Vienna 3

June 5, 2014

Ordered Schnitzel without knowing what it was. Not only did I not like it, but it was the largest portion of anything I have ever been served, overlapping the plate around all the rim. The waiter gave be a bag to take it home in.

Viennese beggars are aggressive and do not, like some others, go to the bother of actually looking like they need a hand-out. I am an exceptional target because I am alone.

Dreams last night that had to do with disguising property so that people won’t want to take it, and then of a great tree falling on 62. I dreamed of a great crack in the wall, then woke and saw it is a vine climbing the wall of my ventilator shaft.

Went to the Jewish Museum, but didn’t go in, because the first thing you see is guns, and you imagine from that all that’s coming. Was shortchanged in a famous café across the street.

Made my way to the Leopold, where I felt immediate and profound harmony with the great figures of the Secession, especially Klimt, who, it turns out, painted a lot more things than decadent gilded women, and all those paintings are more interesting. My own painting is, by intuition, Secessionist. Made my way from there to the Secessionist building surmounted by the dome called locally the Golden Cabbage. The Beethoven Frieze is unspeakably wonderful. Walked and walked, stopped often to drink. Great pain in my legs, sometimes, but it went away when I stretched or sat down, so I kept moving. Crossed the Donau Canal as the half moon rode in the sky. One block from this spot is the liveliest place in Vienna, and I didn’t know it until an hour ago. Crossed the water and came back, and on this side watched a huge brown spider repairing her web by moonlight. She was the best. She was the Beethoven Frieze. She made me happy.

I leave Vienna tomorrow. All last nights are fully of the melancholy of what might have been. Might as well lie back and enjoy it.