Landslide

May 9, 2008

“Bubble Mango! Bubble Mango! Bubble Mango!”
I was finishing up my meal, which included an enormous bowl of noodle soup and the spring rolls that I love. At the back of the Vietnamese restaurant the server was yelling over and over the order for the bubble drink.
“There must be something to this,” I thought. “Goddammit, now I want a bubble mango!”
I caught his attention as I was scooping up some stray noodles from the bottom of the bowl—the rice kind. This particular dish comes with the udon noodles, but I don’t like them so well. Too fat. So I have them make it with the rice noodles, which they always dump in as a clump—as if it were at one time part of the enormous ball of twine and had been sitting around waiting for an occasion like this. It comes apart easily enough, though.
“Bubble Mango!” I shouted. “It’s good?”
“Bubble Mango! Bubble Mango!” He repeated. They were already making my drink.
“Ok, but just ONE.
“Okay! Bubble mango!”

The drink was actually quite good. What I hadn’t bargained for, however, was the unusually wide straw. Not long, but very wide—as if maybe something large had to make its way up the tube. I soon found out what it was, as a glob of darkness (maybe the “bubble”), ascended like one of those elevators in the ritzy shopping malls, where you can see the people go up and down. I considered this thing in my mouth, being uninitiated, and felt that maybe I shouldn’t be eating it. I was a little put off by the texture, which was chewy, but not in an altogether pleasant way.
“Okay, so what’s this stuff in the bottom?” I asked. Upon closer examination, I’d noticed that the very bottom of the cup was taken up with the little black globs.
“Tapioca!” Said the server. “Tapioca seed!”
“I guess that’s okay.”
“You like? Bubble mango!”
“Yes, it’s very good,” I said. The service at this place has greatly improved. The small man who served my food, went about the restaurant yelling about the bubble drink, was actually quite welcoming. I’ve not been there in probably a year, and remember the service as being indifferent at best. You were served everything all at once—drinks, too—then were ignored by the busy wait staff. I didn’t mind so much, being a low-maintenance diner, but it was nice to see that they appreciated the business. I took my bubble mango drink out to the car, drank the rest on the way home.

I’ve pried apart much of the enormous furnace, separating the different sections to make it easier to get them out of the house and into the truck. These things are put together like an enormous cast-iron sandwich, with the final size of the boiler determined by how many sections are fastened together, side by side. I cut through the retaining bolts with my metal saw to make fast work of freeing up the sections. It took much less time than I’d imagined, and only remains to get the heavy pieces carted out to the driveway and loaded up. This means another trip to the scrap metal facility, which is always a fun time for me. It’s like a regular holiday there, but I look around and see that the men in dirty overalls and pickup trucks like mine don’t seem to be enjoying the outing so much.

May 11, 2008

On Sunday I loaded up the little car with some drum equipment, headed out to Montgomery County to attend a friend’s celebration for his parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. This event was close to the area I used to live in, was surprised that I could navigate there without benefit of a map or directions—it being many years since I’ve had to go to that place. The reception and celebration was in the brand-new activities hall that adjoined the equally-new chapel on the grounds of a Catholic School in Potomac. To call it a “Catholic School” is a bit misleading, or disingenuous. This place arose from the moneyed landscape of that area, the result of massive fundraising and apparently very deep pockets. Those who wanted to see the place get built did not cut corners: The twenty acres or so were meticulously landscaped, the buildings looked like they belonged there since time began, and you got the impression that you were entering an exclusive club, one that rivals the membership of the intellectually elite ivy league schools. I was on the grounds of a center for Opus Dei.

My friend, now a priest, gave a mass—a celebration of his parents’ unity and long run, but one that he said would also count towards the next day’s mass, which happened to be Sunday. “That’s just perfect,” I thought. “Now I can skip church.” The “chapel,” which was really a mini-cathedral, had just been dedicated the previous Saturday. There was marble from Italy, beautiful glass doors with etchings of angels behind the altar, life-size statues of saints, and Jesus depicted as a young boy (befitting the school setting), offering his mother Mary a rose. He also held in his other hand a scroll or piece of parchment, perhaps his grade report for the lessons just ending.

When the holy prayers started, I remained mostly silent, letting the centuries of religion wash over me, being merely a stone in the stream. Besides, they were so friggin’ long, you really had to know them, had to be part of this for longer than I care to think about. The psalms I could sing along with, although the melodies were not exactly intuitive, the phrasing sometimes strange. The prayers, however, transported me back to that time of mystery, the one that I idealize in writing and sometimes in speech, because it was without our trappings, our toasters and matching washers and dryers, the SUV in the driveway. But the people, I now realize, were the same as now. And I respected those around me, so knowing of these prayers, able to summon them up at will, repeat them over and over in devotion and as a source of comfort. For they knew as well that they were the same as those early church-goers, wanted mostly to continue what those others started in those centuries with much lost and many pieces still a puzzle, but their conviction and belief unwavering. For me to sit and stupidly mumble some words would very well approach the ultimate in absurdity and silliness. I kept silent.

Being one of eleven children, Father Joseph had many nieces and nephews. With few exceptions, his siblings had gone out and quickly continued the work that their parents started—getting married and having as many kids as possible. I spoke with one of his sisters, now settled in the Midwest. Every seat in the minivan has a child’s safety seat, she said, because the weight requirement for these seats includes children up to eighty pounds. She went on to explain that this was ridiculous, because many children reach the age of ten or so and still don’t weigh eighty pounds.
“What ten-year-old wants to be riding around in a child’s seat?” she asked.
“I would not want that,” I said. “I would feel foolish.”
She appeared to be about twenty-five or so and had five children.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that every single female in the family was gorgeous; any one of them would stand out in a crowd. To see them all together was a bit intimidating, or maybe just too much. I think there should be a rule that allows them only to go out into the world singly, so as not to overwhelm the rest of us. The men were universally well put-together as well, with classically handsome good looks and fine builds. How they managed to pull this off is beyond me. Eleven kids. There may be more—some that I don’t know about.

We played some music--father Joseph, his brother and I. I’d loaded the car with some scant drum equipment, modified my setup to accommodate the limited space in the 2-seater and what I thought would be the expectations of the gathering of family and children. It turns out I made the right choice. We started late, played rather well considering we’d never really approached music together, had certainly not practiced. It could have been absolutely terrible. But it was not terrible, and at some times it was rather decent. With the hour getting late, and an early-morning Sunday looming for me, I packed up and hit the road, mingling with the angry and drunk Montgomery County drivers out for a Saturday night romp around the beltway. The first accident was actually BEFORE the beltway—a minor mishap involving two cars and not much in the way of damage. On the beltway itself, it was just excessive speed and continuous weaving and tailgating that ruled the day. The other side had a pretty serious backup where someone had not managed to get to where they were going safely, had been waylaid there in the high-speed lanes of the super speedway. The other day, coming back from visiting Miss Penny the cat, a woman had rear-ended a new-ish car with her shiny and large Honda sedan. The impact had been great, as she’d actually knocked the other car several hundred feet down the road, where it sat with a crumpled and bent rear end. The woman now stood in the roadway, in front of her own car, talking of course on her cell phone. I am always amazed and wondering that people don’t at least stand OFF the traveled part of the road, take a few steps to get up on the grass or maybe on the other side of the guardrail. They seem to think that standing next to their car will somehow protect it from further damage, will impart the message to unwitting motorists who are ready to ram it, “Hey, I’m standing here, so don’t smack into my car or I’ll come after you with my cell phone!” I think the real reason they stand around in the road, with cars whizzing by within inches, and ready to collide with them or their disabled vehicles, is that they have never walked anywhere, maybe don’t realize that cars can run people over, and that it’s actually quite dangerous to be out in the road mingling with them.

Landslide

There is a recurring song, one that plays only at those times of greyness, early dawn, or during missions that are vague, pointless, ill-advised or a combination thereof. It can be in Missouri or Indiana, watching the sun come up over Denver as I-70 sees the first light of day, with hundreds of miles of roadway used up and stops only for gas and the junk they sell at the quick-stops for sustenance. And then, as dimness turns less dim, the thoughts you have unfocused or blank or trying to shift gears between blankness and coherence, the song comes on—right on cue. This is not even a matter of déjà vu now, it is simply expected. Whatever movie that is playing that involves your life, has this one song for those times, and the radio people put it on then. It’s probably Stevie Nicks, or one of those Fleetwood Mac people, and she puts her heart into it, but you don’t hear it really, because it’s just the background theme to whatever is playing out in your life, something at that particular time that is maybe between major scenes, just filler material until a more interesting part comes along, gets the plot moving again. In French, you have of course “chansons d’amour,” or love songs. This one I call a “chanson de chagrin.” It’s three in the morning, darkness and mist shroud a rural two-laner that may be beautiful, but you can’t really see it. Whatever thoughts come out of the landscape, settle there, mostly involve staying awake, not running off the road into some area that you can’t see but you know vaguely is out there, will suck you down. The only radio station you can tune in has static, plays advertisements for new and used farm equipment, for fertilizers and seeds, for Bob and Betty Ferguson, who run the insurance agency for your home and car and farm needs. Then the ads stop and another station slips in, one that plays music.
“I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around…”