The Packbats' Dreamfeed

The first thing I tried to do once we got our suitcase was go to the toilet.

D found me a disabled one with a weird door: it slid open when you pressed a button (like the ones I'm used to on trains). But when I walked in, the door didn't close! There was no similar button. Nor could I see any other way to activate it. It was a pocket door, it'd disappeared entirely so there was no way to pull it closed or interact with it.

I just stood there in this open room, feeling like there were cartoon question marks above my head.

A nice lady happening by (this door was opposite the entrance to the ladies') helped me out. First she asked me something that I didn't understand of course, which made me feel even more helpless. Then she said "You want to close?" Yes! Why could I remember the word for open right now and not close??

She pointed out a weird switch, like a German light switch which I find confusing anyway...

I pressed it, a red light came on but the door didn't move. I reset it, tried again, said something stupid and obvious like "It doesn't work," she came in and tried it, she went outside and tried the button that is there right under the perfectly functioning one I'd used to open the door. I was a little worried about that one because I didn't want to be stuck in there if I couldn't operate the door from the inside! But it didn't matter because nothing happened. Nothing continued to happen.

"This is Germany," she said to me finally, in an inscrutable tone of voice. And we went our separate ways.

(I had to use the regular men's room, which stank of stale piss even through my Flo mask, had tiny indicators on the cubicle doors of whether they were vacant or occupied that I had to just push on all the doors anyway, and was as quiet as the grave despite how crowded it was, because no one washed their hands apparently.)

In the next half hour or so, D had to carry our suitcase up a non-working escalator, the transport app didn't have signal in the station so we couldn't use it, the correct train we eventually got on was 15 minutes late, and it was almost impossible to both find and then open the door to the apartment that we've booked.

We finally got in but after a very cursory look at the place because it was almost 9pm, we got some food from a nearby Greek takeaway, walked around a little to see what's nearby, and had a drink outside a bar. D called my gin-based cocktail a Gin & Teutonic.

We're here! We've got plans to see friends of mine from the internet the next few days, before my pre-op appointment Tuesday. Turns out I know a few people who live in the vicinity of Düsseldorf.

I'm in this uncomfortable liminal place now: done with work (feeling good about how I wrapped things up! which no doubt is hubris over something I've forgotten but never mind, it feels good for now), trying to pack.

I've packed for lots of vacations and I've packed for hospital stays, but I've never had to pack for both at once.

And especially when I don't know what if anything I will be able to hold or carry or manage on the way back. That isn't something I'm used to. So we've only paid for one checked bag (on our budget airline we've never heard of, I'm amazed we're even being seated together without having to pay extra for that) because D will have to be responsible for it all on the return trip.

I think I've got my stuff all packed, and my tummy is playing up, no doubt due to the stress and the relative lateness; 11pm is past my bedtime.

We leave about lunchtime tomorrow, so there's time for a little bit of sleeping in and also all the last-minute flailing.

Now I just need my stomach to stop hurting so I can sleep!

Whenever I get asked what kind of work I do, I kinda dread answering because I work in policy.

I love it, but most people don't really know what it is, or maybe they have a feeling that it's something boring or abstract or remote from their lives.

I'm met with a lot of "Oh..." and similar reactions. Real conversation killer.

But in one of those books I now have from the library, Stories Are Weapons, Annalee Newitz has paid my line of work a great compliment (transcribed from the audiobook as I was getting off the bus, so it might not be exact):

I would argue that policy is a type of applied science fiction. Policies are visions of possible futures.

I'm gonna start telling people I work in Applied Science Fiction.

Last night when I got a notification that one of my library holds was ready for me to borrow, I meant to click "Suspend" (let the next person have it) because I'd just borrowed an audiobook that morning, after hearing its author, who I already know I like, interviewed on a podcast I love, in such an appealing way that I immediately looked up their new book and (scandalously but luckily for me) in the library and it was available to borrow right away!

But instead of "Suspend" I clicked "Borrow" which is a bigger button right next to it. Par for the course, in the kind of day I was having yesterday! At that point, if I returned it I'd have to place a hold on it again and go to the back of whatever queue there was for it. Which really annoyed me. So I stubbornly decided I'd now read two books in the alloted three weeks (when one is normally a struggle; the previous one I'd had was whisked away back to the library when I was on 87%...).

And this new one is twenty-eight hours long. (For reference, 7-8 hours feels like a "normal" book to me. A really luxurious (or intimidating one) might be as high as mid-teens.)

Perhaps fittingly, the new one is called Wagnerism, as in Richard Wagner, known (among other things) for very long operas. I also happened to have found out about this from an episode of another podcast which interviewed its author. (I do find books by other means, I swear; what a funny coincidence this is.)

Alex Ross I already know because his famous book The Rest is Noise is one of those weird comfort-reads I have -- not least because I'm lucky enough to have the audiobook, which is expertly read by one of my favorite narrators, Grover Gardner. (Other favorites of mine are Scott Brick and Adams Morgan.) I so associate Gardner's voice with The Rest is Noise that I was, goofily, almost-surprised to hear Alex Ross interviewed and find out that he sounds different (even though I've always known of course that it's not Ross reading the book; the audio version tells you who's narrating it!).

The Rest is Noise is about "classical music," western art music, in the 20th century, and like I say I love it. The one thing I wish it had was an accompanying playlist -- I am sure there's versions on YouTube and Spotify and others... yes, now that I google it I see that, but that's not quite what I mean -- that YouTube one, for example, has 28 tracks "unavailable" and the rest are ordered by something other than how they appear in the book (which is roughly chronological so it's not like it should be that difficult or unreasonable to present them in that order). And often, particular aspects of a piece are discussed and it'd be great to be able to hear that bit after you'd read the description of it.

So after years, decades maybe, of thinking this, I am really enjoying that Wagnerism does occasionally have that. Not least because I know next to nothing about Wagner beyond "antisemite" and "loved by Hitler," which while big themes of the book are also helped by knowing the broad brushstrokes of the Ring Cycle and various aspects of the music which make it so important long after Wagner, despite the firm association with Nazism.

Otherwise all I had was the half-remembered delight of watching Anna Russell tell the story of The Ring of the Nibelung in an "intro to music" class I took twenty-five years ago, and listening to the first two parts of In Bed With the Right's Wagner series, though from that all I really remembered was the Das Rheingold bit (which is like the first day of a cricket test match)...

The one downside of having snippets of orchestral music in the book is that it's limiting me to not wanting to listen faster than 1.5x... I can often manage 1.75x or so, which can make for a significant difference in a 28-hour long book, but the music already sounds a little bit strange because it's sped up too!