Best Keep Secrets of Austria - Spring Comes in Phases

"The little windflower, 

whose just opened eye is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at."

William C. Bryant

Antonio Vivaldi - "The Right of Spring - Allegro"

Growing up in Australia, the seasons we learnt about didn't quite apply as explained in the textbooks with the information borrowed from the English school system. Unless you were in Tasmania and the cooler areas of the country, the four seasons were not obvious. We kept the four seasons, in reverse from the Northern Hemisphere by date, despite the fact that the weather failed to shape up to the labels. Depending where you were in the Antipodes, there could be more than four seasons in a year and the variations in temperature could be subtle or extreme.

In Austria, the seasons are very much as I learnt, even though they don’t happen all at once, or by date, there are obviously four of them. In the “wild” and uncultivated areas, spring occurs slowly and in phases. There can also be a variance throughout the country, when it commences. It starts in the valleys and the sheltered places and slowly moves upwards, with the thaw, into the mountains. The cultivated gardens found in country and urban areas are different story of spring.

The Butterfly Hours ~ #01 Contemplation

 
 
 
 
 
"What's a butterfly garden without butterflies?"

Roy Rogers 

Lizzy Sider - "Butterfly"

About a month ago, I decided it was time to visit the Schmetterlinghaus (the Imperial Butterfly House), located in the Burggarten, Vienna. The last time I went was a number of years ago. The Schmetterlinghaus is located a part of a gloriously large greenhouse structure called the Palmenhaus.  This visit was initially to take some photographs.

Once I arrived, the visit, not unlike a caterpillar, metamorphosed into something quite different. It became a butterfly hour of profound contemplation on the beauty of truth in love. Growing up with my Father, I learnt the value of being truthful, as it was so important to his sense of ethics, how he behaved as a parent and a friend.

I realised, what I subconsciously always knew, but like most children failed to recognise, that my Father was one of those rare individuals that handled his family, friends and the wider world without deceit. He dealt with life in complete openness, truth and free from illusionary masks. I now understand this is why we successfully survived as a family unit of three. Father taught my sister and me, the value of truth through the profound love of his family. He showed us that love does not deceive, but deals only in truth when we truly care.

The Circus is Coming to Town!

  
Logo courtesy of Roncalli 

"The attraction of the virtuoso for the public
 is very like that of the circus for the crowd. 
There is always the hope that something dangerous will happen."

Claude Debussy 

Julius Fucik - "Entry Of The Gladiators"

I haven't been to the circus since I was a kid. I am not sure whether my Dad took me that last time. I know I was with him the first time I saw a circus. Dad always arranged tickets through one of the clubs he where he was a member. That last time he may have organised a group of tickets for friends with kids. My baby sister and I may have gone with them Most of the Dads would go the club and wait it out until the show was finished. Each year he would arrange for us to go to these summer events, while the clubs still offered them.

This was when we lived in Australia. In those days, it was a thrill for kids to go to the circus, as it was a rarity in the cities and the country. A once a year chance, for something “exotic” besides the shows, regattas and rodeos, to found annually in the country towns and the big city. The circuses generally had exotic animals that shouldn’t have been performing in captivity, kept in always sad and sometimes bad conditions. Reflecting on it now, I can only imagine the stress and sadness these animals must have endured, to delight and make us human kids, as well as the human adults, smile, laugh or gawk in awe, at their performances.

"The Gloves are off!" - Round #01: Abandoned

"You are hurt and worn out"

Ayumi Hamasaki 

Goyte and Fourth Floor Collapse - "Worn Out Blues"

"The Gloves are off!", at least in Gersthof, the area of Vienna where I live. Wandering from my apartment to the local transport junction, has taken an intriguing turn in the last few months. Major trackwork, on the tramlines, has been going on and will continue until the end of September.  I touched on the work in a previous essay, titled "Nuts in May".

The photographic opportunities afforded by this work to shoot some intriguing and offbeat photo studies has been overwhelming. I could be writing on a variety of topics and sharing the better photos for months on this trackwork. The photos above, of work gloves caught my attention on different days and in different places.

Worn-out and abandoned, the pair in the first photo, shot on a rainy day, were left laying on a section of bare tracks undergoing work. For more than a week, I passed this pair, unmoving and undisturbed, exactly how they were first shot. During this time, I contemplated a number of scenarios for their abandonment - the sad, the bad and the ugly. They finally disappeared when the area was cleaned, as the final work, for that section, went ahead and the plinths, between the sections of track, were put back into place.

Best Keep Secrets of Austria – The Secret of the Giant Leporidae

 
 
 
 
 

Albrecht Dürer's "Young Hare" 1503

Image: Wikipedia

"What beauty is, I know not, 
though it adheres to many things.."

Albrecht Dürer 

Simon & Garfunkel - Bright Eyes

I was wandering through Vienna during the middle of July, while heading towards the Burggarten on a photographic mission (more on that in a number of future blog essays). I decided to go along a side street of the State Opera House, when my eyes caught sight of something totally unexpected. Sitting on top of the most famous Bitzinger Würstelstand, located below the Albertina Museum and across from the Opera house was a supersized green bunny.

Austrians like to enjoy themselves with some rather strong or numerous enlightening liquids and some have been known to see some odd things. Being stone cold sober and spying this ginormous green bunny was a surprise, and delight, to me. I couldn’t help taking a few shots of the bunny sitting in all his elegance on top of this famous Würstelstand.

The Narcissistic Foxes

The Narcissistic Foxes

The narcissistic fox pair like to cunningly plan to slyly cheat,
Traversing to opportunistic events, to secretly and illicitly meet,
The French fox blissfully polishes and grooms plans for the days,
When the Canadian vixen will joyfully abandon her faithful family.
They seek each to bask and reflect in their mutual mirrored pond,
Their plans made with detailed care do really lack class, finesse or flare.

Off to Chicago where bloomers collectively did at a party play,
They cheated first mid-year for closer to a week than a short day
The narcissistic vixen’s family forgotten dismissively and  without a care.
Then while autumn was on the rise again they met to prance as together,
Those sly narcissistic foxes along those sandy shores of Vancouver Bay
With seagulls in flight bearing witness to their deceitfully cunning ways.

Then  early in the year bloggers once more collectively did met,
In New York providing the foxes once more the opportunity  to cheat,
And to plan next to meet in April when the vixen painted head to toe,
Flitted off to Paris again for a slyly planned deceitful adulteress tryst
I have been told, where for all to see that boldly reflected in glass,
Are she and he, that sly cunningly audacious narcissistic fox pair.

Where next will opportunity lead for their meetings of narcissistic lust,
And to abandon  family at home with ever that misguided sense of trust,
Will it be where bloggers choose to collectively to meet in San Jose or NYC,
Perhaps closer to home somewhere nearer to Toronto or a lake maybe?
Wherever it be, I am sure the narcissistic foxes have already slyly planned
The moments when they will once more meet for cunningly illicit trysts.

© W. Heron, 2014

Confessions #02: That 4th of July 1994 Cup of Coffee

 
 
"Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, 
the first often tasting like the second."

Edward Abbey 

Frank Sinatra - "The Coffee Song"

Yes, yet another confession, with a variety of more in the offing. Confession is good for the soul, they say and the truth will free you! Yesterday it was paperwork, today something totally different to confess. From the title and picture you have already gleaned it has to do with coffee.

The Beatles sang the number “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” from their album of the same name, released in 1967. The first two lines of that number were, “It was twenty years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play”. Well today I have been contemplating the tune's first two lines with mediocre words of my own, “It was twenty years ago today, that I gave coffee drinking away!” Yes, twenty years ago today. The 4th of July 1994, was my last cup of coffee, two full decades ago.

Confessions #01: Paperwork

"We can lick gravity, 
but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."

Wernher von Braun 

Cyndi Lauper - "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"  

Oh the infamy! Yes, it is confession time. From the title it is obvious what the subject of this confession is. Something everyone loathes and hates, unless they are totally nuts. From the picture you can see what I have been putting off my paperwork. This is just the tip of the iceberg,

So how the hell did it get to this state of affairs? Well I don’t need to file tax returns. I do not pay taxes to the government, due to my particular place of gainful employment. Now before you get manically excited, wanting to know exactly where I work, and how does one find employment there, I do pay an internal assessment. This assessment is equivalent to a tax. It contributes in a round-about way to what my country would pay as part of its’ global commitment to the organisation where I work.

Just Ducky! No Ducks but a Lone Bachelor Drake

"Be like a duck. 
Calm on the surface, 
but always paddling 
like the dickens underneath."

Michael Caine 

Rick Wackeman's instumental - "Ducks and Drakes"

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got my first indication that summer was truly underway. A personal tradition that began way back in 2008. Back then I shot a photo the first one of a pair of ducks, swimming on the pond/fountain at the complex where I work. I say pond/fountain as because it is so big I am never sure, even with the water spouts, whether it is one or the other. You could even describe it as a pool. If they didn't empty it for winter, it would make a jolly good skating rink. If they failed to empty it, it would crack from the expanding water as it froze.

Days of Wine, Roses...and Therapy. An Incredible Journey

"They are not long, the days of wine and roses."

Ernest Dowson 

Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass - "Days of Wine and Roses"  

Journeys are roads to awareness on many plains. Most have purposes. Some are for fun; some are for illicit acts, full of deceit; some are to catch up with family and friends; some are for business; while others may have a deep therapeutic purpose.

I undertake a special journey regularly, to a nice area of Austria to undertake an exploration into the influences that have shaped my development, my subsequent choices and life effecting decisions. These journeys, take me to a peaceful environment. The therapeutic journeys started a year ago, and were decades overdue.