Wherever you go, there always seems to be someone wearing an ugly hat.
_____________________

A very fat woman sitting on a bench with two overstuffed bags in front of her
is wearing a sweatshirt that says in bright orange letters across the front
"I'm a wild surfer!"

_____________________

Someone recently asked me to list seven things that made me smile.
When I thought about it for a while I realized that the list was much longer
than I would have expected.

"As Ginger Rogers said of her spectacular rapport with Fred Astaire, sure, he's a great dancer and a perfectionist, but I have to do it all backwards so we don't fall over."

David Thomson

"If you know where you're going, it's not worth doing."

Frank Gehry

I had a friend in Vienna who lived in a very old apartment building. In the courtyard of the building was the smallest, oldest porno movie theater in the city. It had something like twenty seats. My friend told me that from what she could see through her window, the same twenty people kept returning to watch the films. And the sweetest funniest part of it was, judging by the posters outside the theater, the movies they showed were only old porno-- all 1960's and 70's films. None of that new hot stuff for them!
Traditionalists...

Something to Think About When You're Bored:

"In December 1959, after the Malpasset Dam burst in southern France and killed many people, Charles de Gaulle drafted a law that would allow a widow to marry her dead fiancee. It is now possible in France to apply for post-mortem
matrimony.

Since that time, hundreds of would-be widows and widowers have applied for
permission to follow the original widow's example. The application procedure begins by sending a formal request to the president. The president then forwards the request to his justice minister, who sends it to the public prosecutor in whose jurisdiction the applicant lives. The prosecutor then has to
determine whether the couple intended to marry before the death, and
whether the parents of the deceased approve of the marriage now. Once he is
satisfied that they do, he sends his recommendation back up the line.
It is ultimately up to the president to decide whether or not to issue a decree
legally allowing the wedding to take place ."

Stopped at a station for a long time, the doors to our subway car suddenly slide open again and a stern voice over the intercom says we have to get out. There's been a short circuit on this track, etcetera. Please cross the platform and take the next train to our destination. People look at each other because the ones on the other side of the platform go in the opposite direction. But we do as we're told and the whole train empties.

Sure enough a couple of minutes later, a train rolls into the station on the other side of the platform going in the wrong (our) direction. By then there are so many people waiting that the platform is full. And so is this newly arrived train. Packed. The doors slide open but no one gets off while hundreds want to get on. It looks like those infamous Tokyo commuter trains where they hire professionals to push people into already packed cars. I have never been so crushed in a subway, much less here in calm old Vienna. We literally cannot move once we're on and the doors slide closed.

When the train begins to move, I am shoved up against a cute tall punk girl with spiky black hair and a revealing sleeveless t-shirt that says in huge letters SUCK MY DICK. We are so jammed in there that my eyes have nowhere to go but her, her shirt, and those 3 very large words. I start to grin and then smile moronically because my eyes are trapped and desperate. They go here, they go there, but then inevitably back to guess who and guess what?

"You have the soul of a desert man," he said. "Maybe that is the one real division between men: wood men and desert men. The Orient's dry intoxication comes from the desert, where hot wind and hot sand make men drunk, where the world is simple and without problems. The woods are full of questions. Only the desert does not ask, does not give, and does not promise anything. But the fire of the soul comes from the wood. The desert man-- I can see him-- has but one face, and knows but one truth, and that truth fulfills him. The woodman has many faces. The fanatic comes from the desert, the creator from the woods. Maybe that is the main difference between East and West."
 
from ALI & NINO by Kurban Said

NEW COMPARISONS

by Tadeusz Rozewicz

To what will you compare
day
is it like night
to what will you compare
an apple
is it like a kingdom
to what will you compare
flesh
at night
the silence
between lips
to what will you compare an eye
a hand in darkness
is the right like the left
teeth tongue mouth
a kiss
to what will you compare
a hip
hair
fingers
breath
silence
poetry
in daylight
at night

(thanks to JG for this one)

Last night the "Live Ball" was held in Vienna. That's the annual Gay Ball, the proceeds of which go to AIDS research. It is infamous in these parts for the genuinely outre costumes, glamorous guests (Elton John, Donatella Versace, Heidi Klum), naughty revellers, and all around good fun for both exhibitionists and poseurs.

Today the Vienna Marathon is being held.

There was a strange connection between the two events for me early this morning when I was riding my bike around the Ringstrasse. The only people on the streets at that hour were people going home from the ball and joggers. Five guys in matching gold lame hotpants, no shirts, upper bodies painted silver, and each of them wearing large furry green wings on their backs. Then came two women in elegant ball gowns, faces painted white, both barefoot and carrying their teeny shoes in their hands. Then a bunch of early joggers with big numbers on their backs came around a corner. They all wore that earnest, slightly pained expression joggers seem to wear. For a few moments all of us were stopped at the same traffic light waiting for it to turn green. It felt like I was in the middle of a human aquarium.

In the window of the art gallery is only one thing-- a sensational black and white photograph of a beautiful woman eating a very large jelly donut. There's white powdered sugar all over her face. She's staring at the camera and laughing, obviously indifferent to how ridiculous (and wonderful) she looks. But the best part of the picture is this: a few feet behind her, out of her line of vision, a mongrel dog is sitting nearby staring up at her with absolute hatred and envy. It is hilarious. I have rarely seen a picture of an animal with such a human expression on its face. This one is pure jealousy.

It's such a great picture that I have to enter the gallery and look at this photographer's other work. And that is when it becomes interesting because although the place is full of the person's other work, all of it is mediocre crap. Bad calendar art, the many pictures are all a hundred miles away from the excellence of that one photograph in the window.

Was that photograph an accident? Or was it simply the peak of this artist's career; the only great photo they ever had, or would, take. That was it forever--one shot, one moment of true greatness.

PS For those who have asked, this blog is now being translated into Polish on a weekly basis by the incomparable Jacek Wietecki and can be found at:

www.jonathancarroll.mikser.net

This is simply flat-out wonderful:

http://stonesoup.com/cd2/cd1.html

Periodically there is a bad season for one thing or another. For example, sometimes it is a bad shoe season. When that comes around, it seems like every time you look at someone's feet and they have on new shoes, they're either wearing jokes or nightmares, or at the very least "Were you on drugs when you bought those shoes?" Most recently here in Vienna there have been several bad haircut seasons. Many young guys have their heads shaved to the bone, Gulag-style. But they don't understand that not all bare heads are attractive and many should definitely not be so nakedly displayed. The other hot style is to wax the hair to a stalactite(mite?) point in the middle of the head, shinily trying to emulate the soccer player David Beckham. Only Beckham stopped doing that to his hair several years ago after the last World Cup. Again, too many of the guys end up looking both uncool and like porcupines. The girls are not immune either. The style now is to dye the hair the color of cheap candy-- cyanic blue, pink, fluorescent green, or road cone orange. I'm sure most of them have done it either because they think it is cute or they're being daring. But as a man I have trouble seeing them as women. I see human lollipops instead, or stoplights and for their sake I'm hoping the light changes soon.

"At our moon viewing party
there is no one with a beautiful face."

Basho

Friday morning on the subway. Everyone is minding their own business. The car is quiet except for the normal train noises. People are staring sleepily at the floor, or plugged into their iPods and Walkmen, reading the paper-- the usual. The train stops at a station and a thin gray haired man gets on with a lustrous red and white accordion strapped to his chest. Not in a case-- out on his chest like he's about to play. I'm not doing anything so I notice him right away. His face is blank. He looks sort of dignified. The doors slide shut and before I can mumble "oh no," the guy starts to play. It is immediately obvious he is the worst accordionist in the world. It is as simple and final as that. He's really, truly, unbelievably bad. Not only can he not play, he can't even squeeze the box so as to get accordion-like *sounds* out of it. Instead it sounds like various animals being strangled. Heads come up. The faces on those heads all have the same dismayed or horrified look on. For the next two or three or four minutes until the next station, all of us are trapped-- a captive audience for the accordion player from hell.

The other day the US publisher of GLASS SOUP sent me a copy of the finished jacket that they will use on their edition of the book. It is inevitably a strange and strong moment to see a final cover for the first time. There's always some kind of emotional oxymoron at work-- a dance of opposites that both attracts and repels you. On the one hand, it's very exciting to see for first time what the face of the book will look like when it appears in stores in a few months. On the other hand there's also something forlorn in that finality. No more room to dream or wonder about what the cover will look like. Even when it's very good, you know That's It. Finished. Sort of like seeing for the first time the last house you will ever live in.

"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship. Imagination without skill is modern art."

Tom Stoppard

''My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm,'' he says. ''To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good.'' He adds, ''Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?''

film director Emir Kusturica

A small thing that makes me sad: years ago I bought a tattered postcard at the Vienna flea market for the equivalent of five cents. From the first moment I saw it in an old shoebox, it was so captivating that it held me in its thrall a long time. Eventually during a move to a new apartment the postcard somehow got lost and I never found it again. A beautiful young woman wearing a 1920's hairdo and clothes is sitting flanked on either side by two handsome men in wrinkled French Foreign Legion uniforms. Real BEAU GESTE or THE ENGLISH PATIENT stuff. The sepia photograph must have been taken in the 20's or 30's in a barren desert camp somewhere, judging from the background. I always wondered what the backstory of the picture could be. Was one of the men her husband or brother that she had journeyed from Paris or London to visit? Or were both men Legionnaries who had met and fallen in love with her out there in the middle of that desolate nowhere? Naturally the eventual resolution of their triangle had to be tragic or triumphant or... Perhaps she was a nurse who volunteered to work in that end of the world spot-- One of those impossibly brave and adventurous women like Beryl Markham, Lee Miller, Tina Modotti or Isak Dinesen. I loved that photograph. Often I played with the idea of writing a book around it.

"To be in doubt is not comfortable, as anyone can attest who has ever awaited lab results, fretted over a test score or stood vigil over a silent telephone, awaiting a call. It's a psychological itch, and you want to scratch your way to certainty. But it is often the first step on a path to greater spiritual or moral wisdom, a deeper compassion, a breaking free from constricting dogma."

Charles Isherwood

Sometimes when I'm in the mood for a little dab of masochism, like a mouthful of fresh horseradish, I go to Amazon.com and read the reader reviews of my books. What never fails to amaze me is how over-the-top, spluttering angry and mean some of the negative reviews are. What's that great word, irate?

If I start a book I don't like, I put it down after fifty pages and read something else. That seems logical, doesn't it? If I watch a video that bores or annoys me, I turn it off after half and hour and do something else.

But these enraged readers not only finish them, but then make the large effort to go to Amazon and write reviews in which treat the books as if they either killed their mothers or stole all of their life savings.

What's that all about? I don't think I have ever felt that enraged about any book I've read. That includes the worst book I ever read which was THE GOLDEN WARRIOR by Hope Muntz back in 10th grade which we had to read for English class.

"The ultimate maxim of human life would then be to live as if a universe will be created in your image."

Robert Nozick

A beautiful, almost-summer Sunday in Vienna. I take the dog for a long walk through town. Passing many packed outdoor cafes along the way, I eventually realize an interesting difference: Generally speaking, when a table is full of only women, they are completely absorbed in their conversations with each other. Very little distracts them. It's clear they are fully engaged.

On the other hand, when I pass a table full of men, it's obvious they are only sort of listening to each other, mostly looking everywhere around to see if anything is more interesting than what's going on right here. When they see a good looking woman pass, they give up all pretense of listening to their buddies and just stare.

When a woman at a woman's table sees a good looking man, she gives him a medium-long appreciative glance, but then returns her attention fully to her companions.