Beta came home today. She choked an orderly with a heart monitor cable, stole his uniform and skated home with a metal bedpan on each foot, spraying sparks all the way, and now I have to go apologize.

She seems okay, given the circumstances. I don’t know any more than that.

Yesterday was father’s day here in Austria. We celebrated like thousands of other Austrians, by going to the women’s 5K and 10K race at Vienna’s Prater park, a nice place to run. 12,000 women were registered for the race. Gamma ran in a shorter kids’ race the day before and got a medal, like all the other kids who finished.

12,000 women, most of whom brought more than one spectator. It was crowded and noisy. Gamma and I watched the start, then hurried to a spot we had picked out about 80 meters before the finish line to scream at Alpha and Beta when they would run past, to give them a little extra spurt of energy, and to take their picture.

My wife and eldest daughter were in the “C” group of starters. After we had been there about 10 minutes, it seemed, the first starters zipped past, the professionals. Eventually, more A’s ran past, and after them a few B’s, a few more A’s etc.

Alpha was wearing the official race t-shirt, a light blue running shirt. As were about 10,000 other women. At times, hundreds were running past all at the same time. Imagine looking for a blonde woman in a blue shirt when that describes 80% of the participants. I looked for Beta too, a young dark haired woman in a black tank top, but never saw her either.

Gamma and I stood there for nearly an hour waiting for them. Since it only takes them less than half an hour to run 5K, we knew something must be wrong. We went to the place we had arranged to meet, but they weren’t there. I didn’t know if we had missed them running past in one of those scrums of blonde women in blue shirts, or if something had happened.

Then my mother-in-law called me on my mobile phone and told me Beta had collapsed 600 meters from the finish line.

So Gamma and I walked that direction. I stopped an ambulance and asked him what he knew, he gave me a number to call, which I did, in an attempt to find out where Beta had gone and whether Alpha was with her.

Gradually, as we called around, the park emptied out. We arrived at the spot Beta had collapsed around the time I finally learned that she, together with her mother, had been taken to a certain hospital.

Gamma and I walked about a mile to the parking lot where we had stowed our car. On the way we stopped to buy her a sandwich and take a pee. Then we drove to the hospital.

They kept Beta overnight, and will keep her there tonight again. I don’t know yet what is wrong. I’m going to go visit her again on my lunch break.

• The sunfish goes by many names, including “ocean sunfish” and “mola mola”.

• No one has ever actually seen a sunfish, but marine biologists assume it looks like in the picture, which is an artist’s rendering based on descriptions by old sailors, because if the sunfish didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.
• Sometimes the sunfish forgets how to walk and staggers all over the path, even if it’s sober. It is a slow walker and doesn’t like trying to keep up with others.
• No matter how bad things get, the sunfish thinks, At least Richard Simmons isn’t trying to cheer me up.
• When a sunfish’s relationship is on the ropes, it goes for a walk with its partner at sunset and a beaver swims up the creek and waddles up the bank and chews down three little trees and sits by the water chewing on them and the sunfish watches the beaver, and watches its partner watching the beaver with wonder, and the sunfish knows, at the very least, we can be good friends.
• Sunfish often dream of flying.

We took the night train to and from Venice on the weekend we just had, which was a day or two longer than normal. We did this so we could sleep on the train and save a night or two in a hotel. Plus it’s something different. We thought we had the compartment to ourselves one way, but the ticket guy had lied to us because we had to share it both ways. At least we didn’t wake up to a guy going through our stuff like last time, crazy fucker. You know how when you take a sleeper train somewhere, when you have to share it, it’s always some person who snores, or some kid that coughs and falls out of her bunk in the middle of the night, or are otherwise noisy? This time, we were that family. To the two quiet, polite young women from Korea traveling from Vienna to Venice, and the nice, quiet, polite mom and young son traveling from Venice to Wels in Austria, I apologize.

The cake shop was closed. Everything else turned out well. There was a George-Clooney-looking guy on one of the boats with us, who had less hair than I do, for now. Gamma ate gelato three times a day. When she wanted spaghetti, all the restaurants served only pizza. When she wanted pizza, they served only the wrong kind, or when they served the right kind, she wanted only spaghetti, which they didn’t serve. But she survived. She complained very little.

We stayed in a hotel on the Lido. It had been sort of our habitual hotel for trips there, but next time I think we’ll try a different one. They messed up our reservation, the bathtub drain malfunctioned, and the breakfast buffet wasn’t what it used to be, among other minor things. It was fine, I just guess we’ll look around next time.

We rented a little four-seater pedal car while at the Lido. I highly recommend doing this if you ever go there. Seriously. Trust me. We rented it for an hour. We’ll just pedal for a half hour in one direction, then turn around and pedal back and be there in plenty of time, I figured. At the end, of course, we were sprinting to make it back in time in order to avoid paying another 12 euro for the second hour. Pedestrians were leaping out of the way at crosswalks, baby carriages went tumbling down steps Battleship Potemkin style etc.

But we made it. Getting out at the end, I half expected an endless line of clowns to emerge from the car.

We really lucked out with the weather. It was cold and rainy in Austria while we were gone. It was warm and sunny in Venice while we were there. As we left, clouds started moving in, though. Now we’re back in the drizzle, but it’s okay.

Seriously, though, rent one of those pedal cars when you go to the Lido.

So apparently no one is interested in an 1nternational c0nspiracy, gee, too bad.
Gosh, there’s a real echo in this place.
Gloomy too.
At least these blind salamanders are cool. Hey there little guy, who’s your daddy?
Guess I’ll have to throw Beta a party at McDonalds or something instead. Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Well, I’ll be offline for a few days, going to the Lido and Venice with the family for some more of that cake. See you um Tuesday.
Gotta run, the red phone’s ringing. Probably Cheney again.

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is, I think, the goddamned book I’ve most enjoyed reading, as far as I can remember, and I can’t find my goddamned copy to reread it. I’m thinking now would be a good time to read it, for some reason, and I must have fucking lent it to someone, pressed it upon them, Here read this you’ll love it it’s great, and they’re all Whatever okay and now it’s gone.

I like the Russians. Viktor Pelevin, “The Life of Insects” I dug. Good combination for me, Russian and insects. God talks to me through insects, maybe that’s why I feel this affinity for them. I see two firebugs fucking in my back yard, and hear God saying, It’s all about the fucking, Mig my boy. Fucking in the broader sense, God says. For some people, it’s eating or painting or music or the kids or canoeing or rock-climbing or cooking or writing or, for some, like my one uncle who seemed fond of Portland hookers and died of something vague, something hushed up in the family, a few years ago, literally fucking. Whatever, God says. It’s the creative urge, I’m creating through you, baby, that’s what it’s all about, you think you’re in the driver’s seat, but you’re the car.

So, liking the Russians, I am surprised at myself that I have never read Gonchorov’s Oblomov, especially since the main character must be like a total slacker hero. I say this because I’m currently reading a 1961 book called “Grundformen der Angst” by Fritz Riemann. The title means, in English, something like “Fundamental Forms of Fear”, which I found appealing.

It’s the sort of book I wish I would’ve read 30 years ago, or even 35. At least, that’s what I say now, after reading the introduction and skimming a bit of the rest. Fear is a fundamental aspect of life, and there are four kinds of fear, basically, and we can react to fear in one of two ways. That seems to be what the book is about, stretched out over a few hundred pages.

You probably know all this already. Maybe you’re thinking, Doh, Mig, the way the nice violin teacher did when I told her, Gee, this year I figured out that if you practice more, you get better faster.

Fear cannot be eliminated from life, it can only be dealt with, or avoided. If we deal with it – confront it, we develop. If we avoid it, we stagnate. I was thinking about Oblomov, lounging around and doing nothing — either he is fearless, or he is avoiding fear and stagnating. I’ll have to read the book, I guess.

All of human culture is an attempt to deal with fear by whatever blah blah blah. From magic, religion, science, politics, collecting Pez dispensers, pimping your ride, you name it. “Love”, whatever. Society itself. Banding together. Being a hermit. Organizing scavenger hunts. Pick any abstract concept.

So, I suppose, my method was avoidance, for a long while. Stagnation: I called it fermentation, aging in the bottle, whatever. Ripening. And what I think is better is to follow your creative urge, the fucking God was talking about, and deal with whatever fears or scary situations arise along the way. There is nothing necessarily heroic about this, it’s just what you do or don’t do, I think.

Like me and the cello, there is getting over the fear of bowing, the cautious bowing that squeaks so much. Squeakophobia as it’s known in the business. Face that and it sounds better. Or, the annual recitals that churn my stomach. They’re getting easier, and christalmighty, they’re only recitals, they’re no big deal, really.

I sat down near the back of the room at the recital, two evenings ago, and looked at the program. Dang, I thought, they put me near the end, amidst the good cellists. Following a girl who plays much better than I do.

Everyone else, though, played badly. Played like kids at a recital, that is. Some weren’t nervous or scared, most were. Most had bad intonation and squeaked and so on. Even the good kids before me made mistakes. A handsome young man was quite nervous and mad at himself while playing at all the boo-boos he was making.

So by the time it was my turn, I was in a very much What-the-hell who cares mood. I was quite happy as I sat down, as happy as you can be when you are as nervous as I was, nervous but calming down rapidly.

I smiled and if not exactly throwing caution to the wind, at least thinking, the cautious playing of the kids before me sounded like crap, I’ll loosen up and if it sounds like crap, it won’t be because I was too timid.

Let me mention here my state of mind: quite fragmented. My picture of the actual playing looked as if it were viewed through a long, shiny tube reflected in a jagged construction of small mirrors assembled with superglue by a crazy person; kaleidoscopic, in other words, and disorganized.

I hammed it up on the vibrato, though. I got vibrato on maybe half the notes where I should have. The others, I was more careful and passed on the vibrato because, like, tricky passages immediately followed them and so on. The first half of the piece (a Romberg sonata for cello and piano) repeated, and although I had been dreading the repetition, it turned out to be fun, and a second chance to go back and get right all the stuff I screwed up the first time, which wasn’t that much, it turned out.

Whenever I made a mistake, I just grinned and played through it. Playing in the orchestra this year really helped with the playing past mistakes issue.

In fact, the hard parts I got right, mostly, and got tangled up over some of the easier passages. Best of all was this dramatic exit at the end, this series of fast, dramatic notes that I had been batting .500 on in practice. I got it right, and knew as I was playing it that I was getting it right, and thinking, I’m getting it right, man, this is fun as hell.

The applause seemed quite heavy, but I was still kaleidoscopic. A friend in the back row yelled Bravo, which was to be expected, he is a funny person, but then some stranger also did. And my kids were proud of me, and Beta, who knows her music, said some nice things, and my inlaws were very proud too, and friends congratulated me for having the nerve to get up there, and my cello teacher said, Great you didn’t lose your sense of humor, whatever that means.

So I suppose, if one faces a fear, it can pan out, although if you are like afraid of a lion, then you get fucking eaten, so use your judgement.