“Vienna, that scrollworked bastion, smoldered with more demons of the future than the most forward-minded cities of the West.”
Frederick Morton, A Nervous Splendor
I dream of Dad last night
Looking at the roundness of a buttock
Approvingly…
In Vienna, female human anatomy and its proportions were taken oh so
seriously!
Reminding me of his father, who annually had to meet the Viennese store
buyer, enormous purchasing power
To sell his woolen goods for the next season,
She “demanding” he pinch her bottom with a Viennese wink.
His knowing look then glances at me!
Teaching me unconsciously the need for “good stock”
Implying a generous rump
In choosing the mother of the next alpha males….
The survival of the fitter, over centuries
The natural selection of choice partners
Requires the ample rump, stocked with fatty nutrients
To feed the sampling trees, the little ones especially during times of hunger,
And exile.
And that dream glance, the look, at me, transmitting this tool to the son.
Why would Dad come to me ?
And why with such base desire?
No high fallootin’ philosophical wisdom from beyond?
An insight? A thought? A piece of advice in my ongoing struggles?
Oh the Viennese double standards !!
How we choose our spouses!
What unconscious embedded predetermined desires…
Handed down in genetic formation
Tiny microscopic armies of DNA
Without a spoken word
Nor rhyme nor reason
He preferred the exotic slim Sephardi Indian beauty
Her delicate long fingers encompassing the neck of the fiddle, with mastery
Her playing seducing him for life
Forever devoted to this musical impressario
To what he sarcastically called the “cholent girls” from East London
Mostly from middle Europe themselves.
The body encodes these prejudices deep within the mitochondria
Not even permitting awareness to the person all the while,
making lifetime decisions about soul mates.
And Dad worshipped her until her dying breath
And beyond, forlorn, “my late wife” he would pine…
Thank you for the dream
