Jupiter

Die Höhle - The Cave 40 x 50 cm mixed media

AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN MOMENT

Soggy morning on the outskirts

of Prague or Vienna—think of huge

pretzels big enough to hang around

an elephant’s neck, cakes and pastries

filled with whipped cream and jam, strudels

of such juiciness that the bearded among us

look befouled after only a few bites,

the blackest coffee, the blackest coffee ever brewed,

newspapers hanging like flags from the wall of a chandeliered cafe—

men in cloaks, little coffins with pistols, a doctor in frock

coat and top hat, called in from one of the season’s

more elaborate balls at which, evidently, physicians

were also needed. It’s ten paces, turn and shoot until

one of the dualists holds up a languid, white-gloved

hand and says, ”I’m not the man who insulted you last night.

That was my twin brother Edgar who even as we speak

is half-way to Nice on the Cote d’Azur Express. He has

enormous gambling debts as well which, in combination

with excessive consumption of Sekt and spirits, makes him, well,

say intolerable things to more or less perfect strangers.”

Something like this has happened to all of us before. We believed the

weather report. We went to that beach resort, that park famous for

its pick-nick areas and wading pools, the musical gazebos and dancing

polar bears, and it came down in buckets; when, against all expectation, all hope,

the whipped cream was canned and the apples sour. When even

Edgar wasn’t who we thought he was.

Mozart - 4th movement of the 41st (Jupiter) Symphony

Karl Böhm - Vienna Philharmonic