the Great? Outdoors

One of my colleagues is also a male American knucklehead married to an Austrian woman. We sometimes share a bitter laugh over our wives inscrutable ways. Both his and mine believe in fresh air and wilderness expeditions on Sundays. I believe in padding around in slippers and pajamas for as much of the weekend as possible.

I was thinking about him Sunday as we were putting on our hiking boots and checking the train timetables. The weather was gorgeous, so it was hard for me to argue for padding around. Anette suggested we take a trip to the old village of Hainburg.

On the train, Adinah and I drew pictures, while V. got bored, got screamy, then got asleep. Anette is always so patient. Outside our windows, Vienna waned into farm fields and lonely mills under a warm winter sun.

In Hainburg, we saw ten minutes worth of town, and forty-five minutes worth of playground. Adinah laughed and laughed, but I think the merry-go-round gives V. the creeps: too much dizzy-spinningness.

After awhile, we started down the inevitable hiking path along the Danube. (I like hiking, really I do, but I prefer that someone does it for me. Or at least brings nachos and beer.) It wasn't too bad. Until Anette said, 'Let's play hide and seek.' I groaned. For the rest of the walk, the girls would periodically run ahead, tuck themselves behind a scraggly bush or a tiny tree, and I would have to pretend I didn't see them. Then they would jump out and "scare" me. That was ghastly.

There we were walking a beautiful piece of river, goofing off on one of the rare sunny January afternoons in Austria. But I was drowning in a sea of cantankerousness, my friends. Actually, I was just hungry. After we stopped and ate some salami and bread, I was better.

We walked to the edge of a marsh, and broke off chunks of the ice sheets in the shallows. Then we threw them out onto the frozen river, and watched them break into ice cubes. All the girls "oohed" and "ahhed" and giggled.

Then we turned around and headed back to Hainburg. As we reached the quiet edge of the village, I looked around at the train trestles and the empty streets. I was hit by a sudden wave of longing for the US, for America, for my home. Sometimes I think I won't be able to make it here for much longer. Sometimes it feels like a long dream, and I wonder what's happened to me. Sometimes I just want to be back in the land I know, the one I understand with my eyes and all my senses and my body.

I don't know where this ache comes from so suddenly--is it always in me? I don't know how long I will feel this way. Somehow I still can't believe I'm going to live in this strange old place for the rest of my life.

Then the wave passed. I started taking pictures of the strange old place. 'Wow, that looks funny.' Hey, isn't that cute and medieval!' Click-whirr-snap.

So it goes.

It's On

Judging from the headlines here, a lot of Austrians, and Europeans in general, are excited about the 44th President of the United States. After his election, one glossy magazine put Obama on the cover with the words "Die Hoffnung der Welt" (the Hope of the World.) This morning, Heute, the conservative tabloid given away free in the subways(and swallowed whole by a frightening number of straphangers), called its front page story on the Inauguration "Stark, cool, gut (Strong, Cool, Good.)

Is that a time-warped reference to TLC, or is it just me? "Crazy, sexy, cool"? I don't care--I think seeing headlines like this here is Alright, Uptight and Outta Sight.

Americans, Austrians, Africans and everyone in-between celebrated the swearing-in at a half dozen big parties across Vienna. Even though I was still woozly from a case of food poisoning (!), I brought my American-Austrian-African family to the rumpus on the Badeschiff. A friend helped throw the party for her organization, Democrats Abroad; the Badeschiff is a barge (moored on the Danube Canal) with a pool and transvestite DJs. As soon as we stepped inside, I was bumping up against every American I do and do not know in this city. Their moods ran the gamut from magnanimous to giddy.

The place was packed. I heard a 'Hi, Pat!' and someone was shaking my hand before I'd turned around to see who it was. The last time I'd seen this former colleague, she was practically hissing, as she told me what a terrible boss I was! Later, a fellow teacher from Webster University was standing next to me and almost blew a gasket as she belted out "The Star-Spangled Banner." The three African women on the other side of us were all beaming, sitting on a tabletop, sitting on top of the world. I even ran into an American lady who I'd met in line at Caritas (the Austrian Salvation Army) just last weekend. The Badeschiff was stinking with embassy officials, diplomats, NGO folk, UN thugs and ex-pats. I had a good time.

The girls too. Though Anette almost cried several times during Obama's speech. Adinah was asking a million questions: like many observers from the past two hundred years, she was particularly puzzled about the role of the Vice President.

V. just wanted more pretzel sticks.

It still didn't (doesn't) feel real to me. I almost lost it when Aretha sang. But that (and that hat) was just another level of surreality. The gigantitude of the moment is hard to express.

The entertainment at the party was several huge screens showing the live CNN feed of the inauguration, against which a few unfortunate live onstage human musicians were competing. As I tried to make sure Adinah and V. didn't tumble off their bar stools, I stared at images of the Mall in Washington DC, a place that evokes bittersweet memories in me. I've never liked DC. Too many politicians live there. And it's full of people who believe in the government. Since the Gulf War, I've only been to DC, and to the Mall, to protest. To march and chant and holler and sing out against the crimes of pro-life assassins and anti-Muslim presidents. Almost eight years ago, on my fortieth birthday, Anette and I went there to protest the invasion of Iraq. At the time, most of my best, most leftest friends thought I was crazy to question Bush/Cheney's War on Terror. The President called us enemies of the State, and a lot of really scared Americans agreed with him. So I remember the Mall as a place where we were always allowed to parade, but never to be heard.

But on Inauguration Night, my twisted-up brain tried to look at the Mall like it was a new place. Was it, on this grand day, still ground zero for the politics of deafness? Or could it really now be a place, again, of ideals and clear vision?

* * *

The next morning, Osterreich, the other tabloid given away free in the U-bahn here, published a tiny photo of Adinah and I at the Badeschiff party. I look bemused, and she, in her "Obama's in the House: 1-20-2009" t-shirt, looks beautiful.

Free @ Last

This is the picture that got to me. To see the Reverend Jesse Jackson crying as Barack Obama became our President was to know--instantly, wordlessly--how much this election means to people, and how different it is from the selections which preceded it.

People often use giant metaphors when they talk about the US, but usually language like this reminds me of a terrible old fifties sci-fi movie. I see the US as a lumbering, 80-foot cyclops in a diaper.

But not today. I am proud of us today. And I feel like something almost forgotten, some fine ideal, has come striding forward through the murk and disillusion of my brain, just like Obama striding across that stage in Chicago last night.

To see Jesse Jackson (and Oprah) crying in that crowd, and to hear Barack Obama speak so powerfully of the giant ideals that people should think of when they think of America, and to just sit back and think of what we did yesterday and how far we've come lately, is to be reminded that there is something fine in us. And there's something truly grand about that place, over there, that I still call 'home.'

(a movie about) that day

Last night, after putting the kids in bed, I watched United 93, the Paul Greengrass film about the only hijacked plane which didn't hit its target on September 11th. I'd heard it was good, I'd gotten a copy, but still I had waited until I thought I was ready to see it. Maybe I miscalculated.

Anette is out of town, and even though I was completely exhausted from chasing V. and Adinah around by myself all day, and even though I was drinking a tall boy to steady my nerves, I was twitching five minutes into the movie. After 18 minutes, I paused United 93 to catch my breath and try to stop shaking. I paused it again after 29 minutes, and then again every seven to ten minutes. It wasn't exactly suspense or excitement, but reliving the shock of that day was almost too much.

Since 2001, wherever I am in the world, and whoever I'm talking to, if the subject of 9/11 comes up, it's always the other person who's in a rush to say where they were the minute they heard what had happened in New York City. Oftentimes they say, 'I saw it happen!' and what they mean is that they saw it live on TV. But I really did hear those two booms. I really was on Pitt street on the Lower East Side on that beautiful fall morning when I looked half a mile south and saw a hole in the World Trade Center. I saw it all.

I guess it left a hole in me too.

So.

Yeah, well that was almost seven years ago.

In the apocalyptic, ohmygod days and weeks after September 11th, I decided I wanted to live. To go forward somehow. I decided I wanted to have a kid. One of the shittiest Presidents we've ever had got us into even more trouble. We went to Ethiopia and met Adinah. Then we moved to Vienna, and I wasn't sorry to leave behind a country that would re-elect a shitty President. And now I miss America, but I live in Europe, and I have a foster daughter too and I work for an NGO and help refugees because I want to live and embrace life.

I wonder where I would be if that day never happened.

semi-Jealous

My wife is back from the USA, and I have been duly briefed. In ten days, she ate sushi in Los Angeles, got snowed-in in Detroit, shopped like some very efficient Queen Bee in New York City, saw friends, and worked and worked and worked a lot. In the cab back from the airport, she was already making plans for us all to go back to New York for a visit, or to LA for a work-study deal. Sounds like fun--even the snow in Detroit part.

Actually, going back to America even for a quick look sounds so great I don't even want to think about it until I've got the tickets in my hand. I would start to salivate thinking of the cheeseburgers, the light on the buildings, the people, and the sound of the English language all around me--I would swim in it.


How long has it been since I've been back? I don't even know.

Anette says everyone over there is excited about Obama, and excited to be excited about politics again. I wish I was there for that.

But underneath her news and gossip about the US, particularly the New York corner of it, I heard darker things. Mean streets. Sometimes it sounds like people in that city are just holding on by their teeth. Heart attacks, looming evictions, outta-sight daycare costs--all of these fabulous adventures await YOU! if you are not rich and/or famous in NYC. This I don't miss. I'll try to remember that the next time I'm feeling blue about living in a musty dusty capital of Olde Europe.

My life has changed. We have a bathtub and we use it almost every night. Our family is too big to fit inside of a New York City life. And I don't think you should have to be rich and/or famous in order to have a bathtub and a family to put into it.


On the other hand, I hear life in Austin, Texas is pretty goddamn great right now....

The Morning Commuter

In prehistoric times, when I was doing my best to be an angry young man, I liked the Jam a lot. British power punk, very muscular chords, catchy tunes, fancied themselves the voice of the working class, etc. They wrote more than a few songs about conformity and bourgeois drones, with titles like "Smithers Jones" and "The Butterfly Collector." In fact, I still like those songs a lot, but I'm more of a Smithers than I'd like to admit.

A few days ago, I was in the U-bahn again, on my way to work. You have to know that Viennese subway manners are toilet. When your train arrives, motherfuckers do not only NOT step aside to let you off, they barrel into you as they shove their way on. Especially little old ladies with those green felt Tyrolean hats with the feathers in them--they're the worst. I don't know what it was, but I started to get a little aggravated. Guys in suits, certain they will lose their pensions if they don't get to that escalator FIRST! Teenage moms that step in your way and then just stand there, gawping, getting their bearings, completely unaware, and unconcerned, that others may be trying to get around them. I could feel myself becoming Hyde.

So I step off the escalator, walk a few steps, and a suit cuts in front of me--not sharply enough to make me trip, but that's only because I, unlike Everyone in Vienna, watch where I'm going. I think, 'He could have tripped me, with his "in-a-hurry-I'm so important" deal.' So I stretch my foot out too far on my next step and kick the back of his leg. And trip and stumble. Convincingly. I look up at the guy and mumble, "Entshuldigung." (That's 'Excuse me,' but many Viennese are unfamiliar with this particular usage of the phrase.) He's a good looking young man, and he just stares at me as he's walking away. I look down again and keep walking myself, although now in a slightly different direction. But I can feel his eyes still on me. And on me. And I'm still mad at the world, so I look up at him again, and say, "Entshuldigung. Du auch. Jedenfalls." Which was my surely unintelligible attempt at saying, 'Yeah, so, you wanna apologize as well?' He just kept staring at me, calmly, with an almost smile, as though commiting my face to memory, as he walked away. Then he was gone.

Completely pathetic.

I was still shaking and embarrassed when I got to work, but of course I couldn't tell anyone about it. It wasn't until a little later that I started to wonder what I must have looked like to him. A pissed-off, slightly stooped, gray-haired, probably American dude. An angry middle-aged man.

the 2o Dollar Question

"You're always advertising Texas," said the olive-skinned woman. "You say you love America. So why are you in Vienna?"

It's a good question, asked with a smile.

Suddenly it's the opening scene of Detour (1946), and I'm Tom Neal, the innocent man, wrongly accused. A low-angle spotlight splashes on my face, the background dims and....ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.

Why am I in Vienna? Who's asking? Sometimes I'm talking to people who have never been over there and don't want to go. Sometimes I'm talking to Americans who wish they could leave the US. Sometimes I'm talking to Americans here who wish, desperately, that they could go back. Sometimes I'm talking to people that are moving there with all the dreams and aspirations that adults can conjure.

My answer--my story--varies. The truth comes out in greater and lesser degrees. The truth is I got sick of only seeing some of my friends twice a year, because we were all so busy. Actually, I was so angry and disgusted with what the Bush Administration has done to the country I do in fact love. The Gods Honest truth is that it was time for a change. Frankly, the "quality of life" (a funny phrase, if you think about it for a second) is higher in Europe. No, wait...we did it for our daughter: everyone knows education and healthcare is better over here. And so forth.

I guess I always try to be honest about the place itself. The US of A, that is. But it's like talking to a kid--you tell them some well-chosen fragment of the truth. For people who are going to America to live happily ever after, or those who go with no illusions, or for those somewhere in the middle, that is, for people who dream, despite themselves, of a better life in the USA, I try to convey the brutality and hilarity and awful poetry of the land. Sometimes I even think they understand me.

Usually the lights come up, I get that grin, and I tell them the real truth. "Why am I in Vienna? Well...I fell in love with an Austrian."

Give my Regards to Man Ray

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I wrote my first film script this winter. Well, this morning I stopped by the set to watch my friend Dorit shoot the picture. It's a conceptual film--no car chases, blowjobs or exploding lead actresses--and to be honest, I hadn't quite understood it until now. Dorit is shooting the tables and chairs and knives and forks of some of the famous designers and architects who built the housing complex in Berlin called Interbau. I wrote a script--part fiction, part documentary--that reads like a fifty year oral history of the neighborhood.

But even though we've had lots of conversations about the idea behind the film, none of it really gelled in my head until I saw Dorit directing the cameraman and the props people, and I saw the playback of a lovely dolly shot passing across an arrangement of Josef Albers nesting tables. Somehow, seeing this process, this visualization and construction, made it clear to me. We are making a film about how people have lived in these buildings.

It's strange to think that people can put words and pictures together in a concept without really knowing if it's going to work. But I guess lots of movies (and music and books) come together just like that.

In any case, the penny dropped, the light bulb lit up, and finally I got it. When I left, I told Dorit, "I'm really happy." "Me too," she said.

I walked out into a gorgeous and sunny spring day, got on a streetcar and suddenly realized I am where I've always wanted to be. I'm in Europe making art with friends and fascinating people. Playing with ideas and trying to capture something real about our lives and the lives of others. Trying and maybe even succeeding in an attempt to document something of our time.

Back when I was an dreamy young knucklehead, I fantasized about being part of a salon, about being fabulous and famous and having lunch with Man Ray all the time to talk about, oh, shadows, I guess. Now I know it's not going be like that. But it's still sort of...cool. (It'll be even cooler if I can actually pay my share of the bills while doing all this fascinating interesting stuff.) (But I guess that's another post.)

I had a girlfriend once who spent a lot of time puzzling over how she'd ended up with me, a Texan, and a fairly goofy one at that. She would always just say, "Ehh, you fall in love with who you fall in love with." I've always thought she was right, even when she fell in love with someone else. And I've told myself that I've ended up in Austria because I love Anette, and she loves Vienna. But actually it's more complicated. Or simpler: One makes choices.

I'm sure I'll feel differently tomorrow. But today I think I'm in Vienna because this is where I'm supposed to be.

Der großer Supermarkt Top 20

I'm only just now starting to master the science of Viennese grocery store shopping. The first thing I learned was that you must purchase your own stuff, pay for the bag, bag it yourself, then get the hell out of the way, because people here HATE waiting in line and they will begin gently bumping you with their shopping cart as soon as they can to make that point. The second thing one must understand is that there is a strict division of provisions here--you can't go to one store for everything. Billa is for food and wine, Bipa is for deodorant and cleaning supplies. And none of them are open after eight p.m.

The major chains, in descending order from fancy-schmancy to cheap, are Spar, Billa, Zielpunkt and Hofer, and they all have their pros and cons, but in none of them will you find Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Oh well. Here then, are my awards for the best and the wurst:


Best Tortilla Chips: Spar

Best Snack Chip: Nacho Cheese Bugles

Worst Snack Chip: Nacho Cheese Bugles

Most Surprising Product Found in a Supermarket: Haagen-Daz Cookies and Cream, Spar

Most Sorely Missed Product: Ben and Jerry's Heath Bar Crunch

Grocery Store Item Most Unappreciated by the Locals: Haas Avocados, Billa

Surliest, Shoviest, Most Abjectly Horrid Customers: Hofer

Store with the Highest Percentage of Organic and Bio-Products: Hofer

Best Fresh Bread Product: the humble Pumpkin Seed Roll, available everywhere

Most Delightful Discovery in the Produce Section: Kohlrabi

Store Most likely to Descend into a Lord of the Flies-type situation at any Moment: the Billa in the Franz-Josefsbahn train station on any Catholic holiday

Best Frozen Food: Iglo brand Edamame

Most Embarrassing Guilty Pleasure: Liver paste

Convenience Store Most Densely Populated with Drunken Teenagers: the BP gas station-mart at Schwedenplatz

Saddest Convenience Store: the 24 hour shop at the MichelBauern Allegemeines hospital.

Gary Floyd Across Time and Space

The immigrant is sometimes taken by an urge, not to fit in, speak German or otherwise be a new sort of man, but to revert to old loyalties and lives. The fog of nostalgia swirls around him and news of home--his first and oldest home, that is--pelts the ground like spiteful oobleck. He parades about the cobblestones of Vienna while wearing his fathers' pointy black cowboy boots. He has his Austrian friends over for tacos and guacamole. He becomes more of a Texan than he ever was when he lived in Texas.

He begins to write a soppy e-mail to an old friend back in Austin. Without even meaning to indulge these sentimental kniptions, he puts on a CD that a Swiss mother burned for him recently. He bobs his head and sings along. He remembers the singer. Gary Floyd. A pink haired gay punk shaped like Divine. Gary Floyd sang about cruising married men in the adult bookstore on Saturday night. About policemen moonlighting in the Ku Klux Klan. Growling, pleading, screaming, accusing and begging you with a voice like blue fire. He sang for the Dicks and he was way, way, WAY more punk rock than you.

Then the immigrant is crying. Seizing up into a grimace and choking on tears that don't want to come out at first. He thinks of his hometown friend, a schoolteacher now but once a punk like him and weren't they both in the audience that night that Gary Floyd and the Dicks played Voltaires Basement? Is this sad? No. Where is Gary Floyd now--is he okay? Don't know. So why the tears?

Because everything is different and everything is also the same. Reaching out to that good old friend across an ocean listening to the same music twenty-five years or five minutes and three lifetimes away from that moment Gary Floyd touched us for the first time.

Because sometimes his brain is so full of names and pictures and feelings that it feels like he's going to burst. Tears come out instead.

* * *

The immigrant promises himself he will Google Gary Floyd. Then he gets back to work.

Hunting, Gathering

When an American moves to town, he can be cocky. At least, I was. My first job here was a revelation, and not just because I was teaching for the first time, and loving it. After so many years in New York City, I got to Vienna and suddenly realized that life and work can be quite fulfilling even if you're not living in the center of the universe. Maybe it's even better--more human--beyond the outer rim of Manhattan. The cockiness kicked in a short time later, because I thought, `Hey I'm from New York fucking City!' I thought a lot about the scene in Planet of the Apes where the astronauts land, look around at the cavemen, and say, 'Well, if this is the best they got here, we'll be running the place in six months.'

And it takes a little bit longer, but one begins to deflate a little when he realizes he lacks some basic working skills. Like being able to speak the local language.

Still later, the American starts to believe he is scurrying down the same path other expatriates took before him. 'Didja teach English at Language Borse?' 'Yeah, I did that one.' 'Try tending bar at Der Blarney Stone?' 'Yup, did that too.'

You start to think you're just not the imaginative type.

Then one day you wake up and you think, 'Judas Priest, I gotta get a job or they're gonna ship me out here for high loafing and crimes against the welfare state.'

An American friend I know here is seriously thinking about taking a job at McDonalds.

Those words have all the ominous power of an urban myth. And he knows it. He told me, 'I know it's the lowest you can go, I know it's a traitor job.' But he's got to find a way to support his family. 'One of us has got to be the guinea pig, and I guess it's going to be me.'

And I don't know what to tell him. On the one hand, I admire him for being willing to go there, to do that. I know there's lots of people all over the world who would love to have a job at McDonalds. On the other hand, I know he can do better. In America, he earned 60 to 70 grand a year making art. Here he can't find a thing. Maybe his German isn't good enough. Or maybe it's the color of his skin. I don't know.

I just hope he can hang in there a little longer.

Jeez, Mickey D's.

At the AMS

Somewhere in the middle of the dime novels of the great Jim Thompson, the protagonist--always a basically good, although ethically flexible fellow--usually gets a funny feeling. Everything's going swell--some silky babe is draping herself all over him, important men are doing him favors, and he's being ridiculously well-paid for doing nothing. So why does he feel like his neck is on the chopping block? This is the funny feeling I have as I sit, once again, in the waiting room of the ninth district offices of the Arbeits Markt Service, otherwise known as my local unemployment agency.

This fall, the AMS paid for two € 300 German classes for me, plus sent me € 800 for my living expenses. When they agreed to pay for my Deutsch lernen, I thought, 'Wow...that's...nice.' When they started sending me the slouch payments (which I hadn't asked for) I thought, 'Whoa, hang on, I don't want a hand-out. And what are they expecting from me in return?'

Did I take the money? Of course.

Because of my half-baked German skills, Anette had gone with me to the AMS once or twice, and so helped me get my deal. When the state-sponsored largesse started rolling in, she explained, once again, that things are different here. Their immigration and assimilation policies are the reverse of those in the US. That is, in America, it's easy to get into the country, but once you're there, nobody wants to know you. But in Austria, it's difficult to become a citizen, get a work permit or otherwise be welcomed into Austrian society. But once you're in, as I am since I'm married to an Austrian, the social system walks right up to you, gives you a bear hug, and says, 'Can I make you a cappucino and pay you some money for having a kid and going to school and just getting by while you're looking for work?'

Right?

As I said, I took the money. Then what did I do? Did I look for a job? Sorta. Did I miss my next appointment with the AMS? Yes. And the appointment after that? Naturally.

I figured, 'Hey, I got their money--what're they gonna do now? Take back the cappucino?'

Then a couple of friends told me, 'Hey, don't miss your termines with the AMS. They get really pissed off about that.'

So here I am, sitting in a waiting room packed with Turkish families, fifty-something day laborers, thirty-ish Serbian carpenters and other folks who probably need the AMS' help way more than I do.

I just know I'm gonna get spanked.

How old does a man have to be before he forgets what it was like to sit in the principal's office, waiting for a smack?

Kaput.

How's my German? Ill.

Now that I'm not in a German class, I can feel the language slipping further away from me everyday. I've taken five classes since we moved here--two evening courses, three intensive, all immersive. It's a lot of work but when you make an effort, learning how to spreche the Deutsch, or any other language, is a miraculous thing. To be able to make those strange sounds with your own mouth, to be able to shoot the breeze on the street with a stranger, to occasionally even get a joke--it's incredible. In school, when I'm beavering away, studying hard, doing vigorous battle with sentence structure and gendered nouns, I feel like I'm slowly surfacing from a swamp of American Pop talk, and bit by bit, beginning to actually understand what's happening around me.

But when I take a break from classes, that momentum reverses. I degenerate. The store clerk who last week seemed so urbane and helpful is now droning on, "Blah blah, bah, bah blah....." The old lady at the streetcar stop is smiling and chirping "Stoppen blinken stinken." All of Vienna is mystifying, nothing is illuminated.



One thing that has changed is that my wife will finally speak German with me. When I took my first classes, I would sometimes try out a few words or phrases on her, and she would just shudder and turn away. She couldn't handle talking to me as if I was a four-year-old. But now I'm speaking like a slightly odd ten-year-old, and that she can deal with. Sometimes she suggests that we should just speak German all the time.

But I'm not ready for that, either. I'm not ready to leave the American Pop talk swamp. I like this swamp. I love using "crummy," and referring to Mister Toad's wild ride as a "real ring tail tooter."

It's not like I want read Goethe in the original German. I'll be happy if I can sit politely at a dinner party, understand 70% of what's being said, wait my turn to speak, then bust out a good line about a fartknocker.

That would be assimilation.

Domestic Violence

One of the more disquieting aspects of living in Europe has been trying to reconcile my love for America with my loathing for the people currently running it. George W. Bush is a liar and a cheat, and saying that he is not impeachable for his crimes is nearly as fatheaded as saying the situation in Iraq "verges on civil war." We didn't move here because I #!*#@!! hate the man, but his administration's utter disregard for the hearts and minds of the American people certainly made it easier to leave home. After the 2004 election, I felt jilted, as if my country had left me for an asshole who was just gonna break her heart.

Today, as he pushes ahead to needlessly send more Americans and Iraqis to their deaths, despite the wishes of most Americans, it looks like the President's relationship to the USA has become even more abusive. Some of the Republicans in the Senate have blocked debate on Iraq-- they have taken the role of the neighbors who don't report a man who is beating his wife or child.

It's a rainy day here in Vienna, and as I stand at our window, watching fifty-year-old streetcars rumbling past signs I can't read, nothing makes me feel farther from home than my inability to understand why we continue to allow this President and his accomplices to batter and bruise us.