Bella Ciao

God: Where are we now?
Noah: Erm, eleven. 9:11.
God: Ok.
God: So anyway, Yes, I am confirming my covenant with you. Never again will floodwaters kill all living creatures; never again will a flood destroy the earth.
Noah (writing): Ok, yep, good, got it. No More Floods.
God: Weeeelll not exackly.
Noah: You said, and I quote, “never again will floodwaters etc etc.”
God: Yes however.
Noah: Kill all living creatures.
God: Yes ok not all of them.
Noah (loses cuniform stylus in mud): Dang. Look, I’ll just put “no more floods” for now and add the details later.
God: You’re gonna forget.
Noah: I won’t forget! Man!
God: Yeah ok whatever.

The Damage Commission was at our house this morning.
They looked around.
My wife, who has been cleaning for over a week (with help from friends and relatives including me) apologized for the mess. Who apologizes for the mess after a flood has flooded your house?
Oh, we’ve seen worse, say the Damage Commission.
The Damage Commission decides how much damage money we get or something, at least is responsible for the first stage of the process, before it vanishes into bureaucracy. I wanted to wait on the cleaning until after their visit so the cellar would look worse but Alpha said they would know, don’t worry, which was correct.

They needed our children to sign a form so I hunted them down on the way to work. There has been much hunting down of people to sign forms lately.

I hunted Gamma down at the hospital where she is doing an internship, something to do with psychology and psychotherapy blah blah blah and out she walks to meet me, wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clip board and a book.

Oh, you have a pen to sign with, I said.
I have two, she said, flaunting the second pen.

That’s how together she is nowadays.

Then I drove to the other train station, my regular train station still being under water, and failed to find a legal parking spot because everyone who normally uses my regular train station is now also using the other train station so I went home and had Alpha drive me to the other train station. When I got to town I went to the ministry to meet Beta.

I hesitate to say which ministry because with Beta you never fucking know how secret something is. Anyway she came out and we went to Starbucks – I think I am allowed to divulge that – where I had a pumpkin spice latte and she had another beverage, I will not say which one. I also had a ham and cheese croissant. She signed the document and now I’m carrying it around until I go home at night. I walked her back to the ministry and she walked me back to the UBahn. I’ll go in here, she said, it’s a secret entrance; you may enter the UBahn station over there.

See you in November when I get back from [REDACTED], she said.

Then I took a couple subways and a bus to the office. On one subway a fellow got on, he was wearing an accordion securely strapped to his body. He said something and began to play. He played short versions of a couple songs I recognized but could not name. Others seemed to be ignoring him. When my stop came I gave him two 2-Euro coins and exited (he, ever the professional had been blocking the exit with his body so one was forced to interact with him one way or the other).

He thanked me and broke into a nice rendition of “Bella Ciao”, my favorite involuntary subway accordion song.

Standing on the platform watching the train leave, I had the same feeling as I had as a boy after loading a jukebox with a bunch of coins and punching in the numbers for many terrible songs before leaving a place.

Enjoy, suckers, I did not say as I watched the tunnel suck up the train. I caught a glimpse of a woman on the train giving the accordionist more coins, and felt good.

Equilibrium

So anyway. There I was in the woods. Looking around. Weather was beginning to cool, but still hot, not like today which is cool and rainy, perfect, perfect weather.
It was hot but the woods were shady.
I was wearing socks this time in case something ran up the inside of my pantsleg again (nothing did) and a straw hat and a pink Bikini Kill T-shirt and blue jeans. And shoes. I had clippers in my pocket, hidden by the shirt in case I encountered the owner of the forest or a hunter or whatever (I didn’t).
I told myself it was legal to clip the cattails; I wasn’t taking many and the ones that were protected are a different, smaller kind. These are ok to take.
I don’t know if they really are. According to something I found online it is legal in Austria to take things (nuts, berries, mushrooms) from the woods for your own use, but not, like, commercially, and not firewood etc. So I took 5 hazel switches (for possible basketry) (I didn’t take more because I didn’t want to look greedy should I encounter an owner or other authority) (I didn’t) and looked around for thick stands of cattails.
I found some near the edge of a pond. It was a steep slope maybe 2 meters down to the water’s edge.
I don’t know what happened. I was carefully going down the slope when I just tipped.
I was clutching at the grass and plants, but it was no good.

Voice in my head: “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” (all lower case, calm, more dismay than terror, more wanting to get this falling stuff over with so the climbing back up can commence). I did not catch myself elegantly. There was 0% elegance going on here.
Did I make a sound? I don’t recall.
At least I didn’t fall into mud or brackish water.
I bet Mary Oliver fell into the cattails sometimes too.
“There it was, the soft animal of my body, lying there on its back in the reeds, hoping nothing slithered up its leg.”
I resolved to start doing more squats and knee mobility stuff.

I got my cattails, a medium-sized bundle, and wandered back to my Ford Tourneo Courier 1.0 Ecoboost (which a recent passenger determined dings a lot, safety warnings that are, in sum, distracting).

I went home and set out my catch in the shed to dry under the wasp nests (3 at last count). That reminds me, I forgot to put my bicycle back into the shed and now it is raining. My motivation to put my bike back was mitigated by the 3 wasp nests.

I made some twine. I watched the closing ceremony of the Paralympics with my wife. At some point I went to bed, because I woke up in bed this morning, happy to see the rain and the cooler weather.

Migbars, and old man whining about health

My recipe for “Migbars” (energy bars to snack on while climbing etc. that are healthier and cheaper than commercial ones) is nearly all sorted out. The climbers I know who have so far test-eaten them all gave positive feedback.

I remain happy with my Ford Tourneo Courier 1.0 Ecoboost although the cruise control is distracting. It is my first car with a cruise control, I like the cruise control, but it switches to “standby” if I step on the brakes or gas while using it, and I have not yet figured out how to just switch it back on, and instead must turn it off and back on instead.

I woke up today without vertigo for the first time in more than 2 weeks. I am hesitant to discuss my health, as I don’t want to be an old person cliche talking about my health all the time, but I always find trouble-shooting a PITA and it’s even more so when it is your health you are dealing with and man don’t ever do internet searches for health/illness stuff. There are so many potential causes of vertigo! Most dire! This led to me bouncing from one doctor to another, with the result that my body has passed inspection and I am street-legal for another year. It has been determined by MRI that my brain is “not clinically relevant” which sounds insulting but is good news; my ears are fine, except for the growing deafness and tinnitus, and so on.

I have been forced to monitor my blood pressure, which so far is right where it should be.

I still don’t know what the cause of my dizziness was – anyway I woke up this morning feeling fine for the first time in 2 weeks. I think it might have been a combination of the hot weather, stress, fear and panic. I was somewhat miserable and unable to go climbing, which is my main anti-misery tool lately. Anyway. Feeling better now, I think. Hope it sticks. Maybe I can go climbing again soon (as soon as I manage to convince Alpha that I my equilibrium has returned), and have a Migbar.

Interspecies contract

It is sometimes good for your mental health when you are able to give the wheel to your stone age side that is otherwise so often repressed in today’s society (does not apply to fascists) and so I found it liberating yesterday to go into the woods and look for some natural fibers with which to make a basket; I have no idea how to make a basket so we are talking early Neanderthal in my case (archeologists have found traces of cordage-making in 90,000 year old Neanderthal settlements but based on how easily the practice of twining fibers came to me I would guess it is earlier than that) anyway I clipped a few cattails and stripped off their leaves, which I find good for making cordage as the leaves are quite long and there are smaller bits on one side of the leaves you can strip off that are good for making thinner, almost thread-like twine that is quite strong but I do not know yet what to do with that either; in fact that is the reason I am trying to make a basket because when a friend asked me, But what are you going to do with the twine? I answered, Make a basket and so there I was with my cat-tails, wandering deeper into the woods to find some branches I could use for a frame and it felt like the opening scene of a detective show where a passerby innocently stumbles upon the first body, which I call the “Leichenfund”-scene as in, I am on the sofa, TV is on, my wife is outside talking to the kale in the raised bed and I shout to her, Honey hurry, your Krimi is on, you’re going to miss the Leichenfund! and I stepped into a tuft of grass and something cold, moving fast, wriggled up my leg, between leg and trouser-leg and I instinctively did the dance (definitely an instinct imprinted in my lizard brain, requiring zero thought) that one does in such a situation, the dance we have been doing since the days of Neanderthal fiber-gathering, probably longer, and in response the cold wriggling creature threw it into reverse and wriggled off through the grass and I thought, Lizard? Snake? and mused upon the interspecies contract whereby one wriggles, one dances, the wriggler exits stage left, no harm done and how that would benefit both species in such a way that we have both evolved to this point that we can safely go our separate ways, happy with our rapidly beating hearts and a story to tell when we get home.
I found no body, but I did cut a few branches that are crookeder and less uniform than I had hoped for for a basket but perhaps that will lend the finished product an interesting air, assuming I can produce a piece of twine to tie them together that doesn’t break when I tug on it.
Then a bee stung me in the left shoulder blade when was watering the flower bed in front of the house. My first thought was a wasp, which will sting you for fun, and not a bee, which you have to give a reason and I had given bees no reason to sting me, I am mellow with bees, I was merely watering their flowers, and I said a bad word and squirted myself in the back with the hose to get rid of the wasp, which will sting you multiple times if they are in a mood to, but when I got back into the house and removed my wet shirt I could see the stinger and its attached poison sack still in my shoulder blade and realized a bee had somehow crawled up my shirt and stung me when I leaned against the wall of the house (as an American, I am always leaning against something, this is typical for Americans, a fact I read on my phone from an article citing a CIA manual for its spies under “how not to look American while abroad” that said Americans were always leaning against something; I was leaning against the interior of a subway when I read that, but everyone leans against the interior of the subway, don’t they?) and finding itself between house and shoulder blade it felt compelled to sting, sadly, because I meant it no harm and honeybees, unlike wasps, can only sting once, and this beautiful animal died, and when I pulled out the stinger I of course accidentally squeezed the remaining venom into myself making it worse, and wished for an interspecies contract with honeybees, which of course maybe we have already and which I had violated, such as, Don’t squish us and we won’t sting you. Maybe.
Anyway. I don’t know what’s going on with the animals in my clothes lately.
Just what happens when you leave the house I guess.
Now please excuse me, I must water the yard.

First review of Ford Tourneo Courier 1.0 Ecoboost

We picked it up today and drove it home past what we later found out was a tornado and out to lunch and then I went shopping with it, more rain, and then we drove it back to the dealer to return the 2nd key from the Kia we traded in and pick up the back support pillow I forgot in the driver’s seat of the Kia.
So not a lot of driving so far, maybe an hour total. I will submit further reviews here with additional impressions as they arise.
For the moment I am enjoying the bells and whistles and electronic doodads and functions. I finally figured out the cruise control, for example, and am gradually getting used to the stay-in-your-lane function and the don’t-tailgate function, not to mention the you-are-exceeding-the-speed-limit alarm.
It also folds the outside mirrors in when you lock it, which is useful if you are someone with a tendency to check if you forgot to lock the door, because now you can see – if the mirrors are folded in you locked it.
When you turn the vehicle on, the radio comes on. When you turn the vehicle off, the radio stays on. Then when you open the door to get out, the radio turns off. I have had cars in the past that did similar things, but this is the first one that seems to do it by design and not because you haven’t found the loose wire yet.
Size-wise it resembles a Doblo, even looks more compact, but has a very roomy feel and there was plenty of room for all the nuts and dried fruit I bought at the supermarket today to make my own energy bars because energy bars are expensive!
Unfortunately dried fruit and nuts are also expensive, oh well.
Lastly, there is no CD player in the Ford, which I gather is normal now, so I guess I will have to bite the bullet and get going on a Spotify account or something.

Hey sister, go sister

One bittersweet thing about ageing, provided you are not a complete fuckhead, is discovering things you had wrongly assumed were true i.e. things you were wrong about. Bitter because you were wrong about them, blithely so, often things that were fundamental to your world view, your understanding of the universe, and sweet because you can correct them, yet bitter because to do so you have to admit, at least (or especially) to yourself, that you really were wrong about them, but sweet because if you fix it then you are right again, yet bitter because you know the next thing will come soon enough.

It’s the Dunning-Kruger thing. The more you grow in wisdom and knowledge, the more you realize you are a bigger dumbfuck than you thought. Lately this has been (like everything else) accelerating with me. Like, during the course of my life, as time passed, I first thought I was invincible, then smart, then a sort of dumb smartfuck, then a dumbfuck, but now, god, a dumb dumbfuck, while yet at the same time knowing, or hoping, that this is the result of growing knowledge and wisdom enabling me to recognize and repair my dumbfuckery and not simply me growing increasingly stupid as I age.

Today, this morning, in the parking lot of my doctor, where we had just gone over the results of a blood test and I had been given the all-clear, or mostly-clear, I hit *play* on the greatest disco hits (CD 2 of 3) in my car’s CD player and bounced along to “Lady Marmalade” on my way to the train station when suddenly a wave of uncertainty washed over me.

Is it “gitchie gitchie” or “gitchy gitchy”? And,
is it really “ya ya gaga”?
Given my inability to understand the simplest lyrics I was compelled to perform an Internet search.
What a rabbit hole, is all I can say.
Turns out it’s basically like whatever schism led to the Roman Catholic Church/Orthodox Church deal.

For one thing, it is “Hey sister, go sister, hey sister soul sister” and not “Hey sister, soul sister” (x2)

For another thing, depending on who you ask it is either “gitchie gitchie” or “gitchi gitchi”. I was unable to find “gitchy gitchy” or any other alternatives.

Likewise, to my surprise there was a general consensus that it is “da da” and not “gaga”.

I am still digesting this.

doo-dad

I weighed myself and then was immediately motivated to go to the gym where I seem to have spent too much time on the crotch machine as I am now walkin’ aroun’ like a bow-legged cowpoke.

I weighed myself because I was curious how much weight Gamma was belaying when she held the rope for me in our climbing class. Quite a bit, it turns out.

We hooked her up to a sandbag a couple times, and ran the rope in a z-pattern a couple times, to assist with my excess weight, as neither of us wanted her to be pulled upwards through a bunch of carabiners if I fell.

I was careful not to fall, but still. You do all that work to help them become awesome, you don’t want to pull them through a bunch of carabiners.

Yesterday I went to a climbing shop and bought a different doo-dad to increase friction on the rope in case of a fall, recommended to me by a climbing friend to help with the weight difference.

Meanwhile, working on decreasing the weight difference as well.

And limpin’ around