It is sometimes good for your mental health when you are able to give the wheel to your stone age side that is otherwise so often repressed in today’s society (does not apply to fascists) and so I found it liberating yesterday to go into the woods and look for some natural fibers with which to make a basket; I have no idea how to make a basket so we are talking early Neanderthal in my case (archeologists have found traces of cordage-making in 90,000 year old Neanderthal settlements but based on how easily the practice of twining fibers came to me I would guess it is earlier than that) anyway I clipped a few cattails and stripped off their leaves, which I find good for making cordage as the leaves are quite long and there are smaller bits on one side of the leaves you can strip off that are good for making thinner, almost thread-like twine that is quite strong but I do not know yet what to do with that either; in fact that is the reason I am trying to make a basket because when a friend asked me, But what are you going to do with the twine? I answered, Make a basket and so there I was with my cat-tails, wandering deeper into the woods to find some branches I could use for a frame and it felt like the opening scene of a detective show where a passerby innocently stumbles upon the first body, which I call the “Leichenfund”-scene as in, I am on the sofa, TV is on, my wife is outside talking to the kale in the raised bed and I shout to her, Honey hurry, your Krimi is on, you’re going to miss the Leichenfund! and I stepped into a tuft of grass and something cold, moving fast, wriggled up my leg, between leg and trouser-leg and I instinctively did the dance (definitely an instinct imprinted in my lizard brain, requiring zero thought) that one does in such a situation, the dance we have been doing since the days of Neanderthal fiber-gathering, probably longer, and in response the cold wriggling creature threw it into reverse and wriggled off through the grass and I thought, Lizard? Snake? and mused upon the interspecies contract whereby one wriggles, one dances, the wriggler exits stage left, no harm done and how that would benefit both species in such a way that we have both evolved to this point that we can safely go our separate ways, happy with our rapidly beating hearts and a story to tell when we get home.
I found no body, but I did cut a few branches that are crookeder and less uniform than I had hoped for for a basket but perhaps that will lend the finished product an interesting air, assuming I can produce a piece of twine to tie them together that doesn’t break when I tug on it.
Then a bee stung me in the left shoulder blade when was watering the flower bed in front of the house. My first thought was a wasp, which will sting you for fun, and not a bee, which you have to give a reason and I had given bees no reason to sting me, I am mellow with bees, I was merely watering their flowers, and I said a bad word and squirted myself in the back with the hose to get rid of the wasp, which will sting you multiple times if they are in a mood to, but when I got back into the house and removed my wet shirt I could see the stinger and its attached poison sack still in my shoulder blade and realized a bee had somehow crawled up my shirt and stung me when I leaned against the wall of the house (as an American, I am always leaning against something, this is typical for Americans, a fact I read on my phone from an article citing a CIA manual for its spies under “how not to look American while abroad” that said Americans were always leaning against something; I was leaning against the interior of a subway when I read that, but everyone leans against the interior of the subway, don’t they?) and finding itself between house and shoulder blade it felt compelled to sting, sadly, because I meant it no harm and honeybees, unlike wasps, can only sting once, and this beautiful animal died, and when I pulled out the stinger I of course accidentally squeezed the remaining venom into myself making it worse, and wished for an interspecies contract with honeybees, which of course maybe we have already and which I had violated, such as, Don’t squish us and we won’t sting you. Maybe.
Anyway. I don’t know what’s going on with the animals in my clothes lately.
Just what happens when you leave the house I guess.
Now please excuse me, I must water the yard.
Category Archives: Feral Living
Lunch at Altausseer See in Altaussee near Bad Aussee near Grundlsee
Today, or yesterday (I am vacationing so my grip on time is more tenuous than usual) I was served a memory from a year ago, a picture of me with a butterfly tickling my nostril at the fish restaurant at Toplitzsee, where we go every year, or have gone each of the past five years, as we have fallen in love with the lake one lake over, Grundlsee, and the surrounding mountains, and other features of the landscape etc in the vicinity; however when we hiked to Toplitzsee for more fish this year the restaurant was closed since we made the mistake of going on a Tuesday and it’s closed Tuesdays, and the second time we went it was open and the fish was good but no butterflies, only mosquitos; likewise when we (in this case my daughter Beta and myself, my wife Alpha having returned home on Thursday to take care of the cats while Beta returned here (she had gone to our house a few days prior to replace her sister Gamma as catsitter because Gamma – who had been with me at Grundlsee at the beginning – was going to Innsbruck to give a presentation at a conference, and to climb in the climbing gym there, which is said to be the best in the world) went to Altausseer See in Altaussee, near Bad Aussee, which is one town over from Grundlsee, for a hike and lunch. While walking around the lake, which is pretty and amidst pretty landscapey views, we were a bit worried whether we would get a table at the place, a rustic restaurant on the bank of the lake, it being tourist season and Friday and noon, but we needn’t have worried because the place was about a third full, if that, when we arrived and we took an empty table and that is when the fun started (the hike had been fun too, except for one stretch with a lot of biting flies) because it seemed to be… New Waitstaff Day? or something? Like first I ordered a “Loser Bier” which is a brand of beer named after a nearby mountain, it comes in a bottle which is good for taking “funny” selfies, which I have been known to do; however, and maybe fortunately, the waitress (a different one from the one who had taken my order) brought a large glass of beer (ein großes Bier) and I was like, internally, all Who is hard of hearing here, you or me? but said nothing because I figured, more beer for the same price and probably the Loser beer selfies are getting old. Then, having studied the menu I asked her what a particular burger, named after the restaurant, was, i.e. was it just a regular burger or what? and she said Yes it was a regular burger. But when my food came it was a fish burger, which I discovered later, after she had gone yet I did not mention it to anyone because 1. fish burger was tasty 2. i figured maybe the burger I ordered, named after the restaurant, was indeed a fish burger not a regular burger and the new waitress who had gotten my beer order wrong had simply not known better. Later, after Gamma and I had eaten a waiter arrived with a regular burger and said, you were served a fish burger right? And I said Right and he said, But you didn’t say anything when it was served? And I said, no problem, just give me the regular burger too and he did and I didn’t know what the fuck was going on but it turned out I had to pay for both burgers apparently because I had failed to point out their incompetence to them immediately, which had not been possible for me because as I mentioned I had not been sure the fish burger was a mistake but I didn’t want to argue and paid; if I had started complaining to the guy I would still be there complaining, wrong beer, wrong burger, right burger not very good (too much filler in the patty), unfriendly blame-shifting waiter. So we paid and left. The waitress who took my money (the 4th waitstaff member to grace our table) had not been involved in any of the mistakes so I still tipped her, a decent tip by Austrian standards but a little paltry by American standards, sort of hit the sweet spot with the percentage, small enough so that it seemed on my end that I was penalizing them for their misdeeds, while large enough that they would not notice anything. Then we walked to our car and got there just as the first raindrops fell and by the time we got home thunder and lightning and lots of rain, it was great.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, Feral Living, ferner liefen