These are just throwaway pictchas...

Spring has arrived.... on the way to the home...








Newly planted fields, and verdant hills.






and a glimpse of my 'chauffeur' in the rear view mirror....








An odd thing happened last week when I was in what I call 'The Café Purgatory', where I have to wait 45 minutes for my train back to Graz. I was out on the terrace, you see, had to go to the WC, and took my new camera because I was NOT gonna leave it unattended on the table. Well, they saw me go with it, and thought it was a men's pocket book, or something, and I returned in time to hear the S word. Which is the F word in local dialect. (yeah, faggot...)

I pretended I hadn't heard that, and took the camera out of its' case, and screened what I had shot that day. Whereupon the guy with the foul mouf got interested, and we talked for about fifteen minutes or so, and he was curious about what I keep doing down there, and where I come from, and what kind of camera I have, and so forth and so on... And I was honest enough, just basic facts... and he was pleasant. He is probably in his forties, sort of rowdy, has long blonde thinning hair, an earing, and looks nine months pregnant, because he seemingly drinks beer instead of anything healthy. And then the train came, and off I went.... I really didn't think about it any more.

So today, I got to the Café Purgatory, as I call it, walked into the door, called out for my mineral water with a twist, and was just finishing my book, because I only read it on the train, or waiting for one. And when I ordered it, I hear this 'WHOA!' in the background, as all the rowdies were at the bar.... And I said, 'What?' And they said 'oh, nothing...' And went out on the terrace, and got back into my book because it was the last two chapters.

And the barkeeperess.... is that a word?... delivered it with a smile, and said, 'This is on the house, a man is putting it on his tab.' Well you could have knocked me over with an axe, hey. I suppose I must have looked mystified, because she added, 'The guy with the long blonde hair inside.' Then the penny dropped, the guy from last week...

So I went inside, and there he was in the corner, and I said 'Thank you. Next week I return the favour', and he got all embarrassed, and said 'Oh no, that isn't necessary.' He knew I had heard... No dummy, in other words.

So I guess I embarassed him last week. It was just the usual hypocrisy, and predjudice, but his way of saying sorry, I guess, and he isn't mean or anything. Try that one in a bar in NH. You'd be dead in an instant....

I never get this macho, 'guys' thing, and if you get perceived as 'different', people are somehow odd, and ostracised. But I know enough about how to turn it around, and if people know you for who you really are, all is well.

I received this crazy sentence about having chosen a 'life-style' recently. I could have screamed, and ranted, and yelled. But am just too tired, and I guess the fight went out of me.

NO one 'chooses' what their sexual orientation is, and they have to struggle a lot, because it isn't in the norm. But they do NOT choose. They just are, and it is not a good thing, sometimes.

It is not a lifestyle. NOT. They are just wired that way, and as in any orientation, they can choose paths that are destructive, or paths that are positive, and there are so many stumbling blocks on the way to feeling whole, and doing the right thing, it isn't easy.

So the guy in Café Purgatory wasn't mean.... he realised that he had been unfair, because he didn't KNOW me. And was quick to apologise in his own way, and I guess that is what it was.

Am not reading more into it than what I KNOW.

If you keep showing up in a very small community, people start wondering, and you have to come up to snuff, so to speak. It isn't always easy, hey. But have been here long enough to defuse any bombs.....

Have to go under the bed now....