Leaving Vienna

Today I say good-bye to Vienna and take the train to Munich, then on to the retreat location, two hours north west of Munich. I took a long time at breakfast this morning, as I woke early in restless anticipation. From the fifth floor of this hotel where the dining room is located, I can see the hills surrounding Vienna. There are old buildings here. It is amazing how old. Of course you know that; maybe you will snicker. Maybe you should. This town started 2000 years ago. The Romans were here. I think in Europe, the Romans were a bit like George Washington on the east coast, they slept everywhere. Only they did more than sleep. They built, they ran things, they printed their ways so deeply that ensuing powers followed in the paths they created. Of course you know this as well. Even I knew this. Yet it is different to feel it. To sit and look around and imagine all that has come because this outpost was created, then built upon, then rebuilt, then again built. My friend, Edith spoke of the Russians ransacking Vienna after the war and I look up the narrow streets and imagine what it would be like to be waiting in my home, my prized possessions hidden away, hoping against hope that my home would be spared, my family safe. I look up the narrow streets and wonder what it would be like to be a Russian, years lost in the misery of war, near starvation, bitter cold, family left long behind in stark poverty, to come down these streets and see rock solid, four story homes, one after another, beautiful homes, beautiful furnishings, plumbing that didn't exist back home, luxuries unimagined to rampage and revel in this unexpected wealth free for the taking, the fruits of war.

I read the history of Vienna, of the Kings and Princes who were good managers, under whom the city thrived, music and creative geniuses found a place to convene, create. At one time, 6% of the population was a musician. Even now, as I travel the train, I see people with music cases, guitars, cellos, bases, violins carried about. I go to the music hall and find myself chatting with a young Canadian who is studying opera in Milano up visiting for the weekend. He is a tenor, hopes to work ultimately in Vancover and travel back and forth between there and Europe to sing. I go to the music museum and after three hours of meandering through time with Mozart, Beethoven, Hayden and others, conducting an orchestra, I sit in the atrium only to discover an elderly gentleman playing the grand piano there. He tells a fellow listener that he plays pieces he has composed himself and wonders how his music seems to others. The notes, they fall over me, surround me and I float in their spaces, in their beauty.

On the road again

I'm in Vienna, Austria. I can't quite believe it. In fact, in the airport in San Francisco last evening, talking to my brother, I told him I was going to Venice and then was confused by why he suggested I not take the gondolas as they were overpriced. Ah yes, spaciness is the first thing I pack. I find myself looking a bit like the dithering old lady, small wallet around her neck with important papers so I won't get lost or lose my passport or money or flight info. But there is such freedom in leaving home the should's. On the plane I get to be comfortable. I get to talk to whomever I wish or be silent. I get to read, sleep, watch a movie or meditate. Then I arrive and I get to see amazing sights. I get to learn stuff. The Hapsburg's ran Austria for 600 years. Sheesh. Oh this isn't very coherent which might be linked to the fact that I just arrived at my hotel after taking the red eye from SF to Munich and then another short flight to Vienna. But I just had to tell you, whoever is reading, the joy of this adventure, of getting on a plane and going somewhere I've never been, seeing things I've only read about and then having the luxury to settle in, settle down, rest down into myself in the excellent company of my teacher and fellow students and discover what will be revealed next.

I just had to say hello, the traveler part of me.

Fresh Bread

Fresh Bread—27 April 2010

Fresh bread just out of the oven, it was one of my mother’s later discoveries. She bought the dough already shaped and frozen into pre-risen loaves, let them thaw, rise and then bake them. It was white bread with no redeeming nutritional value and yet, hot out of the oven, its scent exploding through the house like an ancient siren, it didn’t matter. Late afternoon the smell of it pulls me into the kitchen like a gravitational force. The kitchen in my parents’ home is a huge square with dark brown cabinets on two sides of the room. The refrigerator on the north side of the room is next to the hallway that leads to the garage. The sink is in the corner and on the east side of the room; the cabinets are split by a narrow window that looks out onto Mother’s garden. The south side of the room consists of Mother’s desk, flanked on either side with more cabinets for her files and a window over the desk that looks down the hill to the lake. The door to the screened in porch is on that wall. On the west wall, the wall that has the swinging door to the rest of the house is a stone fireplace and a bar with lighted shelves above where glasses shine. Two chairs sit in front of the fireplace. In the center of the room is an island with the stove in the center surrounded by Italian tile, white background, green vines and orange flowers with matching green tile trim on the edges. The two ovens are below the stove. There is a sofa on the backside of the island facing Mother’s desk. This is the room my parents lived in. In the winter, there is a constant fire in the fireplace with frequent trips through the garage to the woodpile stacked high. Mother is usually at her desk though sometimes she sits on the floor, legs spread, playing solitaire. Dad sits either on the sofa or a chair or sometimes at the small card table next to the island with the mail spread out before him.

The smell of fresh bread circles. Mother, who used to be so strict about eating in between meals puts the bread on cooling racks and then watches the vultures circle, as she says. She makes a brief complaint, “if you cut it before it’s cooled, it’ll smoosh down.” I agree heartily, get the sharpest bread knife and proceed to carefully slice two pieces, with minor smooshing. Then I add the butter to melt easily on the still warm bread and last, either local honey or homemade strawberry jam. It is a tough choice.

Dad waits until I’ve cut the first slice and then says, “I’ll have some of that too, Miggs,” as if he’s just noticed what is going on, wasn’t in support of cutting too warm bread but since it has already happened. . . It was a delicious moment, that quiet camaraderie. Mother superiorly saying she wouldn’t have any because she didn’t want to get fat and Dad and I smiling, and saying nothing, eating and nodding, licking our sticky fingers, she being the only fat person in the room. Then, of course, we needed something to drink, some juice for me, a soda for Dad. And he would smile again that sweet smile when I set his glass in front of him before he returned to his reading. Mother would resume her current project, working at her desk or planning her spring garden or looking through the 101 catalogues that came daily, it seemed. She bought everything she could from a catalogue so she wouldn’t have to make a trip to town. And I would settle into the unclaimed chair, pick up a magazine I hadn’t yet read or just watch the fire, poke it a bit, fetch some more wood and smell that smell as I came back in from the cold outside, that sweet fresh bread smell mixed with the slight scent of smoke. It was my home. I could not imagine that it would ever change.