The mind is forever building
its model airplane.

-Erin Belieu

I heard a nice Thanksgiving story: My Italian editor and his girlfriend were in Vienna and we had coffee. He said they'd just gotten a dog but that it was taking time to get used to because what they'd done was go to the Rome animal shelter and ask for the dog that had lived there longest. They didn't care about the make or model, age or color. They just wanted to adopt whatever poor creature had been there longer than any other, take it home and give it at least some love in its lifetime. So they got this mutt who's old and very tired. They named him Burrito. I asked is there anything nice or special about Burrito? They said no, not yet, but we're growing to like him for that reason alone.

I had been on the phone for a good two hours. Someone was trying to cheat me in business and apparently felt no compunction lying about everything to save his skin and wallet. What was most frustrating was the whole mess was his doing, yet now he said it was mine. I was livid and as I talked to lawyers and insurance agents and and and the future of the situation looked lousy.

Finally I'd had enough of the telephone, thinking about the situation, being angry but powerless, etc. So I got up and went out for a walk. About ten minutes from my place I came on an interesting sight: In front of a supermarket, a man delivering crates of oranges from a produce truck had apparently lost control of his cart. Hundreds of oranges had fallen off and spilled all over the sidewalk. That in itself was an eye opener. But even better was the fact that literally every person on that side of the sidewalk was bent over, retrieving the fruit for him. Men, women, children, old couples... the works. And most of them didn't just pick up one orange, put it back in the box and walk away. They stayed stooped over until they had filled their arms, waddled awkwardly over to his cart and dumped them, then went back to pick up more. Best of all, most of the people were either smiling or laughing while they did it.

Watching this, it didn't make me feel better but it really made me feel different.

Years ago I was in Kennedy airport in New York waiting to catch a flight back to St. Louis where we were living at the time. I was reading John Gardner's wonderful novel FREDDY'S BOOK. I was crazy for Gardner's work at the time and this novel had me in raptures. It was so good that I was even reading it while standing in line to check in, something I almost never do. Like people who can sleep anywhere (on planes, in cars, sitting up...), there are people who can read anywhere but I am not one of them. I'm a comfort reader. I want to be totally comfortable when I (sit down to) read and that usually means a quiet place, a good chair, etcetera. But this book had me hypnotized so I read it everywhere. To pass the time, my wife asked what I was reading because whatever it was obviously had me. I showed her the distinctive Brad Holland cover and told her a little bit about the plot. I finished my croon by saying in the voice of an excited ten year old "It's just a WONDERFUL book!" And as I said it, I noticed who was standing behind my wife in line: John Gardner. I knew he lived in the St. Louis area and he was easily recognizable from his book jacket photos because he had an albino's white very long hair and smoked a Sherlock Holmes pipe.And by God, there he was five feet away listening to me rave on about his book. I looked at him, recognized who he was and said again "This is just a WONDERFUL book!" Gardner did an "aw shucks- thanks- a lot" sort of thing and turned away but I think he was pleased because it's not often writers are recognized in public. I have always wanted to re-read that novel but never have because I'm afraid I won't like it as much and then the memory of that lovely synchronicity in New York airport will be somehow diminished.

"Imagine that you are given the choice of two possibilities: to spend a night of love with a world famous beauty, let's say Brigitte Bardot or Greta Garbo, but on condition that nobody must know about it. Or to stroll down the main avenue of the city with your arm wrapped intimately around her shoulders, but on condition that you must never sleep with her. I'd love to know exactly what percentage ofpeople would choose the one or the other of these possibilities." -Milan Kundera

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." -Tom Waits

On top of my computer is an odd group of objects that I've found over the years outside while walking around and arranged up there as a kind of shrine to nothing. There is a masked action figure in a blue jump suit, both arms raised in victory. A naked sitting baby that I think had a head and face once but they appear to have been pulled off, leaving only what looks like a round pink pencil eraser now in its place. In the baby's lap I placed a green clay heart that's about an inch and a half high and obviously hand made. Finally there's a "Matchbox" AUDI TT convertible in sexy but badly scratched metallic blue. The woman who comes to clean the apartment once a week, Frau Annie, invariably takes these things away and sort of hides them in my room in various places. Sometimes I can't find one or more of them for days. It has become a kind of game of hide the easter egg between us-- Frau Annie hides my found objects and I search for them. This has been going on for I don't know how long. Today I finally asked her why she won't just leave them alone up there. She looked at me, arms crossed tightly over her chest, eyes all squint and accusation. Then she said "They're very strange all together like that. Scary looking. Like voodoo." I felt like saying "If you think that's bad, you should read my books."

Near my apartment is a theater that specializes in putting on children's plays. It's nice to pass there in the early evening because a matinee is often just over and the kids spill out of the building joyous and frenzied and making LOTS of noise. But last night was different. It had been dark since four. As I walked towards the theater I saw literally hundreds of white balloons milling around in front of the theater. It was a surreal, startling image. Were my eyes playing tricks? But as I walked closer no, they were balloons all right. For some reason the theater employees had passed out white balloons to the entire audience as they were leaving. Out on the street as the night began, from afar it looked mysterious and funny and romantic all in one. Hundreds of white balloons glowing and bobbing in the night, moving around, more and more of them spilling out of the theater, kids running around and shouting, their balloons, cries and laughter everywhere.

The discussion on the radio this morning was about the pope and a recent new biography. the author was talking about how the Pope spent his youth considering important questions and I thought to myself: that's where I'm going wrong. I'm always thinking of too simple questions. But it also made me realize that I'm attracted to people who ask good questions. and I concluded that it's what scientists and good artists (writers) have in common: they ask good questions that takes their lifetime to answer, which they do in chunks (i.e. a scientific paper or a book) and yet any good question never gets answered... it just leads you to interesting discoveries.

"German word for the day: What is a "friedhofjodler"? Or literally translated, "cemetery yodeller?"

In the old days, tuberculosis was incurable. Whoever who got it eventually died from the disease. The cough of a tubercular is apparently very different sounding from that of a normal cough. In Vienna when people familiar with the sound of that specific cough heard it, they'd say "There goes a friedhofjodler."

"Ninety percent of being in love is making each other's lives funnier and easier, all the way to the deathbed." -Lois Smith Brady

I dropped off a jacket at the dry cleaner and paid my 7 euros. It'll be ready Monday. As I was walking down the street it suddenly hit me-- what the hell IS dry cleaning? You drop off your dirty, unwashable-in-water clothes and pick them up a few days later ironed and in a plastic bag, supposedly cleaned. But how do I know they've been anything but ironed and bagged for seven Euros? Some smartass will answer well, the spots are gone. There's your proof. And maybe they are, but how do I know the person behind the counter didn't examine the jacket, find the spot, spray some wonder spot remover stuff on it and poof-- spot gone. Then they ironed it, bagged it and five minutes later it was back up on the rack ready for Mr. Gullible Owner to pick it up? On Monday. Maybe dry cleaning's an age old brilliant scam. Maybe all you have to do to be a dry cleaner is to invest in lots of plastic bags and one of those impressive automated racks that they hang the clothes on when they're "clean." Maybe--

It dawned on me this morning that one of the many reasons why an artist creates is because his work is his real last will and testament. These stories, pictures, music... are the sum total of what I've accumulated in my life. Now that I'm gone, you inherit it. Do whatever you want with it-- Save it, share it, give it away. This is how I saw the world. These are the conclusions I came to. This is the only concrete manifestation of what I achieved. Now it's yours. Do with it however you see fit.

People love to look at helicopters and I don't know why. It is one of life's small mysteries. When most people hear a helicopter flying overhead, they stop whatever they're doing and stare up, trying to locate it. This doesn't happen with airplanes. A plane goes by overhead and you keep walking without so much as an eye flick towards the sound. For years the most popular (dumb) show on Austrian television has been a series about a helicopter emergency rescue team. It is so far fetched and ridiculous that it makes the first ten minutes of any James Bond film look like mild stuff.

I was walking across the Heldenplatz the other day. For some reason a helicopter was there and about to take off. Its rotor was spinning, making that loud whack-whack sound we all know from films. It was a beautiful day and there were a couple of hundred people in the square. It seemed like every last one of them was frozen in place watching and waiting for this miraculous machine to lift off. I glanced at it but kept moving because it was unbelievably loud and I was in a hurry to get to an appointment. What was interesting though was any person's eye I happened to catch as I went looked at me like I was nuts not to be standing there with them, waiting for take off. Every single one that I made eye contact with looked at me like I was either crazy or up to no good because I was ignoring the helicopter.