Hog Mountain

To this mountain, which was on land known as Colonel Jonathan Ward’s grant, the Allens and others from Deerfield and vicinity used to drive their hogs every spring as they termed it “to shuck,” there being a great many beechnuts growing there-a-bouts. In the fall, when the owners came after them, there was found a great increase in numbers as well as in quality.

—The History of Buckland, Massachusetts 1779-1935,
Fanny Shaw Kendrick

From: Don Wheeler
Subject: krankenyankin
Date: September 29, 2004 12:59:23 PM EDT
To: Otis Wheeler

Yo hoe!

I thought it time to make some fatherly recommendations. Do you have a snorkel if the lake behind you rises suddenly? Be careful crossing the Autobahn. Have you been eating enough dessert? If you turn your clothes inside out, maybe you can get a couple more day's wearing out of them. Back to the rising lake––do you think fish notice relative humidity? Have you heard them say, boy, it's muggy; or downright clammy today, eh? Is there anyone fishing about those areas nearby, if so, what do they catch? How fast do the streetcars go? What about nude beaches? How's the beer? Are you taking your penicillin stuff?

We got a check from UMASS I.P. today for US$1325 bucks, I will deposit tomorrow in your account. Great!

Love you, Dad

Cowboy boots, hungover, riding a bicycle.
Idiot doesn’t begin to describe.

You’ll ask yourself, what don’t the Germans pickle?
Rice and potatoes is not the answer.

Wearing cowboy boots, walking down cobblestone streets.
Idiot.

Freiburg is known for its Bächle, miniature streams that run parallel to many sidewalks. Despite how many public restrooms dot the city, the temptation to urinate in the Bächle is great, but doing so brings a curse. The worst curse of all, however, comes from stepping in the Bächle: whoever does so, they say, must marry a woman born in Freiburg. Achtung!

Natural Features

While there are no great elevations in Buckland, the natural features are varied and pleasing, the surface rock-ribbed and rugged.

—The History of Buckland, Massachusetts 1779-1935,
Fanny Shaw Kendrick

Crossing the Rhine by ferry. The water here in Basel is as greenish-blue as Bissier painted it (Fähre in Basel, 1928), but the sky is exclusively blue. In Europe, cranes tower over buildings, and the skyline is full of them. At the Messeplatz, the tallest building in Switzerland doesn’t equal the height of two cranes. The public restrooms are fully automated, and hose themselves down after every use. Mothers dress like daughters, girls like women, and a clothing store doubles as a café. Paying for my beer is an ordeal; the waiter speaks in Swiss-German, and I understand a word at most. Exasperated, I put my money on the table and let him take what he needs: an outrageous amount, I think.

So, this is Switzerland. I feel so neutral.

See a ’77 punk and his dog wear matching dog collars. The punks don’t bathe, and neither do their dogs, and while some of them panhandle, one girl sells ice cream out of her bag as if by magic. All the punks have dogs, but some have puppies, and the puppies, looking their toughest, trying hard not to wag their tails, seem to say, that’s right, I don’t give a shit.

Asians going to the computer lab together like girls to the bathroom.

The clothes worn in Wim Wenders’ False Movement reveal things about the characters as often as they conceal them. Wilhelm, the protagonist, dresses like novelist Peter Handke, who wrote the screenplay. The poet, however, dresses like a poet but resembles a butcher, because he reads poetry as if he were wielding a cleaver. The homeless Nazi dresses like your grandfather but just looks like a homeless Nazi. Hanna Schygulla dresses like a coloring book that hasn’t been filled in yet, and Nastassja Kinski dresses like one that has. Objectively, Schygulla was the most beautiful woman in Germany at the time, and Kinski was the most beautiful girl. “You’re revolting when you’re silent,” Wilhelm tells Schygulla. Wilhelm, however, is revolting when he speaks. “Your objective pose is ridiculous,” Schygulla said to him earlier in the film. Sometimes, I try to act objectively, but I only end up acting like someone in a Richard Linklater film. Nastassja Kinski’s character has no concept of objectivity; she’s a thirteen year old mute who can’t juggle. Her grandfather, or whatever he is to her, is a Nazi. She’s the best thing about False Movement. I liked the film immediately, because its story begins on a train, and I like movies with trains in them. I even liked Before Sunrise (I was fourteen at the time). But when I saw Before Sunset, thinking I was going to see Before Sunrise, a film I didn’t remember, not realizing there was a sequel, I kept waiting for there to be trains, and I was disappointed when there weren’t, but I enjoyed it, because I laughed at the characters. Their objective poses were ridiculous. I know people like that; I laugh at them too. And Julie Delpy is right, Ethan Hawke really does have a funny wrinkle between his eyebrows.

I’d write a novel on Lohan’s thighs, if one wasn’t already written in freckles on her back.

A city without bustle. It won’t tolerate hurry.

The contrarian in me rushes to and fro.

Freiburg: where UMass students come to experience Germany. Where Germans go to retire.

Like experiencing Europe through Legos.

Among other things, Hilla Rebay was the Guggenheim’s first director. She assembled the beginnings of their collection, and was the one who asked Frank Lloyd Wright to design the now famous building by Central Park. Inside Freiburg’s Museum für Neue Kunst, looking at an exhibition of lithographs by Rebay, what I remember most about my first visit to the Guggenheim is listening to David Sylvian’s Blemish on my iPod, and timing the length of my visit to the duration of the album: just under forty-five minutes. Outside, it rained, and my red leather bag got wet, the raindrops sure to make its color fade. In his memoirs, Max Frisch called the Guggenheim “an impossible museum,” but I disagree. So much of the time, art is the only thing on exhibit at museums; at the Guggenheim, people too are on display. I like to watch people and, looking at Rebay’s women, I get the feeling she did too. “There she is among her children / full of paintings,” Sylvian sang, over Derek Bailey’s guitar. “Going round and round the houses / full of paintings, full of pictures.” Once, I almost bought an LP on which Bailey plays and Min Tanaka dances. What an idea, to dance on record! Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, goes the old line, as if someone dancing about architecture wouldn’t be a wonderful sight to see!

Oh, god, what an artsy-fartsy place, says Robert when he learns that my hometown is Shelburne Falls. German has no word for the English homesickness. Closest is the phrase heimat sehnsucht: longing for, or literally, searching for the sight of, one’s homeland. I see Shelburne in the farm land outside Freiburg but not within the the city itself. If Shelburne Falls were bigger, it might, like Freiburg, be described as idyllic, and that would make it unbearable to me. Wim Wenders notes a problem with cities that “do not permit neglect”: they have the quality of a museum. Eighty percent of Freiburg was burned to the ground during the second world war; so much of it was rebuilt in the same style, though, that I can’t help feeling they would do well to raze it all over again, excepting, perhaps, the city’s greatest attraction, the Münster, which is made out of sandstone: so it’s constantly crumbling.

The Buckland-Shelburne Falls Bridges

In 1818 there were twelve houses on the Shelburne and three on the Buckland side of the river, and a record states that at that date a very crude boat was being used for crossings. This boat was about three feet wide, twenty feet long and hollowed out of a pine tree. As was the custom of the times, when a person wished to cross the river, he would go to the water’s edge, and if the boat was on the opposite shore, call, “Hello, the Boat!” It then became the duty of anyone who heard the call, no matter how busy he might be, to cross the river, and get the passenger.

—The History of Buckland, Massachusetts 1779-1935,
Fanny Shaw Kendrick

Here in Freiburg, it’s possible to rent a cable car for parties. Like seemingly everywhere in Germany, one can drink and smoke on it. It’s called der Partywagen, or party car. Tonight, a soccer team has rented one, and their train stops in the middle of the city’s biggest intersection, presumably so that we may observe the great time they’re having. Three hours later, the train’s passengers show up at an Irish pub. Whatever they’re singing, it doesn’t appear to contain consonants. Their shirts announce them as Junggesellen: bachelors.

One who travels to make up for never changing as a person. Travel as substitute for character; stories to tell in place of things to say.

The uneasiness that comes from things not going perfectly. In this case, it comes from forgetting my sunglasses.

My flight is overbooked and so the airline offers hotel accommodations and $800 in travel fare to whoever will volunteer to wait for the next available flight. The pilot immediately raises his hand.