It rained hard yesterday (flooding in nearby parts of Austria, road closed locally for flooding) so the tortoise is in the office with me today. She’s currently biting my feet, in fact.

Our cleaning lady had sort of a nervous breakdown recently (not our fault, I don’t think). The tortoise has been walking in circles around the perimeter of the room and rooting about underneath the desk. She’s collected so much dust on her feet it looks like she’s wearing little fuzzy booties.

American cuisine has a poor reputation here in Austria, and certain regions seem to go out of their way to live up to this reputation. Seattle, however, is not one of them. I mean, okay, there is bad food in Seattle too, and plenty of it, but there is also good seafood, which we craved, living in a landlocked country as we do; and good Mexican food, and good Asian food, and good pizza, all of which are hard to find here in Austria.

So anyway, I went to America looking forward to eating Mexican food. And mass quantities of Oreos, with milk. And I did. The Mexican food was good. My sister cooked some delicious enchiladas. I gained 10 pounds during my 2 weeks over there, and most of it was from those enchiladas.

I also got the Oreos. We will be devoting another post to American supermarkets, but I have to mention here that Oreos – those little black (with white filling) industrialized, standardized round cookie simulacra (bearing as they do no relation to real cookies) that I never especially liked when I lived in the United States (they taste to me like dirt mixed with sugar and a little cocoa) but came to crave when I moved away – now come in a variety of versions: Regular, “Double-stuff”, reduced fat (!!), peanut butter and, I think, mint.

I bought one each of double-stuff and reduced fat, but the latter only by accident as I had meant to buy the peanut-butter ones to gross out Alpha, who does not like peanut butter.

We also enjoyed eating bagels, which are hard to come by here in Austria, although there is allegedly one baker somewhere in Vienna who makes them. Blueberry bagels with butter; poppyseed or sesame seed bagels with cream cheese, lox and sliced Walla Walla sweet onions. We ate blueberry toast too, slice after slice of soft, sweet bread incredibly dense with blueberries. And large cups of strong coffee, and various sorts of cinnamon rolls.

We ate various things. We ate, and ate, and ate. I guess because we were guests and everyone wanted to make sure we got enough to eat. They pelted us with food from the time we woke up until we went to bed. We ate at picnics, at nice restaurants, at little holes in the wall, and we ate takeout. But no one hardly ever cooked. My sister cooked the great enchiladas and a few other things; my mother cooked bacon and eggs, once, I think. The rest was dining out or taking out. Or potlucks. On our last day in the States we visited some friends for a barbecue, and they had cooked everything from scratch, including an apple pie, and we were greatly comforted.

Here in Austria, we (or my mother-in-law) usually cook dinner every day.

The refrigerators I saw, at my sister’s and my folks’, were about twice the size of ours here (which is large by Austrian standards, but not huge) and packed absolutely full of stuff. Beverages, food, leftovers. They were so full you had to be careful opening them and taking stuff in and out. When we were visiting my parents, my mother got up at night to get something out of the refrigerator and a jar of pickles fell out and broke her toe. She acted as if it were no big deal, apparently it happens to her a lot.

Alpha and I went out to dinner at a nice restaurant outside Seattle one night and it was pretty good, but also expensive. Eating out here is a bargain by comparison.

We also went out for breakfast with some of the old relatives one morning for all the usual stuff like pancakes and eggs, bacon, biscuits, etc., the kind of breakfast food we rarely eat here. If they eat breakfast at all, Austrians seem to prefer chocolate cake, or maybe toast, or maybe just coffee.

New shoes at the Shoe Project

Alpha: Does real good with English. At times hard to shut up, in fact. Like, when we were at my sister’s house, and one of my favorite cousins was visiting with her family, and we’re all sitting around the table talking, and Alpha for some reason (I missed that part, as I was spacing out for a few seconds apparently) starts explaining how she’s the masculine one in our relationship, and Mig is the feminine one, and even cooks, and even paints his toenails. And I’m all, Hang on, the girls paint my toenails when I drink too much whiskey on Christmas and pass out.

Beta: Beta is thirteen and didn’t talk much this trip but she was able to speak English just fine when required to and I’m all proud of her.

Gamma: She is five and I speak English to her at home but she always answers in German so I wasn’t sure. But after two days in the States she was speaking English with her cousins. All the other kids were her age, from 2-7, so she had a better time than Beta did, I think. Gamma started out using, first of all, imperatives, like, “no kicking!” and “get out of my room!” and “come here!”

When we came home, she even continued speaking English, but only to me and the cats.

The main road has been widened. It’s like four lanes now with sidewalks. It was only two lanes, no sidewalks when I grew up here. So a lot of the big trees that had grown along the street are gone now as a result. Fewer fields, more strip malls.

The developers have blacktopped the gravel road leading back to the house as well. The field seems smaller, but it’s not. Well, the trees along the road are missing, and the wild cherry tree is gone. And all the redwoods dad planted when I was about 2; he used to drive a lumber truck up from Northern California, hauling redwood lumber to Parr Lumber in Portland and I always assumed he brought those trees up with him. He might have, but he could’ve just bought the seedlings at a nursery here. I’m not sure.

Jesus, the cedrus deodara in the front yard is enormous. What is it, 70 feet high now? My folks drove it home in the Volkswagen Bug when I was little. Anyway, Beta, this is the house your dad grew up in.

Over there used to be a nut orchard. Wild grapes grew there too, and we’d build forts and eat the grapes we could reach, which were usually sour. If you were lucky you’d find a few sweet ones. And there were cherry trees too, left over from some orchard.

We won’t get out of the car. The grass sure is high. It looks like it hasn’t been mowed since the arson fire. Looks like the front door is open. Yeah, the front door is open.

Anyway, this was my old neighborhood. If the developers can get it rezoned, there will soon be a Target right here.

Goodbye, house.

Do not misunderstand me: traveling to the United States to see the relatives, we were all looking forward to it; all the same, part of me felt the way Captain Willard must have felt as he journeyed into the North Vietnamese wilderness in search of Col. Kurtz.

I’m waiting for a mission – getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

We arrived in at Sea-Tac airport nine-ish at night, picked up the rental car and drove to my sister’s house. It surprised me, as it always does, how much traffic there now is in Seattle, even at that time of day.

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. They brought it up to me like room service…It was a real choice mission – and when it was over, I never want another…

We stayed with her about 5 days. It’s a middle-class neighborhood near Greenlake, which means middle-class people as I knew them can’t afford it. Two forty-something Microsoft retirees live across the street raising their kid. Rock star Dave Matthews lives up the street. They have two gas fireplaces and eat a lot of takeout. It was nice to see them, to see my kids playing with her kids, to see my sister and her family doing well, the effort she puts into parenting. She’s also training for a triathlon so she went running with Alpha a few times. I only went running once, so I gained 10 pounds in America and Alpha didn’t.

Then we drove to Cannon Beach in Oregon. It was the nicest trip to the beach I’ve ever had, and several other relatives said the same thing. 14 of us stayed in 3 adjoining cabins on the beach. Alpha mentioned she’d never flown a kite and my brother went out and bought her 2 nylon kites. My brother and I built a large sand pyramid. As last year in Greece, this triggered an epidemic of ambitious sand castles along the beach. We had a barbecue, we walked to Haystack Rock and looked at the starfish, which Alpha likes. We rode these three-wheeled sand tricycles up and down the beach. The kids collected stinky shells that were forgotten in the cabins when we left. After two nights, we went to my parents’ place in the untracked wilds of SW Washington state.

I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn’t even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz’s memory, any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine.

They live on 40 acres of woods surrounded by rednecks. It’s a pretty place but they rarely wander through the woods anymore because many of the neighbors are logging their places so all the scary animals some to their property. My dad doesn’t go out in the pre-dawn to collect the newspaper anymore since a bear snorted at him. And he told my mother not to call him on the walkie-talkie she takes with her on her occasional walks around the place if a cougar attacks her, as he couldn’t stand to listen to it.

They used to have a 5-acre fish pond, but it dried up this summer due to hot weather and illegal dams upstream. You’d think the State would do something about the illegal dams but it doesn’t. Still, the wildlife was a joy for our girls. Deer frolic in the yard. Hummingbirds feed outside the dining room window, and chipmunks and squirrels. They have two cats, one of which (“Stripey”) used to catch the chipmunks when they’d eat at the birdfeeder, so my mom locks Stripey up during the day. Spooky is old and lazy, so she gets to go out during the day, but gets locked up at night so no scary animal eats her.

“Your mother has an interesting attitude towards nature,” my father told me one early morning as we sat at the kitchen table doing a crossword puzzle. Normally he does them himself in the mornings, but when I visit he tells me they’re “too hard today,” and for me to solve them.

“We moved some logs and uncovered a mouse nest. I caught a mouse under a bucket. She was fat, like she was pregnant, so I figure she was the mother. I didn’t have the heart to do anything to her myself so when I came in I told your mom about it. She went out and came back a few minutes later. ‘What about the mouse?’ I asked her. ‘It’s taking a dirt nap,’ she said.”

Because there’s a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the Dark Side overcomes what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’

I didn’t really talk much with my father. I’d wanted to talk to him, but I also knew it probably wouldn’t happen. He’s a little on the quiet side, and half-deaf as well, so even if you manage to draw him out it’s still hard to talk about anything deep and private if you have to shout while the rest of the family crowds around watching another DVD etc. We did our crossword puzzles, mostly.

We had a rental car so we could also get away at times, visiting people or shopping. Once we drove to Portland with my brother and his kids, taking all the kids out to Chinese food and an afternoon at OMSI, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. One day Beta and I went out and rented a Celtic harp. She played a few songs for my uncle and aunt, who we visited. Then we went back to my parents’ place and she played for my parents and her uncle and cousins. Afterwards she said she had enough and didn’t want to play anymore after that. Her cousin who is 7 wanted to perform too so she turned on her keyboard/synethesizer that plays pre-recorded music, but turned it off again after staring at it for a while, realizing she couldn’t really play anything herself. Later she drove her 4-wheeled child-sized recreational vehicle around the house (outside) while we all applauded. We even had to get Gamma out of bed so she could give her a ride.

The next day, a bunch of old uncles and aunts came over with food and mentioned they’d like to hear the harp. Beta had sensed this and retreated to her room beforehand. “I know you don’t want to play, but I’ll give you $10,” I told her. No answer, she just kept reading her Seventeen magazine.

“You’ll make a lot of sick old people very happy, Beta.”

For saying that I will probably burn in hell, at least if god is a 13-year-old girl. She went out and played, and a lot of sick old people were made happy. My father cried, which was no surprise as he had cried the day before. But my cynical aunt with leukemia cried! My bipolar aunt with, eh, something like Parkinsons cried! My crackpot uncle who’s still eccentric but getting a little forgetful and drives slow didn’t cry, I don’t think (Alpha told me who cried, because I didn’t look at anyone while Beta played, because if I had seen anyone cry, I would’ve cried too) but my mother! she of the dirt nap, cried. And hugged Alpha! (It was the first time Alpha felt accepted by her, after knowing me for, what, 22 years now).

So manipulating Beta into playing that day was a good thing, except for the rotting in hell part.

Then we did some other stuff, then we came home.

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream, it’s my nightmare. Crawling, slipping along the edge of a straight razor and surviving…

Here’s Gamma and her cousin, who is currently going through his glamorous phase. He likes to wear tu-tu’s and feather boas when he builds his Battlebots. At three and one-half, he is also (like his 2-year-old sister) a huge fan of baseball in general and Ichiro in particular. He hit three over the fence while I was pitching to him one afternoon when his mother was gone.

Here’s one of my sister and me after the kids painted us.

See, Francis S. told me to “say Hi to America” when we went over, so I thought it would be cute to make a “Hi Francis!” sign and take pictures of all sorts of strangers holding it, like America saying “hi” back to Francis. I was especially looking forward to taking a picture of a wino with the sign, and those guys standing on freeway on-ramps who normally hold signs like “will work for food” or “single dad needs money for rent and medicine”. It soon dawned on me that this would be a lot of trouble, though, with things like model releases etc. so I only took these two before deciding to take a more normal vacation. Next time, Francis.