going Bezirk

Oh, I would very much like this to be the hallway I walk down at the end of each long, long Staatsoper day.

I may not have to work endlessly here forever, but I certainly will have to in the first few seasons. It isn't just that there are so many performances. I need to show up for my colleagues. They need to know: die Chefin ist da. Sie hoert zu, sie merkt was: she's listening, she's paying attention. She cares about what happens here. Talk and email all you want, what matters is presence.

My heart breaks a little as I type that...

So I made an offer today on an apartment. The picture is of the entrance hall (check out the ceilings!) The apartment is cute and clean and small but not too small for visitors. The district is beautiful and the streetcar is near and goes right to the opera house. The Donaukanal is a few blocks away and the new farmers' market is close.

I can imagine starting my days here, returning to this lovely place at the end of my long work, and walking down to the street on my day off to sip coffee and start exploring.

Maybe our offer will be accepted, maybe not, but I'm one step closer to it: zu hause in Wien.

dkz

viel zu heiss

Ich sitze und schwitze hier im Hotel! Last week, a certain website, and by "certain" I mean "Satan's own weather(dot)com", mentioned that it might soar into the high seventies here in Vienna. Exactly one week ago in Vienna, the high was 60 degrees. Wow! I packed an umbrella and tights. TIGHTS! In case it was chilly in the evening! Now I'd kind of like to use those tights to slowly close off some forecaster's airflow as the temperature gaily heads over NINETY for the third day in a row. I admire the Europeans as they eschew air-conditioning, but on the other hand I am a weak little American about to start crying for my own meat locker to sleep in. There is an orchestra rehearsal of Tannhaueser this afternoon in the uncooled theater, starting at 2 pm. Whimper.

The weather is perfect for day five of the trip: oppressive, overwhelming, makes me want to take a nap (in the aforementioned meat locker). Now I've been here long enough to run into all the big city problems. Apartment hunting, building relationships at work, everything will take longer that I wish. At this point I must begin fighting off my usual demon, who in such cases hisses into my ear that things need to happen even faster than I planned. You know the one or two big lies that your head will always tell you? That's my best one.

So far I'd say I'm doing OK with what Thich Naht Hahn calls "smiling to your fear" - I just love that phrase and that image. You hold your fear in your arms like a child and smile at it lovingly - oh, little fear (or anger, or impulse to burst into tears in the Kantine, or desire to strangle the weather guy with your tights), aren't you sweet, don't you need love and attention! It's such a compassionate way to view the foibles of one's individual hardwiring.

So my fear is in my arms, I promise not to strangle it with my tights or anything else. I'll sweat through this day and try to remember that cooler weather will come. Och wenns jetz viel zua häääss iss.

dkz

mezzo (o soprano) del cammin

We  picked the single cheesiest place to sit on the Kaerntnerstrasse today, right at the edge of the Hotel Sacher outdoor tables where every camera-toting tourist and opera-bound Wiener/in could watch us eating things mit Schlagobers (Mom, if you're reading this? Vienna is where people who love whipped cream like you do go when they die). We only had an hour before her rehearsal began, so the intake of both dessert and information began in earnest. It was wonderful to catch up with a long-time friend at the top of her game in the central city of our profession. It was even more wonderful to see her happy and settled at this point in her life.

Friends have written me in the last week to give me props for the big transition, and I do appreciate the support. However, although nothing probably equals (emotionally) the thrilling and terrifying bungee jump from adolescence into adulthood, isn't middle age nothing but big transition? Now our own kids are doing the bungee jump - and our parents are doing acrobatics toward territory even more mysterious. Those of us not yet frail but no longer cluelessly vital are finding our bodies and minds shifting, not imperceptibly at all. Usually we don't say much, because of the kids and the parents, but also because of the friends who are free-falling through illness or job loss or job change or divorce or something they could/could not imagine. The big transitions that we get to choose are privileges. Sogni, lampi, giuochi.

I took big unabashed spoonfuls of cream and talked with my friend as we remembered some hard roads and relished this beautiful and easy time. Then I followed her to her rehearsal where she sang in perfect octaves with the mezzo, and the chorus answered in a slightly Viennese-accented whisper, and I walked out into the waning sunlight blessed by every single part of my life.

dkz

Eine kleine Quatschmusik

Instructions for your visit to the Wiener Staatsoper:

1. the stage door "entrance" on Von-Karajan-Platz is locked most of the time. If you try and use it on Sunday after the children's matinee, try also to remember that it's locked before you let the door behind you (also locked) close.  If you do end up trapped in the small airless space in between the two doors, pound on the sturdy glass and rattle the inner door without fear. The alarm won't go off, and there's someone in the Garderobe who will hear you after a bit.

2. Remember that the matinee is based on a well-known and -beloved Austrian children's book. The following will therefore only be shocking to you, and not others:
        - the mother of one of the characters has cancer
        -the servants (one evil, one heroic) are completely dispensable and simply disappear at the end
        -the opera has a message about sharing, but the whole cast ends by singing a song about one of the kids' games, which is about discovering America, in which they get in a conga line and do an Indian "whoop-whoop-whoop" war cry complete with hand gestures, and stick feathers in their wigs. They opine that "we" should all share just like "the Indians" "shared" the potato with "us". Resist the urge to tell anybody about how well that actually worked out.

3. After lunch with the unbelievably cool friends-of-friends that you only know from Facebook, as you are praising the modern age in your head while walking down the gorgeous streets, avoid having too crazy a comedown when you go to the beautifully cast Wagner opera with the laughable production and screamingly bad conductor. Resist making jokes about the conductor although he looks exactly like Brahms and takes longer to walk to the podium than Brahms would if he was raised from the dead this very day and yes that would include the short stroll from his grave to the Staatsoper. For he will surprise you with his fleet, no, SPEEDY conducting of all orchestral music from this piece. If the fast pace of the grail theme is distressing, wait for the singers to come in, when everything from the pit will become slow and late. Regulate your breathing and sense of place in the world by watching the concertmaster fix this situation 75% of the time, occasionally fail, temporarily cease trying out of pique, then begin trying again due to the greatness of the music. When the poison yellow bunny statue appears, remember that custom demands you wait for the supers dressed as huge white gryphons and owls with neon tulips to come out during Elsa's procession to the cathedral before pleading jet lag and going home.

        4. No fewer than three Viennese women will reprimand you for draping your leg over the side of the easy chair as you type this blog entry in the lobby. This is normal, and you have to admit that es geht nicht. 


dkz

Arrival

I asked the Staatsoper portier this morning how long it had been sunny and gorgeous in Vienna, and he replied "seit halb zehn" - since 9:30. I've heard yesterday was lovely too, but evidently winter lasted right up until Thursday night. Today was crazy beautiful, however, the irresistible sun surrounded by unreasonable blue, everyone outside in shorts and skirts and tank tops and sandals, eating ice cream and taking pictures and getting sunburned and having brunch outside. I did that too, having strolled in triumphantly from the airport (pride checklist: easy conversation in German with a stranger on the train, strolling to my hotel with no map). The warm sun helped keep me awake through breakfast (the butter! the egg with the rich golden yolk! the grosser brauner! the tangy cottage cheese and tomatoes!). Then back to the hotel for one of those disorienting naps before Eugene Onegin. First there were reunions: unexpected, with a longtime Met colleague and a few singers, and expected, with beautiful SS who had Dienst up in the company box, where I sat.

It was a good performance. The orchestra is just mind-bending on a night like this, all impossibly warm strings and pristine winds, horns like a sound directly from someone's heart and mind. KP conducted with a light, lithe hand, and for the first time in my limited experience, there were no balance issues. The cast was mostly good, with several ensemble singers giving impressive performances, and with the great FF stopping time in his aria.

In the seat I'll occupy so often in the next three years, directly above stage left, I have a compromised view of the stage but a remarkable view of the house, and I had to keep myself from too often staring openly out at my fellow audience members. Hey, everybody, I wanted to say. For the first time, that room began to feel like home.

dkz

under the rocks and stones

Stop #1 on the OMG Look At The Blessings tour was reached yesterday after travel that begged to be a metaphor in this entry but was probably just travel. I had to check my beautifully packed carry-on bag because there was no room left in the overheads (because no one wants to pay for checking their bags and IT'S LIKE THE GODDAMN GRAPES OF WRATH...um, anyway). We started late in bad weather, enjoying turbulence all the way from IAH to PHI that halted beverage service and made it impossible to read. I massaged my thumb and tried to stay with the discomfort. We landed late, 15 minutes before my connecting flight, which was in a turboprop, which I hate, and I ran all the way there. However! The short hop to LGA featured a spectacular sunset through the calming yet still dramatic clouds. There were Germans sitting next to me and we had a fun, shouty (hello, turboprop) Unterhaltung. And at the airport, there was my bag!

On to the Astoria apartment of TR, Cookbook editor and webgoddess. TR sang in the first opera I ever played. Arizona State, the Reagan years: she was a talented undergraduate and I was accidentally playing rehearsals out of a need for cash. I had to learn Cosi fan tutte in some crazy short amount of time, and after locking myself in a small room to be ravished by Wolfgang and Lorenzo, I was forever changed. TR and I lost touch with each other after school, but life in NY brought us back together (like it does). We have a great serendipitous/random/surprising web of connecting artist friends (like you do), and we checked up on most of them as I devoured a plate of her signature roast lamb with a salt potato, perfect salad, and a cucumber soup shooter. Extra bonus surprise friend MS was there too, as was TR's superhero husband when he came home late from his cool job making bad television. That, my friends, is a bona fide travel day.

Six hours of dead sleep later, I was wide awake on my Aerobed, wishing for more shuteye but knowing there'd be none since, oh, I'm flying to Austria today. So I'm up drinking TR's heavenly coffee and writing out at another serendipitous/random/surprising web of connecting friends. Good morning/Gruess' Gott. It's a beautiful sunny morning in Astoria, and it was beautiful to see the Manhattan skyline come into view last night, and it is heart-opening to sit in my friend's living room surrounded by all the parts of a New York life.


time isn't holding us
time isn't after us
same as it ever was
same as it ever was

dkz

makin' copies

Today I went for a walk in my new shoes. That isn't a metaphor. I have new shoes. Luke's Locker, people - limp there for the fitting of your life. I just ran a mile without heel pain!

This week, things get checked off the list fast, the last grains flying through the slim neck of the hourglass: coffee with AO, doc appointment, an afternoon at the office bogarting the copy machine and hopefully taking some girls out for ice cream, and a highly anticipated dinner with DH and LW, newly minted Pollan freaks (this bodes well).

Some of the many things I'll copy this afternoon are census reports from Ancestry.com, things I want to take home to my family and in-laws as conversation starters (more on that later - there are some interesting mysteries to be solved!). This was a generally weepy weekend, so take what's coming with a grain of teary salt - but I found myself unexpectedly and deeply moved by the early 20th-century census reports from Milford Township, MN, and Mount Pleasant, PA. There on a few sheets of paper in neat (MN) or scrawling (PA) handwriting, the future lies in wait, my four-year-old grandmother on the farm and her six-year-old husband-to-be in town, other children who will become connected in wonderful and terrible ways.

The enormity of our move from Texas to Austria is hitting home, but when I look at these ancient documents, I realize that it's all transition, all the time.

dkz