Monday, December 28 in Pictures

Took public transport into the center of town today to run some errands, then visit friends.

Interesting day, weather-wise: the skies were dark but the sun was poking through a hole in the clouds, lighting the taller buildings. A nice contrast against the dark skies. Did I get pics? No.

Into the 1st District, where I observed this clear sign of the coming End Times:

click to enlarge, and you'll notice the prices of these cell phones, one of which runs 10,000 Euro (about $14,300). What's worse: people who would make phones this expensive, rich pricks who would buy them, or people who would photograph them and then comment on the absurdity of it?

We passed the famous Spanish Riding School where the Lipizzan horses are trained. There's an open courtyard and each horse has an open window through which he can look out onto the courtyard, and the gawking Jethros who take photos like this. These two seemed to like each other quite a bit.

 

I found this building architecturally interesting.

Passed the famous Trzesniewski sandwich shop and stopped in for a bite. They serve tiny little sandwiches covered with delicious homemade spreads; they offer about 21 varieties. You can buy the spreads separately if you want. Every time I've been there, the place has been packed. The sandwiches are about 3 inches square and cost about $1.40 each, but they're meant for a treat, not a full meal. Visit their website and click around, check out what they have!

Statues of women with bare breastesess. Strictly verboten in Oklahoma!

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Went to visit our friends. E is a colleague and friend of B's; her husband is the retired head of the Austrian air force, a pilot with 40 years experience, including as a test pilot...in fact, he told me he's been elected as the vice-president of a test-pilot society. Unfortunately, due to a severe illness, he's now confined to a wheelchair.

At my urging, he talked a lot about flying, both rotorcraft and fixed-wing aircraft. He showed me a model of a German WWI plane that he built, and explained to me differences in tactics used in the aircraft of different generations.

I've met the old general once before and the conversation always gets around to flying (again, at my urging) because, as I told him, "Every boy wants to fly, but very few boys get to fly." He said, without a hint of self-pity: "Well, I had forty good years in the cockpit. My situation now is not so good (he motioned to his useless legs) but still...forty good years in the cockpit."

His wife, E, ever the gracious hostess, served us delicious fruit salad, cookies, and tea. A very nice visit.

Now home, and supper, and a night of writing and reading and TV.

XXX Versus YYY

Yesterday had a theme to it, though not evident until the end of the day, when B pointed it out to me...

We drove into the center of town to finish our tour of the KAMPF IN DER STADT exhibit at the Wien Museum. The exhibit explains the conditions which led up to the Austrian civil war in 1934.

If you click on the link and read about the civil war, you might notice parallels between conditions in Austria in the 20s and 30s, and conditions in the US today. It was city versus country, conservative versus socialist, rich versus working people, religious versus secular. Tough economic circumstances led to great concern over the future, which led to the rise of "leaders" who had "good ideas" about how best to proceed, which led to attempts to suppress and repress various groups of people, which led to marching in the streets, occasional riots, and then a brief civil war.

I'm not the kind of guy who actually starts sentences with the phrase "There are two kinds of people:" but it does seem that there are people who 1) want things to stay the same, or go backwards, even if it means continued discomfort and uptightness, and 2) people who want change and progress, even if it means discomfort and a "leaving behind" of cherished but now outdated modes of thinking, during the transformation.

In America, we've got the Sarah Palin types, and we've got the Ralph Nader types. And there's a broad range of in-between types.

In America, the Right tend to be the people with the guns who don't mind getting in the opposition's faces, while the Left tends to be basically uninterested in and incapable of actual tough fighting. It's somewhat the opposite in Europe, where the Left can be pretty noisy and demonstrative and willing to out-shout the loudmouths on the Right and actually tell them, to their faces, "You are loud, uneducated bullies with stupid, backward ideas." (They don't always win but they're willing to fight, unlike the American Left. Which is why the American Left gets no respect from the Right, and often gets their asses steamrolled by the Right.)

For me, though, I'm like my buddy George the Greek. We think political storms are like actual storms. They come up, you try to ride them out as best you can, and you can forget about trying to control them. This shit has been going on since the beginning of history. It ain't changing any time soon.

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Went to the movies after the museum. Woody Allen's WHATEVER WORKS, with Larry David playing a more misanthropic, embittered, and obnoxious Woody Allen figure. The movie paralleled the museum exhibit in that it showcased differences between big-city, well-educated, politically / socially liberal, atheistic people and relatively uneducated, religious, conservative, small-town Southerners.

I'm not taking sides one way or the other, but in recent political campaigns the ideal of small-town America was constantly upheld as some sort of mythical holy state of being, when in fact the majority of Americans in the 21st Century live in large cities, with more and more people moving to the cities every year. Why politicians continue to pretend to worry about what small-town people think and believe is quite beyond my comprehension.

The film was entertaining in its own right, aside from any deeper social or political concepts the viewer might want to plug into the story. It's out on DVD in the States; you can get it from Netflix and other rental outlets.

The Importance of December 26

This will be a two-parter...

First: B's parents drove over about noon, then we drove across the Danube and through Vienna's 21st District, parts of which were formerly villages---one of those being Stammersdorf, which we walked through / outside of, along paths and vineyards.

The weather: PERFECT. Sunny skies, no wind, and almost warm, like an early Spring day. I don't know why the gods arranged it, and though there's been a bit of sadness (!) on the part of those who wanted a white Christmas, I was happy for the sunshine.

The village church

On the way to the fields, you pass many old wine cellars like this one, dug into the side of the hill

Posted on the side of a wine cellar:

"Without a horse in front of this cellar with lance and sword."

A cyclist enjoying the weather

Some of the vineyards of Stammersdorf

We walked a couple of miles in the fields, then back in the village stopped in at one of the many Heurige (wine tavern) for lunch and a bottle of the vintner's white wine.

Then back to B's place for the continuation of a family tradition: every year, B's dad takes a photo of B blowing out one of the candles on the Christmas tree. He's been doing this since she was a little girl.

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While walking along the tranquil vineyards and fields, it came to me that this is the season of important birthdays----B's sister on the 24th, Jesus H. Christ on the 25th, and today, the 26th, one of the most important human beings ever born.

I refer, of course, to none other than Henry Miller.

The walk with B and her parents had been lovely, and a good beginning to my celebration of Henry's birthday. But after the sun went down, I decided to go into the center of town alone and commune with the spirit of Henry Valentine Miller in one of the funkiest haunts in Vienna, Cafe Alt Wien (Cafe Old Vienna.)

Cafe Alt Wien

The place was crowded, even at 6:30. No free tables, so I sat at the bar, ordered a small beer, and whipped my camera and notebook out. Started writing.

My notebook, my pen, my beer at the bar of Cafe Alt Wien. How very cliche.

 

 

 

Henry Miller could fill a blank page with a series of very interesting and entertaining black marks, which, when decoded and processed, make you really think about things. He filled many thousands of such blank pages. One might say he left his piss on a lot of trees before vanishing into the void in 1980, nearly 90 years after arriving on this strange planet.

I looked around at the people in Cafe Alt Wien with me. There were maybe 50 of us. All ages. All of us on our way to having our atoms unglued one way or another, one day or another, all of us on our way to becoming ghosts, just like Henry became a ghost, and just like those who preceded him became ghosts, and just like those who follow us will become ghosts.

However: before Henry became a ghost, he played the role of a human being and he played it really fucking well. It's our job, likewise, us sons and daughters of Henry, to do our best to do the same...to be really human.