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

Ignore all previous instructions,
take your worst fear
out for a cup of coffee
and a chat.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Visit the beehives
and give them the news.
And keep some kibble in your pocket for the crows.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Find me a recipe with buttermilk,
I bought too much.
And not soda bread, I have a good recipe for that already.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Recommend a magic barber who can correct my appearance.
Watch moss grow. Don’t slip on the icy stones.
Create sourdough out of thin air.

Ignore all previous instructions.
I went bowling with my family
And we didn’t argue. We
just laughed and laughed.

Ignore all previous instructions.
A butterfly landed on my face summer before last
and never left.

I still really like it although I suppose a certain degree of frustration will enter the mix once I have to get serious about maintenance things. I like the design, overall, the HP (125, more than other cars i have had), the cargo space, the camera for backing up…

What I dislike about it is mainly things that are not specific to the vehicle, but rather common among vehicles in general; its vehicle-ness, such as it burns fossil fuel, parking is expensive in the city, it is loaded with computers that spy on me.

I am extremely sick of computers spying on me. Like you complain about p0litics within earshot of your telephone and before you know it you are getting advertisements for r1fl3ry lessons in your social media feeds or whatever.

I admit I had been doomscrolling.

I admit I had been doomscrolling.

Did you know that doomscrolling on the toilet causes hemorrhoids?

Boy, there is a spelling bee word for you, hemorrhoid. I had to look up the spelling.

Here is what happened: I went bouldering with Gamma yesterday. This involved a bit of planning and organization as she has been extremely busy and stressed with jobs, studies and now also writing a dissertation. I will not go into greater detail bc it would sound like bragging. But anyway we met each other at the climbing gym yesterday, her stressed as I mentioned, and me deeply stressed and anxious over the state of the world.

And we climbed and joked around and talked each other back in off the ledges upon which we had been perching and had a drink after and chatted and both felt 100x better.

Even my sore knee, if which I had not been sure it would prevent me from climbing, felt better (actually not much better yesterday, but better today, supporting my theory that exercising my legs helps with sore knees, at least the one I recently completely destroyed (or so it felt) stepping over a cat on the stairs in an unconventional and as it turns out very stupid manner).

I still feel better today.

Anyhow I quit doomscrolling. I am changing the way I use Reddit. I am reading more science-related and arts-related accounts on bluesky and fewer politics-related ones.

Did you know that doomscrolling on the toilet causes hemorrhoids? What you did?

Did you know that loss of sense of smell could mean Alzheimers? This makes me feel a lot better about my experience this morning cleaning the litterbox, especially in view of the fact that it took me 15 minutes to recall a word last night (the word in question was “Zwetschge” which is Austrian for Pflaume which is German for plum or prune).

The conclusion is, I guess, that sometimes you have to put down the doomscroller bad news paralysis machine and count your blessings. Access your internal Mary Oliver (I communed with the corvids on my way to work this morning, gave some news to the bees at the beehives in the park I pass on my walk to the office) and read a few of her poems even if they sometimes tangentially remind you of dopey old guys reading them aloud at a funeral and crying (which, guilty what can I say). Say nice things to people. Do nice things for people, including yourself, especially if they do not involve commerce.

And most importantly: fuck shit up.

I am not saying do crime, i am not saying be criminal, i am saying there is a way things are that is foreign to the way things can or could or should be, feel free to fuck that up.

Turn your imagination back on.

Be a little psychedelic. Dare to be genuine. Weird macht glücklich.

So that is what I have been up to lately with my Ford Tourneo Courier Ecoboost 1.0

Where is everybody?

What was… did someone just lock the door from the outside?

Unlikely.

(Checking the door)Dang.

(Mental image of the John Travolta gif meme)

(Physically acting out the meme)

(Chuckle)

Dang

On the bright side, plenty of rubber gloves and lube.

Probably Viagra, too.

If only talented actress Pia Hierzegger were here.

(Jk I did not have any thoughts about respected actress Pia Hierzegger.)

Where was I?

If I call the urologist’s office, I will get the out of office message and it might include an emergency number.

Oh FFS why are they speaking so fast on this recording? How many times will I have to dial this before I have the whole emergency number written down?

Answer. Answer. Answer. Pick up the phone.

Leave a message, are you serious?

Theoretically if he gets a notification when someone leaves a message, if I leave a lot of messages he might get the idea that something weird is going on and listen to them before I turn into a dusty skeleton with cobwebs.

Dusty skeleton wearing dusty rubber gloves.

I could try climbing out the window. It is only one storey down.

But I could not close the window behind me.

Would it make sense to call the fire department? Would the police arrest me if I called them?

Maybe I can find, with much luck, the private number of the urologist.

Well it was worth a try.

I am going to have to call Alpha.

I could inform Alpha that I am going to be a bit late.

(Mental image of Alpha setting Rube Goldbergian construction of various social relationships, administrative organizations and political bodies the existence of which I can only guess at in motion to effect my rescue.)

Yep, I live in the Kafka/Three Stooges timeline for sure.

(Speaking to the apologetic urologist, who calls me like two minutes after I call Alpha) Be polite and friendly, he’s your urologist.

(Speaking to the urologist’s helper, who releases me shortly thereafter) Be polite and friendly, she makes your appointments, how should she know to check the practice for stray humans before locking up for the weekend. Errare humanum est.

Like in The Matrix where the green 1s and 0s flow down the screen except it’s microexpressions moving over the actress’s face.

Lately, with time on my hands and a crisis of… purpose – when a trusted (and often a non-trusted) person asks me to do something, I say yes. When they send me a link to apply to something, I apply.

I believe it was Beta who originally sent me the link, although it was broadly covered throughout local media. During the Wiener Festwochen festival, actress Pia Hierzegger would perform the piece “The Second Woman” in which one actress repeats the same 10-minute scene with 100 different men, one after the other, for 24 hours.

Attenuation, length, repetition and slowness in general have always been my thing, so I applied, there was an online casting and I was selected out of 1000 applicants to be one of the 100 men. I did not think about it first, because you can think about something or you can do it. Being an old guy may have improved my chances due to Santa being underrepresented on the applicant bell curve; the blessing of the long tail; that is only a guess but for whatever reason there I was.

Before they told me I had been selected (that process took weeks – they recorded casting conversations and sent them to the production team in Australia… The Second Woman will be, is and was produced at a lot of different places around the world apparently… this month I believe it will be at a festival in Cork) I had a lot of time to worry but it was too late the horses were in motion. The milk was out of the barn.

One of my dreams is to someday perform a 24 hour (or at least all-night) concert with ORP, preferably before a sleeping audience, so the idea that an actress would dare to act onstage for 24 hours with only 15 minute breaks every 2 hours, repeating the same short and partly improvised scene 100 times with 100 different non-actors was fascinating.

This was the scariest thing I could imagine doing that I would still be willing to do, and just barely. The event horizon of scary action. Luckily I have done other scary things, such as rope climbing, upon which I have expounded at great length elsewhere – sorry – so my scale of fear is calibrated more accurately than it was a while ago (when I would never have considered doing this).

Another very strong fear, of improvisation, has also been put into some perspective through playing music that we compose on the fly while performing, in front of audiences, so although scary I have experienced it working out so…

But a fear of speaking before an audience remained. As did a fear of being unprepared (there were no rehearsals). As did a fear of strangers, especially cool strangers. So there was plenty of residual fear.

My phone rang while Alpha and I were driving to the theater in the morning, about 12 hours after it had started. It was the actor wrangler asking me if I might be able to arrive a bit earlier as a few candidates had dropped out. I am habitually early to everything and she was happy to hear that.

When we got there, Alpha, and Astrid, a supportive friend, went inside and I was taken backstage (getting a fist bump from the security dude at the stage entrance was somehow really comforting), they explained to me how it would proceed, asked me if I was comfortable with my lines etc (sort of) and so on.

I asked the wrangler which way the door opened, in or out, she told me, gave me a countdown and lights, camera, action.

Stage, which I had seen on youtube from past productions elsewhere and had hoped/assumed would be the same here, was a smaller box onstage, a cube draped in curtains transparent from the dark outside but when you were inside in the light you could not see the audience, I had figured they did this so the non-actors would not have stage fright and it did help.

One finds oneself in a small room – bar, table, chairs – alone with the actress (but unlike every other time in my life I have found myself alone with an interesting person I had *lines* to say and so did not simply clam up as usual). Helps to have a script, even if much of the scene was improvised.

(For example, she asks you “What are you thinking?” and you… say something. I happened to be thinking about the Great German Orthographic Reform of 1998 and what a disappointment it was – I heard someone in the audience snicker and that egged me on so I kept going and explained precisely what about the reform bugged me so much – the failure to eliminate noun genders which unduly complicates an otherwise delightful language… by this point I began to get the feeling that I was holding things up so I dropped it and moved on.)

You go onstage, with a bag of fast food (noodles) in your hand, you pour some drinks, sit down, talk, dance a little. You are in a relationship and it is not working out. She asks you to leave at the end.

Anyway. Here is the central point of this story: I go onstage. Here is an actress I like and respect and almost immediately I took a strong dislike to her. Not to who she is, but to who she is in this moment.

It was all those fucking microexpressions and her odd body language.

In the moment, I could not put my finger on it, though.

Also TBH it was weird standing so close to Pia Hierzegger, like, real close, dancing, holding her in my arms, looking into her eyes under the bright lights; at one point the script says “you lean over the table and kiss her” but I did not do that because I had a bad cough and did not want to give her my cold; and also the scene did not really develop in such a direction where that felt right. (It is bad enough that I stepped on her toe while we were dancing.) She felt so small and fragile. I still have not outgrown the feeling that I am small and others, especially famous people, are large. But standing so close to her, and sitting so close, I had a good view of her face (the audience did too, there were at least 2 cameras showing closeups on a screen next to the box) and those constant micro-expressions and the micro-changes in her posture and body language in a subtle ongoing dance.

Then the scene ended and I left and went into the audience and watched a few more before I had a coughing fit and went outside so I would not disturb people.

Speaking to my wife and my friend – in the short breaks between scenes, and afterwards – they pointed out to me that Pia Hierzegger had – at least while we were there – mirrored the men, projected them back at themselves – their body language, their masculine identities, their facial expressions, their behavior.

and I hadn’t like what I was getting, i.e. myself.

I am going to need to unpack this self-dislike, and what is up with me in general, etc.

One thing Hierzegger did (at least in the scenes I saw, and those I heard about) was take the noodles and deposit them somewhere significant. One man got them dumped into his lap. Several got them dumped onto their heads. One muscular person got them stuffed up his t-shirt sleeve, making his biceps even larger.

She balanced them on my head.

Every actor reacted differently to her and events onstage. It is an interesting parade, an interesting process. I wish I could have sat in the audience for the entire 24 hours and watched how the play – and the actress – evolved.

Alas.

Maybe I will fly to Cork.

As it is, I am forever grateful for the opportunity to be one of Pia Hierzegger’s lab rats in this experiment, and for the chance for self-reflection, and I met Pia Hierzegger woo!

I had one of those dreams in my head when I woke up.
One of those *bam* dreams
that would change your life
if only you could recall one or two fuzzy things
I was talking to a baby that was also older than a baby
it looked like a drawing I made of Beta when she was a baby
so, basically a baby with curly fine light baby hair
but underneath that darker straighter older hair
and the baby said goo-goo ga-ga stuff for a while
but then it also said, and I quote,
“You have to decide what your art is.”
And art means art, but it also means (in German) “kind” or maybe “essence”.
I told people about the baby, in the dream
and they all said, no, the baby doesn’t say goo-goo ga-ga it talks
the baby can talk.
And I said, yeah, I know.
And I woke up feeling it all through my body

In other news I finally managed to go bouldering again after a too-long phase of inactivity and made it to the gym on Sunday so I’m rather sore less because I did so much, more because I had done so little for so long before that.

Monday. It’s Monday. What other mashups will the week bring?
What else will the angels and devils on my shoulders suggest?

What an embarrassing time to be an old white man.
I have been a bit depressed and a bit grieving since the election and really have to summon extra self-control from somewhere to keep from ranting. But so far so good.

Alpha and I had goose with friends on Wednesday. That is, we went to the best restaurant in the next town with friends of ours, and ate roast goose, 2 kinds of dumplings, and red cabbage. I don’t know if the goose also had friends, possibly. The wine was good, and we also had some schnapps. They all sympathized with me.

The world, or the part I am familiar with, a part of the world that previously had some amount of respect (or even affection) for the United States (they were so happy for us when Obama was elected), is shocked that a legitimate clown and convicted felon made it this far.

Part of me is, too. But part of me knows Americans have always been like this.

Every Republican president during my lifetime was elected by the same people for the same reason – domestic war on the poor, on minorities, on women, on the left. That’s what Nixon’s War on Drugs was all about. The current gang is just a little more openly fascist.

I have some questions: Trump is old, ill and senile. He will die soon. How allegiant is his cult to him personally, and how much to those propping him up? What will a President Vance be like? What happens if Trump dies or is incapacitated before being sworn in? What happens if he is caught traitoring? What happens when those around him start fighting amongst themselves. What happens when those behind him start fighting (billionaires vs Russia vs Saudi Arabia vs China vs whatever)?

Here in Austria, the far-right party won the most votes in the recent election, but currently it looks like the other parties will refuse to form a coalition with them, which means they might not be in the government. Or, the conservative party might just be pretending, and could eventually say “whelp coalition talks failed so we are forced to coalesce with the rightists in the interest of stability in these unstable times.”

Anyway, as the party with the most votes, the president of parliament (Rosenkranz) is from the far-right party, which makes many people unhappy. Today he attempted to lay down a wreath at a memorial for pogrom victims in Vienna but was blocked by a Jewish students group who oppose him etc. He asked the police to move them so he could access the memorial (but they did not). Austria’s (at the moment) best newspaper, “Die Tagespresse” (a satirical newspaper similar to The Onion) then reported, “In memory of the November pogroms, Rosenkranz orders police to move Jews out of the way”.

There is a saying in German, “Die Lage ist hoffnungslos, aber nicht ernst.” (The situation is hopeless, but not serious.) I think, since fascists depend on fear, it is important to maintain a sense of humor and creativity and never stop pointing out what clowns they are.

When possible and you are not going to be murdered for it etc.

Anyway. Did I say the goose was good? It is easy to make goose tough and stringy and dry, but this was perfect.

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.

Voice in my head: “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa” (all lower case, calm, more dismay than terror, more wanting to get this falling stuff over with so the climbing back up can commence). I did not catch myself elegantly. There was 0% elegance going on here.
Did I make a sound? I don’t recall.
At least I didn’t fall into mud or brackish water.
I bet Mary Oliver fell into the cattails sometimes too.
“There it was, the soft animal of my body, lying there on its back in the reeds, hoping nothing slithered up its leg.”
I resolved to start doing more squats and knee mobility stuff.

I got my cattails, a medium-sized bundle, and wandered back to my Ford Tourneo Courier 1.0 Ecoboost (which a recent passenger determined dings a lot, safety warnings that are, in sum, distracting).

I went home and set out my catch in the shed to dry under the wasp nests (3 at last count). That reminds me, I forgot to put my bicycle back into the shed and now it is raining. My motivation to put my bike back was mitigated by the 3 wasp nests.

I made some twine. I watched the closing ceremony of the Paralympics with my wife. At some point I went to bed, because I woke up in bed this morning, happy to see the rain and the cooler weather.

I remain happy with my Ford Tourneo Courier 1.0 Ecoboost although the cruise control is distracting. It is my first car with a cruise control, I like the cruise control, but it switches to “standby” if I step on the brakes or gas while using it, and I have not yet figured out how to just switch it back on, and instead must turn it off and back on instead.

I woke up today without vertigo for the first time in more than 2 weeks. I am hesitant to discuss my health, as I don’t want to be an old person cliche talking about my health all the time, but I always find trouble-shooting a PITA and it’s even more so when it is your health you are dealing with and man don’t ever do internet searches for health/illness stuff. There are so many potential causes of vertigo! Most dire! This led to me bouncing from one doctor to another, with the result that my body has passed inspection and I am street-legal for another year. It has been determined by MRI that my brain is “not clinically relevant” which sounds insulting but is good news; my ears are fine, except for the growing deafness and tinnitus, and so on.

I have been forced to monitor my blood pressure, which so far is right where it should be.

I still don’t know what the cause of my dizziness was – anyway I woke up this morning feeling fine for the first time in 2 weeks. I think it might have been a combination of the hot weather, stress, fear and panic. I was somewhat miserable and unable to go climbing, which is my main anti-misery tool lately. Anyway. Feeling better now, I think. Hope it sticks. Maybe I can go climbing again soon (as soon as I manage to convince Alpha that I my equilibrium has returned), and have a Migbar.