Oh, how sad. What did you say?
We said, I guess, "Happy birthday." He (approaching 50 and an old country boy) would be embarrassed by cake and candles and people trying to sing at work.
He and his wife and their kids and the grandfolks will probably have a nice
celebration and tonight is Wednesday so that is church night for them;
No balloons.
Today is also the birthday of Sid Caeser (82). Anybody remember him?
Damn, he and Imogene were funny! -rjb-
(I gotta type this out first)
So I had a precariously short night, having preferred, yesterday, to work deep into the night rather than to have to run around like a headless chicken, panicking about things undone and asked after, all day today. Better tired and relaxed than well-slept but all stressed, was the line I'd come up with (though obviously you can only do that so many times). Early morning appointment, and back to work.
Feeling upbeat about it, though - in fact, in the face of what I was afraid would finally collapse me into the hapless and irrevocably small, I've actually been eerily cheerful and lighthearted, lately. For days now, just suddenly being able to let it all go and blow over me as things come up and disappear again (we're preparing an imminent, big conference) - grinning, even, and joking. Feeling like - as if the Lord relieved me, for some unknown momentary reason. Well, I dont feel like that all the time of course - but surprisingly steadily. It's all the others who've gone either deflated or impatient now, in fact. A highly unexpected and counterinstinctual (and probably temporary) turn of events, that.
But, after last night at the office, I did think I deserved an early evening off today, and so left straight at six, or close anyway. The sun shone too, a last warm day in Utrecht. Me on the terrace, reading the paper, listening to people chat around me, watching happy girls and stout young men and the Ledig Erf's usual charming bunch of driftwood people. But something was missing & I headed on home to take care of my new plants (something up with them again).
The moment I jumped on my bike tho, someone strikes up a song, a keyboard and guitar somewhere on the terrace opposite, a little jazzy something. And as I cycle home, I suddenly, very vividly, have a song in my head, an ebullient piece of fifties r&b - b-oo-gie! w-oo-gie! Piano, I can hear the voice, I haven't got a clue where it's from or which CD it could be on but here I am on my bike, passing by the hardcore rockers cafe going, b-oo-gie! w-oo-gie! Why on earth the flashback?
Perhaps because of this. On the steps of the city hall by the bridge (one of the few certifiably postcard-perfect places in Utrecht, with a view down at the matchbox houses along the canal and the Dom towering over them, the nigtsky blueing up overhead as down on the other side it's still psychedelic streaks of pink and pale blue), there's music. My favourite street musicians.
These are no ordinary buskers - they're brilliant! Or the guy is, a Spaniard I'm guessing, a fierce type who, yet, is always grinning at playing music with his friend. He has this guitar, special guitar, and he just tockles it furiously in this style pleasantly familiar from some old French Nouvelle Vague movie, evocative, agile, charming. He's got mad skills. His friend is a Polish guy with dreads, friend of a guy that once came round to our place after A.'d met him when we were clubbing (smoked a joint, had a bite, talked drugs), and he accompanies him strumming on a regular guitar, ably enough I'm guessing. Sometimes there's a third guy, like the other time when I also sat down on the steps to listen for a while.
But this time, there's SIX. There's another, punky guy in a tight white shirt, playing some strident guitar and behind them, a guy with an actual double bass on top o' the steps! Then there's a girl segueing in and out with a dwarsfluit (the flute you hold horizontally, play from the side), and another guy's gotten one o' them shakers thrust in his hands, gamely shaking it along. And man, do they make music. The Hungarian Roma Street News seller and his white friend (always together) are there too and gesture me welcome and 'hey, isn't this amazing!'; the Dutch kid, happily stoned, going on for a mo' about how he just digs this music - he's 33, but he loves this music you know, like it's jazz or something? He ain't got no need to go anywhere (as he again tells two more friends stopping by a moment later), he's just staying put here and listening to the music!
So I sit down too, listening and reading a little and looking at the people looking at the musicians. A cute teen couple clapping from over where they're sitting on a bench, businessmen stopping in their tracks surprised and leaving some money, and then there's this cutest family, a very Dutch guy with a darkish wife/girlfriend and little daughter, five years old perhaps. She's clapping her hands and taking her mothers' and dancing with her, kicking their feet up and whirling around, and then she has her daddy (or momma's Dutch bf) dance with her too, kicking his feet up like her and turning and clapping, and finally the woman takes him by the hand for a dance of their own, to which (being a Dutch guy) he again submits gamely if haplessly. And amazing these guys are, playing some Slavic songs, with at one point some guy appearing out of nowhere to play a tune along on a friggin' balalaika!
But now, they're stopping. There were some more raindrops and it's dark; the Dom tower looks like it's meticulously cut out and pasted on even, darkblue cardboard.
RJB, it sounds like the older guy just wanted a little acknowledgement and you gave it to him. It really is sweet.
Nimh, your posts always make me smile. Have you published any of your writing?
As Dys and I plan the trip to Mass, CT and NYC, I'm smiling and planning and thinking about my sons and friends whom I haven't seen for months. Happy plans to be with friends and people i love.
I blew off everything and everybody and took a three-hour nap today.
Hmmm, Jo. I'm with you and W, but I'm not sure Bushies are in the majority 'round here. Actually, I still feel the love...
Well, now here's my smile for the day story: While on walk this morning saw elderly lady walking two huge black labs...they run for the nearest fence, dragging her along in the process...barking wildly, scratching at the ground, acting as if they are going to catch and eat whatever is behind the fence, etc.
Tiny, tiny, sounding doglet is barking on the other side and scratching back...but you can't see her, for she is behind massive wooden fence.
The old lady passes the house and says to her dogs: "Don't you talk to that mean doggie...she's mean, you just don't listen to a word she says..."
I thought it was so funny, because she was serious.
I guess they were her babies.
"I got friends in high places / like Jesus", rapper (making it rhyme)
While on the subject: the Revival Joy church-building around the corner is in scaffolding. Between the metal bars, one of those canvases announcing that building company X or Y is working here. And another one, of the church itself: "See, Jesus makes everything anew".
Can't help wonderin' how the construction workers feel about JC getting all the credits ...
Nimh, this church is fascinating. Have you noticed any increase of religious ferver in Holland in general or is this just a little US church trying to spread the word?
Is the canvas in Dutch or English?
Smiling today after seeing a beautiful baby in a shopping cart that was filled with flowers. She looked like that was where she has always lived--a little thing of beauty.
I wasn't even there to see the baby, and that made me smile.
In Maus, Art Spiegelman draws himself feeling torn, talking to his therapist. He's shrunk into the chair, drawn the size of a little kid.
"Samuel Beckett once said", he tells his therapist in one frame, "Every word is an unnecessary stain on the silence and the nothing".
Silence. The men smoke. Deep.
"But still he said it", the kid notes, and time stumbles up again, the conversation newly triggered.
Quote:Nimh, this church is fascinating. Have you noticed any increase of religious ferver in Holland in general or is this just a little US church trying to spread the word?
Is the canvas in Dutch or English?
Canvas is in Dutch ("Zie, Jezus maakt alles nieuw").
Did I ever mention the huge neon sign opposite Amsterdam Central Station, on top of what I believe is a Salvation Army building or church or something? It's bilingual. In English, it says, "Jesus Loves You". In Dutch, it says, "God Calls Upon You". Hhmmmmmm ....
I actually know very little about this Revival Joy church thing. An American guy once approached us at the canal, talking about his happiness at finding God again and so on, he was from that place. They have a cheerfully painted van, and I think they serve meals or something (in any case, they give out day-old bread) to the poor/homeless.
You know more about them? Fascinating, you say?
I went rock climbing today and yesterday. It was awesome! Yesterday was my first time.
Well, actually, it wasn't really my first time... I did it once in a gym class in middle school but it was a horrible experience. I didn't want to climb, and they forced me to go up, and I didn't trust the teacher half as far as I could throw him, which is not very far. I didn't trust him (or the equipment) to lower me back down, and I got stuck up there at the top of the wall for about a half an hour while fellow students and teachers taunted me. Which, needless to say, did not help me gather the courage to come back down.
The really unfunny thing about all that was that the motto of Project Adventure (which was supposed to have been the model for the program in my middle school) is Challenge by Choice.
Over a decade later I ran into that awful gym teacher in the supermarket, and he had the gall to make fun of me for that incident!
Anyway, this weekend I finally had the opportunity to try it in a supportive environment with someone I TRUST on belay, and I had an awesome time! Which is good, because I have to actually get good at this and enjoy it when we teach it to the students this winter at an indoor rock climbing gym.
And now I am sore. But I feel great and I've had a huge confidence boost and I want to go again soon!
Unrelatedly but still causing me to smile, Hyoun and I went out bookcase shopping this afternoon and now my books are (mostly) put away instead of stacked on the floor!
Yay for a mostly really good weekend!
For the first time in eons, when I mentally described my mood to myself, I did so in Dutch.
The news that hurricane Jeanne has fizzled out and heading out to sea:)
There was a hummingbird in my garden today. Clear blue sky...crisp, sunny September weather... and a hummingbird.
What a present.
Yesterday--I'm outside in a fabulous, breezy, post-hurricane morning, arranging pieces of my life on a table--to sell for cheap. Cars were pulling up in my yard--and I was a little frazzled mentally, trying to arrive at prices for my soon to be 'not mine' heirlooms.
My daughter, not a morning person, came up behind me and hugged me. We'd both been trying to 'out brave' the other for a couple of weeks, and we were getting tired.
"Beautiful morning," and such greetings came down our driveway, and we made small talk pretty happily for a few minutes. At one point, I just stopped thinking about these things of wood and stone and glass that had been in my family for longer than I had. I stopped thinking about my daughter being cheated of them, and the insult it added to her injury in having to help load these items in the backs of people's cars.
I just looked up. While people browsed. The sky was free, I guess I thought. No disturbing hieroglyphics to read. Peaceful.... A nice oasis from my reality.
(I swear I'm laughing now.)
I noticed an odd bird. He had a white neck and a fat body. I continued to watch curiously as it zigged and zagged toward me, and over my house. A duck, finally I recognised and smiled. The moment it flew out of sight, the smile still on my face... I heard a loud shot.
I'm not kidding.
<LOL>
LoL-doglover, that's funny!!!
I've been smiling all day, I finally have the house to myself!
me...i crack myself up....
