Another Exotic Saturday

I dropped by Prosi, Vienna's best international grocery, to buy some taco shells and refried beans on Saturday. The street outside had been blocked off and a stage set up for the Prosi Strassenfest Exotic Festival. I scanned the stands selling food from Zambia and Ecuador, coffee and tea from Ethiopia, and cookies from, um, Poland. I had formed my plan for the day.

I took the subway home, picked the kids up, and got back there as fast as I could.

Just as we arrived, a tiny Indian dancer swept onstage, twirling around in a classical style mixed with a few Bollywood moves and yoga poses. "Watch her hands," I said as I squatted next to Adinah and V. She spun and fluttered them like she was letting loose magic birds.

In short order, we saw a demonstration of a homegrown fusion of African and Shri Lankan dance, then a Viennese Samba troupe, and then a batch of belly dancers with huge, Theda Bara-style capes. V. loved all this boogie. Soon she was swiveling her hips, grabbing her crotch, and giving the world her best Johnny Rotten sneer. This is how V. rocks out. One day, she will be onstage with Justin Timberlake or Lady Gaga, whichever lasts longer.

For about the fortieth time, I asked the girls if they were hungry yet. Adinah gave me a barely enthusiastic, 'Yeah,' and we were off! I steered the posse to the nearest stall, which turned out to be Tanzanian. Adinah is usually a pasta-bread-rice gal, but she surprised me by asking for a spicy beef turnover. I snapped up a roasted chicken drumstick. V. just wanted the sweet vanilla fritters. Uh uh, real food first, I insisted.

We spun over to the Indian booth, and Adinah got her (curried) rice with chapati, which V. also nibbled. I got the spicy chicken and lemon pickles. Ouch. Then V. got those fritters at last.

Then it was henna tattoo time. At that stand, the girl in the sari, who looked like a member of the Upper Austria caste, explained that if she put a design on the girls' hands, they'd have to keep their hands still for two hours. HA HA HA! Also, she only had a dark brown henna, which didn't look like it would be visible on Adinah's chocolate skin. We did it anyway. And just as Ms. Sari finished up with them, it started raining.

We were afraid the rain would wash off the dye, so both girls covered their tattoos as we ran for the subway. Two hours later, Adinah and I scratched the henna off her hand. Underneath was a pretty brown rose.

Then we giggled as we climbed into V.'s bed, where she was already sawing zzzzz's. We scratched off her henna--somehow she'd kept it basically intact--and now she had a nice new rose, too.

It was a nice day.

weekend in steiermark

the nightlife era

Steve Shelley was in Vienna last night. He’s taking time off from Sonic Youth to play the drums for a band called Disappears . They’re good—a real straight-ahead railroad charge of spiky and spacy guitars—and it was great to see Steve bashing hell out of his kit in a hammerblow sort of way.

I’ve known Steve for about 25 years, so it was fun to visit with him and exchange sightings of some of our more loony rocker friends. He is also an unabashed Classic rock head, so I could (relatively) shamelessly confess to him that I’ve only recently “discovered” the Allman Brothers and well, James Brown. He gave me a few tips about both, then promised he’d send me some MP3s. Oh boy!

I haven’t been in a rock club watching a live band in about a million years, so that in itself was cause for rumination. Everything looked the same: the fanboys bumming cigarettes from each other in the front row, the blond bartendress built like a fireplug, the looks of surprise and pleasure on the guitarist’s faces. The sweat. It’s a great world. I wonder how much longer it will last.

I just don’t know how bands can tour anymore—gotta be so expensive, and to what actual financial or public relations gain? Matter of fact, even local bands must be going extinct. It’s always been a young person’s game, and always financially iffy, but right now? Sheesh, how long can one put off earning a living, just to bring the heavy riffage to a niteklub?

As I watched Steve wacking the toms with the same boyish half-grin he’s always grinned, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to show this world to my daughters?’ But I don’t know if the rock club will still exist by the time they become old enough to enter one.

something to think about

Yeah, that’s me. The guy in the long gray pimp coat hanging onto a pole in the U1 to Reumannplatz. The one with Southern rock –Georgia’s finest—blasting out of his pink iPod and spilling out all over a subway car full of down-gazing gray Viennese, Muslim moms with shopping bags that say Strawberry Shortcake, and maybe even some folks from the other Georgia. That’s me in the middle of that.

The other day I was pondering how much bad luck some people have, and also marveling at my inability to cherish my own good fortune. But this morning I did it. The cat woke us up with kisses @ 5:45, then the alarm clock woke us up again @ 6:20, with the floatey, dreamy music of Manuel Göttsching's e2-e4.

The kids tumbled out of the bunk bed on their own and in a sunny mood. I sprinkled extra granulated maple syrup on my hot cereal, and it tasted ‘Grrrrr-eeaat!’ The kids got dressed for school, even helping each other out—no screaming or biting at all! Anette threw a few extra things in her suitcase and said good-bye—easy, simple, no fuss. She’s off to teach in Belgium again this week. Then at kindergarten, V. said, ‘Geh weg!’ (meaning ‘You don’t have to help me take off my boots, Papa. Take off, you hoser. Go to work. I’ll be fine.’)

And I just thought, ‘What a nice family I have.’

Walking to the subway, I pulled out the headphones and stuck the Allman Brothers in my ears. I’ve never been a fan, but suddenly, as I listened to Gregg Allman’s words, I understood something. Though I scribble furiously and mope meaningfully, these guys really said it better a long time ago. Life’s too short. So I ain’t wasting time no more.

black days

Whoa. Stop. I can’t take any more bad news.

Trouble has come to friends and family in the US, other countries, and here in our building, right up to our doorstep. I hear such sorrowful stories. The shootings in Arizona (and Sarah Palin’s hideous response) are terrible enough. But people I love are struggling with divorce, depression, sudden and not-so-sudden unemployment, medical traumas, and suicide.

Fuck.

Paranoids imagine that the world is conspiring against them. I put a Vegas twist on that: I worry that with such black times descended upon my friends, odds are that I’m next.

Then I swing to an equally instinctive, and selfish, gesture. I realize that some people have Real problems and life can be very, very hard. I think, ‘I should be thankful everyone in my house is okay, is healthy, and, if not always happy, then relatively able to make themselves happier.’

I think, ‘What have I done to deserve my stay of execution?’ I feel guilty. And I decide, ‘I’ll never complain about anything, ever, again until the end of Time.’

Then, an hour later, I find a fly in my soup. ‘Waiter!!’

What is that? Is that a human thing—are we genetically incapable of thanking our lucky stars? Is it a question of brain mass? I’ve always thought that most of us have trouble reconciling different or conflicting ideas. Maybe, as a species, we don’t have enough gray matter to stay grateful for more than five minutes. Because we so quickly start thinking again about all the stuff we don’t have, all the experiences we’ve missed, all the money Bill Gates has, and all the fun those young folks are having on all those reality tv shows. It could be that human beings have always been this way, or it’s possible that those ten percent of us who are blessed enough to have fast Internet connections and no net censorship, and live in middle class houses in Western Europe and the US, are mostly just big fat spoiled 21st century babies.

Ahem. Yeah, that’s possible.

Well, okay, maybe I’ll have to overcome vast societal, economic and technological forces, but Today I’m gonna try to live right and be thankful and have a satisfied mind. I can do this. I will do this.

Needs versus Wants

Need: Chips and salsa
Want: Nachos

Need: Motorhead-Ace of Spades
Want: Deep Purple-Who Do We Think We Are

Need: Bic Medium Ball Point pens (black or blue)
Want: a laptop

Need: my family
Want: my family in good spirits

Need: Robert De Niro
Want: George Clooney

Need: a hot bath every once in a while
Want: Sauna Night with Anette

Need: a public library
Want: Facebook, Pirate Bay, Demonoid, all blogs

Need: long underwear
Want: my fuzzy gray pimp coat

Need: coffee
Mindless Self-Indulgence: ginger tea

Need: Barack Obama
Want: a hero

A Real Ring-Tail-Tooter

Gawd, that was a tough month. Or as by brother in Montana would say, 'a hard pull.'

The last four weeks have been so crazy-exhausting-exciting-exhausting. But you wouldn't know about that, would you? Because I've been neglecting this blog again, haven't I?

Well, it started with a complete technological mutiny. Both of my computers stopped speaking to the Internet. Both my computers: kaput! My watch stopped. My phone quit. For one night, even the DVD player went on strike.

This lasted for a little more than three weeks. The turning point was the night I spilled beer on (and in) my laptop. After that, everything started working better. Honestly.

Then I got an assignment from a pretty respected German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which was great! but I wasn't entirely prepared for it. I had to scribble and circle around the subject for a bit, then write it one or two paragraphs at a time, on the subway to work, or in moments stolen from my real job: Father. So I was barely able to write anything else--not even Facebook updates.

Then Adinah did an end run around us and joined the Girl Scouts! And V. got a new kindergarten teacher (who is great, but isn't it always stressful to get to know someone new?) And I had a birthday--my forty-ninth. And even more important, preparations began for V.'s birthday. Then everyone in my department at work got sick just as my boss dumped several new projects in my lap. I had to teach, do all the administrative stuff that normally consumes my days, plus quite a few things that other people usually do, plus create and do a presentation for a Webinar, whatever that is.

Then we got a kitten. A small black and white love cat named Ada. She was rescued from a garbage can in Romania, and brought to a shelter in Vienna, which is where we met her, the little darling. She's the kind of cat who gets her motor running--like, purr city--then melts in your lap.

But when we brought Ada home we got a horrible surprise. Both Adinah and V. were terrified of her. Neither of them has ever lived with a cat (actually Deanie has, back in NYC, but she doesn't remember The Little Guy.) So the kids looked at Ada and saw, not a cuddly, fluffy little Hello Kitty! but a strange, stalking furry Creature, with claws!! On Morning Two, Ada sprung at Deanie's face to play with her hair extension. Adinah shrieked to break glass, fled to her room and hid in her bed.

Meals in the kitchen were impossible--neither girl would dangle their feet from their chairs, because they could see Ada down there, purring. We had to set V. on the breakfast table whenever the kitten said 'Mraow.'

We've always known that V. both loves and fears animals (monkeys, cows, dogs, pretty much everything except caterpillars, whom she does not fear.) But we had no idea Adinah would be so traumatized by a fuzzball from Romania.

So began the long and painful era in our history known as the Katzenintegrationsprojekt, or The Great Coming Together. Many tears were shed, many screams rang out, and several gasps were gasped.

But today, we can look back and say that we have made great strides. Both girls let Ada sit in their laps now. Yelping, hollering and hissy fits are down by 50%.

And it's been a week already.

Ada aus Romanien

so long, so long

It’s official: we’re losing Rosa, our beloved first babysitter.

Okay, maybe she wasn’t the first-first. A few other folks have guest-starred as babysitters for our girls. But Rosa is the best.

I wasn’t sure what to think of her at first. She was soft-spoken and she was a radikal feminist grad student. On one of the first days she had Adinah, she asked if she could take our baby to a squat that was about to be raided by the police. I said, um, No. But I guess the important thing was that she asked.

Suffice to say, over the years, Adinah and V. have not been angels nor princesses every day they were with Miss Rosa. Adinah can bring the psychic pain, and V. has a pretty wicked backswing. Rosa has been super patient with them. She’s the polar opposite of Gloria, the heroine of that underappreciated Cassavettes film: she really likes kids, especially ours.

I don’t know what we’re gonna do without her. She has recommended a friend, and that’s a start. It’s such a precarious, maddening idea: leaving your children with another person, especially someone you don’t know so well. So many things, big and small, can go wrong. I’m sure we’ll find someone who’s okay. But I’m really going to miss talking medieval history and diapers with Rosa.

our place in the sun

It's Personal

Well, I tried out the new line yesterday. It didn't go so well.

V and Adinah and I were walking down our street, in no particular hurry. I felt good.

About twenty-five feet behind me, V. had just decided she did not feel good, and was launching a mini-tantrum. Also behind us, a little old lady with shopping bags had just passed V. and Adinah, and was approaching me with that little smile people get when they want to make contact. She looked harmless enough.

When she got to me, she looked back at the girls, who were now assaulting a coin-operated rocking horse. The lady asked, in German, 'Where is their mother from?'

So I smiled a friendly but pointed smile back, like I was about to be frank with a good pal, and I said, "That's a very personal question."

The little old lady went off. Blustering, frowning, huffing.

"That's not a personal question," she cried. "That's a normal question!"

"Do we know each other?" I asked her.

"No, I saw the children and I thought they looked like they were from Africa!"

I started to ask her why she would ask me something like that, but she didn't let me finish. Tried to ask her to be more polite, but she didn't hear me. Blustering. And mad.

So I put up my hand and walked back to my kids. And Adinah, seeing the lady making a commotion, asked, "What's she saying, Papa?"

That's when I thought I might have been wrong. I'm so tired of people asking us about us, when it's just none of their business. It's probably harmless, she's probably a nice person, but really, I'm sure she would never ask any other total stranger the same question. And I wanted her to check herself. Maybe I thought, 'Now she'll think twice before asking another family a damn fool question.'

But maybe I was only thinking of myself, and that stranger, and not of my girls. Adinah could see something had happened, could see the lady was mad at me, and that may have frightened her, or made her feel bad. That's not right, either.

It's so hard to know what to do sometimes.

After the Weekend I Need a Holiday

A wedding. An art opening and book launch party. Auditioning a new babysitter. Three trips across Vienna and back home again by U-Bahn in one day. A pretty intense visit with a healer from Jeruselem. Drinks with my New Yorker friends Larry and Klaudia. A Skype call plus blowjob revelations from my old high school friend Ralph (last contact: maybe, oh, thirty years ago.) Scouting the river town of Kritzendorf for a summer Danube shack we can call our own.

Playing cards and laffing hysterically with Adinah. Asking V. for the fourth time to put on her pants, and then laughing despite ourselves as she defied us by trotting around doing a butt-naked turkey dance. Holding and kissing my wife when she came back from five days in Belgium.

Fighting with Adinah, fighting with V., and fighting with Anette too.

So I straggle into the office Monday at 8 a.m., happy to be in place with Standard Operating Procedures, a chain of command and immutable rules. My real life has none of these things.

There's no employee handbook for adult life.

Honey and Vinegar

Something has changed again in V. She's more self-possessed, more sure of herself. I'd like to think she's more confident, and that she likes herself more, but that's a bit presumptuous. Because all I see is something in her smile.

Her smile is more understanding now. She smiles like she is aware of more of the dynamics and complications in the room around her. She smiles now like someone who is starting to be able to see things on two different levels. Her smile is sometimes that of someone who is able to step outside of the action-and of herself-and reconsider the situation.

Of course, I could just be nuts. But....let's just say she still has other tools in her toolkit.

Yesterday, just after returning from the States and still jet-lagged, Anette took both our girls to the playground. They met up with all of their friends. While they were all congregating around the Korbschaukel (basket swing), some older boys started bothering them, telling them, 'Go away, we want to play here.' Adinah and her other friends just looked down and didn't say anything back to the boys. But V. walked right up to the interlopers, planted both feet and screamed at the top of her lungs, 'NO, You go away!!"

The boys went away.

Pretty cool, huh?

What I Learned on my Easter Holiday

1) Paying attention to a kid is a good way to get to know them, but it also distracts the Devil in him. Or her.

2) My wife really does have the patience of a saint.

3) Adinah is a world class Memory player, and is quite capable of humiliating players who are even three (!) years older than her. (Now I don't feel so stupid.)

4) If you want to coax a kid up (or down) a mountain, tell her a story. (Even if that means dressing up the Big Bad Wolf in a leather jacket.)

5) V. doesn’t start by assembling the outer edge of the puzzle; she puts it together by color cluster.

6) Even though she’s not a rock chick, and she complains about whiney white boys with guitars, Anette knows and derives pleasure from “Death Of A Clown” by the Kinks. For now, this is all the proof I need that I am a lucky fellow.

7) If V. is screaming a lot, calling me a stupid cow or otherwise ausgeflipping out, she needs food or sleep or both. Immediately.

8) Left to her own devices, Adinah would be perfectly content with a breakfast of a roll with butter, cake, buttered toast, and Melba toast.

9) I quite enjoy eating Osso Bucco or vegetables in a perfect red pepper sauce but sooner or later I’m gonna need to eat some french fries or I’ll get a little difficult.

10) We may be the loudest and sloppiest family in the hotel restaurant, but that doesn’t mean we’re bad people.

Hotel Panorama, SudTirol, “Italy”

We’re in a super comfortable lodge perched just above the northern Italian town of Tschars, just below two stupendous, snowy ridges of the Alps. It’s more Austrian then it is Italian, the whole of this region having been part of Austria until the end of the first World War. So that means that the hotel restaurant plays alpine schlager hits and the female hotel staff wears Dirndls. Yesterday, we took a cable car way-the-fuck-up these steep mountain walls, then hiked back down. For six hours. We have mountain goats for daughters.

It helps that we’re here with our favorite other Ethiopian-Austrian family. Adinah and V. probably never would have hiked like they did without their pals Teresa and Emily. But still: V. is just 3 ½ years old. And even though she cried and whined at times, she walked almost the whole way down by herself. For a kiddo who probably sees no point at all in clambering down a near-vertical slab of rock and scrub brush, that’s six hours of heroic effort.

Last night at the dinner table, in an effort to summarize her day, V. took a skewer and jabbed it into a giant chunk of her schnitzel, turned it upside down and started flying it around the room. “Look,” she laffed, “I’m a cable car.”

Variations on a Mall

The girls and I are just back from four days in the the snowiest mountain village I have ever seen, and I will post pictures from that soon. But right now I want to tell everyone in Vienna (and anyone else who can see ORF 2) that a film by my brilliant wife will be showing on Austrian TV tomorrow night, the 7th of February, at 23.05. It's called The Gruen Effect, and it's about Victor Gruen, the inventor of the shopping mall. It's a great, smart, groovy movie and if you watch it you might even learn something! Here's a synopsis, and be sure to tune in tomorrow night!

The Gruen Effect (52 min)

Victor Gruen couldn’t possibly have known how much he would change
the world. The world famous Viennese architect is chiefly remembered
as the inventor of the shopping mall. His “green” ideas spawned cities,
which ultimately became shrines to the Gods of consumption and the
free market. This documentary follows Gruen’s dramatic escape from
Nazi controlled Vienna in 1938, his subsequent adventures in booming
post-war America and finally his return to Vienna in the 1960s as a
committed socialist. The life, work and critical humour of this exceptional
architect serve as a starting point for an examination of the cities in
which we live today. A portrait of a man who, in keeping with the motto
“cars buy nothing”, has had a lasting influence on economics, politics
and, above all, consumers.

Director:Katharina Weingartner and Anette Baldauf
Production:co-production: Wailand Filmproduktion and ORF
Language:german | original version
Format:4:3 Letterbox, 16:9, PAL, HDTV
Length:52 min
Available:worldwide

thought for the day

Do kids in the US play with little plastic colored beads that can be fused together into elaborate shapes with a common household clothes iron? Do you know the German for "common household clothes iron?" It is "bügeleisen." Now you know how I'm spending my Saturday with my girls.

I wonder if Captain Beefheart knew this. Then he could have changed the words to one of his songs every time he played Dusseldorf: "I'm gonna bügeleisen ya, baby!"

Tuesday night dinner conversation

One record that I have only just recently discovered is John Martyn's Solid Air. Astonishing. But I'll save the review for another post. I was listening to it tonight as I fixed dinner for myself and the smaller girls in my life. I must have been feeling chatty (or fragile). Just before Martyn sang the lyric "I don't wanna know about evil, only wanna know about love," Adinah spoke up. V., as usual, mostly let Adinah do the talking.

Adinah: Is this still La Roux?

Me: No, this is a different record. This is a guy named John Martyn.

Me: Do you know what he's singing about?

Adinah: No.

Me: Well, he's singing about good and evil. And love. You know what love is, right?

Adinah: YES. I know what love is. What is e-?

Me: Evil? Well, that's when people do bad things. When they hurt each other.

Adinah: Do you know anyone who did e-vil?

Me: I don't know. I guess I've known people who've done bad things, yes.

Adinah: Did your papa do bad things?

Me: Yes. I mean, my papa made some mistakes. But that's not the same thing as evil. Everyone makes mistakes.

(pause)

Adinah: Good thing my papa is not drunk.

Me: (smiling and starting to tear up) Yes.

(longer pause)

V.: (looking at me with big eyes) Bist du traurig? (Are you sad?)

Me: No, V., I'm not sad, it's...it's just not easy talking about stuff like this. Talking about people you love.

(pause)

Me: But Adinah, even though I've told you that my father got drunk or that he was a drunk, that doesn't mean he was bad. He was a good man. He did the best he could. But he was sick. It was hard work to love him sometimes. Even though love isn't like work. You either love someone or you don't.

Adinah: Yeah, I love you because you're my papa.

Pray for Snow

Our first Christmas without Anette’s mother was cozy for me and the girls, but not so easy for Anette. On Xmas Eve, we stood at Oma’s grave, lit candles and sparklers, and sang “Kling Glockchen Kling” (Ring Bell Ring.) That was always one of her favorite songs.

Opa is doing well—shopping and cooking for himself, and swimming almost every day. He’s the Burgermeister of the Bregenz Sport Zentrum, and he has said he’s very proud to introduce us, his American-Austrian-Ethiopian-Nigerian kids and grandkids, to all of his seventy and eighty-year old friends at the pool. But after four days of hosting and baking for us, he was ready for some peace and quiet. And he said so. Which is good because I know Adinah and V. would have happily stayed out here until February, just to eat those Christmas cookies he made. Mmmmmh, Rum Kokos and Vanilla Kipfel….

As luck would have it, one of Anette’s friends owns a company which owns an ski apartment in the beautiful mountain town of Brand. When Anette mentioned we were hoping to find a hotel for a few days, the friend told us the ski apartment was free, and free. We scrambled, the friend wrangled us everything we needed—from comforters, plates and pasta to cook--and that’s why I’m posting today from a very cozy bunkbed in Brand. V. is napping next to me, Adinah is in a kiddy ski class (loving it), and way high above us, Anette is cheerily whistling R. Kelly’s “I Believe I can Fly” as she hurtles down the slopes.

So I'm wondering: what have I done to deserve this?

An Edition of One

In August, I wrote about beginning to put together a lifebook for Adinah. (In this post.) I used a large photo album, pictures, text, a few maps, some Ethiopian currency, an ID slip from a children's hospital and some Winnie the Pooh stickers, all to tell the story of who our daughter is and how she came to be with us. I tried to write it from her perspective, not mine (that is, I made no references to Black Sabbath or knarly skater babes.)

I finally finished it in October, and gave it to her. She really likes it.

Here's some photos. Now I've got to start making one for V.