Big Hero

It’s a nice day so Mr. and Mrs. Big Robot go to a Heurigen, a wine tavern, within walking distance of their house, for a casual meal and a glass of wine or two. They get a table in the shade and order and while they are eating and drinking an older couple come and ask if they may share the table and the Big Robots say, sure! And everyone is friendly and chatting and drinking and eating and the older couple seem to know the Big Robots but this is not mutual. I mean, they look familiar. At least the lady. But their names, where they live, all those details…?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They talk about kids, they talk about solar power and heat pumps, home renovations, all that old people stuff.
Things are sort of gliding along, Mr. Big Robot orders another glass of wine, lets his mind wander until he notices Mrs. Big Robot talking about all the people he has saved.
Mr. Big Robot is, like, WTF? People, plural?
So he is like, what? The guy in the snow… who else?
The mayor’s brother in the snow, you mean. Corrects Mrs. Robot.
Not the current mayor, clarifies Mr. Robot. Long time ago.
Then there was the old lady bleeding in the street, says Mrs. Robot.
Ah! Right, hit by a car or something. I got her to the curb…
And you saved me, says the old lady they are drinking with.
Oh, yeah, says Mr. Big Robot, although he has absolutely no memory of it.
Then they talk about something else besides his forgotten heroism which was anything but heroic, it was merely wondering “what is that person doing lying in the snow/in the street” and checking on them while someone else called an ambulance.
Walking home later, he asks Mrs. Robot wtf the old lady had been talking about. Had he saved her too?
No that was our friend Medium Robot. She passed out on the street or something.
What was he doing there? I live here, he doesn’t. Maybe he was visiting us. I may have been with him, which would explain her remembering me. Perhaps I assisted in her salvation.
He likes the feel of that.

No one is upset and nothing hurts

I was dreaming this morning when a cat woke me with a bladder massage.
In the dream, my extended family was celebrating my birthday at my childhood home, around a redwood picnic table my father had built, on a sunny summer day, in the shade of a cherry tree, a maple and some redwoods.
There was picnic food on the table, no animals were trying to steal it, the sun was warm but gentle and not blinding, the way summer sun used to be.
Everyone was happy at the same time, but not excited, there was no drama, no one was sad or mad at someone, everyone got along.
My grandmother was not there. I imagine she was in Montana, as a teenager, riding horses.
My uncle, who sometimes felt compelled to be weird at gatherings, I suppose due to anxiety, was not there. He might have been in the hills filling his green and white Ford pickup with scavenged firewood.
My parents (whom I remember missing yesterday) were there. They were younger than they had been when they died. 30s or 40s. My father looked fit and was not wearing a shirt, which was typical of him in the summer at that age. I talked to my mother.
I talked to my father. I asked him how Heaven was.
No one is upset and nothing hurts, he said.
My sister gave me a letter she had written for my birthday. It was written with a wide calligraphy pen in several colors. Each color said something else, and the colors intertwined, and tangled, and she had written it in her normal handwriting not calligraphy despite the nib she was using so I was unable to read it.
I asked her to read it for me.
She was about to read it when I woke up.

Musique concrète

A man walks down the sidewalk towards the Vienna Stadthalle, reading a Kriminalroman by Alex Beer, “Der zweite Reiter.”
Suddenly there is a big KADONGGG!!
And the man sees a few stars.
What a beautiful new sound, the man thinks.
KADONGGG, I love it.
He rubs his head. He focuses his eyes on the steel pole of a street sign, very close.
He steps around the pole, finds his place in the book, and continues walking, half of him reading, half thinking about the sound.
Half of him wondering how a Foley artist would reproduce it, the THONK of brain against skull against 4-inch steel pole, the ringing tintinabulation of the pole and the sign after being struck.
KADONGGG!
The world is full of beauty.

New cryptid just dropped

Allow me to announce that I have discovered a new cryptid, one so new it’s not on the Wikipedia List of Cryptids yet:

The Chupacapybara, a mysterious, slightly chubby, land-dwelling (but water-loving) creecher that sucks goats but everybody loves it.

Running up that you-know-what

I was racing a nun up a hill this morning, the final and steepest hill on my morning walk from the train station to the office – it goes past a nunnery, convent, something along those lines, the ground floor windows are barred and when you look in you generally see nuns, stamping out license plates, sharpening spoons into shivs in metal shop – and she was tough, despite the early heat – maybe she wanted to get a to a bus before the dogs picked up her scent – the scent of a nun – Al Pacino’s lowest-grossing film (at the box office at least) but I was doing pretty good, I was ahead, I was leading but then I had to stop to feed a crow because rule is, if the crow recognizes you and you have anything edible on your person you must share and this crow definitely recognized me – I even recognized it, black with a white spot, unmistakable – plus it said, Racing nuns now are we, Mig? And I was like, More like trying to get in my fitness points this morning – my wife gave me one of those watches that tracks your every move – And this is my best hill, the longest, steepest hill on my morning walk, here have a Frolic. Have five Frolics. And it went to work on the Frolics and left me alone. And that’s why I got fitness points this morning, just not as many as I had hoped for.

I just want to say

I just want to say
that it doesn’t hurt much
when a crow pecks you
accidentally
trying to get the doggie treat
you are holding out for it
while sitting on the park bench
surrounded by crows
regarding you like acolytes
waiting for words of enlightenment.
It is scarier feeding a bagel to a juvenile seagull
than a snack to a crow.
This is especially true if you grew up
getting pecked by chickens all the time.
I just want to say
my thing with the crows
is not going unnoticed at the park,
a young family walked by
and referred to me
as “Professor Rabe”.
I just want to say
that I am still sadder
and more broken up by
my mother’s death
than I had expected.
But the crows help.
If someone asks me about them
I will say, “I have to come and feed them,
they know where I work and
come and shit on my balcony otherwise,”
but that is not the reason.
I know it’s just crows and doggie treats,
but it’s a comfort.

Notes on the proper selection of an appropriate amulet

Ask the sun, when you fell upon me, reflected off the orange garbage truck my streetcar was stuck behind on the way to work this morning, filling the streetcar with bright amber light and turning the interior into mysterious silhouettes, was it a judgement or a blessing? Or do you not perceive any of us at all?
Ask the crows, what say the slain? And listen to their answer: they are waiting for you to delineate your sadness over your mom dying, to put a name on it, for you to find a balance for it between heart and head but for that to happen it has to come out of the dark. They are waiting for you to understand something ununderstandable.
Ask the bear, do you feel like I do when I am walking down the stairs at the subway station and faster descenders pass me right and left when you stand in the river and running salmon crowd past you on their way to spawn, or is there a difference bc you are eating them and I am not? And are people right who say a fish does not perceive the water surrounding it, or are fish as aware of it as we are of air and ground, do they even hold swimming contests and do they maybe, crowding into the mouth of a river on their way to spawn, arrange dates when they hit it off, baby that shady spot under the alder tree, lay your eggs there, I have so much milt for you.
Walk in a circle while reading the instructions on the can of blue insulation foam, especially the bit that says ‘only fill the space 1/3 of the way with foam, as it continues to expand after application’ because if not the foam will expand uncontrolled and drip onto the floor and onto the attic ladder/steps, the bookcase, two books, your slippers, your shirt, your glasses and your hair, and if that happens do not try to wash it out of your hair because the instructions also say, For better adhesion dampen target area prior to application, and if you read that after making your hair wet you will feel like a moron, justifiably, and the insulation foam remover you rush to the hardware store for won’t work for you either, although if you make an emergency appointment with your hair stylist she will, together with two colleagues, in the emergency hair salon operating room you didn’t realize they had, using the foam remover and some stuff they use to remove hair extensions, in a dramatic and slightly painful medical-drama-style operation not only successfully remove every last bit of foam (which is, chemically, a close relative of super glue) from your hair, which you had expected would have to be shaved off, they will also laugh while working on you and say, “This is a first, this is one for the books, we have never had anything like this,” and ultimately style your hair and leave you looking nicer than ever, and charge you such a paltry sum you give everyone big tips.
Ask the crows, what say the dead, to which they will answer, nothing today.
Then wander into the junk shop with your eyes closed and hold your hands over the amulets and feel the vibes.