned off Anner and listened to the radio some more. Nothing wrong with Anner. He just needs a break. Next Easter when Isserlis publishes his recording of Bach's suites I'll have a little party and compare the two or something.
Anyway on the radio: Bach. Just like what Anner had just been playing, only on another instrument.
It sounded like the fricking Prelude, and it sounded like a banjo.
I was all, that must be a mandolin or something classy. But wouldn't it be cool for someone that good to play Bach on a banjo?
When the song was finished, the DJ said it was Béla Fleck playing a Bach prelude for violin.
Traffic was pretty light this morning, so I was able to really get into all this.
Béla Fleck playing Bach on the banjo (and very well) made me imagine Anner Bylsma feeding nickels into a slot machine at the Cherokee Casino in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma and asking the employees if they like music and the employees whispering to each other, He says he's from Holland, and, Isserlis lost eight hundred bucks on the slots just two nights ago.
So, the Bach Prelude is further along than it was last summer. If I practiced like parents make their little kids practice, I'd be further.
Actually, if I practiced like parents make their little kids practice, I'd be sitting there crying probably and hating the cello.
If I practiced better, I'd be further.
And if I were smaller, I could save money by buying my suits in the boys section.

Little-known facts about the horseshoe crab

• Horseshoe crabs, Limulus polyphemus, have evolved little in the last 250 million years.
  
• Two-thirds the size of females, the males ride their mates up to the high-tide line, fertilizing eggs as they go.
  
• Like most people, horseshoe crabs have 2 eyes on the top of their shells that can see about 3 feet. They use them to find mates.
  
• Migratory birds like to feed on horseshoe crabs when they molt. However, molting is the only way they can grow, so they're in something of a bind.
  
• Horseshoe crabs look like they were designed by Swiss artist HR Giger, which in fact they were.
  
• Every horseshoe crab drags a heavy stone uphill. Despite the fact that the stones are of uniform weight, each horseshoe crab remains convinced his is the heaviest.
  
• Kate Bush sings "Running up that hill" while the horseshoe crabs do this, proving that life is more ironic and cynical than anything you or I can think up.
  
• Despite their nasty-looking tails, horseshoe crabs have never harmed Australians.
  
• The horseshoe crab's central mouth is surrounded by legs and while scary-looking, is harmless unless someone compares the horseshoe crab to a Roomba, which they are sick of hearing.
  
• Horseshoe crabs sometimes talk loudly during movies. Sometimes. It depends on the horseshoe crab.

Trying to remember

For some reason none of the prunes on the trees have worms now. Earlier in the summer, when they were first getting ripe, it was gross. You had to examine every single one, and throw away more than half. Now you still examine every one, but none are infested.
Weekend: Saturday we did some stuff. Sunday we did some more stuff. Don't ask me what, so long ago.
Saturday morning, I think Beta and I moved furniture at her grandparents' house. It went well, I only squished her into the corner once and we damaged the freshly-painted walls minimally. Nothing got crushed etc and there was no blood and no tears and minimal sweat. Then we ate pizza and I went and lifted weights at the gym a little.
I say lifted weights. Worked out. I worked out at the gym.
A little.
Sunday morning I worked in the yard. I clipped some bushes. Gamma and I played catch with a tennis ball after Alpha and Beta went somewhere. Then Gamma took a shower, and then I did. Then I started to practice cello, but Alpha called and said put some food together let's go on a picnic, so we did and it was nice.
In the afternoon, Sunday was all about the circus. Gamma had been promised a visit to the circus. It was my turn, and presented to me as if I would treat it like punishment, but I didn't mind this year. Most years I try to get out of it. This year I didn't mind.
It is the cheapest circus that comes to town. The others really fucking rip you off. This one is reasonable by comparison. Gamma and I - that is, a 9 year old kid and a grown man - got decent seats for €17, plus a drink and popcorn for Gamma for €2 each, and at the end she got a large balloon with a rubber band so you can make it go boing-boing against your fist in the car on the drive home and distract the driver, for only another euro. We skipped the animal show in the intermission, which would have been only €1.50 per person, as well as the pony riding (€2) and the autograph cards (€1 I think), the poster (€2) and so on.
The show lasted two hours, totally a reasonable deal for your money. There was a pretty good clown (Charlie Chaplin style outfit) and there were some decent acrobats.
It is a family circus. We have been going to see them for about the last 12 or so years. They come to town every year. We have watched the kids grow up and either get good, or not, or sort of drop out and do something else.
One of the daughters is in her 20s now. She came out with some little dogs and they climbed up and down stuff and got treats. Then later she came out with a horse and a pony and the horse stood there while the pony ran underneath it, back and forth. She (the young woman) was tall and sort of shapely and wearing a tight glittery dress slit up past the hip, to the point where when the dads who took their kids to the circus come home and are asked, How were the horses? they say, Horses?
And there was a glittery shapely Czech gal who lay on her back and balanced things with her feet, and juggled things with her feet. And there was another blonde Austrian woman who climbed up and down a rope, and did a hulahoop act.
In the intermission, Gamma and I stayed in the tent because we were skipping the animal petting thing, and she enjoyed climbing around under the bleachers. She found a baby bracelet and a t-shirt and some other stuff.
After the show we bought the balloon on our way out, and it took a while because people kept taking cuts in front of Gamma, until I finally gave her a hand.
Then we drove home and did some more stuff. We went to a concert in a nearby town where a 12 year old Korean girl played violin with an orchestra from Budweis. She was the soloist. She stood up front, a skinny kid in a blue dress, and played. She played by heart, and seemed (as Gamma remarked) to dissolve into pure music when she played.
We left early, as soon as she was finished, because you know, school tomorrow. On our way home we passed the wunderkind and her parents, and I slowed down so Alpha could yell out the window at her how well she had played. She and her parents seemed happy.
Then we went home and went to bed. Then I slept until 3 AM, when someone sleeping in bed with me screamed in their sleep. Then I went back to sleep and kept waking myself up because I was snoring.
Then at 5 I got up and fed the cats, and my day started.

Rain, by Beta

Just messing around with flickr. Beta took some pictures on our way into Vienna a few days ago.

More about the weather

A lightning storm over our house woke me up at four this morning. It was still raining pretty good when Beta and I drove into town. I made her take pictures all the way in, until the batteries went dead.

It was muggy yesterday

Took some stuff to the dump yesterday because it's open late Thursdays, until seven in the evening. Got home late from work because traffic was heavy, loaded up the old Dobló, which we had borrowed from my father-in-law the retired mechanic and drove to the dump.

Much of the drive was spent stuck behind a truck loaded with large odd things. When I finally passed it, a tractor pulling a huge load of hay had just pulled out in front of it and so I was sandwiched in between the two. The tractor turned off after a while and I drove the rest of the way to the dump, arriving there at one after seven. At that point, I didn't know yet that the dump was open until seven (which was good, because think how nervous I would have been); all I knew was that it was open late Thursdays. But the sign said 19.00. The dashboard clock said 19.01. Which explained why things were so quiet at the dump.

The dump lady at the gate let me in anyway. She usually tries to cultivate a hardass attitude when I see her on Saturdays, which are busier, but I suspect she's actually nice at heart. Working with refuse does that to women.

She told me where to toss my cardboard and where the milk cartons and juice cartons go and where the plastic, although I already knew all that. She actually has a house at the dump, the stairs up to the door are covered with stacks of various things salvaged from the dump.

I went around throwing everything in the proper containers because I didn't want to get yelled at.

Throw the metal garbage way back into the metal garbage dumpster, she said. It's nearly empty. So I threw the screens left over from the first tortoise habitat, which we dismantled when we moved the tortoise to the big flowerbed in front of the house.

Then I removed the swingset parts, long tubes of metal painted green with red accents, and threw them in, clear to the back of the dumpster, one by one. For each one, I made a trip from the back of the car to the dumpster and threw it towards the right-rear corner, using an underhand throw.

There was a single swing, a two-seated swing, and a different two-seated swing. There were four leg tubes in all, which when the swingset was standing connected in inverted V-shapes at each end of the swingset, and there was a slightly larger tube that went along the top of the swingset, connecting the two inverted V-shapes at their apexes, from which the various swings had hung. The rope ladder I disposed of in a different dumpster, the one for rope ladders.

I was in no hurry to throw all that shit away, but it had to go. No one was swinging on it anymore and it was just taking up space in the yard.

Then I threw away bottles and cans and went and got the kids at their grandparents and went home. It got dark and the moon was full and Alpha and I put the kids to bed and went into the backyard and killed a bottle of prosecco and talked. There was a partial eclipse of the moon and we looked at that a bit and called the kids out to look at it too. It was one of your nicer partial lunar eclipses, big harvest moon and all.

Eating some manufactured ice cream product this afternoon on my way back from the store on my lunch break, I tried to remember the very last time I had pushed a child on a swing at that swingset and I am sad to say I couldn't.

Can you imagine?

That's why I don't say No to my kids as often as I should. Because there you are, pushing them on the swing and you think you're just pushing a kid on the swing, who cares, it's going one of two ways, either you're looking at your watch and saying Just ten more pushes, honey and they say, No twenty, or you're saying Hang on tight, let's see if I can make you spin all the way around and they're squealing with delight. Either way, you're doing this and it is the last time and you don't know it.

First fog

Driving to work Tuesday, I saw the first fog of the season. Apparently there's a fog season, who knew. I looked for deer, but it was too bright for them.

Fog has a calming effect. Fog is quiet. Deer in fog are even nicer, but fog is okay by itself, sort of coming out of the woods like that.

Around the bend in the freeway, there were a lot of dumptrucks and road construction machinery, and I realized it was actually dust. Dust is almost as nice, as long as you think it's fog.

This morning I screamed at Gamma. I told her to wear her glasses to school, which she must, and to wear them all day. She said she'd go to school without glasses and wear them in class, which means she did not intend to wear them. I got madder and madder, she started crying big tears. I got so mad I yelled and threw a ring of keys down onto the floor so hard that the cheap plastic piece of shit in the keyring broke.

Gamma is of the opinion she looks like a pig in her glasses. She wouldn't answer me when I asked who said that. She was not impressed by my statement that I think she looks cute in glasses.

I tried to calm down. She wiped the tears off her face and I walked her to school. I told her I would tell her teacher she had to wear glasses all day, but the lazy teacher wasn't at school yet when we got there, nor did she arrive before I left for work.

Gamma had her glasses on when I left. She still had them on when I snuck back a minute later to check. No idea whether she'll wear them all day. If I weren't her dad, I'd advise her to flush them down the toilet. Then we'd have no choice but to buy her new ones she likes.

When we left the house this morning, there was some real fog in the trees and around the chimneys. The first fog, Gamma said. Fall is coming, I said.

Climbing the walls

Life lately has been a lot like when they lock you in the rubber room at the insane asylum except the walls are made of beautiful naked ladies not rubber, and when you go to climb the walls they are all covered with oil so you keep slipping back down to the floor, and the floor is made of ugly naked ladies.

A lot, I say "a lot," in fact that's exactly what it's been like.

Three dreams have come true for me this summer: I rode my bike from Dürnstein to my house, about a zillion miles down the Danube, very beautiful, with my daughter and my cousin's kid. I went on that pilgrimage with Alpha, another zillion, great fun, and last Saturday I rowed about 20 or 30 miles down the Danube, more great fun. My back held up (I took a pain pill beforehand, just in case) although I was pretty pooped and not rowing especially hard the last 3 or 4 miles. Man was that beautiful too.

I should be a travel writer. "Went to Paris. Boy is it pretty."

From the river, you see very few signs of human life, except for humans along the banks, like a young dad fishing with his little boy and a dog (actually, the dad was fishing with a pole and worms, the little boy and dog were watching) and that made my eyes tear up, seeing the dad thing going on and thinking of dads all over the world fishing with their little kids, and all the little kids growing up and remembering it fondly.

All you see from the water are trees and green, green, green. By Greifenstein we had to carry the rowboat around the dam. There was a sort of reservoir there with a load of nudists sunning in the woods and reeds along the shore. They all stared at us like we were the show.

In all, it was a fun day, although most of the other rowers were these competitive rower-types and I hadn't done anything athletic all summer etc. so there was that aspect of mild humiliation/deprecation, but the water and the peace and the landscape was totally worth it.

Today is the first day of school here. Gamma couldn't sleep at night and neither could I. I gave her a foot massage and told her how excited I used to get as a kid on the first day of school, what suffering and anxiety it was, although I mostly enjoyed the academic part of school.

Today I walked her to school, it's just down the street from our house. I took a picture of her alongside the school. She wouldn't let me take her picture right in front, because other people were already there.

Fourth grade she's in this year. Little Gamma. And Beta's a high school senior, her last year of public school man. Little Beta.

I took a walk in the woods with Alpha yesterday morning. We had a good talk. I am fond of Alpha, and of our walks. We saw a frog and some other stuff. I took pictures, and finally got around to uploading stuff to flickr.

Guest post: Mig's Lumbar Pain

You want something to cry about? I'll give you something to cry about. You think that's bad? I'll give you something bad. Try this on for size. How do you like this? Do you like it? How do you like it? Do you like it like this? What was on your mind just a second ago? Before you can teach anyone anything, you have to get their attention. You with me? You think that's bad? I'll show you bad. I'll show you how to let go in a hurry. You think you want to let go. I'll show you want to let go. You want relief? There isn't any relief. This is all there is. Welcome to the moment. You think that was a spasm? I'll show you a spasm you won't forget. What were you just a minute ago? What was that? And look at you now, one big vessel of misery. How's it feel to be back in your body like this? Feel your size? Bigger than you tend to think, aren't you? Go ahead and move, it doesn't help. This is it buddy boy, one endless moment. And you thought mindfulness was so hard.