13Aug / 2013

Down besider agin

There was this crow and Little Miss Muffet was trying to dig out some beef for it without getting sauce on herself cause she figured it would prefer beef to the wok vegetables or the rice and due to her concentration she didn’t see the spider until she had flipped the beef out into the street where the crow pecked at it and waited for it to cool enough to carry it off.

“Hola, guapa,” said the spider.

“Geeze, you, gah, whoa,” said Little Miss Muffet, fanning herself.

The spider chuckled and chewed on his cigar.

With his mandibles or pedipalps or whatever they are.

Seen up close like that, it was like something out of an old grindhouse scifihorror movie.

“Short story is,” said the spider around his cigar, and shrugged, all eight eyes looking upward theatrically, palms theatrically upward.

“What.” Miss Muffet paused, chopsticks halfway to her mouth with a load of rice from which generic brown sauce dripped.

“Perfection is another word for death. Check a thesaurus: perfection, death, paralysis, stasis, procrastination.”

Miss Muffet glanced at the crow, which was burying the beef under some dead leaves.

“All there ever is, is this moment and doing one little thing after another. One little, imperfect, broken thing after another, again and again and again.”

“Sounds depressing.”

“It’s beautiful. It’s the most beautiful thing there is. It’s the only thing there is, in fact.”

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13Aug / 2013

Advertising as a decision-making tool

My wife and I have begun using television advertising as an aid to making our purchasing decisions: if it is advertised on television, we don’t buy it.

Basically, nothing advertised on television is necessary, and much of it is harmful.

I’ll keep you posted on how this works out.

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13Aug / 2013

My biggest parenting regret

So, those of you with kids: how’s the parenting working out?

A Huffington Post article a friend (Zeynep) linked on facebook a while ago got me thinking about parenting.

Also someone was asking for tips on metafilter.com.

Parenting tips.

As if there were such a thing.

I have no parenting advice to give. I am a terrible parent. My kids are wonderful people despite my best efforts.

You try real hard, to do what is good and avoid doing what is not good, and it turns out by trying so hard to do what is good you end up doing something different that is bad that you didn’t see coming.

The HP article linked above got me thinking about hurrying my kids, though, which I really wish I had done less of. I wish I had not done it at all.

I was this guy, with two jobs, and when Beta was little I had to get her to day care, get my father-in-law to work, then get to my own job, all on time. So I was always in a hurry and got in the habit of telling Beta to hurry up. We later moved and got different jobs and she could walk to school, but the habit stuck. The habit of being overwhelmed by external circumstances, I guess.

I wish I had just said, fuck you, external circumstances. I wish a lot of things. But I wish I had not hurried my kids, or my wife, or myself.

On the other hand, I have no evidence that I ever did any damage by hurrying people. Still, though.

Ah, who knows?

We have all the time in the world.

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06Aug / 2013

Huginn and Muninn

There is a weathered green bench on the strip of sunblasted grass between the street and the sidewalk. Odin sits there, drapes his suit jacket over the back of the bench, and looks at what’s for lunch.

Times were, whole roast boar, pheasants, flagons of wine and ale.

Not to mention the wenches.

Odin sighs and peels the plastic cover off a serving of Greek salad from the deli. He spears a cherry tomato with a plastic fork.

Times were.

A grey crow hops up.

No, wait, it’s a black crow. A grey crow yawked at him a few minutes ago when he was walking here from the deli. He used to always have to stop and think, which one is Huginn and which one is Muninn? Which is the grey one and which is the black one? Then he decided, I am Odin, I say the first one you see is Huginn and the other one is Muninn, just because. So the grey one from before was Huginn — Odin gave it a handful of peanuts — which makes this black one Muninn. Careful not to spook Muninn, Odin tosses a few peanuts in its direction.

Which Muninn eats.

“How are you with dairy?” asks Odin, and tosses over a piece of feta cheese. Muninn looks at the cheese, thinks about it, then hides it under a pile of dead leaves in the gutter.

Eating peanuts and salad is nice when you’re hungry, thinks Odin, but sharing them with hungry crows is even better.

“Have you lore for me, Muninn?” asks Odin. “What say the slain?”

Muninn is seeing how many peanuts it can carry in its beak, and so says nothing.

Time was, thinks Odin, and polishes off his salad, even the last hard-to-get bits of grated carrot.

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30Jul / 2013

Sat down besider

Little Miss Muffet was trying out the 5:2 diet, and it was a ‘2’ day, is why she was eating cottage cheese. Also, she lived in a cottage so it seemed somehow appropriate.

She sat down on the tuffet and waited.

Somewhere, a clock ticked dog barked truck shifted gears lawnmower buzzed ice cream truck tinkled a song someone hollered at someone else across the street something went BANG airplane flew termites gnawed bees buzzed leaky faucet dripped hearts beat fly bashed its head against window ambient hum hummed.

“Looks good, if you’re into dairy,” said the Spider. Capital S.

“I expect it is a source of lean protein,” said Miss Muffet.

The Spider watched eight different things at once through his eight eyes, arranged in two rows of four.

The Spider watched Miss Muffet, because you can’t be too careful.

The Spider watched a hollyhock sway in the wind outside the window.

The Spider watched shadows moving on the floor.

The Spider watched the fly.

The Spider watched another fly.

The Spider watched the clock.

The Spider watched the soul of an old man leave his body two houses down.

The Spider watched the beating heart of the earth itself.

Miss Muffet finished her lunch.

“I admire your resolve, sticking with the 5:2 diet,” said the Spider.

“It’s actually easy, and plus I’ve lost five pounds already,” said Miss Muffet.

The two of them sat there side-by-side, watching.

“It’s a life-long thing, isn’t it,” sighed Miss Muffet.

“The only alternative is not having a heart,” said the Spider. He spread out five of his eight legs, gesturing everywhere. “And that is no real alternative, in this lovely, lovely universe.”

“We love, and our hearts break, and it hurts, and we love stubbornly on.”

“One eye laughs, and one eye cries,” said the Spider. “At all times. And six watch. One watches humorously, one watches hopefully, one watches without hope. One watches warily, one lovingly, and one objectively.”

“One with joy, one with curiosity, one with suspicion, one with sadness, one with grief, one with elation,” said Miss Muffet. “One with gratitude, one with amazement.”

“That, too,” said the Spider.

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18Jul / 2013

The god of the office and the god of the streetcar

The god of the office is headed somewhere to learn something and gets on a streetcar to take him to the subway, but it is a different streetcar and turns left where the streetcar he wanted would have gone straight, but he looks at the chart showing the streetcar’s route and it will take him to an even better subway station so he decides to stay put and enjoy the ride.

There is a puddle of something under a seat two rows up, that is why the god of the office is sitting in the back row. He is quickly thankful for what looks like a puddle of piss because a few rows up, closer to where he would otherwise have sat, the god of the streetcar is saying something in a loud voice. The god of the office leans over for a better look. The god of the streetcar is in his thirties or maybe late twenties, pig shave, wife-beater shirt, random tattoos, large can of beer, open, despite the fact that it is just after nine in the morning.

And what a glorious morning it is! Vienna never looked this nice. Or, this section of Vienna, which the god of the office has never before seen, has never looked this good to him.

A woman wearing a head scarf gets off the street car and that is the god of the street car’s cue to give his opinion of foreigners, who are stealing jobs from Austrians, and apartments, and although they cannot speak German can somehow communicate well enough when they want to to take advantage of welfare and social services. There are some, in the past, and maybe even present, who would say kill the foreigners, but the god of the street car would not kill them, because he is a Mensch – he would just send them home, every last one of them.

The god of the office, who is himself a foreigner, imagines someone speaking up to the god of the streetcar and getting knifed.

The god of the office notes that no one is seated within three rows of the god of the subway. He looks out the window, where there is a park with large cages inside which boys play soccer. The god of the office is careful to keep his feet well away from the puddle of piss, which migrates slowly here and there as the street car accelerates, or slows, or goes around corners.

The god of the office first wants to tune out the other man’s ranting, but decides to listen closely instead. Because, crazy thing: who knows what something is good for? The universe has funny ways of communicating with us.

The god of the street car says his grandfather said, and he agrees, that politicians should be sewn up in a large sack and beaten with a baseball bat because they are nothing but lackeys of the rich and powerful.

The god of the office raises his eyebrows. When did the god of the street car’s rant take this tack? He does not condone violence such as that detailed by the god of the street car, but otherwise this could be something he has preached to his daughters in the car on the way to town.

Servants of bankers and high finance. The curse of materialism.

The god of the street car is channeling the god of the office!

That is me, thinks the god of the office. Never shall I rant again, for evermore.

Thanks, universe, he says out loud.

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16Jul / 2013

The coolest thing I’ve done since 1988

Natali, Laurent, and Agnes

(I also gush a little about wet plate collodion here on medium.com.)

Vienna photographer Agnes Prammer uses a variety of technologies, including wet plate collodion. I wrote about meeting Agnes last October. Since then I have been bugging her to give a workshop.

Last weekend she did and I signed up and the universe did not smite me and I went and this is the story.

Wet plate collodion photography, executive summary: coolest photographic technology ever.

How it is done: collodion solution poured over metal or glass plate to form thin layer. When it gets a little tacky, but not dry, it is put in a silver nitrate bath. This gives you a light-sensitive emulsion. The plate goes into a plate holder, that goes into the camera, the lens cap is removed (there is no shutter), the plate is exposed, the lens cap is replaced, the plate holder is taken to the darkroom, where developer is poured over it, (these steps must all be completed before the plate dries out, hence the name) then once it develops washed off with water to stop the process, then put into the fixative solution, then a water bath, and you’re done.

It’s that simple.

The first day was devoted to technical and theoretical stuff, the second day we went outside to a park by the Alte Donau and took pictures.

I won’t go into the technical and theoretical angle here, it’s all available online if you’re interested, although it is very useful to hear face to face in a workshop. A couple of interesting facts, though: it dates back to the 1850s; collodion contains ether, that explosively flammable party drug of the 19th century; fixative solution sometimes contains cyanide (which we did not use thank god).

The image at the top of this post is my first attempt at wet plate photography. It shows the other participants, left to right: Agnes’s assistant Natali, Laurent, and Agnes.

Look at that picture. Don’t you just want to give them a hug? I sure did, when I walked into the studio where they were sitting around the table talking about ether and cyanide, but acting like Lennie Small is a bad idea in the first impressions department so I held myself back.

Natali and Laurent

Weather was changeable. Mostly cloudy, a little windier than necessary, the second day. We shot in a park near the Alte Donau, water off the Danube by the Vienna International Centre where there are a lot of parks, boats, swimming, etc. We started off by mixing developer and for some reason no police showed up to ask what we were up to, sitting around a picnic table with our chemicals and rubber gloves like an early episode of Breaking Bad.

Then we took pictures with Agnes’s antique camera and developed the plates in her portable darkroom, which she made from a baby carriage. The camera, enormous, with a black cloth you put over your head to see the frosted glass plate when you compose and focus the picture, is a great ice breaker. Quite a few people stop to ask questions.

Natali

Wet plate collodion photography is a slow, fussy process. At the fastest, you can get a plate prepared, shot and developed in about fifteen minutes. I got three made all day, and they all are ruined by a variety of technical mistakes I made – pouring the collodion wrong, poor composition, poor focusing, pouring developer wrong, developing for too long, overexposure, light leaks in the darkroom, and a number of other things.

All the same, they are the best photos I have ever taken. Wet plate photography is my new favorite art form. Even in my inexperienced hands, it captures something magical and wonderful about humans that other forms of photography miss – and you should really go look at Agnes’s website to see what a talented photographer can do with it.

When I got home Saturday night, I went for a walk along the creek with my wife and gushed about the workshop and the people I had met.

“It was the coolest thing I have done since I took a pee with Boris Yeltsin at the Moscow airport men’s room in 1988,” I said.

“That’s what you said after you did your public performance of your composition for theremin, soprano and cash register a few years ago,” she said.

“I think this was even cooler,” I said.

Then something else happened. It got dark and the world came out and I saw it all — everything I looked at I saw: green fields of wheat white in the dark, the moon reflecting in the creek, the black shrubs and blacker path. The church steeple and the wino sitting at a picnic table under the half dead wild cherry tree and the bugs swarming the floodlights of the tennis club.

I saw it all with new eyes, thanks to doing something new, I guess.

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