Die vase ist verboten

The details are slipping out.  There’s already been much buzz about what’ll be inside it … talk of powertrains and dual-clutch automated manual transmissions and wheelbase platforms borrowed from current models.

Me, I’ve been waiting for the look.

Much is at stake here.  As I’ve noted, the Beetle is a small-but-mighty car, with much history.  Its powers are largely unexplainable.  So it’s not a casual thing for Volkswagen to remake this auto.

Earlier this month, Autoblog posted spy photos – real photos – of the 2012 Beetle that it snapped while the new Beetle spun through a German neighborhood.  You can tell it’s in Germany by the signs in the background.  Oh, and there’s a kids’ playground back there, too … er, they call it a “spielplatz,” I believe.

Ha! “Der Kafer … uh … fuhr durch … uh … den spielplatz!”  The Beetle drove by the playground! 

I’m sure that’s wrong.

Anyway, I don’t know quite what to say about the new look. Check it out.  It seems so … respectable, grown up.  Almost patrician. But in a very odd sort of way. When I first saw it, I thought of Alfred Hitchcock.  Lord knows why. He’s hardly German.

Maybe because I remember his mystery-show introductions on TV. With his massive round head, big nose and loose jowels, he would utter an aristocratic “Good eeeevening” as knighted Britishers do.

But then the fun would start … quirky shows featuring twists and turns and always a bit of dry humor.  There was much wry wit beneath Sir Al's veneer.

(Or maybe it's because if you take Hitchcock's signature line-art profile used in the show, flip it, then lay it on its back, it looks kind of like the car. See?! Weird.) 

I’m expecting the 2012 Beetle to be just that – a smidge of fun beneath the veneer. Not quite a serious man’s car – never that – but a step up in, sniff, respectability.  More mature. I’m guessing it’ll have more power, a better ride, a wider wheelbase and perhaps even be longer.  The photos suggest as much.

But no flower vase on the dashboard like my Beetle has. That would go too far.

Forbidden!

“Verboten!” 

And yes, hardly a bug.

And that’s the rub.

The bug always has been small, bumpy, childlike, nimble and clumsy both, a bit noisy, joked about, made fun of, dissed by the car crowd. Worth slugging your neighbor over.

No longer, it seems. This Beetle has a junior limo look to it.  Heck, Gordon Gekko could light a cigar inside and still feel secure.

Home, James! 

“Um das haus, James!”

I guess I’m okay with that. 

But can we stop by the spielplatz first?

It runs ... clear

GLEN ARBOR, Mich. – We floated the Crystal River today. 

The river’s name is well chosen … the water perfect, pure, the surface glass-smooth.  The salmon know that.  Today they were running upriver to spawn.  We saw them move under us, silently, as we marveled at their size.

Rivers are metaphors for so much of life.  And that’s hardly an original thought.  A good bar bet: Name 10 songs with “river” or a name or subject of a river in their title.  Okay, I’ll start:  the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water.” Oh, and then there’s that Andy Williams guy.

Sings Adrienne Young: “I am a river, forever changing.”

But the metaphor is true.  Rivers, like life, move in an expected direction, but most of us are never quite sure what’s around the next bend.

They also speak volumes about popular currents, and being caught up in them while others aren’t – for good or ill. Today, tall, thin grass graced Crystal River’s edge.  But the Crystal must have moved higher, because some stalks of the same grass were now partly under water, on the left and on the right.

And those half-submerged stalks flicked rapidly and jerkily like wagging fingers, the water’s deep currents clearly in control. The stalks’ sideline kin could only stare and bemoan,  “There but for the grace of God go I …”

Exactly how I feel about politics right now.

But the Crystal evoked another message today … of beginnings and endings.

The Weaver siblings, all five of us, are here this weekend to bring to a close the 45-year life of the cottage that our mother dubbed WindSong. Last year at about this time, we sold it to the National Park Service, which next spring will remove all trace of it and let the land return to nature.

So far we’ve handled our emotions well, dutifully packing up memories, dividing furniture and wall hangings, coordinating with the Salvation Army to pick up the rest.

None of us, I think, is deeply unhappy about what we’re doing. Probably because we’ve had a year to grieve, each in our own way. 

But it may get harder in the next 48 hours, after which we depart this place, going our  separate ways.

That’s because losing WindSong is its own metaphor … like losing a friend, or a family member, or – heaven forbid – a dog. 

In this case, we’ve known that the final weekend would come since February 2009, when we met in Nashville to decide on this course. That it’s the right course doesn’t make it easier.

Oh, we’ve girded ourselves well. Technology helps.  WindSong may have its rustic attributes – a large stone fireplace, knotty paneling, cold bedrooms – but a wireless modem and 3g connections leave us in comfortable contact with our distant families.

Okay, perhaps to a fault.

Where once Mom would knit in the rocker, or Dad would read a book in his Lazy Boy, we find ourselves texting, or searching, or sending photos to our spouses and children on our laptops and/or phones.

Or, in my case, broadcasting a first-time video with background sound in full, extreme color on my new 32 gigabyte, 960-by-640 resolution, HDR-equippped iPhone 4 of Linda, Bill and me on  … uh, where were we again? Oh, yeah … on the Crystal River. 

River … rivers … life’s metaphor. 

We floated the Crystal River today.

We saw salmon going up river, passing below us, on their journey to reach Glen Lake.

We went down river … to eventually bid our good-byes to a lake that’s spawned so many memories – of family, many friends, sweet sunsets, nature’s bounty.

But here the metaphor ends.  For those salmon will return to the lake, spawn and, their job done, they will eventually die. 

We’ve all vowed to return as well, but we will come to again breathe deep the life that teems around Glen Lake.  To catch the sun. To hear wind’s song. 

That’s Crystal clear.