Greece has been in the news off and on pretty steadily lately, more or less, due to the various economic and financial pecadillos and hijinks hereabouts. The German word for Greece is Griechenland which I sometimes misread as Gretchenland, (fair enough, as they’re both in italics) triggering images of a country homogenously populated by blonde girls similar to a girl who got on the schoolbus at the same busstop as I did when I was a boy, whose name was Gretchen. The girl’s name was Gretchen, that is, of course, not “when I was a boy whose name was Gretchen,” although now when I read the word Griechenland it will trigger an implanted false memory of how I was once a boy whose name was Gretchen. (How do you do?!)
Category Archives: Metamorphosism
Riding along on Kafka’s motorbike
The economist and the monitor lizard
You know, says the economist, to be honest, I have to say the finance pages made my eyes glaze over. I was never interested in all that. All those rows and rows of figures. Maybe I studied the wrong thing.
The monitor lizard shifts a little, there in his sunny spot on the big slate tiles. So you were actually relieved when economics was eliminated?
The economist nods. It’s totally awesome now that we can just borrow what we need and not give it back.
You used to do that already anyway, says the monitor lizard.
Ah, but not to this extent. Now I can drive a KTM X-Bow to work when I want. Or, at least I could, until someone else borrowed it from me. To be honest, it was freaking me out anyway. Who needs all that horsepower in a little gokart like that?
The train’s okay, though, says the monitor lizard.
I don’t mind the train, says the economist.
The sun’s warm, says the monitor lizard.
Sure is, says the economist.
Fourth rule is, eat kosher salamis
The SWAT crisis negotiator stands out on the balcony having a smoke, thinking, someday somebody’s going to figure things out and replace me with a 14 year old girl.
He imagines a situation, fouled-up robbery, perps holding a couple dozen sobbing hostages inside a bank, surrounded by marksmen, talking tough until the 14 year old girl shows up. Then they’re all, Johnny, dey brought the goil! And Johnny’s all, not dat fast, Eddie, dey wouldn’t do dat. Not da kid! And Eddie’s all, sure looks like dat goil Slugger was tellin me about in da joint. And Johnny’s all, close the goddamn blinds, Eddie! Let me think!
And out front, someone hands the girl a megaphone and she’s all, Do you know who this is? Come out with your hands up! And my allowance is way too low and no way am I cleaning my room today, god, don’t be so old and boring, I’ll do it some other time! Would you like some pizza? I sure would. How about you call out for some?
Eventually they surrender, like always.
That’s what the SWAT negotiator imagines.
The SWAT negotiator is feeling pretty good, all in all, now that the hot weather is over. Boy, was it hot. Also, he now takes the back way into work, and home again. Windy little streets through wooded hills, so it won’t work in winter, but for now, it’s funner, and faster, than the freeway. No traffic jams, although there are a lot of cyclists you sometimes get stuck behind.
Life throws you a cookie now and then, he thinks.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, Metamorphosism
Tags: adolescence, bank robbery, driving, life, negotiation
Eensy-weensy
I just googleimaged “garden spider” to see if I could find an image of the spider my daughter had seen when she was picking some parsley in the garden (she damaged its web accidentally and it charged her) that she then showed my wife and my wife said it looked as if it were eating a bee, it was so big and strange-shaped, but my daughter said no it was just a bee-like spider, long bodied and so on, and then neither one of them wanted to go pick tomatoes for dinner so I did, and accidentally damaged a spiderweb there, on the tomatoes, and by god, a similar spider charged me too (I guess they’re touchy about their webs) and I was all, whoa! damn! because it was the first time I had seen a spider like that, black legs, yellowish body with markings like tribal tattoos, and when I went back into the house and described it to them they were all, yeah, that’s the guy, and I was all, well he wasn’t eating a spider, he was just big, and fast and strange-shaped (at first I thought it was lugging an egg sac around but no, it was just big-bodied) and later that evening when they were discussing whether to sleep out in the yard at night (it’s been hot) and i mentioned the spider for some reason, they were all, “I’m sleeping inside after all” and believe it or not, it was in the very first images at the top of the page, apparently it’s called a garden spider for real. But the one I saw had blacker legs. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Argiope_aurantia_Yellow_Garden_Spider.jpg
Also, yesterday I woke up covered with spiderwebs, which sort of freaked me out in retrospect, after seeing this spider. But it’s a real pretty spider.
I will report you
On the day I was born
I woke up one morning
at a crossroads
in the middle of a crossfire hurricane
and for once my mind wasn’t occupied
with a song I couldn’t just quite place –
the Beatles? Vending machine jingle?
or a veil of a nightmare about not getting through to someone
or of committing a crime
or of someone being dissected, probably me
or a headache
or someone else’s broken skeleton
or the feeling that I had forgotten something essential
but rather
an earworm
a line from my daughter’s travel blog of her trip through
India and Nepal
read in her own voice
(the earworm)
“I will report you”
Behold the sturgeon
The sturgeon decides enough is enough and decides to finish turning that cluttered room in the cellar into a studio/workshop/whatever. He marches downstairs, opens the door, steps inside and stands there gobsmacked by the horribility of the mess.
He is standing there while his youngest daughter enters. “Dude, I would totally put a sofa right there,” she says. “Or a big mafia boss chair, at least.”
He throws out some stuff, then goes to bed and sleeps.
The next day he goes back down there and throws away some more stuff. Other stuff he arranges in boxes and puts away in an orderly manner. Slowly it begins to look better than before.
He stands at the work table going through papers he has, for whatever reason, saved. Post-Its with scribbles on them, for instance. You never know when you will need one of those. Instruction manuals for computers he no longer has.
A piece of paper reading, “I love you” in the handwriting of one of his daughters. Tapes that to the wall.
Later he finds a Valentine’s card his oldest daughter gave him when she was four or five.
This is time travel, it dawns on him. This is two tin cans connected by a string, stretched between him, now, and that little girl sixteen, seventeen years ago.
He holds the can up close to his ear.
He can hear her voice, as he reads the card.
“I want you to be happy,” she says.
“I love you,” she says.
“I am giving you a castle with lots of roses.”
The world is full of these tin can telephones, crossing decades, he thinks.
This is why he can’t throw anything away. You never know.
Everything comes to a stop for a minute, down there in the cellar.
“I am giving you a castle with lots of roses, just for you and me.”
That’s all they want from him, he realizes. That is the only thing – for him to be happy.
Everyone who loves me wants only for me to be happy, he thinks.
So he decides to be happy.
Just like that.
And he is.
His oldest daughter, she of the time traveling tin can phone, writes of her trip through India and he is happy, amazed at her talent for writing, her eye for detail, her heart for the world.
His youngest daughter informs him that he has to drive her into Vienna before work tomorrow for a dance lesson. He asks her what sort of dance and she says, pole dancing, and he is happy.
He plays cello with his teacher at a lesson and at one point the beauty of Vivaldi moves him to the verge of tears, and he is happy.
He tapes the Valentine’s card to the wall of his shop. Then he throws away some more junk.
Posted in Das Cello, Das Gehirn, Familie, Metamorphosism
Tags: cello, india, love, messy syndrome, pole-dancing, time travel, valentine
Things I learned on vacation
- When eating chicken satay and telling a story at the same time, it is possible to hit the end of a satay skewer extending past the edge of the tabletop in such a way that the skewer, full of chicken, flips into the air, does a 360, and lands back on the plate without getting peanut sauce on anyone.
- The Balinese are way into kites.
- The sidewalks in Ubud are hallucinogenic – meter-deep holes, offerings everywhere that you have to keep stepping over, 1-food height differences for driveways. Don’t ask me what Ubud looked like, I was looking at the sidewalk the whole time.
- The Balinese are terribly kind. A shopwoman felt so sorry for me she gave me haggling lessons.
- Men often wear flowers behind their ear on Bali. It looks awesome.
- On Lombok, do not tell the waiter to bring you the spiciest thing on the menu. No amount of Long Island Iced Teas excuses this.
- The monkeys in the Monkey Forest are nasty.
- At the Lombok airport, do not let anyone carry your luggage for you. It is a rip off. You will have to be more assertive than I was.
- Careful what you eat and where you eat it, i.e. avoid ice cubes, which are sometimes made using unsterilized water etc. and so on.
- The Balinese are terribly kind. A waitress at our hotel brought medicine for our daughter when she heard she had consumed something with ice cubes, and organized a doctor etc. When we gave her a tip at the end of our stay (some tourist guides recommend against tipping on Bali, but that made me feel bad), she shared it with the other waitresses.
- Luwak coffee tastes the same as regular coffee.
- Up close, like walking across your hotel window, a firefly looks like a flying ant with a green LED up its ass.
- Fried rice is a great breakfast.