This is the most snow we’ve ever gotten here in your lifetime, I told Gamma.
She nodded solemly. Then she plopped back down into the snow and swam. She invited me to join her. I said sorry, I have to go into town now for a therapist appointment.

Almost two feet of snow in just a few hours during the night. I took the next day off to shovel our our house and the inlaws’, so that they could go home again and stop staying at our house.

I told my therapist they were staying with us. I told him he’d probably find it fascinating, from a professional viewpoint.

Today Alpha and I were at the airport to see off Beta. Got a couple hugs out of it. Waved. Got lost on the way home. Alpha made the mistake of following me and got lost too and I let her go around me and followed her for a while until I was back on track.

The kid’s plane hasn’t even landed and I already feel weird.

See the progress I’m making? Getting in touch with my feelings? How do you feel, Mig?

Weird. I feel weird.

Very good. Expand.

No matter what else I’m doing, I’m standing low on University Avenue in Seattle looking uphill past the University Book Store. It is summer. This image is superimposed over whatever else I’m doing. A dream, during the day.

A daydream.

That’s not what I said. I said University Avenue looking uphill in summer, and also I feel as if a lion has been extracted from my spine. And now I see the parking lot behind the bookstore.

I see.

And a small plane flying low over Lake Union. Getting ready to land. So hopefully it’s a seaplane. I used to work at a bank in Seattle and they demolished a building across the street but I didn’t see it happen. Just came to work one Monday morning and a few windows were broken.

I see. Go on.

My wife remembers snow like this from back when she was Gamma’s age or so. This is one of those snowfalls you remember.

Is it materialistic of me to jones for a cello of my own or is it giving my musical side the recognition it deserves?
And if it’s okay to jones for a cello of my own how expensive of a cello is it okay for me to jones for?
And if it’s okay for me to jones for a medium-priced cello of my own and my cello teacher mentions he’s seen several nice ones lately, is it okay for me to seriously consider buying one of them? And if that’s okay, where the hell is the money supposed to come from? Is it okay to hit up the American relatives for a loan? Or maybe even a “loan”?
And if it’s okay for me to spend a reasonable sum of money on a genuine cello, oughtn’t I spend an equal amount on my wife? Or would it be enough to buy her a musical instrument of her own? Would that be generous, or would it be cynical and miserly, seeing as how she plays the recorder?
Or is that just her problem?
It’s just, you know. I’ve wanted a cello of my own for a long time. Since I started this blog. Since I started the predecessor of the predecessor of this blog.
Two hands. On this hand, I think about myself all the time anyway and am selfish and self-centered and egotistic and neglectful of others and insensitive and a frustrated bully. On that hand, I’m making a lot of progress on the frustration and bully things and you have any idea how pretty a cello is? Or whatever instrument it is you play? A new instrument, belonging to you?
But none of that matters.
On the one hand I’m broke, on the other hand life confronts me with cellos for sale.
If it’s a test, what is the right answer? Jump for once and buy the cello, or be frugal for once and not buy it?
An acquaintance mentioned a PC for sale recently, used, ultra cheap, but it was gone by the time I decided to take it.
It’s easy to say, go for it guy, you only live once. It’s not your money.
It’s easy to say, when you’re eighty and phasing in and out of consciousness you’ll think, where is that hot nurse and, did I ever buy that cello or not? so buy it. It’s not your money.
So to make it harder and more realistic, I’m charging $50/

Hypothesis: Corn meal, while adding interesting elements of taste and texture to Mig’s Interesting Pizza Dough [Note: I would be willing to change the name to Mig's Incredible Pizza Dough in exchange for a deal with the marketers of The Incredibles. Or not.] can build clumps baked to a hardness capable of breaking a molar and requiring an emergency trip to the dentist, where he takes forever to get the dental dam thing on you and his assistant, although a pretty Gothic-type pale blonde, sits just out of your line of sight and is a bit lax about sucking the water and saliva back out of your mouth so you half-drown during the repair process and when you get back to work you TWALK WIKE A STWOKE ICKTIN until after lunch due to the novocaine.

Experiment results: Hypothesis confirmed.

Not necessarily in that order.

The more balanced and un-frustrated I get, the better I have my anger under control. Nevertheless, when a co-worker woke me up at 5 AM Saturday or was it Sunday morning, then hung up without what I considered sufficient apology or self-identification (I recognized his voice) for pressing the wrong button on his cellphone, my black heart immediately decided to break his neck and drop him down the elevator shaft at work to make it look like an accident. Just like that, the plan was hatched fully formed. Only afterwards did I feel sorry for him for having to work at that ungodly hour. When I told that to my wife, she suggested he just wanted people to feel sorry for him, and had probably called all our co-workers doing that.

The harp transport grows more complicated. It looks like we leave as planned this Friday night, take the train (complete with car) to the other end of Austria and drive from there, refreshed, the following morning. We already bought a toll sticker to use the Swiss freeway; then we found out that going via non-EU member Switzerland would cause considerable customs problems, requiring documentation that is hard for us to get on such short notice. So instead, we’re going via Germany, it seems, which is 100 km longer but in addition to eliminating the customs documentation problem as we can stay in the EU the whole time, also skirts the Alps rather than going straight through them. Which is good, as it is starting to snow here. No telling what the weather will be like at the end of the week, but I have to think this is a better solution.

We’ll see.

What else, creativity. I painted two pictures this weekend that I’d been carrying around in my body for a while. I say two pictures, actually a diptych. And, I say “I painted” when actually the brush painted them. Or something else. Not me. My mind was blank the whole time. My hands squeezed paints out of tubes, mixed in turpentine and linseed oil, devoid of thought.
I like how they turned out – half abstract half not. Everything different than expected – color, form.

At seven, Gamma is still too young to drink absinthe, so I sat beside her at the piano and drank it while she composed. “What is that? How can you drink that? Get that out of my sight,” she said.
“The notes have to add up to four,” I said.
“Why?”
I pointed at the time signature. “4/4 time.”
“Okay.”
Composition tip: you can’t go wrong with black keys. Much non-Western music is based on the pentatonic scale. Her teacher gave her a half-finished piece, and her assignment was to write the second half of the song, black keys only.
So she doodled around on the piano for half an hour, writing stuff down and then trying it out. She ended it with two whole notes, which I thought was a cool idea.

Wandering around blindly in the cold at lunch your hands are freezing and the coat you’re wearing is two inches shorter than your suit coat underneath making you feel like a dork, suddenly there it is, the phrase Secret Santa. What does it mean? Is Life throwing you a bone, an idea for a twisted little story?
Yes.
Is it pointing you towards an interesting blog that you find when you google the phrase?
Yes.
But it’s also pointing you towards your own inner Secret Santa; the being who knows what you really want.
Do you want to meet him? The idea strikes you as funny at first, whimsical, or dopey, as dopey as the phrase. Until you recall where Santa comes from: that old Nordic guy who lives in the ice.

Jesus, google it yourself, I can’t be arsed. I’m not supposed to be reading this week.

Secret Santa was just the trigger, the phrase it took to get you thinking about him. He has no name.
Close your eyes. It’s cold and you’ve been traveling a long time to see him. Do you even want to? Would you rather turn around?
He knows you.
What’s he look like to you? Gandalf? That guardian of the bridge in Monty Python and the Holy Grail only scarier? A biker? He stands there in the storm and you can go no further until you deal with him.
He knows what you don’t.
That’s the gift in his bag.
In German, Gift means poison
It will cost you everything.

Continue reading →

Just remembered what it was I wanted to say when I logged on. Synchronicity and stuff.

You know how life sometimes sends you what you’re looking for or asking for?
I was complaining recently about a dearth in my life of, among other things, romance and adventure. In a week or so, my wife and I will be driving a harp to France, taking the Alpine route through Austria, Switzerland and France. For those of you in the Southern hemisphere, it’s winter here right now. Adventure factors: Alps, winter, Doblo. Romance factors: harp, France, wife.
And I was thinking that I need a better home PC among other things, and the tech guy today told me about a used one he knew about, cheap. Not sure if I want it, but it’s very likely.

Just for the record, here are a few more things I need, life: sex, Macallan’s single malt, a filling in that molar where the old one fell out, sex, a nice cello, a new suit, some clothes, a bookcase, a stereo, sex, literary mentors and muses, a laptop, a fat win in the lottery, a literary agent, sex, and a new shower head. Among other things.