Walking on Thin Ice

friday - it is december, yet there’s a yellow rose blooming in our yard. today is t-shirt and open light jacket weather. the sun is shining. the sky is blue.

saturday - how quickly things change… it’s cold windy stormy rainy - and we have no heat or hot water because the gas ran out yesterday; it’ll be monday before they can deliver. this isn’t really a problem because cold here isn’t really cold cold - but - our cleveland poet writer teacher friends arrive tonight… they expect paradise and will get a taste of cleveland instead. reality sure has an absurdist sense of humor. kathy ran some water thru the coffee maker to get hot water to wash us. the adventure continues.

kathy questions me every night about my past for my bio / memoir / autobio project… here’s an excerpt from last night: How you see things affects what you do. You could take the same event and if you look at it with fear, you’re going to react differently than if you look at it with joy. It’s the old Heisenberg Universe Reality thing again. You get what you see, you see what you expect. Your answer is what you asked for. You’re responsible for your own particular corner where you are. If it’s a shithole, you’re the feces.

bussed into pula and got a couple of electric space heaters for $18 each. didn’t know where to find them, so i told kathy to activate the heisenberg uncertainty universe - we’d expect to find them, so we’d find them. they were at the 2nd place we tried. it’s harder buying stuff when you don’t speak the language, can’t read the signs, and don’t know what stores sell what. we bought cold cuts and cheeses and breads for our cleveland guests tonight - stuff to eat without heating… we have the toaster for toast, the coffeemaker hot water for tea and washing. and since we’re all married, we can each keep our spouses warm during the night.

walking to the food store, i was expounding on my joy-in-joy-out view of life when a car came along and soaked me… i raised my umbrella in mock rage saying ‘you dirty rat…‘ and while we were standing there by the puddle laughing, a second car came by and soaked me again. laugh at gods, gods laugh back. at least they have a sense of humor. nam myoho renge kyo.

speaking of humor, my heart beat’s been getting steadier since i started joking about it. beats for longer periods with fewer skips. looks like the cure is making jokes and quitting coffee… i’m in my 5th day of no coffee. now that my heart’s improving, a tooth just broke. can’t go to the dentist until monday. so far, no pain. my physical body life is becoming a bad joke, with me as the punch line. i’m already missing 6-7 teeth… if i were a gift horse, no one would accept me.

told kathy she and i were playing grownup… this is a good thing - gives me practice in case i ever do grow up.

heard a beep - thot it might be the gas delivery man. so ran on the rocks up to the road in my socks. no gas man. came back, heat went on. tank still says empty, but is working for a wee bit. it’s as if reality feels sorry for making me run over wet rocks in socks, so gave us a heat respite. when sara and michael call, we’ll explain our uncertain present so they’ll be able to stay overnight in trieste if they choose. no showers here until the gasman cometh.

oops, no need - they missed their flight connection to frankfurt due to winds and impatient airline (continental) in newark.

sunday - back to sun and blue skies and bicycle rides. sara & michael flew into zagreb instead and are driving to pula… kathy gave them directions to our fishing village - we’ll go up and wait for them on the road, flag them down as they pass because there’s no street names, and our place has no number as well. hard to give directions to no-number place on no-name street.

sunday nite. thanks to the continental airlines, sara holbrook & michael salinger have no luggage, no materials for their workshop in zagreb - but they did find us in the night… we got to the road literally 60 seconds before they came around the corner in their car… fairy tale finding. sara brought us each scarves she knitted from yarn from out of business cleveland supplier - each has a special thread from china. mike’s way tired cuz he trained from thursday night chicago poetry reading to meet sara friday at the cleveland airport to fly to paris france to fly to frankfurt germany to stay overnight due to missed connections then fly to zagreb croatia to rent a car to drive 4 hours here to our small fishing village on a hill by the adriatic sea.

monday night - did 3 manly man things for the first time… took the insides out of two whole fish, started a charcoal grill fire, and spent an hour trying to get the furnace to light. the first two went well - the furnace still won’t light. like meatloaf said - two out of three ain’t bad. mike’s grilling the fish now.

tuesday morn. gonna go see mummies today - dead saints who didn’t decay, maybe eat lunch in italy. tomorrow go with sara&mike to zagreb for their writers workshop… then drive down to split to see a bit more of croatia.

tuesday nite. we don’t see dead people - church was closed, and when we rang the priest’s door at #4, an old old lady peeped out from 2nd floor window… when we asked to see their dead, she wagged her finger a la monty python at us and saying no, no, no, you can’t see our dead. they close down in september to give their dead a rest.

today was our 2nd 3 country day - in september we flew from amsterdam netherlands to london england to lodz poland… today mike drove us from croatia thru slovenia to trieste italy and back to croatia. wandered fairy tale outdoor stalls buying xmas goods and woolen shoes. as their afghan friend once said in bahrain, “it’s a magical day!”