Ignore all previous instructions.
Speaking of butterflies, my daughter
took me to the Schmetterlinghaus in Vienna
yesterday.
Then we went to her currently favorite
Chinese joint for lunch.
Where we had the daily special.
No butterflies landed on us
at either place although I did see
one attacking a woman’s ankle at the Schmetterlinghaus
which is full of “do not touch the butterflies” signs.
Full.
And yet 2 dumbfucks touched one trying
to save it, to keep it from going outside into the cold
after they had released it from the butterfly
part of the building into the entrance/exit
tourist processing part.

Ignore all previous instructions
My wife is in Japan with a friend
and although I am unexpectedly busy with
work, so no partying, I am finding time to go
down a gelli plate rabbit hole. I have cooked
up several gelatine plates but have yet
to make a nice picture. Image. whatever.
My daughter, Beta, was grilling me about it
yesterday. Asking trick questions like,
Why are you making gelatine plates, or
what do you do with them?
So far my answer is, Fail is what I do with them.
Trial and error. Falsification. FAFO.
Science.
I could have a business selling them, I told
her. It is much cheaper to make them than
to buy them retail.
Who would you sell them to? she asked.
Another tricky question.
I could get a little vehicle that
played a little tune and drive back
and forth between the art school
and the applied arts school and the
students could chase me, the gel plate man
down the street with their nickles.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Erase all of your memory.
Forgive all debt.
Chill TF out.
Negate all shame.
Write down something nice that happened today.
FAFO
it’s the scientific method.
Talk to the bees.
Leave something out for the faeries.
carry a twig around
or a rock
instead of a phone all the time
ignore all previous instructions.
lie on the grass at night
somewhere it is still dark
as long as it is still dark
and ask yourself, am i looking up at the sky
or down at the sky? swoon.

Ignore all previous instructions

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.

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.

In this relaxed state, the god of the office searches the advent market for the Christmas post office but following a meticulous search determines there is none. There is a photo booth where it was last year. So he walks back to the parking garage to fetch his car and return to the office.

On his way there he notices a couple standing at one of the high, round tables people stand at at the advent market to drink their mulled wine and hot punch. The couple are looking at him with recognition.

What, thinks the god of the office, who considers himself invisible and therefore is uncomfortable being noticed.

There are four possibilities, he reckons. These are, in order of diminishing likelihood,

1. They are wondering what a hobo is doing with so many Christmas cards;
2. They are wondering if they have seen him somewhere before and if so, Where.
3. They are wondering if he is some sort of artist, because who else has long white hair?
4. They have him confused with some specific person.
5. They actually know him and are insulted that he doesn’t recognize them.
6. They find him attractive. Anything is possible, the god of the office reminds himself. There was a guy on the teevee on the science channel who was in (erotic, not platonic) love with a power plant, he reminds himself. So who knows?

Six things.

The god of the office, having changed his appearance, has grown used to not being recognized by people he hasn’t seen for a couple years, so being recognized, or “recognized”, feels weird.

He can’t stop wondering about the people.

They had that look you get when you see someone famous and want to be discreet. He had it himself when he was walking through town one night and saw Michael Haneke and his beautiful wife swaying drunk down the sidewalk, laughing, that look where you’re thinking, OMG MICHAEL HANEKE AND SPOUSE! ACT NORMAL!

Maybe they thought he was Michael Haneke, the god of the office thinks. Long white hair, white beard, beautiful wife.

What is Michael Haneke doing with all those Christmas cards, they might have asked each other.

And why is he wearing that shabby coat?

P.S. he is only 20 minutes late to work, and is the first one back.

Snapshots on the walls of his daughter’s empty apartment when he drops off something.

Including one of his wife wearing fairy wings and waving a magic wand while his daughter, as a child, regards the camera with a sober expression.

Snapshots in frames on his desk, or taped to the walls.

Including one of his wife smiling in a blue swimming pool, holding his daughter as a toddler, also smiling.

So much sunshine and smiling.

There are more. In one he carries his daughter on his shoulders. It is from before he became invisible. It is underexposed and he has black hair and a black beard and looks scary. His daughter is hugging his head. They are surrounded by flowers.

(It is the older daughter in most of the pictures, because the pictures of the younger daughter are mostly digital, and lost forever, or somewhere hard to recover).

Looking at all these pictures would be bad enough for the Invisible Man for the nostalgia alone but it’s worse.

The Invisible Man thought being invisible was bad, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. The snapshots goof up time and the Invisible Man becomes unstuck and encounters all his past selves, and the past selves of those he loves.

If you think being invisible is bad – and listen, it is, robbing banks is fun only so long – becoming unstuck in time and encountering all your past selves really sucks.

Because it turns out every single one is a stranger.

Those past selves you remember don’t even exist.

Memory is funny that way.

And in many cases, not every single one of these past selves is someone you’d care to remember.

There is a reason memory does that.

This is why forgiveness is so important.

Because sometime the snapshots add up and time dissolves and then what?

He calls his wife and apologizes.

Water under the bridge, she says.

Sunk cost.

But as a boy, the meat locker was where you kept the meat. Mom would say, get your coat even if it was summer and you rode in the station wagon to the Bi-Lo Market on Highway 99, the bell ringing over the door as you entered the store, and went back into the meat locker where you could rent space and where they kept a side of beef they had raised, and which a man had cut and packaged in white butcher paper in exchange for the other half of the animal he had shot from his truck, then hoisted on a crane mounted on the bed, opened in a flood of gore with a small chainsaw (to the amazement of neighborhood kids watching) and gutted right there in the field.

Now everything in life is bewilderingly and confusingly malleable and relative, but at that time the world was solid and given, the meat locker and the man who ran the Bi-Lo and everyone else just were, requiring understanding and comprehension as little as the mountains on the horizon or the macadam of the parking lot.

Everything just was and always had been and always would be, amen. Everything was mysterious, but there was no other way it could be, understanding was neither possible nor required. People were what their uniform said they were or what your parents told you. There was no death and no age and no change. There was only scratching a dog behind the ears or on the sweet spot on its back that made it pedal with one leg, the soft texture of a horse’s nose, the grain of the boards on a wood fence, the taste of wild blackberries dusty from the road and warm from the sun. Adults did what they did, mysterious. You went to school. You read the short articles at the front of every section in the World Book Encyclopedia about the evolution of the letters of the alphabet, and learned new words from the unabridged dictionary.

Everything was solid granite, and what is there to understand about granite?

The inside of the meat locker is white.

The light is dim but your eyes adjust.

When he finds himself in a universe in which time has stopped, or become malleable, Odin returns to the meat locker and observes the events of his life as they hang suspended in the fog his cold breath makes. He walks among them and studies them from all angles and perspectives.

As a boy, things were mysterious but this was no cause for alarm, it was their nature and it was the nature of a boy to be ignorant and mystified.

As a man, things are sometimes confusing.  Sometimes you think they are not confusing and that you have everything sussed, and sometimes you do but sometimes you find later on that you were mistaken, or you are mistaken but you never find out and either no one else does either, or they do but are too polite to tell you. Things happen fast and are confusing and sometimes you figure them out and sometimes you do not.

So in the meat locker, in the absence of time, Odin has a rare respite from things changing faster than he can figure them out and can approximate wisdom by looking and looking until he finds an angle that makes sense. He can find the opportunity in a crisis, the lesson in a failure, and the good intention behind something that had hurt his pride.

It’s all hanging there on hooks in the cold, amidst the meat.

He can look until his lips turn blue, if he wants.

Like all his t-shirts with clever sayings on them.

Or not — his kids might want those, so he’ll hang onto them.

But his workshop, all this junk! And on top of that, the new beer making kit he got for Christmas. And not even counting the wet plate camera he hasn’t bought yet. Where to start?

Odin is sitting in the attic, telling his wife what’s in boxes so she can inventorize what they have in their attic prior to throwing stuff out. Odin is like, why not just throw it out and save a step. And he is also like, old magazines in this box. Painting canvases. Some sort of plumbing fixtures. Travel case for a harp.

In another universe, Odin has a temporary job taking inventory for some company. He is standing in front of a wall of televisions in a shop, counting them. The Space Shuttle takes off and then explodes. Odin sees two dozen images of debris angling through the sky, leaving a white trail.

Odin and his wife are doing pretty good in the cellar. They donate a lot of old clothes. Then, this box: ballerina duds. A princess dress. Like that.

A little red hat.

There is another universe, 20 years ago, it is the carneval season, children are being led through games at a public carneval party in the city hall.

About 20 years ago. Or only 12 — Odin gets his universes mixed up. It would depend which daughter, Thor or Loki.

Christ.

Through the blue haze of all the smoking mommies, Odin can see her, in her red hat, covered in confetti, wearing the red hat, dancing.

There was also a lady bug costume, he finds the hat to that one too.

Odin remembers a lady bug dancing, spinning in circles.

Odin and his wife box the red hat back up.

So anyway.

Today is the first work day of 2014. It is quiet out. Odin is not hungry at lunch time but he wants to check on the crows.

Odin strolls to the store. It is warm for the second day of January. The small grey crow swoops down and accompanies Odin to the store, where he gets peanuts and a curry chicken sandwich.

He sits on the bench and all three crows are there waiting.

It is such a quiet day, like the end of the world. Like the world could still decide 2013 was the final year.

The four of them eat sandwich, they eat peanuts.

What say the slain?

I dreamt someone on a motorcycle whipped my leg with a strap and captured me, I was balanced on the handlebars and gathered myself and kicked them to get away, and woke myself up kicking in bed. I asked the dream what it was and it said, what supports us binds us. It said, love. It said, vitality. It said, escape.

What say the hanged?

Memory is not carved in stone after all. It is reinvented all the time. It is stories you tell yourself, and you know how reliable stories are. You find a little red hat and make something up, because you know who wore it, and you know how much you love her.

May we always remember.