Essen Haus: Yesterday, Today, and (Hopefully) Forever

 

Today I worked on campus, and at lunch I walked by myself and got to see a train go by up close. The horn was so loud that I had to plug my ears. After work I took the 38 bus get my hair cut. Remember a couple of days ago when I said they should have the big bendy buses on Route 28? My 38 today was a big bendy bus. They are way more comfortable than the old buses. There was a faculty member already on it that I had wanted to talk to about something, but I couldn't remember what. We sat together and chatted, and only after she got off the bus did I remember that she has the image of Niko's ancestor on her door, so I wanted to ask her about that. Then again, there's not really anything to ask because I googled it and found where the image is from, and that the inscription - Illuminor - is Latin for "I am enlightened." That's pretty cool.

After my haircut, I went to the Essen Haus to wait for Travalon. A duo of a saxophone and a piano accordion were playing along with a cheesy karaoke machine, and the bathrooms that were out of date thirty years ago when I was in college haven't been updated. The whole place looks just the same, with college students drinking out of boots, and when I said to the waitress that in my day you didn't want to be the second-to-last to drink from the boot or you'd have to buy the next one, she said it's still that way. It was making me so nostalgic. The pretzels still taste the same. So much in Madison has changed that it's delightful to feel the continuity of going to a place that is exactly the same as when I was young. They keep threatening to tear it down to build condos or apartments or something, but that project keeps getting postponed. May it be postponed another thirty years, and by then maybe I won't care anymore.

Tiffy continues to send me photos from Greece. Today they drove by Meteora, where the monasteries are built on cliffs. 

I said I had been there thirty years ago and that there was one room in a monastery just full of skulls. (I have a photo of that somewhere.) I asked if she had gone into any of them, and she said yes, but not the one with the skull room. I seem to remember that when the monks have been dead seven years, they dig them up and by then they're just bones, and then they put the skulls in the ossuary. Maybe the other bones too, but what I remember is all the skulls. It was quite something to see them all staring back at me. It makes you think of the impermanence of life, except for the Essen Haus. That's the same yesterday, today, and hopefully forever.

Famous Hat