the question

Have you ever noticed the way a bird cocks it head sideways to cast a look up at your face? There is something magical about that moment. Part of the reason is probably because it seems to be such a human behavior, like the way a questioning spouse might look up at you from a chair, not quite sure of what you mean. Or perhaps whether you have been unfaithful.

At a different level, the moment seems like a contact between equals from two different worlds, both wondering what life is like being the other. It is both inspiring and unsettling.

It always leaves me wondering what was going through the bird's mind at the moment. Was the creature merely hoping to pry some food out of you? Was it an expression of love? Or was it an act of aggression, telling you to get no closer? Or was the bird wondering if you would make a good spouse?

I don't know. Nevertheless, it is an experience I always look forward to as I sit at the bus stop, and one crow or another, or perhaps a pigeon, lights down a few feet away and looks up.

Chopsticks That Work

I just got back from eating at the Chinese restaurant across the street. The place has a bit of history to go with the food. When I first moved into my current apartment two years ago, the restaurant had opened.

Since it was so convenient, I decided to give it a try. All I had to do was get off my couch walk 100 meters across the steet and eat.

The first thing I noticed about the restaurant when I walked in was that no one was there. But I wasn't about to let that deter me. So I took a seat and ordered.

As I waited for the food, I looked aroud the restaurant. It was a very unhappy looking place. All of the chairs and tables looked beat up, just barely functional. And the windows looked dusty. But I have seen worse, and some of them have served very good food.

But that turned out not to be the case with this place. The vegetables were lifeless looking and the meat was tough. I got the impression that everything had simply been pulled out of the freezer, microwaved and then placed on my table. All-in-all, it was an unpleasant meal.

As I left, I had two thoughts: 1) I will never go back to that place again! 2) I'm not sure what business that place is in, but it certainly isn't the restaurant business!

A few months later, I came home very tired, and cooking was the last thing I could endure. Against my better judgment, I decided to give the restaurant another try.

I shouldn't have done it. The food and atmosphere were just as bad as last time.

Over the 1.5 years, this scene repeated itself a couple of more times.

But then one day, I noticed that the place was closed, for good. In fact, all of the restaurant signs were up, but there was a message on the door saying the place was closed.

No big loss, I thought. Then, a few months later, I noticed that new signs were up and a large, garish banner screamed out NEW OPENING.

So, one day a couple of weeks later, I decided to check the place out more closely. The place had a new name. I was hoping that more than the name was new.

And, indeed, that turned out to be true! The interior was classy, almost opulent. It had an atmosphere that suggested success and happiness.

So I ordered some food. When I took my first bite, I wasn't expecting much. But it proved me wrong! The food was wonderful! Everything tasted fresh and cooked by someone with a lot of kitchen experience. I was more than surprised.

Since then, I have been back at least five times. And the food has been wonderful every time. I always order something different each time, and it is clear that the cook can produce good food no matter what the menu item is.

And there's even more good news: The place has been packed every time. It is apparent that the cook has impressed more people than me.

I really don't know what the point of all this is, except perhaps that I now have a lot of peach of mind just knowing that there's a good Chinese restaurant at hand if I can't turn on the stove myself. In fact, I now daydream about which menu item I am going to try next when I go there. The waitress now knows me so well that she stops by my table for a couple of small chats on each visit.

Perhaps the point of this is clear after all: I like it when things work, when a system does exactly what it is programmed to do, when a process is carried out properly and successful. Click, click, click!

Thump Evangelism

One of my favorite parts of summer is here as usual: Watermelons! They are such an amazing fruit – heavier than a fat pig, sweeter than a honey bun, and crisp and crunchier than Rice Crispies. Their flesh is unique: beautifully colored and it gives you the sense of light explosiveness when you bite into it. To date, I have not seen any synthetically produced food that is anywhere like watermelon.

When I buy a melon, I always look for the large ones that have seeds. The seedless ones are certainly much better if you are going to be eating the melon in the company of prissy people, because seedless ones free you from the tricky matter of how to spit out the seeds. So I avoid prissy people.

Melons with seeds are usually so much tastier. Their flesh is sweeter, more delicate, and the taste is much richer.

Here in Germany, most people prefer the seedless type. I think it largely because they don't understand the difference. They just think that with-seed and seedless melons all taste the same, so why not just make life easier for yourself and buy the seedless type.

Fortunately, I do not have to endure such culinary poverty because many of the vegetable and fruit stores here are run by Turks and Greeks. And they know melons. In their home countries, they have the luxury of having farmers who still grow the with-seed melons, and they really understand the difference.

The country that supplies most of the seedless melons to Germany is Spain. I have tried the Spanish melons again and again, but have always been disappointed. They look fine on the outside, but they never resonate properly after being thumped firmly by a finger. Once cut, their color always seems too muted, too pale. And then there's the taste: crunchy but overly chewy, cardboard-like taste and flat. Plus, they do not deliver the light explosiveness when bitten into.

So the local green grocers now know me by name and always pick out the best melon they have for me. And they know how to pick one. Just give it a solid thump. If the sound is deep and rich, but not too deep, the melon is good. If the sound is high-pitched and thin, it's a no-buyer. The Germans in the store always look on quizzically, and I always hope that they will also pick a with-seed melon to take home with them. The more converts, the better.

Not Available at the Pharmacy

I've just discovered a new drug. It's called "painting," and it is incredibly addictive. Over the past three days, I have generated four finished pieces of, er, "work." It is an addiction at which I am incredibly bad and untalented, but it is a very effective drug.

Getting started is always the hard part. And the main reason for that is that I first have to do something that I am very bad at doing: making a decision. If I let myself, I can sit there three hours just trying to figure out where to start. But I have always found that the answer is "It does not matter where you start. Just start."

Once I convince myself that that piece of device is a valid one, the rest is history. Everything begins to flow smoothly. I just do this, then that, then another this and another that. It's all so simple. Before I know it, I have completed another painting.

The finished painting is usually is no better than the previous one. But that doesn't matter. When I embarked on the painting cruise, I quickly realized that my objective is not to get any better technically. My objective is to get a very nagging image out of my head. This is the way it works: Some crazy image forms in my head and then drifts around for days, weeks, months, years, an entire lifetime, demanding that I do something with it. So that's what I did. I captured it on canvas.

The result is almost magical: Once deposited on canvas, the image disappears from my head, and it does so forever. It never nags me again. I feel like a meaningless burden has been lifted from my shoulders. I sleep much better.

A Fall Unearned

I'm still waiting for summer to arrive here (in Germany). The weather is still mild and cool, usually in the 70s or low 80s in the day, and sometimes even a little cooler at night. It seems more like a very long spring than summer. To be honest, I really like it this way. However, I grew up where the summers were very hot, usually in the 90s or 100s every day, and I now somehow feel cheated if a summer doesn't deliver at least a few weeks of hot, humid, sweaty weather.

It feels like I went on one of those shark excursions at sea where you are lowered into the water in a cage made of solid iron bars, and the only creatures that show up are dolphins. That little voice in my head would tell me, "Sure, dolphins are great, but I was really counting on sharks. What a bummer."

Also, deep down I don't feel that I have deserved the coolness of autumn if I have not suffered through an unbearable summer. Somehow, I don't feel cleansed and purified for autumn. It's sort of like knowing that you are going to a family reunion without having bathed for the past two weeks. You know that your rancid aroma is going to sully up the air everywhere you go.

So, I guess this entire entry is sort of my apology to fall, which should be showing up here in three weeks or so.

"Please, Miss Autumn, please forgive me, for I have not bathed properly."

Breathe Through a Handkerchief

This one goes out to Ms. C (you know who you are!).

Some of the worst aspects of daily life are exactly what makes you miss the way it was years later. Before I packed up and headed off to other states, countries and continents for good, summer always brought at least a few days, but sometimes weeks, or even months of something completely unavoidable: hot, dry days that offered, at best, no more than a fluffy cloud that got no darker than white and delivered nary a drop of precipitation.

Before long, all the dirt roads turned into dust factories, just waiting for a truck to fly down them and whip the sandy red clay up into an arid but insistent afternoon fog that turned the rays of the sun visible as it drifted off in search of something brown and crackly to settle on.

Normally, that included my hair, or, at yet an even greater extreme, nostrils and ears. A good shower at the end of day was the only way to free myself of it. But not just a quick shower. Else, I would soon find the dust reappearing after I dried off, ready to accompany me to bed.

That stuff took work to get rid of. At least two good shampoos and soapy scrub-downs were needed. In a world where cleanliness was a code-word for godliness, The Almighty proved to be a stubborn and elusive fellow. Even the usually highly reliable Dial soap was forced to perform at its ultimate to get me there.

Letters Unseen?

Germany is arguably one of the safest countries on the face of the earth. The only other countries I can think of that give it a little competition are Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Singapore and perhaps Japan. And within Germany, Bavaria is one of the safest states. To give you an idea of just how safe life is here, consider this: Mail carriers do not drive a secured car or van when delivering the mail each day. They ride a bicycle – yes, a bicycle!

When a mail carrier arrives at an apartment building, he or she simply parks the bicycle in front of the building, hop off, grabs the bundle of mail to be distributed, and heads into the building. He doesn't set any sort of alarm on the bicycle. He simply leaves the bicycle unattended right there in front of the building, still loaded with all the mail for the other buildings and recipients left on the rounds. If someone was truly intent on stealing the mail or the bicycle, there's little to stop them. Just grab a bundle of unsupervised mail or hop on the bicycle and speed off.

But that rarely happens. Instead, the bike and alls its yet-to-be-delivered mail stands there untouched until the mail carrier returns. It's a sight that leaves me feeling split right down the middle. On the one hand, it gives me a little hope for humankind. But, on the other hand, it trips a number of alarms in my head and makes me wonder how many letters addressed to me might have not ended up in my mailbox over the past ten years.