Semi-Hiatusing

Dateline: Flipnotics

Well, back at my desk I find I have relatively little new to say, old chums, except that I'd like to get out of here again. You know, I work in the same place I live -- in the same room I sleep -- and it surprises me, or not, to discover, after half a century, that being inside for too long drives me flukin STIR-CRAZY. Has this been the problem all along?

I have an absolute need for breezes, just as I do for solitude and for daily exposure to good prose.

In addition, within 24 hours of the heat coming on I start getting congested and unless I get out of there fast I cough all winter.

There are several places I'd like to drive or fly in the near future.

Meanwhile,I have belatedly discovered the secret method of leaving the house: open the door!

I do, however, have a lot of paying work in December to keep me sitting but not awakened, so I'm thinking I probably won't post very much this coming month. I type too much already.

Gorillas in the Mist, H1N1 in the Guest House, Heaven in the Church, Mud Against the Wall

Help, I have a lot more to say! Here's a very quick recap:

1. I previously opined that the church service was disappointing, but the following Sunday we all went to another one, at the same church, that knocked our socks off. We'd come too late for the choir the first time, but on Sunday we were fully present and armed with the spirit. They sang beautiful African gospel harmonies, dancing to the music, passing the microphone from one section of the choir to the other; and two or three of the women, including a pair of knockout fortyish sisters (alas, I did not get their phone numbers), were possessed with the greatest joy, hopping up and down, pointing ecstatically to the congregation, and had voices to match. The visiting preacher was a visiting bishop from Kenya who oversees 500 churches, and not only the power, but the benignity, of his preaching was beautiful.

2. We went to work on finishing two traditional houses made of mud brick, funded by Groundwork Opportunities, a nonprofit that helps fund our host Costa's work. No time to link now - I'll do it in future posts so you can donate! What we did was pick up handfuls of coarse wet mud that were poured onto the ground in heaps, and sling them hard against the handmade bricks of the wall. The mud gets smoothed down with a long horizontal stick, and after drying, is stuccoed. The owners of the two neighboring houses are families that were on opposite sides of the genocide and are now close friends. They are delighted with their new homes, into which they invited us with the greatest kindness. Among them was a six-month-old girl, Giselle, who loved to chew my index finger and thumb.

3. A member of our group and I rode four buses and a moto (motorcycle taxi) through rain and mist and bad roads from Kigali in the center of the country to Volcanoes National Park in the north to visit the world's last remaining mountain gorillas. The population is a bit over 700 and gradually rising. It costs $500 a person for admission (mostly applied to conservation and community projects), up to $50 for a guest house room, and $80 for a short jeep ride to the park, and it's worth every penny. We hiked up through the rain forest for about an hour, then reached the area where the trackers said the gorillas were. (There are several gorilla troops, and small groups of up to 8 tourists are assigned to each.) Our first contact was when the silverback rose up before us at a distance of about four feet to check us out. Our lead guide went into a crouch of submission, lowering his head and covering it with his hands, showing the boss that we meant no harm. We spent an hour with our gorilla friends, who included five females and five children as well as Mr. Big. Hundreds of photos were taken; locations were carefully shifted with those of the gorilla troop; the scientifically recommended distance of 7m was maintained. It was one of the highs of a lifetime.

4. We returned to a guest house increasingly full of sick muzungus wearing useless but bureaucratically required surgical masks. Step by step the situation became a farce. A doctor with his driver drove an hour from Kigali to swab-test the First World visitors; shortly afterward, an ambulance with another doctor drove up to the community center where we were doing The Work of Byron Katie with a group of HIV-infected women. The second doctor didn't believe in the existence of the first doctor, but they were put into telephone contact after much crosstalk among many interested parties. Upshot: we do have two confirmed cases of H1N1, but no severe symptoms, and some of us may have other viruses instead. Costa, Pamela, Brenda, and I have no symptoms, and quickly tossed away the surgical masks that were presented to us as solemn necessities when we returned to our home guest house. The crucial goal now is to be declared uninfected so that one can be put back on the plane on Tuesday instead of having to spend seven days in quarantine. We'll see!

Love,
Richard

Muhanga Days

We're in the very nice small town of Muhanga -- "we" meaning our little group of seven muzungus and muzungettes -- treated with the greatest hospitality by our host Costa's brother Leopold, who bought us a restaurant meal and invited us to his home to dinner, and the mayor, who's paving our way with the prison administration, and a couple of Canadian guys we don't even know who are paying our bill at a guest house for five nights.

We're finally getting down to some serious work here, which may make me feel less like I'm sponging off people. We were supposed to do the Work of Byron Katie at the prison yesterday but the warden was away and couldn't arrange security for us. Then we were supposed to assist in mud-brick house construction in the afternoon, but we had a downpour so we sat at a protected outdoor terrace for a long time having good conversation, assorted brochettes, and the by-now-expectable great, homemade fries. In the afternoon, as a group, we did The Work with five HIV-positive Rwandan women of various ages, perhaps helping open their minds to new, less painful ways of seeing their lives, and it was moving experience -- clearly difficult for the women to think about their pain, and they expressed gratitude afterward.

Today we're booked to work with prisoners again and do the house construction. It feels as if my experience is shifting from travel exploration into community service, and that feels exciting and a little scary.

I haven't had many opportunities to sit quietly in places where there's been Internet access, and at times I've been borrowing other people's paid online minutes, so I don't think I'll be able to post more frequently than I have been, but I wanted to say hello and tell you that everything's fine. Did I mention that there's wonderful camaraderie among the seven of us? I've taken lots of photos and written lots of journal notes, so when I get back to the States I'll winnow through them and post them and give you a much more detailed and thought-out picture of this experience, which I consider to be one of the privileges of my lifetime.

National Work Day

Today's a national work day in Rwanda. They have it on the last day of every month. For a couple of hours in the morning, everyone does community work, cleaning the streets and so forth. This helps explain why the streets are so clean!

Meanwhile, I, the muzungu (white person), am sitting in the living room drinking excellent Rwandan mountain tea and eating chappatis and typing. Eveywhere I go, children call out, "Muzungu!" and say things like "Hello" or "How are you?" and shake my hand. The other day we walked past a long line of prisoners in orange jumpsuits -- these are men who have admited their role in the genocide and are being rehabilitated -- and a couple called out "muzungu" and I gave them the peace sign and they cheered. Have had experiences similar in the big open-air market and on the streets.

Last night I attended a charismatic church service at my hosts' chuch. I'd seen them often on TV but never in person, and I found that in person they're just like on TV! A portly, sweaty guest preacher bounced from one end of the stage to another proclaiming that nothing had given him satisfaction like God, telling us that in order to reach Canaan land you have to go through pain (the Bible text was a passage from Joshua about how God commanded the children of Israel to be circumcized again before they could enter the Promised Land). Mic'd, it was as loud as a rock concert in the 300-person room. There was singing and dancing afterward to a drum and organ accompaniment, and I was shocked to find that the Africans clapped on one and three instead of two and four! Neither was the dancing marked by any particularly magical looseness of limb, imaginative improvisation, or the like.

Yesterday was spent pleasantly sitting in a bare undecorated restaurant in the town of Muhunga, where I ate cooked cassava root and brochettes of goat meat and goat liver and, not least, some very good french fries. (There's a good beer here, BTW, called Primus, light and tangy with a slight sweetness, made from sorghum. There's also banana-based beer, which I hope to try later.)It rained briefly and hard and we went inside from the cafe terrace to watch, with a couple of new friends with whom we practiced three different languages. One was a geography teacher in secondary school, who teaches in English, a language of which he could trade only a very few phrases with me. I drew him a map of the US -- assuring hiim beforehand in French that I was the world's greatest artist -- and it was all new to him.

The schoolkids have just gotten thrugh a national exam that lasts, I think, two days. They all dress in clean outfits and wait tensely for the results. Acccording to Costa, private schools in Rwanda are good but expensive and the free public schools are overcrowded and not good. Oddly, Protestant schools here have a good reputation but Catholic schools do not.

There's much more ethnology around, much more than can fit here. Just wanted to tell you that everything's going well. Next week should be more serious for us -- doing The Work of Byron Katie with prisoners and other traumatized people. We've done a little of that so far, and it honestly seemed to have led some shut-off genocide survivors to open up. I've seen people smile who, according to my host, have not done so in years, and cry at confronting things that they had hid from for even longer.

Fourth Morning in Rwanda

I'm getting used to a pleasant routine. Five-year-old Gentil is counting teabags in English before he gets ready for school; Costa is bouncing baby Queen on his lap and humming to her while his wife Bernadette takes a well-deserved break; Grace the servant (who was rescued by Costa from post-genocide abuses a couple of years ago) hands him Queen's bottle. Queen returned from the hospital yesterday afternoon, a couple of days after we'd expected. It turned out she had an intestinal infection, possibly caused by eating something off the floor while crawling. She took antibiotics IV for a couple of days, then they released her with an oral form of the medicine, and now she's looking perfectly content, although she looks at me with a puzzled expression at times.

The floors have been mopped and the front and back patios dusted, as on every morning. Yesterday my clothes were not only wash by hand but ironed, an experience most of them had never had before. Breakfast will be fresh, thick, soft Senegalese-style chappatis, sweet rolls, and Rwandan coffee or tea. Today Costa, our German friend Christina, and I will be taking a bus to the southern region of the country, about an hour away, to meet Costa's mom, who wants to give Costa her expert instructions on how to take care of Queen's convalescence.

Over the past couple of days we've been to two different genocide memorials, one, on the outskirts of town, a very suitably gruesome setup in a church where 5,000 Tutsis were rounded up and killed in one day. On a platform, hundreds of skulls are displayed; on the platform below it, countless leg bones; across the room, a collection of rusted machetes and clubs.

The other memorial, in town, was erected by the Belgian government in honor of ten Belgian soldiers who were killed trying to protect the opposition party leader on the day the genocide began. Ten simple memorial columns in the yard; educational posters in the now-empty rooms where the soldiers took their stand; grenade fragments and bloodstains on the interior walls; fist-size bullet holes all over the exterior walls.

It's hard to imagine a nation that is more constructively aware of its problems or facing them more honestly and progressively. And not just the genocide: a nationwide anti-litter campaign has been very successful, HIV awareness is all over the media (there's one TV station, government-owned, and seven radio stations, some of them foreign), and Rwanda, with the highest population density in sub-Saharan Africa, has the second lowest malaria rate, largely due to educational programs such as the Bill and Melinda Gates' foundation's work in promulgating mosquito netting. In addition, Rwanda's parliament is 55% female, the electorate having recoiled from the violent governments that produced periodic genocides and massacres from 1959 to 1995. Rwanda has received a fair amount of international aid in the past fifteen years and has used it well. To me it appears that if the average American were as aware of our nation's problems, and as committed to solving them, as the average Rwandan is for Rwanda, in a decade and a half our inner-city schools would be graduating masses of literate, ambitious, responsible adolescents, the problems of gang violence and drugs would disappear, our health care system would care for all Americans equally, and our government would mobilize a nationwide environmental cleanup and infrastructural upgrade. In other words, we would be the nation we ought to be. A much, much poorer nation than ours is accomplishing equivalent goals. We could even do it without the need for genocide memorials.

Where Am I?

Using a German keyboard in an unpaved neighborhood outside the center of Kigali. Just gettting the machine ready with a Sim card transferred from a cell phone was a triumph, and I don't know how many minutes' credit I have. I recently awoke from 45 straight hours of travel, Austin-Minneapolis-Amsterdam-Nairobi-Kigali, which included an afternoon walking around Amsterdam. There's so much to report already that I don't know where to start, but the people are lovely, the setting is one of Third World low-rise urbanization familiar to those who know Morocco, Greece, Costa Rica, etc.

I've even now heard stories which are too chilling, sobering, to tell here in a rush. They require books.

Two more weeks -- how will I be different at the end? This afternoon I'm going to church, an English-language service, with Costa. I thnk I'm also scheduled to accompany him to talk to a woman who has HIV as a result of the genocide.If I can't describe such things fully yet, I hope that time will allow me to.

Costa's year-old daughter went to the hospital last night, a problem with digesting breast milk. She's okay now.

Amid all this, things like not shaving and showering,and wake-sleep shedules, and brushing teeth from a half-glass of boiled water, seem of minimal import.

The completely ordinary, and the worldwide problems of economics, coexist here with the unimaginable. Will I be able imagine it after I've heard it? If so, there's the danger of it becoming ordinary: "Oh yes, you told me that story before." A defense mechanism to keep it at safe distance.

Meanwhile, there's fun! Meeting delightful individuals, immediate friends; talking a mix of English and French, and building affection through the effort; drinking East African coffee and tea, among the world's best. Watching TV, which is just like all TV but in a different language. Saw a good Congolese movie last night, though, a somwhat realistic romance-melodrama featuring famous regional musicians and actors.

Fifteen more nights under a moquito net, in a shared hot room where no mosquitoes are seen. Playing with 5-year-old Gentil, who can count to 1,000 in English and taught me how to fold a paper boat and blow bubbles.

See you later! Forgive me if I don't answer comments while I'm here. Later there will be photos and more time to write at length.

A Lifetime's Reading

I'm entering the time of life when you want to spend more time with your loved ones. And so I want to reread Resurrection, Crime and Punishment, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, Orlando, Emma, Tom Jones, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Dombey and Son...and I'll get to Shakespeare's histories and Bartholomew Fair, and I'll go further in Chaucer...and when I reread A Moveable Feast I'll kiss the pages, and then I'll read Chekhov's "The Peasants" and "In the Ravine" continually, as we're told to pray continually.

Nice Description

Someone once called my work "beautiful but not important." What a perfect description of this world!

Heard Around the House, So I'll Steal It

“An empty muffin case of a man.” Old, empty, used up, disposable, and crummy, its only value being as a momentary reminder of past sweetness.

That's What the Simple Folk Do

This rain reminds me of the Northeast, an old-fashioned all-day soak with no lightning-and-thunder drama, no floods, no power outages. I’m letting cars pass me –- this is new –- and somehow through ignorance I end up in the thick traffic to the Austin City Limits Music Festival. But I smile, it’s a Saturday of no plans. Wet couples and small groups, mostly in their twenties and thirties, walk straggly-haired across the bridge over the Colorado, and it surprises me how many of the young women are wearing skirts or dresses; it reminds me of when we went back to Ann Arbor in 1976 and found that, during the three-year interval since graduation, coeds had started putting on makeup and wearing skirts again.

I’m going shopping –- strange. So this is how people spend their Saturdays! I’m buying gifts for my hosts for my forthcoming foreign stay: two children’s Texas Longhorns T-shirts in burnt orange, and two gospel CDs, one of black music and one of white. (That’s America.) Do they have a CD player at their home? I’m betting yes; after all, they’re not in the bush. Then I drive from bookstore to bookstore looking for a copy of the Constance Garnett translation of Crime and Punishment -– the Roman Polanski uproar has made me want to reread it, but I doubt if Roman’s going to find redemption in the arms of a saintly whore in the end –- and the third store I try has one used copy, with decent-size print no less.

Four o’clock and I haven’t eaten since breakfast -– this is new too -- so I swing by the Cajun saloon-restaurant, imagining fried oysters. The small parking lot is full as always but a space opens right at the front door, and I start toward it, but by the time I begin guiding my slow turn there’s a big beer-bellied man standing in the way, slurping from a 32-ounce Styrofoam of soda pop. I wait for him to see me -– he doesn’t move –- he’s standing smack between the white lines -- I extend my arm to show I want to get through -- he slurps, doesn’t move. He’s wearing a purple LSU T-shirt: this bar’s the Louisiana sports headquarters of Austin and today’s game day, the place is packed with his type. I wait, he slurps. Shaking my head, I go into reverse and, before pulling away, draw up beside him and roll down my window and say with a smile, “Thanks, you’re a prince.” How I’ve mellowed! As I’m driving away it dawns on me he’s not absolutely being a prick, he’s saving the space for a friend. I can identify, which makes it -- does it? -- all right.

To the fancy supermarket in the heavy rain -– plastic bags today, not paper! –- and I nosh on free samples to tide me over till home. I skip the pears and the avocados, they’re hard as rocks despite the loyal service workers slicing them into quarter-moons and the customers accepting them without a qualm -– I pick up a container of the house gumbo which is really good, and German bread to dip in it. And a large coconut macaroon half-draped in chocolate: “I think this is the best thing in the store!” the cashier says to me. One must remember they’re not flirting, they’re just being friendly.

After the gumbo I have coffee and take a nap, the perfect wakeup routine because when the nap’s over the coffee’s just taking effect, and start Philip K. Dick’s In Milton Lumky Territory -– how is it I’ve been reading him for thirty-five years and haven’t gotten to all his books yet? I’ve got two rental movies for this evening, and best of all, I’ve had time to write something of my own, even if it’s only this.

leaf impressions, quack not clack, Great Pyrenees

1. At the newly landscaped pond at the multi-use development, the designers imprinted leaves and grasses into the wet cement so that the impressions dried in. Not until after I drive off do I wonder whether they took real plants from the surrounding fields, or used ready-made stamps. Oh no, how will I know whether I’m allowed to like it or not?

2. A nearby clacking: at first I think it’s my phone mischievously taking snapshots inside my pocket, but it’s a pair of quacking waterbirds at the edge of the pond, small and black with off-white bills, quick-paddling this way and that through the grass and algae and dipping for munchables, and followed by three fuzzy chicks with red bills who wonder, “What’s next?”

3. The dogs are out, their masters putting on or taking off their leashes. From the other side of the pond I’m planning what I’m going to say to the leash-removers if I command myself not to chicken out. But by the time we’re all on the same side of the pond it’s occurred to me that these people may know how to handle their animals –- canine-human pairs stop on the path to greet one another and separate with no horrible consequences -- and that the only unpeaceful things in the scene are my own judgments. In a wild departure, I smile at one of the dog owners and ask him what breed his big beautiful dog is: it’s a Great Pyrenees.

valuable hair, umbrella man, sleek legs

1. Toweling dry, one of my hairs lands on the rim of the bathtub curled in the shape of the tai chi (ak/a yin yang sign). Should I sell it on eBay?

2. A cloudy day at last; a man walks down the street carrying a folded umbrella. A welcome portent of rain, or is he just a doofus?

3. Few epiphanies are sexier than that constituted by a blonde in a business suit and heels striding down the sidewalk sipping from a takeout container of coffee.

men, men, men!

1. I’m reading a suspense novel whose front cover is a photo of a naked young male. I’m afraid someone will see.

2. Which reminds me, I want to rent Brokeback Mountain – but only for Heath Ledger’s performance, you understand.

3. I read an article somewhere about the show Mad Men, in which the show's creator, Matthew Weiner, talked about having to compromise on casting. In the case of one important role, after much painful discussion they decided to go with “the beautiful one” rather than the better actor. I leaped to the conclusion that “the beautiful one” was a woman, undoubtedly either January Jones or Christina Hendricks, but now I think it was Jon Hamm, who plays the lead role, Don Draper. They can't possibly have hired him for his acting.

Slumming: An Epiphany

On the surface it couldn’t look more promising: a restaurant counter at the back of a Chinese grocery. I eat at a little card table with a view of the store shelves: cardboard boxes of round fried gluten, dried noodle, board bean thread; shelf displays of soup mixes with a week’s worth of sodium per serving; ginger and maltose candy; white bread buns filled with guava paste; bags of taro-flavored shrimp chips dyed bright purple. Surely the much-maligned western diet has it over this.

The daily specials are written in Chinese and English on a whiteboard, in smudged black marker. Duck tongues, pork innards… Ever the moderate, I order squid with ground pork.

I take my number tag, 44, to my table, and every time the manager emerges with a tray and shouts a number it sounds, in his accent, like “Forty-four!” An urn behind the counter offers free tea; I do not partake. A fiftyish Mexican man –- immigrant? parolee? -- buses the tables.

When my food arrives, the manager doesn’t shout “Forty-four!” He signals to me with a quiet smile, making allowances for my race. Hm, the pork is sliced, not ground, but this isn’t the kind of place where you send a dish back. The squid? It’s glossy, translucent pink and crunchy-hard. The chef has avoided the danger of overcooking. It probably skidded around in the wok for all of thirty seconds before he flipped it onto the plate. I try a few pieces, then push the rest to the side –- very well, let them think I’m a squeamish Yank! It’s the first time in my life I haven’t liked squid. But the tentacles are long and thick; maybe it’s really octopus.

I finish the pork, sliced garlic, and snow peas, and the tiny bowl of rice. Then I close my eyes and imagine how this dish would have tasted if not for the romantic appeal of the downscale ambience. A watery tan sauce; plain, insipid pork strips. I’d rather have had the standardized, sugar-zapped kung pao chicken of some middle-class palace with gold lions at the door, or the clichéd shrimp and lobster sauce of my childhood’s “Chinese-American” restaurants.

Back outside in the strip mall, I look in at a Cajun place of similar class: long rows of white clothless tables with unmatched chairs, some of them lawn chairs. In the window there’s a favorable review from a guidebook, and inside there’s one person eating, or perhaps just keeping the staff company.

On the evidence of the Chinese place, I’m not going to go here either. I’m going to get home and pour a large helping of fresh blueberries over a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

red arc, the kind of crap I’ll eat, stakeout at RLC's

1. Watering the grass in full sunlight: the afterimage of the green hose makes a red arc across the lawn.

2. What to do with leftover rice: dump leftover cold white rice into a soup bowl. Sprinkle generously with soy sauce and vinegar, and moderately with sesame oil. Drain a can of sardines, with skin and bones on, and place the fish on top of the rice in a lovely stripe or spoke pattern. Garnish with thin-sliced scallion and red or black pepper. Guaranteed to make people say, “Ew, get that away from me!”

3. At about five this afternoon a police cruiser parked in front of my house, and stayed there an hour. The cop remained in the driver’s seat the whole time. About halfway through, two local women walked up and chatted pleasantly with him for a few minutes. Then they walked on. I was inside listening to music and generally puttering about. At six I put on my gym clothes, got a bottle of water, and opened the front door. The police car was gone; I never got the chance to ask the cop what was up.

gravel, gravestones, blue p

1. A turning dump truck has dropped a spray of gravel over the road, like fragments of a kidney stone vaporized by a laser.

2. Small gray and brown tombstones cover the cemetery field, like fragments of a kidney stone vaporized by a laser.

3. This is the first time I've ever seen blue pee.* It's cute!

*a normal side effect of Uretron

The Cab at the Door

Hey, I'm leaving in about two minutes to get my kidney stone vaporized by a laser. Talk to you in a day or so...inshallah.

The Pants Detector

Sears cashier, as I put two pairs of jeans on the counter: “You’re buying pants?”

“Yes.”

Seizing the advantage as she touches the pants: “You found some?”

“Yes.” Is she toying with me? Or is she asking: “Did you find those pants, or did they find you? Can one ever truly say one has found something? Was it not always here? Is there a Finder, is there anything to find, was there ever anything to lose?”

In the fluorescent-lit navel of a sparsely traveled store sits the existential gatekeeper, waiting, waiting, for the seeker who will present his offering and answer the perilous questions.

At least she didn’t ask, “So you’re starting to need Relaxed Fit?”

Asheville Joy

Hi, I'm in Asheville, NC, having, as I often do, the time of my life. Everybody's here: Steve, Lynne, Andy, Chris, Chris, John, Danielle, Ann, Meade, Mike, James -- and Ken, who had to leave early -- and Agents 95 and 97. Almost everybody...there's always someone I'd want to add, to make what's complete more complete.

This is the first time I've looked at a computer in three days, and the reason I opened it up this morning was to see the photos Ann posted of some of our group. (And this one of herself.) Ann and John are excellent nonprofessional photographers and Lynne's an excellent professional one, so we've got people snapping away like mad, taking pictures of each other taking pictures, and memorializing how lucky I am to belong to this loving, welcoming, sparkling, comical, brilliant family who are helping create the new life of the world.

If more photos show up I'll direct you to their locations. Right now I've got to go have more fun!

African plans, macrobiotics, white bread

1. I look into flights and immunizations for my autumn trip to Africa.

2. After a long workout I take myself to dinner at the all-you-can-eat macrobiotic restaurant, Casa de Luz. Sweet potato soup, aduki beans and brown rice, steamed zucchini with walnut kombu miso sauce, blanched greens, daikon, beet-and-carrot cornmeal pie, urns of twig tea. You can eat an infinite amount of that stuff and not gain weight.

It’s in a little Central American-looking complex of meditation rooms and yoga rooms and a preschool. Tropical trees shield a narrow red-cobbled walk and an assortment of sitting nooks. A pomegranate tree; banana leaves; notice boards; a black stone statuette of an elephant god; an oak draped with tiny antiqued lampshades. A blond-haired little brother and sister –- her name, inevitably, is Zoe –- argue in the most reasonable polite tones about how to break a stalk from the carefully groomed stand of bamboo.

The dining room is like an audition hall for roles requiring tall, lean, healthy, pink people. A few tall gray stoop-shouldered ones lurk around hoping against hope for callbacks. Multigeneration families discuss meaningful issues; strangers venture conversation at communal tables; regulars rush to hug hello. The tall pink waiter with the unchanging minimal smile makes sure not to be accusable of impatience when I ask him to explain the food-ordering system. He has embraced silence but sometimes acknowledges a spiritual duty to interrupt it for a customer.

By the window sit a group of unrelated adults, a class in some meritorious subject. Two of them, a white-haired man and a sexy fortyish brunette, stand and bow repeatedly to the setting sun through the window, clap three times, and thank each other very much. Later everyone in the group sits with their right arm extended in midair.

The studenty foursome at my table wonder aloud about the arm-raisers, and reminisce about a convenience store in Lafayette, Louisiana that serves immense magnificent delicious po’boy sandwiches piled with oysters and dripping with mayonnaise. I could use one myself. The most memorable of the four, short and wiry, Appalachian-looking, visually out of place here, wearing a half-grown beard and a green gimme cap, talks about his travels with a landscape crew digging gardens for the wealthy. The inexplicable competitive lust to outdo one’s neighbor’s plants. He and his friends fantasize about a plot of land they’ve seen for sale, almost seven acres with an unlivable 1920s farmhouse, just outside the city, for $110,000, but who can get that kind of money?

I’m practicing taking surreptitious notes. I’ve got a science fiction novel open and am apparently recording my insights about it. I stare off at the ceiling with intense detachment while hanging onto the voices here beside me. I open and close my notebook at unpredictable intervals as if inspired by shuddering fancies all my own.

The fools! Little do they know I have captured their dreams.

3. Home, I allow myself to eat packaged white bread, which I keep only for my children. The sky doesn’t fall.