Church towers and Mountains

Some people climb mountains. That's not for me. Look at Messner: he lost six toes and a younger brother. I prefer church towers -- the man-made, conquering the human assembly, ascending the historical. You can take lovely pictures up there: cityscapes, mountains fringed on the horizon like a pie crust; it's not a battle between man and nature (or man and beast on a mountain, or man and beast poo on some other mountains).

The church I grew up attending only had a ground floor, a small steeple, and no bells. The steeple was a concession to someone's idea of what a Midwest Protestant church should look like. Once there was a fire but it was in a small storage closet and was put out before it could reach up to Heaven like (some of) our eyes and prayers or the smoke from the candles at the altar.

This may have frustrated me. In any case, perhaps I took unconscious revenge by fainting at the altar during my first communion and smashing my head on the floor before being gathered up by the ushers and carried out. I was told my head made a resounding boom whose echo filled the hall. Perhaps that knocked the demon out because I made it through the second service that morning without collapsing.

Ancestors on my father's side were coal miners, daily descending in cages to hack out Appalachian rock. They weren't religious folk, nor am I now. When I got my first communion wafer the Pastor asked that God keep me inquisitive. I have been kept inquisitive. I have climbed Stephansdom in Vienna, St. Stephen’s in Budapest, and St. Paul’s in London. I climbed a minaret in Eger that was so narrow and had stairs trampled to such dangerous smoothness that coming back down required a harrowing restraint that caused my legs to shake for hours afterwards. I climbed a synagogue in Gyor but it had a regular staircase and only 3 floors. I took the elevator up the Eiffel Tower and the CN Tower. I'm sitting in a chair now with my feet up. I digress.

I live in Innsbruck now, nestled in a broad green gap between mountains. Q: How long can I continue to not climb mountains? A: As long as there are cable cars, church towers, trains, and as long as my wife doesn't demand edelweiss.

The Snowdrops are Flourishing in the Garden

Spring is here and advancing fitfully but steadily. The Earth is never content. It always longs for change -- discontent and the failure to be happy with what you've got: these are not human "faults".

Snow still lies in little heaps the garden, especially in the low foot-traffic areas and where I shoveled and piled it before leaving for work in the dark winter mornings. It lies in forgotten crusts, like the ruined foundations of buildings, or like childhood fears that look paltry now.

The snowdrops are flourishing in the garden. It's hard to figure out whether to be for or against them. What is their purpose? They hang their heads in abject meekness. Are they delegates from the defeated kingdom of Winter apologizing for the cold and the darkness and hoping for kind peace terms; ones in which there will be a continued place for Winter in the coming months? Perhaps they would like to divide the day and night into times for heat and for cold. It is, after all, already divided between light and dark. Surely Summer can live in harmony with Winter.

Or are they from the workshop of the future, of Spring? A tentative and transitional product between the seasons: a flower with yellow-green flourishes on the petal tips but overwhelmingly snow-colored. The new architects are not free from the style of their predecessors. Late Romanesque is easy to confuse with early-Gothic.

I'm inclined to believe in the snowdrops. Perhaps because I don't fear the cold or perhaps because I am optimistic or perhaps I see how they crumple when the dog races over them in pursuit of birds. It is Spring.