California Dreaming

As part of Anika's "cultural immersion program ;)" I have been volunteered to speak to her class in English. The first time I did this, searching for something to talk about, I decided to explain Thanksgiving to Anika's fellow students. I explained how Thanksgiving comes from the pilgrams giving thanks to the indians for saving their silly europeans butts. I said that Thanksgiving is now a family holiday where everyone comes together and shares a traditional meal. To quiz the students I asked to whom the pilgrams were giving thanks. One student said: to God. O.k. that's an alright answer but let's be a little more specific, what about those helpful indians eh? After the talk I showed the kids how to make a turkey drawing by tracing the outline of your hand (thumb is the head, other fingers the tail feathers, draw the feet in from the base of the palm). Everyone thought that was way cool.

Two weeks later I did another presentation, this time about waves and surfing. I explained how waves on the beach come from ocean storms thousands of miles away; how waves finally break on the beach because the water becomes increasingly shallow forcing the wave, or rather swell, to grow taller until it topples over, or breaks. I showed them a couple scenes from some surf videos I have. I showed them footage of the big wave spot "Mavericks" close to where we used to live. I showed a picture of Anika on the beach at Mavericks. I briefly explained how you catch a wave; how seals pop their heads out of the water to look at you in the water; how pelicans fly right above the waves; how dolphins surf inside a wave. And of course I showed them the hand sign and explained the expression "Hang Loose," auf Deutsch "Sei Locker."

After organizing and presenting all that info about sunny california, the surf, the sand, I was really salivating for the state. I started to figure, "If we can move all the way over here, would we move right back to the same place in California? Where could we live in California? How about San Diego? It's got sun and surf, a foriegn country right next door and a decent biotech industry. What about that? I even looked up some rentals: 3 bedroom, $2500 per month and about 6 blocks from the beach (ya, the photos below are of that beach, JUST 6 BLOCKS AWAY). Awwh, it's just a projection born out of a cold winter in a big city, it's just California Dreaming.

SWEET! HUH?

First Snow!!

Today (October 15) was the first day of snow in Wien. O.K. it was only a little flurry mixed in with the rain, but it was echtes Schnee! That would have made the day, but as chance would have it, the heating in our apartment also failed. The coldest day since the end of summer (3 degrees Celcius, or about 38 degrees Freakin cold!) and our heating won't work. Great! No, it felt worse than that.... I thought we were in fact cursed by uncaring gods. I couldn't believe it. I imagined a very cold night. I was not pleased. I was pissed. I was at the end of my rope. I was... helpless. I hate that feeling.

By the end of the day someone arrived to fix our heater (turned out to be a routine problem which now I know how to fix myself), and all was well, again. Wheww. I had 3 beers that evening and went early to bed.

Possibilities

Put together Pascal rambling on about "possibilities" and other things, with an old night walk we took in the innen stadt and set it to "Jigsaw" by Radiohead.

Pascalian Logic

So Pascal likes to be carried around on my shoulders when we are walking through the city. We call it "Hop-Hop". But Pascal is getting older and heavier and really he should walk on his own two feet. Of course Pascal resists and continues to prefer the shoulder high ride. Every time we go about the city I have to fight with him about if he should or shouldn't get "hop-hop". It's exhausting.

Yesterday Pascal's whining about "hop-hop" led him to completely forget that we were standing on a sidewalk next to a busy street. Complaining about "hop-hop" Pascal jumped in front of me and into the street full of traffic. I was really angry with him about this and I told him that today, and forever more he would no longer get "hop-hop".

Tonight after a day of no "hop-hop" Pascal told me, "I was bad yesterday, whined for "hop-hop", jumped in the street, etc. so that today I wouldn't get "hop-hop" and then you would be happy." "I was bad yesterday, so I could be good today." Hmmmm. There's something missing here. Seems like some pretty tricky revisionist history going on here. But you know what, I'll take it. I just hope Pascal won't actively start looking for bad things to do today, so that tomorrow will look better. I hope instead, his explanation is just his way of putting a story around things. Nonetheless I know Pascal will ask for "hop-hop" tomorrow, and we'll be back to square one again.

Mozart Konzerte

This is from a while ago, but Sabine and I went to see/hear a Mozart Konzerte when Oma and Opa were visiting and could babysit Ani and Pascal. The concert is performed in a smallish hall about the size of a high school basketball gymnasium. The performers wear period costumes, so all the men look like George Washington (so it follows then, that the women all looked like Betsy Ross if she ever dressed up for a night on the town). The performance include highlights from Mozart's symphonic works, operas as well as music from other composers of the period, like Haydn. There is no amplification because the room is that small. Sabine and I were sitting in the thin balcony that surrounds the room. It was really quite a pleasure to sit in the opulent room and hear the orchestra churn away below. Very relaxing. (A Japanese man sitting in front of us got so carried away he fell asleep. In the meantime his wife made some pretty good pencil sketches of the singers in her notebook.)

The room is totally ornate, gold this and that all over, bare-breasted women along the walls, adonis like dudes painted on the ceilings, the requisite fat little cherubs playing in the clouds. At some point while gazing around the room I got the impression I was in some sort of playboy mansion from the 18th century, but I think the bare-breasted women and adonis like men were less about sex directly and more about the general idea of fecundity and the pleasure of our senses. Nonetheless judging from the endless ornamentation, and lack of any really serious theme I get the impression that the people of the 18th century (at least the nobility) spent a lot of time thinking about pleasure, and the various ways to be swept away by it. Obviously these people were skating on thin ice (think the french revolution, and the american revolution) but it seems like they were all having a really swell time until reality crashed the party. Although in this neck of the european woods, the Habsburg monarchy seemed to have survived the sweeping changes of history a bit more intact than did their other european cousins.

Pascal Talk Deutsch

Pascal is speaking more and more German. At the beginning he hated it when we talked to him in German, he would protest "No, talk...TALK!!!" meaning speak English not Deutsch. Now Pascal is mixing up the Talk mit der Deutsch. Here are some examples:

Telling him we have to stop watching a movie and get ready for bed: "Nein. Nicht fertig. Ich love das (the movie)"

Playing board games: "Du bist dran." "Ich bin's." "Wieder mal."

Basic pre-school phrases: "Ich bin Erste." "Bitte, bitte, bitte..."

I'm sure there's mehr, and I'll have more again soon to add to the list.

Waldsteine

Just finished a canvas (~4x3 foot). This one is new for me. It's very loosely based on reality. On one of our hikes through the Austrian woods I knew I wanted to paint a forest picture, all mysterious, trees, branches, roots, rocks all jumbled together. I thought about how in earlier times the people believed the woods were filled with strange secret things (now we've classified all the plants and animals, fenced in the wild beasts, and tagged the trees with signs and numbers).

For me a new idea was to add the shapes of letters, not to hide any secret message but because we recognize letters as special, and therefore we can see them in a jumble of lines and shades, kind of like how we see faces on certain rocks, or how some discover the image of Jesus on the bark of a tree. What actually do you "see" when you see a letter?

There are also several deliberate perceptual anomalies I was able to get away with. They were easier to work into the painting since reality (or photo's of reality) wasn't lecturing me about what I should and shouldn't paint.

The painting was a fun experiment and it gave me lots of ideas about how to paint other paintings. And that's what a satisfactory painting is supposed to do.... make you want to explore again and paint the next painting. I'm also beginning to conclude that I have a serious obsession about rocks. I really find those boring chunks of matter interesting.

I took some pictures during the painting process to see how things changed evolved. There weren't any radical changes, except that I ended up painting the rocks completely differently than I had at the beginning intended. The top photo was taken at the beginning of September, the middle from the middle, and the last photo is the completed painting (I hope) from 21 September.

Foreign Contaminations

O.K. a list of some minor annoyances I've had here. Most of them seem to have something to do with being a foreigner or being perceived as one. Or maybe I just don't like perfect strangers telling me what I should and should not do.

Other people on the subway telling me my kids can't put their feet on the seat, even briefly. You know what? MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS - it's a subway with a million people going in and out everyday, it's NOT YOUR LIVINGROOM.

This annoyance should be offset by the women several seats away from me who observed me searching for a tissue for Pascal's nose, and got up out of her seat and asked me if I would like to use one of her tissues. Very kind, very thoughtful.

Other people telling me what I can and cannot throw away, and then they proceed to chuck their paper waste in with the regular garbage. Really, this old lady told me I couldn't put a rubber tire (cleaning out our cellar) in the regular trash, all the while she's shoving her paper waste in the regular trash with the paper waste dumpster three steps behind her. Later her friend asked me where I was from, and since CA is so nice, why am I here? I told her that yes CA is nice, and so is Vienna that's why I'm here. Why are you asking, is there some reason I shouldn't be here? Welcome to you to.

The above incident perfectly illustrates how foreigners, or outsiders of any sort, are held accountable to a higher standard then the in crowd. Typical, it starts in school and never really goes away. I gotta remember to hold my criticism of "others" in check sometimes too.

POLICE. Need I say more. Today a cop standing on the sidewalk with a radar gun admonished me and Pascal for crossing the street when the crossing light was red. She yelled across the street once I had crossed "Ja, nice role model for your son!" There wasn't a car within 500 yards of us, and we crossed a small one way street, with perfect sight lines of oncoming traffic. Thanks for the info Polizei!! I'm sure you're like a role model perfect parent yourself. The police job seems to attract people who like to tell other people what to do, my least favorite flavor of people.

LOCALISM. Some california examples, like surfers in Santa Cruz. They think all the wave should rightly be theirs because they live in Santa Cruz. Well how long have you lived in Santa Cruz? I lived my entire life in the Bay Area, does that mean they're mine by seniority? Also, I didn't especially like the way the Bay Area was choking on traffic, displays of newfound wealth, and an over crowded housing market during the internet startup boom, but what are you going to do? Tell all the new "foreigners" to go back home?

NATIONALISM. It's bad, usually always a recipe for disaster. Thank god the Bush years are over.

Tractor Boy!

We went to a Baurenfest in the innenstadt. Not really that great but, being a farmfest there were a couple of cool tractors. Pascal made the best of making it into a jungle gym (see picture).

There was also a little exhibit of a beehive where you could see the bees crawling around in the hive behind a sheet of glass. Pascal was looking at the beehive with a magnifying glass, and he had the magnifying glass pressed right against his nose. Pretty funny. Then this lady comes up and asks if they can photograph Mr. P. She points to a guy with a big shoulder held video camera behind us. Alright, I say. Then she comes back with a big red microphone with the letters "ORF" (that's one of the TV stations in Austria). She sticks the mic out in front of Pascal's face, and asks him about the bees. He actually repeats some stuff we had been talking about earlier, that the bees cluster into a tight ball to survive the winter and the queen bee is in the center. Very cute. No idea if Pascal made the cut for the evening news.

Wohnung Furnished

From top to bottom: Living room, Kitchen with laptop, The junk table in the hall, Livingroom TV with bedroom through open door, Anika's reading corner, Desk at the window, Livingroom couch

Our Mistake!!

Oui!!! Today (Sunday) we planned to go to the zoo, but on the way out I couldn't lock the deadbolt to the front door. I also couldn't unlock the door and get back inside. Scheisse!!!! We're locked out! No cellphone too. Damn.

We walked up to the corner grocery store and the clerk loaned us his cellphone. We called the locksmith. The locksmith said I couldn't look while he opened the door. I kind of stood behind a corner on the stairwell with full intentions of sneaking a peak. But the locksmith was finished in like 30 seconds. It's that easy to open a lock, and we have a pretty solid front door lock. The locksmith said it would have been just a little harder if the deadbolt was also locked.

Then the bill - 200 euros!!! Like we were in any position to bargain. Live and learn.

Small California Paintings

I've had time to do a couple of small paintings. They remind me of California. I have a collection of rocks, shells, and one starfish we brought from CA (Anika found the starfish on a beach and I dried it out in the oven). I enjoyed painting the mussels, the starfish was a challenge, and the rocks are just pure fun. The little rocks are actually pretty interesting, there are all sorts of colors and patterns and lines in them if you look closely. How to translate the little rocks into paint is amusing, because there are so many ways to do it. You'd think rocks would be boring, but I like my little california rocks and shells.

P.S. I'm starting to collect Austrian rocks too, but so far they'll have to wait their turn.

Sound and Silence

Zell am See Vacation!!

Finally a vacation! We went for 3 nights to Zell am See, about 1 1/2 hour by train south from Salzburg. It was nice to get out of the hot city and into the green cool mountains. We had a nice room overlooking the lake with the mountains behind. The first day we hiked the Schmitten Hohe. We took the cable tram up the mountain and hiked downhill. Along the way Sabine spotted blueberry bushes and showed Ani and Pascal how to pick the berries. The two of them picked and ate like little bears. If you look closely in some of the photos you can see that Ani and Pascal's lips turned blue from all the berries they ate. Funny thing....about 45minutes down the blueberry trail Sabine finds a sign showing the difference between blueberries you can eat, and their close cousin blueberries that will give you a stomach ache. We were picking the right ones!!

The following days we took less adventurous hikes because our (my) calves were sooo sore from our 4 hour downhill hike the first day. We visited a huge waterfall an hours busride from Zell am See, and the day after that a narrow canyon, or Schlucht, or Shoot, with raging water below. All in all it was nice to leave the city for awhile and enjoy the cool mountain airs.

Pictures from top to bottom: 1. from Schmitten Hohe with the Glacier in the distance 2. Ani with a handfull of blueberries 3. Ani scratching a drawing into a rock 4. View from top of Schmitten Hohe looking toward the Tauern region 5. Pascal playing in the sparkly glacier sand 6. Pascal, Sabine and Ani half way through the first days hike 7. Ani in the boulders 8. Pascal in the boulders 9. Sabine swinging Pascal down the hill 10. A view of the Tauern mountains 11. Coffee and Water, MMMmmmm 12. Ani and Pascal the little blueberry pickin bear cubs 13. Ani with pre-blue lips 14. The top of Schmitten Hohe looking at the glacier 15. Looking down from Schmitten Hohe at Zell am See 16. The view from our balcony

Schonbrunn and Parkour

Video of our carriage ride through Schonbrunn Schloss Park. It was very relaxing, watching the trees go by, listening to the horses hooves pressing the gravel, and church bells ringing in the background. Anika felt good. We waved the royal wave to the passersby.

Pascal suddenly showed us some Parkour moves during a nighttime walk through the innen stadt, then later on a sculpture/planter by the Glorietta at the top of Schonbrunn. Looks promising. Perfecto!!

SMORG the mash-up Video

Put together a video of different clips of the kids about town. Set it to music. Strange things happened. Why are hip-hop lyrics so dirty?

My Children and the Imp of the Perverse

Just read an article at NYtimes (www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/health/07mind.html?ref=science) about what Edgar Allen Poe called the "Imp of the Perverse." It is that strange contradictory feeling you get when standing at the edge of a cliff that you might just walk over the edge - you have to keep telling yourself not to do it (or maybe I'm just unnaturally afraid of heights).

The article quotes Daniel Wegner, a psychologist at Harvard: “There are all kinds of pitfalls in social life, everywhere we look; not just errors but worst possible errors come to mind, and they come to mind easily, and having the worst thing come to mind, in some circumstances, might increase the likelihood that it will happen.” And the author continues, "At a fundamental level, functioning socially means mastering one’s impulses. The adult brain expends at least as much energy on inhibition as on action, some studies suggest."

I've been with the kids quite a lot lately and I'm kind of tired of saying, "don't do that, stop it, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" Well maybe for children the parent acts as the master of the children's impulses. Sounds reasonable. The fact that I must spend at least 1/2 the day saying NO to my kids, fits the statement that the ADULT brain expends as much energy on inhibition as it does on action. So I feel a little less guilty now, I'm just helping my children not die before their own brains take over the task themselves. Now, when exactly do their brains take over, and can I stop with the NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!

Naturhistorishe Museum

Spent the morning at the natural history museum. Lots of items collected and displayed in a 19th century fashion. The "pile of skeletons" in the video was unearthed like you see it, and presumably a prehistoric family died together from food poisoning. Average people in europe collect mushrooms in the woods, so I guess this prehistoric family helped us know which mushrooms to avoid. Thanks!

BTW the music is from Carla Bruni, who is now the first lady of France. I don't know why exactly I have her music on my computer, and I don't have a clue about the lyrics, the music just sounded right.

Little Bit Zipline Fun

We spent the afternoon after a rainy morning testing the limits of a zipline in the park down the street. We still have more work to do.

It could have just been a dream, but I swear I caught Pascal on film looking awful happy climbing up on a police motorcycle.

Panorama from Duerstein Castle

Panorama from the Duerstein Schloss or "Crumbly Castle" looking down over the Donau. The rocks in the foreground look like what you see in many medieval paintings. I always thought the rocks in these paintings were distortions of real rock formations. Guess not.