Tuesday, November 13, 2001 4:47:29 PM
Tycho Brahe
I've been sick lately, some flu that drags a body already too used by the years through fits of shivering alternating with sweating, twisting pain and groaning as the innumerable cable TV channels manage to run and rerun uninteresting movies, programs and Lord, pulease no more, talk shows that reveal the truly unappealing lives of unprepossessing people. (How did it get to a point where there are commercials about erectile dysfunction on TV?)
At a bookstore, I took a bleary eyed Saturday jaunt with a hard lump in my stomach and my nose temporarily cleared by medication; I came across a book about Tycho Brahe. Tycho lost his nose in a duel and had one fashioned out of metal, strapped to his face. No help from decongestant there. In a flash and a partial delirium I was transported back to the ferry that ran from Copenhagen to Aalborg.
I left New Experimental College, in the high north of Denmark, one spring break to visit Copenhagen. A back pack, my guitar (very hip) and a pumping arm, proper for European hitchiking. I got a little distance south, when I realized that by the end of summer with some luck I could probably mange to hitch the entire way. I stopped a NATO soldier and asked if there was a bus to Copenhagen. He said, or so I thought, “Oh, yes, there are many, many buses to Copenhagen.” The real translation was, “Oh yes, but it takes many, many buses to get to Copenhagen. You should take the train.” Wise advice that shortly I followed.
After a ride to the next town in a belching Mercedes Diesel Truck, I managed to convince the guy in the train station ticket window that I only wanted a one-way trip to Copenhagen. At least I think I only paid for a one way trip. Since I only spoke and could understand the most rudimentary Danish. I would point and gesticulate at what I thought was the train schedule. It could have been the breakfast menu; for all I know I ordered a bowl of Sugar Pops. It did quite a dance, and it did, after all, get me to my destination.
Copenhagen, I moved in a whirl. I walked passed Kierkegaard’s house. I imagined him pacing frantically the night with lights a blazing thinking about Regina. I smiled at each person on the street, convinced that I knew them intimately. I rubbed polsers, thin red skin hot dogs with a gray interior, in yellow mustard and red ketchup smeared on wax paper. Downed them in big gulps as I walked down to Nyhavn. Tivoli bright in old world amusement.Yes, even the little mermaid chaste and naked in the water. I walked and walked for days. And then I took the overnight Ferry from Copenhagen to Aalborg. I couldn’t afford a sleeping cabin so I found a seat in the cafeteria. Read, drank coffee, listened to the buzz of a familiar yet incomprehensible language. The ship traveled in a dense fog and I gave in to it. Got into that twilight world between sleep and waking that can only come when you are traveling.
A fog horn, honest to God! Bellowing like the creature in the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (yes it was from a Bradbury story called The Fog), sounds out into that good Oresund night. And somehow I arouse myself from the demi-slumber that engulfed me and I know that we are passing the Island of Hven, and the vestiges of Uraniborg, where Tycho and his crew labored on clear nights plotting accurate paths in the heaven, collecting monumental bits of astronomical information. Kepler, good assistant, eventually used the data to come up with his elliptical approach to the course of the planets. Tycho, Mr. Brahe, communing with the celestial orbs, face worn like the specter from the attic of the observatory, and his naked eye crew of regulars on that wet island, writing and observing and calculating. And me passing in the shroud of fog out to sea on my way to Aalborg. In the morning we docked to clear skies and I road the train north.
Monday, November 19, 2001
Thursday, November 01, 2001
Thursday, November 01, 2001 5:46:19 PM
The Devil on Nadine Road.
I lived, as a child, and a cute child I was, pictures on the pony to prove it, in the ethnically Italian section of Pittsburgh called East Liberty. An even tighter grid on the map will reveal the name Larimar Avenue and down about a block from the intersection of Carver Street; past the alley that led over to Meadow Street was my paternal house where we lived when I was in the early formative years. Three until I was about eight years old. We thereafter became the first of a growing migration to the suburbs, where I live to this very day deep in the basement, writing.
I am glib with the names of these streets though some have since passed on to historical atlas and most are part of a severely troubled neighborhood, because they are the essence of legend to my family. At re-unions, at least until the older generation passes entirely, they are whispered with reverence and also the butts of many a bawdy joke. I lived on those streets for a very short period of time, but they resonate in me and I feel that I have to make some effort to keep the stories alive.
My formative brain sat on the corner of Carver and Lenora with a group of equally formative brains. Yes, we believed that dinosaurs still ruled the earth. Hadn't we seen the fossil evidence when we removed a dead decayed leaf from the ground, which clearly showed the form of a Tyrannosaurus Rex? Hadn't we all barely escaped from the haunted house on the hill across Negley Run? Didn't the Chinaman at the laundry on the way to East Liberty chase us with his butcher knife as we ran past his business and chanted Ching Ching Chinaman?
It came as no surprise when a group of elder toughs, I mean guys, who fought Golden Gloves up at the Red Eagle, told us what had happened the night before. They were just taking a drive out in the country. Out Allegheny River Boulevard. Just checking things out. They turned onto Nadine Road. About half way up in the hill, when they were immersed in the dark forest, the devil jumped out on the road! With a red skin, a forked tongue and even worse a pitch fork in his hands. The car stopped dead. The devil leered and dared them forward. Those hard inner city guys were terrified!
"Whad' ya do?"
What could they do? They backed the car up, turned around a got the hell out of there. They vowed that they would never return to Nadine Road. And for all I know they never did.
I travel Nadine Road almost every day. And every time I climb the hill up from Allegheny River Boulevard to Lincoln Road, I look out for the devil. Especially late at night. Satan never shows and I wonder what it could have possibly been that they saw? It wasn't Halloween; it was the summer of the year. The shade of Grant Wood's canvas? An Apparition from a can of spiced ham? Catholic neurosis?
I am haunted, as we all are, by all manner of demons. Some harder to vanquish than others. I kinda look for a battle with Old Beelzebub on the curve of the road midway between this life and the next. 'C'mon, make my day,' I'll say as I advance, ' and put down that damn pitchfork!' 'Hey how about a game of chess?'
The Devil on Nadine Road.
I lived, as a child, and a cute child I was, pictures on the pony to prove it, in the ethnically Italian section of Pittsburgh called East Liberty. An even tighter grid on the map will reveal the name Larimar Avenue and down about a block from the intersection of Carver Street; past the alley that led over to Meadow Street was my paternal house where we lived when I was in the early formative years. Three until I was about eight years old. We thereafter became the first of a growing migration to the suburbs, where I live to this very day deep in the basement, writing.
I am glib with the names of these streets though some have since passed on to historical atlas and most are part of a severely troubled neighborhood, because they are the essence of legend to my family. At re-unions, at least until the older generation passes entirely, they are whispered with reverence and also the butts of many a bawdy joke. I lived on those streets for a very short period of time, but they resonate in me and I feel that I have to make some effort to keep the stories alive.
My formative brain sat on the corner of Carver and Lenora with a group of equally formative brains. Yes, we believed that dinosaurs still ruled the earth. Hadn't we seen the fossil evidence when we removed a dead decayed leaf from the ground, which clearly showed the form of a Tyrannosaurus Rex? Hadn't we all barely escaped from the haunted house on the hill across Negley Run? Didn't the Chinaman at the laundry on the way to East Liberty chase us with his butcher knife as we ran past his business and chanted Ching Ching Chinaman?
It came as no surprise when a group of elder toughs, I mean guys, who fought Golden Gloves up at the Red Eagle, told us what had happened the night before. They were just taking a drive out in the country. Out Allegheny River Boulevard. Just checking things out. They turned onto Nadine Road. About half way up in the hill, when they were immersed in the dark forest, the devil jumped out on the road! With a red skin, a forked tongue and even worse a pitch fork in his hands. The car stopped dead. The devil leered and dared them forward. Those hard inner city guys were terrified!
"Whad' ya do?"
What could they do? They backed the car up, turned around a got the hell out of there. They vowed that they would never return to Nadine Road. And for all I know they never did.
I travel Nadine Road almost every day. And every time I climb the hill up from Allegheny River Boulevard to Lincoln Road, I look out for the devil. Especially late at night. Satan never shows and I wonder what it could have possibly been that they saw? It wasn't Halloween; it was the summer of the year. The shade of Grant Wood's canvas? An Apparition from a can of spiced ham? Catholic neurosis?
I am haunted, as we all are, by all manner of demons. Some harder to vanquish than others. I kinda look for a battle with Old Beelzebub on the curve of the road midway between this life and the next. 'C'mon, make my day,' I'll say as I advance, ' and put down that damn pitchfork!' 'Hey how about a game of chess?'