Part 18: The Cuckoo's Nest
Ripe from a Swiss (town of) Basel night spent with British Ex-pat's & "die loiter" (regulars) at the bar, Mr Pickwick (NINE Euros for a pint, for chrissakes!!!?) the dawn finds me stealing a ride on a (local) train to (the town) Lanfen, some 20 miles South then hiking in the crisp morning sun up the foothills of the eternally pristine Swiss Alps.
Expecting an "agony" of waits, hitch-hiking, a roadside apple tree provides a sumptuous breakfast (fruhstuck) and the (Deutsch) Swiss, god bless 'em, surprise!
Ride on ride.
Roger; on his way to visit his sick mother (OH, C"MON!?).
Brigette, who has a brother in the Music business: Swiss Patriotic Music (OH, GET OUTTA HERE!!??).
....But she's a "jewel", beautiful...and runs her own Floral delivery business, hence: Brigette's Blessings (.de) ... And I do believe SHE DID (...bless me), for dropping me off in/at some village/fork in the road, I'm immediately picked up by "Horst" in a mini-van...who drives me a good 60 miles (in Switzerland, that's like crossing the state of Kansas & Colorado, both), all the time exposed to the Alpine majesty of "Heidi", "Grandfather", "Belle & Sebastiane" and the RICOLA lozenge factory!
"Oh!" I exclaim, every half - mounain-winding - mile; "Just STOP IT!... Switzerland!? -just CUT THAT OUT!" -for the scenary is just OFF the Scale....
....which brings me to the "Cuckoo's Nest".
Finally over the "Sustan (?)" mountain pass (elevation: LSD), I find myself down in Oensingen, hitch-hiking...actually...on the Freeway-Auto-bahn...where I run afoul of the Law and get busted by Lindsey Lohan's Swiss counterpart (real pretty in real life), tightly wrapped in Swiss Highway Patrol uniform & Designer shades...who directs me - smilingly, but in NO uncertain terms - to "get the frick off the highway" via some highway Service/industrial road.
So I comply.
...It meanders this way & that, then there's a small industrial warehouse district...and then I "espsy" what looks like a college or school of some sort, thronged with young-ish people. And "thank god!", because I really need to use a restroom.
...Long story short? It's actually a HOSPITAL-residence for the Mentally Challenged, so straight away, I feel quite at home...waving my arms...to no-one in particular, queuing up for a free lunch, mucho coffees, bathroom, of course; and bantering with the cafeteria serving ladies about Beckburg, that magnificent castle (Schloss) that over looks Oensingen and the rich countryside, hereabouts.
Still waving my arms around - at no-one in particular - and now dribbling at the mouth with a messy face (it was BEANS day) I promise myself that on my next "proffessional" music tour I will include this "Cuckoo's Nest" to repay the generosity & warmth of these beautiful People.... And STILL waving my arms around, now demonically - at no-one in particular - I pick up my guitar/gear and take my leave, the Serving Ladies & luncheon residents, waving their "goodbyes" in return.
................
What to say about Switzerland? I could write pages! -Perhaps in the vein of this laconic blog...an update of Orson Welles' famous, THE THIRD MAN "Cuckoo Clock" speech is called for?
The awesome beauty of the land, the reserved charm of its People and the succinct calm of its Society/civilization...?
("Like the fella said:") For the last 100 years, other countries have boldly created The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, PICASSO, Udo Lindenburg (sic), BEAT POETRY, the....er....INTER-NET, film Directors UP the wazoo, Moon Landings (oh, yes: those things), Concordes & Dreamliners, the M1-A1 Tank, SAM Missiles, Nuclear Submarines (see where I'm going?) The Atom Bomb. The Hydrogen Bomb!
And what did the Swiss produce?
The Swiss Army Pocket Knife.
c. 2010. @ ze Black Pearl, following the "Code", Usingen/dave delacroix/our man in europe
Monday, October 4, 2010
OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 17: Die Jaegers
Part 17: Die Jaegers
On the cusp of an Autumnal Hessian dawn... "Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness..." Sebastian (the Fisher-King), Herr Graff, Count Alex von Ludwigshafen and "I" sip coffee, chew on schinken, black bread smothered in "sharfer senf" (hot mustard)...
Conversation is minimal ("pass the sugar").
You can feel the tension in the air.
The night before: mucho Bitburgers, Schapps, obscene drinking songs, rowdy, sometimes rowing. There was a Dumpling fight in the kitchen.
One of the Count's retainers must have cleaned up the mess as the room is now spotless.
....but I digress.
Now is all tension, repressed fever, repressed hangovers; we are alert, a trifle anxious, filled with anticipation for the morning's Hunt.
A feeling of dread. Nature's World. We will drink a "hair of the dog (that bit you)" before -with intent exageration - saunter out from the warm Schloss into the damp morning fog, before treading deep, then deeper into the surrounding dense forest of this world of Tannus. -where! (hark!) -if you halt in the thicket, wrapped in the veils of mist, you can still - though you must listen very hard! - echoes of the War cries of ancient Barbarians and the chants of Roman Legions, banging sword on shield: "Victa-Victorix-Victoric!"
After an hour or so of foot slogging, the Count (Herr Graff) and the "Fisher-Kaiser" are soon 100's of yards ahead of me, intent on stalking their prey...with a precision and sense of exactitude that non-Germanic people's can never understand... So! Finding a "designer" tree stump aside another that will do as a makeshift seat and writing desk, I establish myself: beer, cigarette, notebook, pen...and decide which parcel of ground will be my ashtray & "pissoir", respectively.
Thus, I crack a Bitburger (BB), smoke a "fag" and - for a while - enjoy the forest's primaevil tranquility, which (alas) is constantly shattered by groups of school children out hiking, yakking and enjoying the mountain forest - early morning - echoes
WHICH
...they swamp with a string of inane banalities;
"ECHO!!!"
Good.
Glad they got THAT one out of the way.
"EEEE-OH!!!"
And so on.
Thus the World's Future parcels by. (many groups)
Some, respectful.
"Guten tag."
Others, with looks of disdain at my smoking and early morning drinking. Nevertheless, the whole FUTURE WORLD parades by. The intelligent. The mischievous. The dullards. The athletic. The, sadly, kids born into drug abuse OR obesity! -one kid in particular, it's plain to see, will...after 20 years on the day shift at the Post Office, eat his 50,000 pasta dish, burp, then keel over backwards in his dinning chair and...be quite dead!
(Mr Creasote)
And then there's the "straggler", the Poet, the Outsider, the lonely kid, who drags his/her feet near my presence, unconsciously, yet accutely...aware in the fog of human awakening, he (or she) too, will one day sit in my place, with the potential to KNOW everything; the Universal glory of Being.
(Swallow hard, People)
...At some point (3 BB's later) the Fisher-King (Sebastian) returns from the advance to find me as he and the Count (Yup. Herr Graff) will go "off-track" to follow secret ways the forest hosts and which few mortals know. These lads, of course, have played here as children; they have carved their Sweethearts names on trees.
And so the Hunt continues...and the day, like (ahem!) a River of Time...that, initially babbles, brooks, falls, swirls, now opens up into a deep slow flow, rich & verdant; a breeze appears, though the fog does NOT clear. The dew soaked soil & foilage; it glistens.
And the fauna?
-Tuxedoed!
We cross the ancient Roman road, now known as RENN Strasse. The care-laden stones and traction, 2000 years old, still serving their purpose. We traverse "Alte Konig", the "Old - Celtic - King"-forrested mountain top, ringed by stone defense-parrapets. Once, headquarters to Amenius (Herman) the Etruscian, famed in history for anhiliating Octavian-Caesar's Legions at the massacre in the Tutterberg forest, further to the North.
....All this, and through which, with little regard, we trek; incidental tourists in Time's incomprehensible tapestry...but we are Hunters (Jaegers!) and LIKE Hunters we are intent only on the hunt...and closing in on the kill.
The silence is electric.
Squirrels have ceased their play.
The wild Boar, sniffing the air.
Deer; pensive, indecisive. Do they bolt or graze?
Lesser mammals retreat to their dens.
The Fisher-Kaiser, finger on mouth: "SSSSSCHHHHHSSSSSSS!!!!"
The Count, running fingers along his knife's cold blade.
"THERE!" shouts Sebastian.
The Count lets out a blood curdling scream!
"Victor-Victorix." I whisper.
And there, before us, like deer, naked, vulnerable, innocent, caught in the glare of a car's HI-beams, our prey, quite defenseless, nevertheless bold and bravely...face their fate. We have them surrounded, for these are the Mushrooms we have sought.
2010. At the Black Pearl/Nicky batending/Usingen/dave delacroix/our man in europe
On the cusp of an Autumnal Hessian dawn... "Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness..." Sebastian (the Fisher-King), Herr Graff, Count Alex von Ludwigshafen and "I" sip coffee, chew on schinken, black bread smothered in "sharfer senf" (hot mustard)...
Conversation is minimal ("pass the sugar").
You can feel the tension in the air.
The night before: mucho Bitburgers, Schapps, obscene drinking songs, rowdy, sometimes rowing. There was a Dumpling fight in the kitchen.
One of the Count's retainers must have cleaned up the mess as the room is now spotless.
....but I digress.
Now is all tension, repressed fever, repressed hangovers; we are alert, a trifle anxious, filled with anticipation for the morning's Hunt.
A feeling of dread. Nature's World. We will drink a "hair of the dog (that bit you)" before -with intent exageration - saunter out from the warm Schloss into the damp morning fog, before treading deep, then deeper into the surrounding dense forest of this world of Tannus. -where! (hark!) -if you halt in the thicket, wrapped in the veils of mist, you can still - though you must listen very hard! - echoes of the War cries of ancient Barbarians and the chants of Roman Legions, banging sword on shield: "Victa-Victorix-Victoric!"
After an hour or so of foot slogging, the Count (Herr Graff) and the "Fisher-Kaiser" are soon 100's of yards ahead of me, intent on stalking their prey...with a precision and sense of exactitude that non-Germanic people's can never understand... So! Finding a "designer" tree stump aside another that will do as a makeshift seat and writing desk, I establish myself: beer, cigarette, notebook, pen...and decide which parcel of ground will be my ashtray & "pissoir", respectively.
Thus, I crack a Bitburger (BB), smoke a "fag" and - for a while - enjoy the forest's primaevil tranquility, which (alas) is constantly shattered by groups of school children out hiking, yakking and enjoying the mountain forest - early morning - echoes
WHICH
...they swamp with a string of inane banalities;
"ECHO!!!"
Good.
Glad they got THAT one out of the way.
"EEEE-OH!!!"
And so on.
Thus the World's Future parcels by. (many groups)
Some, respectful.
"Guten tag."
Others, with looks of disdain at my smoking and early morning drinking. Nevertheless, the whole FUTURE WORLD parades by. The intelligent. The mischievous. The dullards. The athletic. The, sadly, kids born into drug abuse OR obesity! -one kid in particular, it's plain to see, will...after 20 years on the day shift at the Post Office, eat his 50,000 pasta dish, burp, then keel over backwards in his dinning chair and...be quite dead!
(Mr Creasote)
And then there's the "straggler", the Poet, the Outsider, the lonely kid, who drags his/her feet near my presence, unconsciously, yet accutely...aware in the fog of human awakening, he (or she) too, will one day sit in my place, with the potential to KNOW everything; the Universal glory of Being.
(Swallow hard, People)
...At some point (3 BB's later) the Fisher-King (Sebastian) returns from the advance to find me as he and the Count (Yup. Herr Graff) will go "off-track" to follow secret ways the forest hosts and which few mortals know. These lads, of course, have played here as children; they have carved their Sweethearts names on trees.
And so the Hunt continues...and the day, like (ahem!) a River of Time...that, initially babbles, brooks, falls, swirls, now opens up into a deep slow flow, rich & verdant; a breeze appears, though the fog does NOT clear. The dew soaked soil & foilage; it glistens.
And the fauna?
-Tuxedoed!
We cross the ancient Roman road, now known as RENN Strasse. The care-laden stones and traction, 2000 years old, still serving their purpose. We traverse "Alte Konig", the "Old - Celtic - King"-forrested mountain top, ringed by stone defense-parrapets. Once, headquarters to Amenius (Herman) the Etruscian, famed in history for anhiliating Octavian-Caesar's Legions at the massacre in the Tutterberg forest, further to the North.
....All this, and through which, with little regard, we trek; incidental tourists in Time's incomprehensible tapestry...but we are Hunters (Jaegers!) and LIKE Hunters we are intent only on the hunt...and closing in on the kill.
The silence is electric.
Squirrels have ceased their play.
The wild Boar, sniffing the air.
Deer; pensive, indecisive. Do they bolt or graze?
Lesser mammals retreat to their dens.
The Fisher-Kaiser, finger on mouth: "SSSSSCHHHHHSSSSSSS!!!!"
The Count, running fingers along his knife's cold blade.
"THERE!" shouts Sebastian.
The Count lets out a blood curdling scream!
"Victor-Victorix." I whisper.
And there, before us, like deer, naked, vulnerable, innocent, caught in the glare of a car's HI-beams, our prey, quite defenseless, nevertheless bold and bravely...face their fate. We have them surrounded, for these are the Mushrooms we have sought.
2010. At the Black Pearl/Nicky batending/Usingen/dave delacroix/our man in europe
Saturday, October 2, 2010
OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 16: Down on the Beat!
Part 16: Down on the Beat!
Back on the Street...it ALL comes back. Memories of a thousand towns, pre-Berlin Wall breakdown Europe, USA, Canada; the same highs, the same lows.
Givers? Charitable hearts? The kids, as always, are great, wanting to touch the Guitar, much to their mother's consternation:
"C'mon, lady! Cough up that Euro!"
Fashionistas, dismissive, but OLD ladies, always the givers...knowing I'm some mother's Son...down on the Beat.
Business guys, oddly, always prepped to chip in a Euro, Immigrants, sharing their change; the ocassional "stone cold" beauty, but with a heart of Gold, the one you want to really meet...but never do! -a Court of suitors, no doubt, like Penelope, swarming....whilst she awaits her Ullysess?...
Of course (I use that expression a lot) there's ALWAYS the (capital P) Parasite who cycles by, circles like a Great White, then stops, parks his Ass, sits TOO close and "ogles" away the potential business: why, infact, I stopped jammin' to write this Blog, hoping this "piece of shit" will starve of stimulae and piss off!
He'll sit for a while, waste my business hour, NEVER donate, then cycle away in all his Spiritual (sic) bankruptcy.
(There he goes...)
The mid afternoon street has gone dramatically quiet; hoping Tuesday's are not thee Dead day of the week....
...But back to my Public! - Then, there's the "clueless" gaggle, opposite me in the Mews, wondering if they can get that latest designer hand bag in their size...? The dim wit Mommas, gathered with carry-cart babies,
"CIAO-ing!" at the top of their voices; MAN! -it's Perambulator gridlock!!!
The sneak who wants your iconic photograph but does not want to pay.
The dum gals who, sitting next to you, munch down on Gelato or Donner Kebabs and kill your starving gut with intoxicating aromas.
...Man! I've seen it all!
Then there's (as here) the Piacenza (Italy) cops. A Hareem, for chrissakes! -Never outside of Lindsey Lohan in Switzerland have I seen such gorgeous cops! In peak fitness, uniform wrapped, blonde braided hair, glossy white side arms and holsters, plus the usual "gizmo" belt for lipstick, Mace... and spare bullets!
Ever greet two cops with: "Enchante, ladies"...?
Try THAT one in Denver, babee, and you're going DOWN with the accompanying MIRANDA warning of:
"If you DONT have a Priest (for last rites) one can be provided at no extra cost to your surviving family members.
A Rabbi or an Iman can also be supplied "on request" should you still have breath in your body...due to our restraining methods, which - incidentally - are absolutely for your own safety."
Yup! Italy's a different planet, and with Piacenza's fair haired Police Officiers, it's quite another "situ":
"PUR-LEEZE CUFF ME!!!"
Need I go on?
Interesting thing about busking in Italy, though; just sitting, there on smoke break or just sitting with your guitar all fagged out...people STILL throw money in the Hat, sometimes MORE than when you're actuallty playing!?
(A hint?)
-Fricked if I know!?...
c 2010. San Lazaro, near Borgomaro, Italy/dave delacroix/our man in europe
Back on the Street...it ALL comes back. Memories of a thousand towns, pre-Berlin Wall breakdown Europe, USA, Canada; the same highs, the same lows.
Givers? Charitable hearts? The kids, as always, are great, wanting to touch the Guitar, much to their mother's consternation:
"C'mon, lady! Cough up that Euro!"
Fashionistas, dismissive, but OLD ladies, always the givers...knowing I'm some mother's Son...down on the Beat.
Business guys, oddly, always prepped to chip in a Euro, Immigrants, sharing their change; the ocassional "stone cold" beauty, but with a heart of Gold, the one you want to really meet...but never do! -a Court of suitors, no doubt, like Penelope, swarming....whilst she awaits her Ullysess?...
Of course (I use that expression a lot) there's ALWAYS the (capital P) Parasite who cycles by, circles like a Great White, then stops, parks his Ass, sits TOO close and "ogles" away the potential business: why, infact, I stopped jammin' to write this Blog, hoping this "piece of shit" will starve of stimulae and piss off!
He'll sit for a while, waste my business hour, NEVER donate, then cycle away in all his Spiritual (sic) bankruptcy.
(There he goes...)
The mid afternoon street has gone dramatically quiet; hoping Tuesday's are not thee Dead day of the week....
...But back to my Public! - Then, there's the "clueless" gaggle, opposite me in the Mews, wondering if they can get that latest designer hand bag in their size...? The dim wit Mommas, gathered with carry-cart babies,
"CIAO-ing!" at the top of their voices; MAN! -it's Perambulator gridlock!!!
The sneak who wants your iconic photograph but does not want to pay.
The dum gals who, sitting next to you, munch down on Gelato or Donner Kebabs and kill your starving gut with intoxicating aromas.
...Man! I've seen it all!
Then there's (as here) the Piacenza (Italy) cops. A Hareem, for chrissakes! -Never outside of Lindsey Lohan in Switzerland have I seen such gorgeous cops! In peak fitness, uniform wrapped, blonde braided hair, glossy white side arms and holsters, plus the usual "gizmo" belt for lipstick, Mace... and spare bullets!
Ever greet two cops with: "Enchante, ladies"...?
Try THAT one in Denver, babee, and you're going DOWN with the accompanying MIRANDA warning of:
"If you DONT have a Priest (for last rites) one can be provided at no extra cost to your surviving family members.
A Rabbi or an Iman can also be supplied "on request" should you still have breath in your body...due to our restraining methods, which - incidentally - are absolutely for your own safety."
Yup! Italy's a different planet, and with Piacenza's fair haired Police Officiers, it's quite another "situ":
"PUR-LEEZE CUFF ME!!!"
Need I go on?
Interesting thing about busking in Italy, though; just sitting, there on smoke break or just sitting with your guitar all fagged out...people STILL throw money in the Hat, sometimes MORE than when you're actuallty playing!?
(A hint?)
-Fricked if I know!?...
c 2010. San Lazaro, near Borgomaro, Italy/dave delacroix/our man in europe
OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 15: The Lady in the Lake
Part 15: The Lady in the Lake
ACTION! MUSIC! Roll Soundtrack: Debussey!.....now fade music.....
Like well fed, yet nubile...flamingoes, the people bask in the late Summer sun around the small forest lined lake; a large pond, if you will.
Small chatter, mother nature (birds & bugs) audiable; the distant drone of vehicular commerce. A dragonfly alights on this page!
I'm the only "clothe-ie" in a gathering of Nudes that suggest (a painting by)Suerat, yet painted in an ancient time.
(A camp fire would give t a Barbarian edge!)
...I'd take off my clothes but, within an hour, I'd turn into a Lobster under the sun's rays....and after 20 or so minutes, the reclining-on-grass, naked assembly accept my presence with barely a chink of a glass of Pinot Grigio. PLUS! I don't leer, letch or ogle and clearly "get" the Peoples' opportunity to go "au naturelle".
My main worry is keeping the Bitburger Pilsner OUT of the sun, a 12 pack, no less - though we only plan to be here for an hour! - and NOT starting a forest fire with my oxygenated Drum tabacco "rollie" cigarettes!
No major bug problems, though; "Gott fur danke!"
But! To the point:
Naked, she lies, unpostured in all her reckless, half asleep, abandon. She will turn this way, then that...in all her natural splendour.
The pre-Autumnal sun gently carresses her tanned, lithe limbs, be-speckled by the lakeside's leafy canopy...until....warmed to perfection;
(Ouch! I almost started a forest fire!!!)
...warmed to perfection, she awakes, stretches her physique, towel wraps her ample buns and saunters, teasingly, down to the sedge lined lake-pond, dis-robes, then seduces the calm waters into enveloping her body with its cooling charm.
In stark contrast to Herr Graff, Count Alex von Ludwigshafen...who almost Goose-steps to the water's edge, marches up on to a small wooden jetty promonitory, then (a'la'Tarzan yodel) DIVES, causing a huge splash with his ample "excalibur" before even his torso hits the "aqua", sending dryads, gnats, frogs (I guess) and fish dispersing for their very mortality!
...but not even THIS dsturbs the "Lady in the Lake" who does not effect a stroke when she casually swims, but seemingly embraces the lake's "surface tension", though she cuts an awesome avenue through the declining sedge of water lillies, resplendent in their Sunday Best.
Meantime, word is out that there's an Englishman present and the Bugs are mustering in all their tenacious, tuxedoed glory.
And perhaps it's the Sea Level oxygenated-balmed air, but my scalp begins to itch like Mary (any Mary)!!!
All ths is lost on "Herr Graff", the Count, of course, who, invigorated by the lake water's chill, stand up in the shallows, all godly nature on view, and begins to sing an old German drinking song that reminds me of that Nino Rota composition from Fellini's Casanova, where the Prussian's start stamping their Jack boots!
"DOG-FISH!
DOG-FISH!
CAN I GET A TAXI!?
KISS-ME!
DOG=FISH!
An I will always
LOVE YOU!!!
(Intro choir)
...Hope the BEER
Dosent run out.......!!!!
DOG-FISH!
DOG-FISH!"
....ad infinitum
.....But for "the Lady in the Lake"...under the Goethe sun's dying embers, she glides, aquatic, in Peace.
She flees, or departs, eventually, but in my mind's eye, and to the end of my days, I see her, and will, still, spiraling in her ecstacy, into ever decreasing circles, until the tunnel vision of a fading imagination, ends.
c 2010. Bad Homburg/ dave delacroix/our man in europe
ACTION! MUSIC! Roll Soundtrack: Debussey!.....now fade music.....
Like well fed, yet nubile...flamingoes, the people bask in the late Summer sun around the small forest lined lake; a large pond, if you will.
Small chatter, mother nature (birds & bugs) audiable; the distant drone of vehicular commerce. A dragonfly alights on this page!
I'm the only "clothe-ie" in a gathering of Nudes that suggest (a painting by)Suerat, yet painted in an ancient time.
(A camp fire would give t a Barbarian edge!)
...I'd take off my clothes but, within an hour, I'd turn into a Lobster under the sun's rays....and after 20 or so minutes, the reclining-on-grass, naked assembly accept my presence with barely a chink of a glass of Pinot Grigio. PLUS! I don't leer, letch or ogle and clearly "get" the Peoples' opportunity to go "au naturelle".
My main worry is keeping the Bitburger Pilsner OUT of the sun, a 12 pack, no less - though we only plan to be here for an hour! - and NOT starting a forest fire with my oxygenated Drum tabacco "rollie" cigarettes!
No major bug problems, though; "Gott fur danke!"
But! To the point:
Naked, she lies, unpostured in all her reckless, half asleep, abandon. She will turn this way, then that...in all her natural splendour.
The pre-Autumnal sun gently carresses her tanned, lithe limbs, be-speckled by the lakeside's leafy canopy...until....warmed to perfection;
(Ouch! I almost started a forest fire!!!)
...warmed to perfection, she awakes, stretches her physique, towel wraps her ample buns and saunters, teasingly, down to the sedge lined lake-pond, dis-robes, then seduces the calm waters into enveloping her body with its cooling charm.
In stark contrast to Herr Graff, Count Alex von Ludwigshafen...who almost Goose-steps to the water's edge, marches up on to a small wooden jetty promonitory, then (a'la'Tarzan yodel) DIVES, causing a huge splash with his ample "excalibur" before even his torso hits the "aqua", sending dryads, gnats, frogs (I guess) and fish dispersing for their very mortality!
...but not even THIS dsturbs the "Lady in the Lake" who does not effect a stroke when she casually swims, but seemingly embraces the lake's "surface tension", though she cuts an awesome avenue through the declining sedge of water lillies, resplendent in their Sunday Best.
Meantime, word is out that there's an Englishman present and the Bugs are mustering in all their tenacious, tuxedoed glory.
And perhaps it's the Sea Level oxygenated-balmed air, but my scalp begins to itch like Mary (any Mary)!!!
All ths is lost on "Herr Graff", the Count, of course, who, invigorated by the lake water's chill, stand up in the shallows, all godly nature on view, and begins to sing an old German drinking song that reminds me of that Nino Rota composition from Fellini's Casanova, where the Prussian's start stamping their Jack boots!
"DOG-FISH!
DOG-FISH!
CAN I GET A TAXI!?
KISS-ME!
DOG=FISH!
An I will always
LOVE YOU!!!
(Intro choir)
...Hope the BEER
Dosent run out.......!!!!
DOG-FISH!
DOG-FISH!"
....ad infinitum
.....But for "the Lady in the Lake"...under the Goethe sun's dying embers, she glides, aquatic, in Peace.
She flees, or departs, eventually, but in my mind's eye, and to the end of my days, I see her, and will, still, spiraling in her ecstacy, into ever decreasing circles, until the tunnel vision of a fading imagination, ends.
c 2010. Bad Homburg/ dave delacroix/our man in europe
OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 14: Postcard to Jude
Part 14: Postcard to Jude
Dear Sweetie-Pie, all's well. Weather fine. Avoiding the sun, pebbles on the beach, etc.
How quickly we dispense with platitudes? And presently intoxicated on the high & lows of trans-contintenental travel and all its vicissitudes (?) I find myself, delivered from the hurly-burly of travel (Italy, Switzerland) back n Hessan (soon to be in Paris....the one in France), residing once again at the Schloss of Herr Graf, Count Alex von Ludwigshafen in the (now famous)Tannus region of Germany....in prep....wait a Mo!....I already mentioned Paree!
And here, you find me, in the early hours, drawn to the Schloss's cavenous kitchen, cooking up a famous Dave Delacroix Omelette, a.k.a. Myspace or Facebook.
I always thought it quite proper to give your Omelette a name; you can quote me!
The receipe (leastways, tonight) is thus: 1 egg
Pepper
Salt
Tomato-sliced thin
Bell pepper- ditto
BRIE - chunks!
Onion
Garlc
SCHINKENWURFEL
....in butter.
I think we ALWAYS agreed that "SCHINKENWURFEL" was thee secret ingredient to a "wholesome" Omelette on the basis that if "we" screwed it up on the stove top.... EGG Drop Noodle Soup, Goulash, or a complicated Curry would ensue?.... But then (yum-yum) I'm only quoting You!......:)
c. 2010, Usingen-at the Black Pearl, Gaby Bartending/ dave delacroix/our man in europe
Dear Sweetie-Pie, all's well. Weather fine. Avoiding the sun, pebbles on the beach, etc.
How quickly we dispense with platitudes? And presently intoxicated on the high & lows of trans-contintenental travel and all its vicissitudes (?) I find myself, delivered from the hurly-burly of travel (Italy, Switzerland) back n Hessan (soon to be in Paris....the one in France), residing once again at the Schloss of Herr Graf, Count Alex von Ludwigshafen in the (now famous)Tannus region of Germany....in prep....wait a Mo!....I already mentioned Paree!
And here, you find me, in the early hours, drawn to the Schloss's cavenous kitchen, cooking up a famous Dave Delacroix Omelette, a.k.a. Myspace or Facebook.
I always thought it quite proper to give your Omelette a name; you can quote me!
The receipe (leastways, tonight) is thus: 1 egg
Pepper
Salt
Tomato-sliced thin
Bell pepper- ditto
BRIE - chunks!
Onion
Garlc
SCHINKENWURFEL
....in butter.
I think we ALWAYS agreed that "SCHINKENWURFEL" was thee secret ingredient to a "wholesome" Omelette on the basis that if "we" screwed it up on the stove top.... EGG Drop Noodle Soup, Goulash, or a complicated Curry would ensue?.... But then (yum-yum) I'm only quoting You!......:)
c. 2010, Usingen-at the Black Pearl, Gaby Bartending/ dave delacroix/our man in europe
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 13: Whale-Fish!
Part 13: Whale-Fish!
No one game is more under stated than the gentle, relaxing game of Bowls (Boules, Petanque). Forever big in France, I see my old Frieburger (German) friends have all grown into - what I thought was - ostensibly an old man´s pastime, chucking heavy metal (a clue?) balls around in a sand pit or barren patch of dusty ground.
CLONK. CLONK.
At the Freiburg GANTER Pilsner-beer, ´bier garten´, it´s positively a religious ritual.
CLONK. CLONK.
Here, several years ago, these guys would have been paralytically drunk, chasing Hilda, or, hungover, sipping jugs of milk, reading Wittgenstein, at the nearby bar, the WALFISCH (Whale-Fish), which, presently open, lies empty, with ceiling and walls studded with bones, skulls and the like; on the juke-box, the band Motorhead, probably, blasting to the people vacuum.
CLONK. CLONK.
But here, in the GANTER bier garten´s relative tranquility, the fast fading light of a Summer´s eve, gnats dancing under the elms by the banks of the Dreisam river, the lads, playing away, chucking those ball-missiles around, raises my own safety concern level...with every CLONK.
And yet, content with my beer and happy to be among old comrades, I surmise, people get old...or older, activities mellow, new wives, new - lesser intensive - lives. And having children, as some have, are always the great maturer, sometimes destroyer, especially of young provincial men´s lives and dreams.
...Thus I find (CLONK!) a tribe of friends whose raging youth, now ebbed, still clinging to the Pack, the Group. Some are rich, some, not so. Still the most intellectually provocative, are the financially challenged, who still talk well but need to collect our beer garden glasses for the return deposit at the distant garden bar... CLONK!!!
Still, it´s been a brilliant and idyllic German Breisgau Summer´s day, so I bid my ´adieu´s´ till we all meet later at the Heavy Metal bar of old, the Walfisch, and on departing the Bier Garten I - not quite unexpectedly - hear a loud CLONK, a loud piercing SCREAM and hue and cry.
An ambulance, with all it´s bells and whistles blaring, sirens past me before I even get 500 yards!
c. 2010. Freiburg I. Breisgau/ our man in europe/dave delacroix
No one game is more under stated than the gentle, relaxing game of Bowls (Boules, Petanque). Forever big in France, I see my old Frieburger (German) friends have all grown into - what I thought was - ostensibly an old man´s pastime, chucking heavy metal (a clue?) balls around in a sand pit or barren patch of dusty ground.
CLONK. CLONK.
At the Freiburg GANTER Pilsner-beer, ´bier garten´, it´s positively a religious ritual.
CLONK. CLONK.
Here, several years ago, these guys would have been paralytically drunk, chasing Hilda, or, hungover, sipping jugs of milk, reading Wittgenstein, at the nearby bar, the WALFISCH (Whale-Fish), which, presently open, lies empty, with ceiling and walls studded with bones, skulls and the like; on the juke-box, the band Motorhead, probably, blasting to the people vacuum.
CLONK. CLONK.
But here, in the GANTER bier garten´s relative tranquility, the fast fading light of a Summer´s eve, gnats dancing under the elms by the banks of the Dreisam river, the lads, playing away, chucking those ball-missiles around, raises my own safety concern level...with every CLONK.
And yet, content with my beer and happy to be among old comrades, I surmise, people get old...or older, activities mellow, new wives, new - lesser intensive - lives. And having children, as some have, are always the great maturer, sometimes destroyer, especially of young provincial men´s lives and dreams.
...Thus I find (CLONK!) a tribe of friends whose raging youth, now ebbed, still clinging to the Pack, the Group. Some are rich, some, not so. Still the most intellectually provocative, are the financially challenged, who still talk well but need to collect our beer garden glasses for the return deposit at the distant garden bar... CLONK!!!
Still, it´s been a brilliant and idyllic German Breisgau Summer´s day, so I bid my ´adieu´s´ till we all meet later at the Heavy Metal bar of old, the Walfisch, and on departing the Bier Garten I - not quite unexpectedly - hear a loud CLONK, a loud piercing SCREAM and hue and cry.
An ambulance, with all it´s bells and whistles blaring, sirens past me before I even get 500 yards!
c. 2010. Freiburg I. Breisgau/ our man in europe/dave delacroix
Saturday, September 4, 2010
OUR MAN in EUROPE/dave delacroix/Part 12: I am a Zimmermann
Part 12 : I am a Zimmermann
It would be remiss of me, having left Germany via Freiburg I. Breisgau and then travelling up and over the width of Switzerland not to write something of note....
In Frieburg, due to my all black clothes and Stevie Ray V. leather floppy hat, the locals confuse me with a Zimmermann,
"Das dar... ist ein Zimmermann!"
"Make way! Hier komt... ein Zimmermann!"....
(No. Weŕe not talking about Bob Dylan....and if you´re an idiot, please google, under "Z")
....Which, honestly, from a point of social respect, I quite enjoy... As...sometimes with a loaded wallet, sometimes NOT! -courtesy of those swines at Capitol One (Whatś in YOUR wallet?), this trip-holiday is punctuated by hairs and scares with ye olde Cap One Credit card...though, up to this point, not ruinously.
Zimmermanner are, of course, respected travelling Artisans as indeed. am I, so I enjoy the courtesy and recognition given by the German "cogniscenti", the Deutsche Dudette and Dudesters!
Freiburg (Freetown), established in the 1300´s as a free trade city. Even back then, I guess, there was a Ross Perot (Ross who?), olde world buildings, cobbled streets, "trad" German (Bavarian) restaurants (Schnitzel-City!) checkered with Shish-Kebab kiosks and a ZOO of streets musicians, buskers and entertainers, even a troop of Russian soldiers - in full uniform in the Summer heat - doing the Ruskie Cossack fandango!
Pur-leeze!...
My mind wanders... I´m supposed to be teaming up in Paris in October with my American Music-film crew...
Can y´all bring me some SELSIN BLUE anti-scalp-itch Shampoo...
Some Habernero Chillis...for my "on the road" curries...
And...remember that extra SAMSONITE "wheelie" bag I brought...full of prophylactics?
Well, so far?... Itś been a BUST!
2010, Sept. our man in europe/dave delacroix
It would be remiss of me, having left Germany via Freiburg I. Breisgau and then travelling up and over the width of Switzerland not to write something of note....
In Frieburg, due to my all black clothes and Stevie Ray V. leather floppy hat, the locals confuse me with a Zimmermann,
"Das dar... ist ein Zimmermann!"
"Make way! Hier komt... ein Zimmermann!"....
(No. Weŕe not talking about Bob Dylan....and if you´re an idiot, please google, under "Z")
....Which, honestly, from a point of social respect, I quite enjoy... As...sometimes with a loaded wallet, sometimes NOT! -courtesy of those swines at Capitol One (Whatś in YOUR wallet?), this trip-holiday is punctuated by hairs and scares with ye olde Cap One Credit card...though, up to this point, not ruinously.
Zimmermanner are, of course, respected travelling Artisans as indeed. am I, so I enjoy the courtesy and recognition given by the German "cogniscenti", the Deutsche Dudette and Dudesters!
Freiburg (Freetown), established in the 1300´s as a free trade city. Even back then, I guess, there was a Ross Perot (Ross who?), olde world buildings, cobbled streets, "trad" German (Bavarian) restaurants (Schnitzel-City!) checkered with Shish-Kebab kiosks and a ZOO of streets musicians, buskers and entertainers, even a troop of Russian soldiers - in full uniform in the Summer heat - doing the Ruskie Cossack fandango!
Pur-leeze!...
My mind wanders... I´m supposed to be teaming up in Paris in October with my American Music-film crew...
Can y´all bring me some SELSIN BLUE anti-scalp-itch Shampoo...
Some Habernero Chillis...for my "on the road" curries...
And...remember that extra SAMSONITE "wheelie" bag I brought...full of prophylactics?
Well, so far?... Itś been a BUST!
2010, Sept. our man in europe/dave delacroix
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