So how do you feel?

Waiting for traffic to move on I found myself thinking of a jellybean composed of pure tension and slapstick with the mass of a planet lodged in my stomach, between my navel chakra and my solar plexus chakra.

So, it sounds like you…

Closer to my navel.

Like a made-up movie called “The End of the World” produced by Jerry Bruckheimer starring Louis De Funes at his most apocaplectic.

What, your wife away on business again?

Japan. Until Sunday. She picked a busy week to go away, but not that much busier than any other week. How does she do it? She can bilocate I think. Unlike me. So while she effortlessly does three things at the same time in three different places, I find myself rushing around.

So you’re frustrated you can’t whine, only suffer.

I find myself, you know, to get papers at the consulate I don’t simply drive to the consulate and get papers, like she would in a similar situation. Or call them and have them send the papers. I find myself turning right at the no-right-turn sign, in front of a streetcar, to find myself not only facing the wrong way down a one-way street, but facing a police car to boot. So I make a quick left, thinking, on the one hand, if they send me a ticket, as Austrian police like to do, my wife will get it, this being her car I’m driving as my father-in-law is trying to get the exhaust fixed on the Dobl

If you are not a father you can’t know what it is like. It can’t be imagined. What you’re imagining when you think you’re imagining fatherhood is not fatherhood, it’s just you sitting there, or driving along in your car, or taking a shower or shaving, imagining fatherhood.

Fatherhood is way different. It’s nothing you can imagine. Whatever you can imagine, that’s not it. It’s always a surprise, and it’s a different surprise for every one of us so what one man says about fatherhood, that’s not what it would or will be like for you, either.

For you, it will be different.

For you, it will be as follows:

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Kresse = cress
Igel = hedgehog
Kr3sse1gel (you understand I want to avoid perverts searching for the word arriving at my site) = dinky popup image

Thanks it looks fantastic, I said, when it was all over.

It was a hard haircut this time. She kept talking to me. Talking, talking. While the other stylist was talking and talking to a lady getting her hair colored, and the helper was talking to another woman getting her hair colored. Each of them holding something in her hand going buzz. And probably a radio going. In a foreign language, albeit one in which I am conversant.

I.e. I said, what? a lot. And Pardon me? And sometimes even, yeah, not really knowing what I was yeahing.

I really have trouble following a conversation when there is background noise, is what I’m saying.

So say something in Japanese, she said.

Hrm, I said. Eh, like what? I hate it when people ask you things like that. I can never think of anything. I ought to have a standard phrase at the ready, leaned against the door of my mind like an umbrella on a rainy day to whip out when people say that. In German, I suppose, I shall use the phrase, “Hau di iba di Heisa, du Zniachtl,” which Babelfish won’t help you with. Japanese, hrm.

Say, I like the haircut, she said.

Eh, I said. Right at that point I was at the stage in the haircut where they have you looking like Beaker from the Muppets before fixing you?

She finally got me to say “how are you.”

So anyway, I was happy with the haircut. I paid, left and went to meet my wife and daughter at a music school concert. Actually a concert, too fancy to be a recital. My wife just looked at me and got this charming look on her face she gets when she doesn’t like my haircut. Sort of, you dork, you’ve gotten a short haircut again although you know I prefer it longer, but in a sweet way.

The first thing Gamma said was, Dad, you look like a Kr3sse1gel!

What part makes the pollen? Gamma asked me.
I pointed to the flower. There, I said. That’s called the stamen. It’s like the flower’s penis. The bee flies in looking for nectar and picks up pollen from the stamen and flies to the next flower and some pollen gets on the second flower’s pistil, which is like that flower’s vagina and ovaries and so on, I said.
Okay, Gamma said.
Honey, aren’t you supposed to use flowers and birds and bees as a metaphor for human reproduction and not the other way around? Alpha said.

How long have you been taking cello lessons she said.
Going on five years I said.
That’s cool she said.
We gave my father cello lessons for his retirement present and he still loves them she said.
That’s nice I said.

Neat how she got father and retirement into the same sentence like that.

Haircut appointments often trigger a crisis for me. Thoughts of makeovers.

In fact it’s simple: grey = short, end of story.
In fact it’s simple: forget about the hair and lose fifteen pounds.
In fact it’s simple: who gives a shit, look at Tom Waits or Billy Bob Thornton. Look at Harrison Ford, on the other hand: all the money in the world and he reminds me of someone’s great-aunt.
On the other hand, look at Kevin Spacey. Or my dad. He could play Billy Bob’s dad in a movie.

I heard an anecdote about a university lecturer remarking that a double negative can result in a positive statement, but a double positive can never result in a negative statement, to which someone in the back of the room replied, “Yeah, yeah.”

We will be immortal by the year 2050, according to a scientist quoted in an article I read at breakfast this morning. Or our children will. By then, PlayStations will be roughly as smart as people, and we will be able to upload our minds, and live forever, except for virii, spam attacks and denial-of-service hijinks; I suppose the BSOD will take on new significance, too.

Eternal life in a PlayStation, cool.

How, exactly? And what do you mean by eternal? And what happens to me? And what do I mean by me?

It’s 2050 and we have Mig-in-a-box now, writing, you know, the usual stuff. I saw a deer, no I saw a dozen deer. In the fog. It was so cool. Or, cello is hard. Or, hold your mouth real close to the microphone and say, “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.” Say, “Alessandro Marcello, Antonio Vivaldi, Accademia Bizantina, Tiziano Bagnati.” So for everyone else, I’m immortal. But how do I see that? Ask the box, and it says, “yeah, sure, I’m immortal pal, WTF, ROTFL, heh.” So who’s rotting in the ground, then? And how does he see all of this?

I listen to her radio show on my way into work. She has a classical music show on that radio station I recently started listening to because it spends an hour on the news in the morning and in the evening, not just 5 minutes like the other station I used to listen to, and the music they play is so eclectic, as eclectic as you can be playing serious, classical-type music all the time, plus a show in the evenings, coinciding with my evening commute home, where they play other things, jazz or serious songwritey stuff or odd music from around the world.

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