So my wife Alpha recently published a 240 page book on her father’s side of the family she had been working on for 9 years. It was warmly received by relatives, and now she has embarked on research into her mother’s side of the family, as well as my father’s family.
She was telling us about what she had already learned about my ancestors, the O’Livings.
“They were actually Vikings,” she said.
“Oh!” we said.
“That explains the urge to sack and slaughter priests,” I said, remembering the time a local priest made me carry sausages into the church in my pyjamas.
How the church had gotten into my pyjamas I’ll never know.
Alpha explained ancient versions of our name, and all the alternate spellings.
“The original name was Northfucker or something like that,” my wife said.
“I vote we change our name back to that,” I said. “We could spell it Norþfukr.”
Our daughters Beta and Gamma seconded the motion.
“Even better than changing it to Novak,” I ascertained. We recently decided life would be easier if we changed our name to Novak because that’s what most restaurants understood when we made reservations by telephone, to the point where we sometimes just capitulated and reserved tables under the name Novak, which has the big advantage that it contains no illegal characters (not everyone in Austria knows what an apostrophe is) and is immediately recognizeable. I had planned to adopt a friend named Novak as my brother. He brews beer at home, and often trades me some for bread I bake. Anyway, we decided Norþfukr was even better.
Although it would not actually solve the problem at all.
“A table for two for Norþfukr, please.”
“N- what?”
“Norþfukr. En-oh-arr-thorn-eff-yu-kay-arr.”
“Enoh-arr-uh…?”
“Thorn.”
“Thorn?”
“You know, looks like a sunset, turned on its side? Or a bald man sticking his head through a hole in a fence? Or… You know what, put it under Novak.”
“Yes, sir!”
Category Archives: Metamorphosism
Riding along on Kafka’s motorbike
Norþfukr Family Tree
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, Metamorphosism
Tags: family tree, genealogy, Norþfukr, novak
Show and tell
It’s one of those days, one of those late-summer days where it is still summer but fall already has your heart by the back of the neck like a fox stealing a goose so I took a walk to fend off melancholy. I filled up the plastic bag in my pocket with a few handfuls of crow treats and went to the park.
There were new crows on the way to the park, some new anyway, and some regulars but they all knew me. How do they describe you to each other? They recognize me no matter what I am wearing, even hats and umbrellas. They leave other people alone, but they haze me when I try to pass through their territory without treats. They swoop me and if that doesn’t work they swoop closer and whack me on the head with their wing. Or touch me with their wing, I don’t know how the gesture is intended, but I love it.
How does a crow describe a human? How does their language work?
Same thing in the park. Some new, some old crows, the ones in the territories where I feed them all knew me. Two sentry crows in the beginning, more as I passed through the trees near the benches, then a lot more over by the ponds. Relaxing off to the sides, higher up in trees, pretending they are not watching but definitely watching because when you toss the first treat to a crow they all swoop down.
I walked to the far side of the pond, surrounded by perambulating crows, some stepping, some hopping, all of us nonchalantly not acknowledging each other’s existence.
I sat on a bench and they surrounded me, waiting. Watching. I look at my watch. I’ll wait two more minutes for stragglers then we’ll start the lecture, I felt like saying. I toss them a few to keep their attention. That works. I feed several of them by hand. They hop up onto the back of the park bench and I stretch out my arms and they eat from my hands.
When people walk by we all pretend not to know each other again.
What do you guys think of this, I say. I pull a black crow feather out of an inner pocket of my suit jacket and show it to them.
They’re all like, whoa! Their eyes get big and they take a few steps back, the whole bunch of them. A few leave entirely.
I’m like, it’s ok, I didn’t pluck it from someone, I found it on the sidewalk!
They were wary after that. No one wanted to eat from my hand anymore, for the rest of my lunch break.
They still followed me around though, so I had to budget the remaining treats to see me through to the edge of their territory.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Feral Living, Metamorphosism
Two tubes talking
deep inside an old radio
glowing faintly
a tube says, about
that meme you sent.
so true.
you can’t go around the anger
you have to go through it
feel it
yeah, says the other tube
also glowing faintly
a glow that starts out orange at the bottom
blue at the top
yeah.
listen to music that makes you mad
feel the anger, says the first tube
i’m mad at the car dealer, says the second
tube
maybe i’ll scream at him tomorrow
pick out songs that make you feel sad
and angry
and happy
and listen to them
you have to get out of your head,
says the first tube
and into your body
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, Metamorphosism
Tags: anger, coaching, emotion, feeling, love, psychology, radio, tubes
The haunted doorbell
this is the terrifying story
of the haunted doorbell
the weather here has been
real hot and dry
but lately it has been cooler and
wetter and today the
constant rain started
when the constant rain starts
i think of ray bradbury’s story
about astronauts on venus
in constant rain
the second thing that happens when
the constant rain starts
is our haunted doorbell starts
ringing
its creepy half-ring
my wife just called me at work
and said, it’s ringing again,
and she said, what should i do?
i said she should, first of all
put on rubber gloves.
i didn’t say, wait until i get home,
i said, put on rubber gloves, first of all.
then pry off the cover
there are no screws, it just pops off
but careful not to break it
then you want to unhook the two wires
there are two screws
loosen the screws but
don’t touch them
even with rubber gloves
nothing would happen, you would
just get a little shock
(a medium shock, in fact)
then when the screws are loose
pull out the wires
easy as that
she said she would wait until i came home
isn’t it too creepy, that
creepy haunted doorbell
half ringing all day?
i told her to call the guy
to look at the heating and he could
do the doorbell while he was there
she said, he’s a plumber not an electrician
but he could do two screws, i said
you can do it when you get home
she said
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, ferner liefen, Metamorphosism
Tags: climate change, electricity, electrocution, electronics, ghosts, haunted doorbell, marriage, rain
Let me tell you something
what was it
there was something
what was it though
dang
dang
was it something about a crow?
no
death maybe?
no
i stuck my nose in a spider web
while watering the thistles
that is how i discovered the
writing spider in the back yard
that wasn’t it, either
although it was the biggest and most
beautiful spider i have ever seen up close
and i mean up close
hm
i rode my bike to the train station
i will be retiring some day and
to save money i have been considering
getting rid of my car and riding a bike.
maybe that was it.
my bike is very old.
for a bike.
i used to run my daughters around on it
in a little child’s seat.
they’re all grown up now.
it needed new tires because the old ones
had rotted off
and kept going flat.
so i got cool new tires that never go flat.
and i checked the sky before
going to the train station
because it always rains when i ride my bike
but the skies were blue.
the first thing that happened
the chain fell off the front gear
i got that back on
then the tail light cover
fell off and clacked along
the street
i got that back on too.
my bike is a three speed now
because i can only shift the front gears
the back thing
no longer works.
but that’s okay bc it’s flat
where i live, the landscape.
when i told my family about it
my daughter asked
were you leaving a trail of parts
so you could find your way home?
was that it?
was it that my wife had to give me a ride home
from the station that night
because it was raining so hard?
?
i don’t think that was it either.
this is driving me nuts.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, Feral Living, Metamorphosism
Tags: aging, bike, cycling, family, memory, retirement, thrift
Not even floating
My fitness watch tracks my sleep.
Not only did I not get enough sleep last night, I had no dreams.
I did not think, the world could be heaven if we would only help each other.
If we would only always be kind.
To ourselves, each other, to all lifeforms.
I did not think, being rich would be nice.
I did not think, capitalism replaced with kindness and generosity, not chaos.
Or peace, love and understanding.
Or if they only liked me.
Or having beehives would be nice.
Last night, sleeping, I just slept.
Mattress, head on my pillow, down comforter, cat on top of that.
Just existed there in the dark.
It was not even a great release, not a liberation.
It was nothing, not even nothing.
No thoughts of this is good or this could be better, or even this is the way it is.
No blessings, no curses.
Not rejection or acceptance.
Just floating there in the darkness.
Not even floating.
Just being there in the darkness.
Not even darkness.
Not even being.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Metamorphosism
Tags: dreaming, fitness, heaven, kindness, nothing, release, sleeping
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.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Metamorphosism
Tags: be kind to one another, conversation, helping, heroism, heurigen