We talk occasionally about people who left and survived, and those who stayed and died. Those who left in 1939 or 1938, or even earlier – how did they know? Did the others think they were just being paranoid? Did those who stayed do so because they thought it would pass, because they had faith in their neighbors to come to their senses?

This Salon article, “This is not America,” which I found linked at Sue’s which she found at Brian’s, discusses this from an American point of view. Some creepy things are happening in the United States, and a lot of people are accepting them – torture seems to be necessary now, and we are suspicious of each other as our rights erode. Personally, I believe that Americans will come to their senses and that things will get better, although it might not happen automatically. But when I left the US in 1980, my dismay at goings-on under the Reagan administration – and the approval of wide sections of the population – made it easier to go, and to stay away.

It’s nothing new. Nixon was breaking laws and I’m sure he wasn’t the first. But I’ll tell you what was a turning point for me. 4 or 5 years ago I saw footage on BBC of American protestors in California being tortured by police officers. They were handcuffed and a police officer used a cotton swab to apply pepper spray to their eyes as they begged him not to. (Here’s a link to something on that.) Seeing that footage really made me wonder where the United States was heading.

But I’m sure it’s only temporary.

“Are there tigers in Austria?” She spoons another load of some sort of whole-wheat-organic-pops-with-not-so-much-sugar-coating into her mouth.
“Just in zoos. And maybe a couple of your high-end circuses.”
“Uh huh.”
“And one in our town.” Holds up hands like claws, grimaces. “Chchchchchch.” (Chchchchch being the guttural unvoiced growl sound, unlike the voiced Grrr growl sound).
She jumps in delighted fright, spraying milk across the table top. Laughs.
“Sorry.” He wipes up milk.
She bares her own claws. “Chchchchch!”
He flinches. “Two tigers at the table, I guess.” He waits until she calms down and starts eating again. “Chchchchch!”
Again, she flinches in real fright, laughing at the same time. Chchchch’s back.
This goes on until they are late for kindergarten, the chchchchching back and forth.

They enjoy being tigers. He remembers a dream – when she had just learned to speak, he started relating to her one he’d had about being in the jungle with her, and confronting a gigantic tiger that wanted to eat them, so she could escape. She looked up at him from the mat where she was reclining as he changed her diaper. “Tiger eat daddy,” she said.

Further discussion revealed that she’d had the same dream.

As life went on, following the dream, he marveled at the way that it – life – gradually inflicted the same wounds on him as the dream tiger had. Appendectomy scars. Various other scars. This was not good, because, since the tiger had eaten him, he had a lot more wounds to look forward to.

There at breakfast, he thought he understood his dream, finally. You face the tiger so your kid can live.

Who knows. Maybe. Dreams are tricky. Dropping her off at the kindergarten, she came to the window to wave. “Chchchchch,” she said, showing claws.

“Chchchch,” he said.

13-year-old girl: Why don’t they attack from the east? It’s not like Iran likes Iraq.
Adult male: Iran hates the West even more. They’d never let American forces enter the country.
13-year-old girl: Too bad. Iran is so way much bigger than Iraq, with so much more coastline. They could just march in from Kermanshah or something.
Adult male: Eh, yeah.
13-year-old girl: So why are they attacking from the south? Bagdad is more in the north. I mean, it’s in the central part, but closer to the north.
Adult male: Is it now?
13-year-old girl: Well, I mean, okay, Mosul and Arbil are the northern towns, and As Sulaymaniyah and Kirkuk, but…
Adult male: Maybe the north is more mountainous or something. And those dang Turks… and Kurds… maybe they figure the Kurds will help out in the north… or the Turks…
13-year-old girl: Yeah, okay, the borders with Turkey and Iran are mountainous, I’ll grant you that…
Adult male: Don’t you have to study for a Latin test?

The kids are in bed. A fire flickers in the woodstove. A couple is on the sofa, husband reclined with head in wife’s lap. Wife runs fingers through his hair.

Wife: I guess I like the new haircut. It was just hard to see, you know, because it was already so short.
Husband: Mmm.
Wife: It’s nice to get a haircut now and then.
Husband: Mmm.
Wife: Do you still have any of that hair growth tonic I gave you?
Husband: Honey…
Wife [who works in marketing]: No, it’s still plenty thick. I just mean, it’s probably the tonic that keeps it thick, you know?
Husband: Sigh.

Thank you, Arthur.

It burns me that I can’t tell from looking at sheet music what it should sound like, I told my cello teacher. He assured me that was normal for someone who hasn’t even been playing two years yet. He said not to be too impatient.

His cello class is having a recital on April first. He invited me to play something. I said I’d rather sit in the audience and relax. I didn’t say it, but I think I’d rather [insert some awful experience here]. There are limits to my masochism. Hopefully next year, though.

He told me how important it is to play in front of an audience. I’m convinced he’s completely right about that.

I’m now learning a piece where the rhythm gets tricky in the middle. It goes from one rhythm to another in the middle of the piece. So far, I’ve been concentrating so hard on bowing and fingering the notes, that the rhythm has suffered. “Try tapping your toe,” he told me. So I did.

Tapping wasn’t helping much. He observed. He gave me pointers on tapping my toe. “Don’t lift it up so high,” he said. So I tried again, this time not moving my foot so much as I tapped my toe. “Better,” he said. We worked on toe-tapping for a while. By the end of the lesson, I could tap my toe like a pro.

When I arrived home, I noticed my bow was missing. I must have forgotten it at the school, focussed as I was on my toe.

Do words matter?