Eye buggers big as granola nuggets block my boo hoo ducts, products
of the crystallized sentiment that rushed me when about the sixth person
in two weeks asked why I haven’t sent out a travel missive. It tears me
up that people give a rat’s ass about my whereabouts and howabeings.
Many followers of the logs say they live vicariously through me and my
wild hair adventures. It’s the fun ones people like to read. “Fun” is
not the word I would use to describe the journey that has replaced my
South American tour guide dream and perhaps that’s why I haven’t been
sending out many travel logs.
It’s coming up on a year that I quit
my job with faith, fervor and the grandiose idea of copycatting
Elizabeth What’s-Her-Face’s Love, Eat, Pray ….or Pray, Love, Eat …or Screw, Gorge, Supplicate…whatever
the hell the title of the book is that I am intensely jealous of.
Things have just not gone as planned. I’m not in the mood for clichés,
so if you’re thinking “Plans never do” or “Man plans, God laughs,” or
“It’s all about the journey,” or “Bloom where you are planted” or
“Things could be worse,” kindly keep it to yourself. Clichés piss me
off. First of all, they reek of triviality, but deep down under the
fake there is something profound, like a trophy wife who is a guru.
Second, I try every which way to prove them wrong, but after an
exhausting battle to poke a hole in their lofty ideals, they end up
being right. Third, they require absolutely no cleverness to think up
and so the average ding-a-ling can make himself out to be Rasputin, when
in fact he doesn’t even know who Rasputin is.
Anyway, all I have
to show for the aforementioned grandiose idea is a freeze-dried romance
in Spain, a journal full of self-indulgent reflections and an
unfulfilled longing to see all of South America on the back of a big-ass
truck. Besides that, my “world travels” have landed me back in the
‘holler, Virginia, the very place where I was born and raised. That
ain’t exactly the exciting adventure I had in mind.
My sensitivity
about this issue showed itself shortly after the return from Spain. On
the way to the airport to catch the flight to VA, after a three day
layover in Dallas, where I own a home, that I cannot stay in, because I
rented it out, thinking I was going to be on a hi-ho adventure for at
least a year, a friend gave me her unsolicited opinion about what is wrong
with my life at present. According to her, I don’t know what I want and
I’m wandering around aimlessly trying to find it. What I need to do is
settle down and conduct a ruthless auto-examination of my conscious, so I
can come to know myself and what I truly want, and I don’t need to go
traipsing around the world to discover that. Those were almost the exact
words my mother said to me in 1993 when I went to live in Ecuador. (One
of the best decisions I ever made, just for the record.)
Her
supposition of my current lifestyle as flawed flew all over me like ugly
on ape. I said nothing, but my innards ruffled like the feathers on a
horny rooster defending his hen. The gift in that discomfort was a
reminder of exactly what is “wrong” with my life…what’s kept me
from fulfilling any of my dreams or my highest potential: worrying
about what others might think. I worry that I might be perceived as
irresponsible, or that my irreverent sense of humor might offend
someone, or that if I write the truth I might expose a family secret, or
that I might say a brutal truth that hurts someone’s feelings, or that I
might make somebody mad, or that I might be criticized by those I love
or that…...
Well, I’m smack-dab in the middle of a midlife crisis
and crises call for drastic measures. They call for females sprouting
fuzzy balls and rolling them in attitude. They call for digging
deep into one’s own beliefs, casting out the ones that cripple the
spirit and keeping the ones that empower the essence of the individual.
In my case, they call for loyalty to my knowing that I haven’t a drop of
malicious intention coursing my veins and as long as I’m not asking
anyone for anything, I owe them no explanations. The moment has come to
say Fuck it with a big fucking capital “F.”
The bottom line is, if I say the truth as I see it and do what I really, really, really want to do, someone will be offended and feelings will be
hurt. It’s a given, and for that reason the Universe threw apologies
into the game. So, there you have it, a few summative paragraphs of
what’s going on with me and my missing missives, all written on the
road, under the influence of a new anti-depressant, self-help books,
conversations with old-souls, twenty years of psychotherapy and a
shitload of clichés.
Otherwise, at present, I’m in Hendersonville,
NC attending a Wilderness First Responders training, which many friends
and family seem to have confused with casting a role on Survivor. I am
not eating worms and rotted deer testicles or letting scorpions and
spiders crawl all over me. I’m learning what to do in the case of a
medical emergency when out in the wilderness and days away from a
hospital. It’s intense and makes me wish I would have paid attention in
Anatomy class instead of sling-shotting notes up to my best friend on
the front row.
There are 16 participants and I could be the mother
of 15. They keep saying “Yes, m’am,” to me as if I just asked them if
they washed their hands after they used the bathroom. The instructor
uses me for the examples in the “elderly” emergency cases. So, I thought
I’d show them what the old lady is made of. We had one hell of a
thunderstorm Friday night, with thunder, lightening, hail, side-ways
rain, and gusts of wind that would take the shingles off an outhouse. I
stayed in my tent the whole night while those wimpy whippersnappers
slept in the cabins. Of course, given that I was about 200 ft from the
lake and under a 200 ft tall pine tree, what I did was just plain
stupid, but I showed 'em.
Actually, they are all very sweet and
try to make me feel included. Last night they invited me to beer
drinkin’ and star gazing on the dock and even offered me a toke off the
reefer going around the circle. Tonight they’re driving into Ashville to
go bar hopping and asked if I wanted to go. I politely declined, to set
a good example. We’ve got class tomorrow at 9 a.m. and I’ve got to know
what nasopharyngeal airways, myocardial infarction, defibrillation,
hypovolemic shock, the appendicular skeleton, and many more things I
can’t pronounce are. Tomorrow we get to practice e-vacing someone with a
compound femur fracture. It will probably be an elderly person. Hot
damn.
So, I’m off to study. Hope everyone is well. Much love, G
Friday, May 20, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Travelogue 7, Spain: Of Monks and Grannies
Since my last update, the weather has been rather PMSy, bouncing back
and forth between pleasant and pissy. My mood has followed its lead
like ant # 17 following #16 in a line of 100,000…blindly and wearily
marching onward to an undisclosed destination. If #16 were to stop
without warning, I’d get a face full of ant ass. If there is one thing
that I have confirmed about myself from these past 10 months of jobless
wandering it is that the unknown unnerves me. I like to be the lead ant
on stilts, with a clear vision of where I’m leading the troops, why we
are going there and what’s on the to-do list to achieve our goal. Of
course, the metaphor is all too appropriate. In the big scheme of
existence, I am but an ant, if even that. I’m probably more like an
amoeba in ant poop. I’m not referring to worthiness, but rather point of
view. Can you imagine how it would screw up the whole ecosystem if ant
poop bacteria didn’t exist? We’d be up to our toenails in exoskeleton
shit! No, no, value is not the issue. It’s perspective.
ANYWAYS!
One of the most exciting things I’ve seen in the last two weeks (or is it 3?) is a sheep herding granny in hiking boots. I met her while visiting the village where Marta grew up in Asturias called San Esteban de Peñamellera Baja, population 12. No, I’m not missing any digits there. I meant to write a one followed by a two to form a twelve, and that grand total is not counting the foster child her aunt and uncle have taken in.
Shortly after we arrived, Marta wanted to show me around town so we could stretch our legs, but the whole tour didn’t get even a yawn out of one calf of one leg. As we were strolling down the (one and only) cobblestone street, we happened upon some relatives, which is bound to happen in a town of 12. Immediately my eyes were drawn to the sweet smile of a white-haired woman two inches shorter than me and twice my age. From the knees up I would have thought she was on her way to chapel in her handmade black-checkered dress, gray wool sweater and matching silk scarf. About mid-calf, however, a thick pair of black athletic socks rose up out of the finest pair of Timberlands you ever laid eyes on, laced up tight and ready to hike. She leaned on her walking stick, smiling and waiting patiently for the visit to end so she could head off to seek her flock grazing somewhere on yon mountainside so steep and tall that the sheep all walk lopsided on flat ground. I think she attracted me so because I hope to be dressing classy, climbing mountains and smiling while waiting when I am 85.
On a different excursion last week I met the antithesis of Great Granny Hiker and if I’m like him when I’m 85, I’ll die in a lonely, miserable existence. I got stuck with the Monk from Hell for a monastery tour. What a bitter, bitter man and I chalk it up to a life of abstinence. If he were to get laid I’m sure his countenance would improve 100%. I’m certain he would have to pay for the service given his age, scowl and lack of passion experience. I say pass the plate for a special offering called The Happy Monk fund. I’d empty my pockets. He opened the monastery door, waved our group of about 15 in, and barred the door shut behind us. The lyrics to “Hotel California” came to mind. We eagerly, but respectfully, gathered around him waiting for instructions: -“Look here, I am a man of faith, a monk, NOT a tour guide. I’ll tell you what I know about this place, but don’t ask me about anything else. This tour is one hour and one hour only. Don’t ask me for any more time, because I don’t have it. There is no charge for the tour, but we live off of your donations.” With that he turned his back to us and took off down a long passageway, leaving the group in the dust. We all looked at one another and shrugged our shoulders. There was a unanimous assumption that we were supposed to follow him. By the time the bulk of the group caught up, he had already explained the architecture of the buttresses and was moving on to the garden. Between the history and architecture lessons, he slipped in his homilies. We were informed that the problem with the world today is that people don’t believe in sin and therefore they have no conscious. They don’t study the Bible or believe in heaven and hell, either. Thus, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Of course, he didn’t use that exact idiom, but I claim translator’s poetic license. Whooooaaaahhhh mule! What I want to know is how a monk who is locked up in a monastery, reads only the Bible and spends all day praying can consider himself an expert on “the world” and “people.” Is he paying news correspondents to slip the headlines to him under the door? This inquiring mind wants to know. I looked at the tour as an hour of religious tolerance. The monastery itself, which was built around 1300, is worth seeing. Just check the schedule to see when Grump Monk is off-duty.
The
reason I was at the monastery is quite interesting. I participated in a
Vaughntown program at the hotel adjacent to it. The deal is, this
company creates a total English immersion experience for Spainards who
can’t travel abroad. They invite Anglos from all over the world to spend
a week at a 4 star hotel for free in exchange for speaking English with
the Spainards. That’s it. 8 hours a day you speak English and get
treated like royalty. I think it a marvelous idea that I’d like to steal
and set up in the U.S. for Anglos wanting to practice Spanish. 
I’ll end with a quick rundown of “the plan,” which probably interests you more than grannies and monks: May 6 I return to Dallas and hope some kind friend will take me in for a few weeks. I’ve set up a few on-line grading shifts to tide me over. If the job offer of my dreams does not come along by mid-May, I’m going to do an 8 day Wilderness First Responder training course in Ashville, NC, which many of the tour companies have been requiring. From there I’ll continue northward to visit my family in VA. If by that time I haven’t been offered a job I want, I’m going to make use of the Brazilian visa Kufucka made me buy for the promised job, and go learn Portuguese, which would be another feather for the tour guide cap. I have 50 some applications and inquiries floating around out there in cyberspace, so all of this could change at any moment. As for the relationship, it’s in a holding pattern. The reality is that we’ve got to get the employment situation worked out before anything can proceed. Yikes, 1236 words. I shouldn’t wait so long between updates. Much love and peace, G
ANYWAYS!
One of the most exciting things I’ve seen in the last two weeks (or is it 3?) is a sheep herding granny in hiking boots. I met her while visiting the village where Marta grew up in Asturias called San Esteban de Peñamellera Baja, population 12. No, I’m not missing any digits there. I meant to write a one followed by a two to form a twelve, and that grand total is not counting the foster child her aunt and uncle have taken in.
Shortly after we arrived, Marta wanted to show me around town so we could stretch our legs, but the whole tour didn’t get even a yawn out of one calf of one leg. As we were strolling down the (one and only) cobblestone street, we happened upon some relatives, which is bound to happen in a town of 12. Immediately my eyes were drawn to the sweet smile of a white-haired woman two inches shorter than me and twice my age. From the knees up I would have thought she was on her way to chapel in her handmade black-checkered dress, gray wool sweater and matching silk scarf. About mid-calf, however, a thick pair of black athletic socks rose up out of the finest pair of Timberlands you ever laid eyes on, laced up tight and ready to hike. She leaned on her walking stick, smiling and waiting patiently for the visit to end so she could head off to seek her flock grazing somewhere on yon mountainside so steep and tall that the sheep all walk lopsided on flat ground. I think she attracted me so because I hope to be dressing classy, climbing mountains and smiling while waiting when I am 85.
On a different excursion last week I met the antithesis of Great Granny Hiker and if I’m like him when I’m 85, I’ll die in a lonely, miserable existence. I got stuck with the Monk from Hell for a monastery tour. What a bitter, bitter man and I chalk it up to a life of abstinence. If he were to get laid I’m sure his countenance would improve 100%. I’m certain he would have to pay for the service given his age, scowl and lack of passion experience. I say pass the plate for a special offering called The Happy Monk fund. I’d empty my pockets. He opened the monastery door, waved our group of about 15 in, and barred the door shut behind us. The lyrics to “Hotel California” came to mind. We eagerly, but respectfully, gathered around him waiting for instructions: -“Look here, I am a man of faith, a monk, NOT a tour guide. I’ll tell you what I know about this place, but don’t ask me about anything else. This tour is one hour and one hour only. Don’t ask me for any more time, because I don’t have it. There is no charge for the tour, but we live off of your donations.” With that he turned his back to us and took off down a long passageway, leaving the group in the dust. We all looked at one another and shrugged our shoulders. There was a unanimous assumption that we were supposed to follow him. By the time the bulk of the group caught up, he had already explained the architecture of the buttresses and was moving on to the garden. Between the history and architecture lessons, he slipped in his homilies. We were informed that the problem with the world today is that people don’t believe in sin and therefore they have no conscious. They don’t study the Bible or believe in heaven and hell, either. Thus, the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Of course, he didn’t use that exact idiom, but I claim translator’s poetic license. Whooooaaaahhhh mule! What I want to know is how a monk who is locked up in a monastery, reads only the Bible and spends all day praying can consider himself an expert on “the world” and “people.” Is he paying news correspondents to slip the headlines to him under the door? This inquiring mind wants to know. I looked at the tour as an hour of religious tolerance. The monastery itself, which was built around 1300, is worth seeing. Just check the schedule to see when Grump Monk is off-duty.
The
reason I was at the monastery is quite interesting. I participated in a
Vaughntown program at the hotel adjacent to it. The deal is, this
company creates a total English immersion experience for Spainards who
can’t travel abroad. They invite Anglos from all over the world to spend
a week at a 4 star hotel for free in exchange for speaking English with
the Spainards. That’s it. 8 hours a day you speak English and get
treated like royalty. I think it a marvelous idea that I’d like to steal
and set up in the U.S. for Anglos wanting to practice Spanish. 
I’ll end with a quick rundown of “the plan,” which probably interests you more than grannies and monks: May 6 I return to Dallas and hope some kind friend will take me in for a few weeks. I’ve set up a few on-line grading shifts to tide me over. If the job offer of my dreams does not come along by mid-May, I’m going to do an 8 day Wilderness First Responder training course in Ashville, NC, which many of the tour companies have been requiring. From there I’ll continue northward to visit my family in VA. If by that time I haven’t been offered a job I want, I’m going to make use of the Brazilian visa Kufucka made me buy for the promised job, and go learn Portuguese, which would be another feather for the tour guide cap. I have 50 some applications and inquiries floating around out there in cyberspace, so all of this could change at any moment. As for the relationship, it’s in a holding pattern. The reality is that we’ve got to get the employment situation worked out before anything can proceed. Yikes, 1236 words. I shouldn’t wait so long between updates. Much love and peace, G
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Travelogue 6, Spain: I Ain't Nothing But a Houndog
Dear Family and Friends,
It takes a village to raise a child and a bus ride to get my pen moving. There is something about staring out a window at passing scenery that puts me in a pensive mood. If I’m in the backseat of a car, it puts me in a puking mood, but on a bus, I see my own reflections in the glass and feel inspired to write them down. Assuming that the elderly and pregnant get the assistance they need in a timely fashion, it’s a 27 minute trip into Valladolid, which I’ll use as a start on an update.
My excuse for not writing is that I’ve been under the weather…not as in sick, but more like under the influence of bad climate...like my mood has been thrown under the tires of gray skies, cold , rain, cold and walking around in a shivering self-hug hoping to leech my own body heat to battle the cold drizzle. I produce about as much body heat as a cucumber, so I prefer to stay home in front of the wood stove, which has added cabin fever to my list of ailments. “Hate” is not too strong of a word to describe my sentiments toward cold, which is why the threat of going to hell does not scared me. I’m hoping to go there, actually, which explains my incessant need to curse, dance, drink, play cards, and chase women. I hope the devil has a seat waiting for me pulled right up next to the hottest fire down there. Some hot chocolate would be nice too, but I doubt the devil would be so hospitable.
----three days later----
See what a little whining will do?-- spring’s water has broken at last and it’s brought out my animalistic nature. The first day of sunshine, after going for a run in only shorts and a sports bra, I wallowed in the dandelions and daisies like a hound dog rolls in something dead, snaking the spine and pushing off with the back legs for good coverage. Before exiting the patch, I got down on all fours to give both cheeks a rub for the road, and then I bounced off, tail wagging. I’m so afraid that if I don’t show spring some love, it will go away. I shall frolic like a kid of the bhaaaaing kind until clouds again dampen the spirit.
Aside from the weather, the update reports that I’m entering week 4 of stagnation. In the work realm things have not gone as planned. Marta still hasn’t found a place to open her bar, so my vision of sliding frothing mugs of beer down a wooden countertop goes unfulfilled. Being a barmaid is not a role I’ve ever aspired to, but at least it would be something different that requires no lesson plans or grading. I was actually looking forward to it now that the Spanish government has passed the brilliant law that PROHIBITS SMOKING IN ALL PUBLIC PLACES, including bars. “Genial,” as the Spaniards would say.
The travel bug has not left my veins. I’ve inquired with 64 tourism organizations about employment, but nada. I’m getting so desperate that I am filling out apps for chaperoning summer abroad programs for teens (even those who need to have a knot jerked in their tail, as we say in the Holler), some even volunteer gigs. Hell, I’ve considered ones where I have to pay to do it. My soul craves adventure and it will not leave me in peace until it gets it. Marta understands this and wisely encourages that I have a Latin-American whirl, knowing restlessness would breed shallow roots.
My inner guru is on strike and has a nasty attitude the moment. Part of me clamors that I could be using this time to work on myself--practicing patience, training my mind to think positively, enforcing the law of attraction, being in the now, accepting what is, so on and so forth, but I’m not in the mood. Anxiety is having its way with me and I’m coping with a yoga class here and there, long runs and hours of internet job searching. “This too shall pass,” comes to mind, and when I get that job and whine for a break, someone will remind me, “remember when you were in Spain….”
So, my dear ones, I conclude one of my drier travel missives and look forward to telling you about the whopper of an adventure that is sure to come. As I write this, Marta and I are on the road in route to the pueblo where she was raised in Austurias. We are running parallel to El Camino de Santiago and I feel the wild hair to hike it is sprouting.
Much love to each and all. I miss you. Please write.
G
It takes a village to raise a child and a bus ride to get my pen moving. There is something about staring out a window at passing scenery that puts me in a pensive mood. If I’m in the backseat of a car, it puts me in a puking mood, but on a bus, I see my own reflections in the glass and feel inspired to write them down. Assuming that the elderly and pregnant get the assistance they need in a timely fashion, it’s a 27 minute trip into Valladolid, which I’ll use as a start on an update.
My excuse for not writing is that I’ve been under the weather…not as in sick, but more like under the influence of bad climate...like my mood has been thrown under the tires of gray skies, cold , rain, cold and walking around in a shivering self-hug hoping to leech my own body heat to battle the cold drizzle. I produce about as much body heat as a cucumber, so I prefer to stay home in front of the wood stove, which has added cabin fever to my list of ailments. “Hate” is not too strong of a word to describe my sentiments toward cold, which is why the threat of going to hell does not scared me. I’m hoping to go there, actually, which explains my incessant need to curse, dance, drink, play cards, and chase women. I hope the devil has a seat waiting for me pulled right up next to the hottest fire down there. Some hot chocolate would be nice too, but I doubt the devil would be so hospitable.
----three days later----
See what a little whining will do?-- spring’s water has broken at last and it’s brought out my animalistic nature. The first day of sunshine, after going for a run in only shorts and a sports bra, I wallowed in the dandelions and daisies like a hound dog rolls in something dead, snaking the spine and pushing off with the back legs for good coverage. Before exiting the patch, I got down on all fours to give both cheeks a rub for the road, and then I bounced off, tail wagging. I’m so afraid that if I don’t show spring some love, it will go away. I shall frolic like a kid of the bhaaaaing kind until clouds again dampen the spirit.
Aside from the weather, the update reports that I’m entering week 4 of stagnation. In the work realm things have not gone as planned. Marta still hasn’t found a place to open her bar, so my vision of sliding frothing mugs of beer down a wooden countertop goes unfulfilled. Being a barmaid is not a role I’ve ever aspired to, but at least it would be something different that requires no lesson plans or grading. I was actually looking forward to it now that the Spanish government has passed the brilliant law that PROHIBITS SMOKING IN ALL PUBLIC PLACES, including bars. “Genial,” as the Spaniards would say.
The travel bug has not left my veins. I’ve inquired with 64 tourism organizations about employment, but nada. I’m getting so desperate that I am filling out apps for chaperoning summer abroad programs for teens (even those who need to have a knot jerked in their tail, as we say in the Holler), some even volunteer gigs. Hell, I’ve considered ones where I have to pay to do it. My soul craves adventure and it will not leave me in peace until it gets it. Marta understands this and wisely encourages that I have a Latin-American whirl, knowing restlessness would breed shallow roots.
My inner guru is on strike and has a nasty attitude the moment. Part of me clamors that I could be using this time to work on myself--practicing patience, training my mind to think positively, enforcing the law of attraction, being in the now, accepting what is, so on and so forth, but I’m not in the mood. Anxiety is having its way with me and I’m coping with a yoga class here and there, long runs and hours of internet job searching. “This too shall pass,” comes to mind, and when I get that job and whine for a break, someone will remind me, “remember when you were in Spain….”
So, my dear ones, I conclude one of my drier travel missives and look forward to telling you about the whopper of an adventure that is sure to come. As I write this, Marta and I are on the road in route to the pueblo where she was raised in Austurias. We are running parallel to El Camino de Santiago and I feel the wild hair to hike it is sprouting.
Much love to each and all. I miss you. Please write.
G
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Travelogue 5, Spain: Meet the Parents
My dear friends and family, Here I lay in front of the fire like an
anaconda trying to inch down a wild boar. Today’s lunch is not setting
well with me and while I was hoping it would hurl itself up and out with
the grace of an acrobat exiting a trampoline routine, it has opted to
torture me with a slow decent to the basement door at the rate of a
90-year-old- tackling a downhill flight of stairs.
Today I went to meet The Parents, Marta’s, of course. It was not the social encounter that has caused this indigestible indigestion, but rather the meal itself that’s got my guts all twisted up. First out of the oven came Marta’s step-father’s lunch, baby goat brains, baked in the very skull that houses them. He scooped them out with a spoon as if he were savoring the ripe flesh of a rare, succulent fruit. He offered me some, and I politely declined, which I’m sure he knew ahead of time would be my response. Thank God there was a vase of carnations between my end of the table and his. When he ran his tongue along the xylophone of intact teeth bridging mandible to sinus cavity, I ducked behind the flowers like a lightweight in the ring with Ali.
Really, none of this scene should faze me as I have seen my father devour the carcass of all the indigenous creatures that run, hop, crawl, swim or fly through the forests, streams and meadows of Mangus Hollow, Virginia. I remember one night he plopped down in the middle of the supper table a boiled mud turtle, fully intact, but, of course, with its head hanging low and its eye sockets empty. “Ya’ll dig in,” he announces to my brothers and me as we squinted up a face of disgust. Then he gave the same response we heard every time we protested a mystery meat, “Aww, just eat it. It’s good! It won’t hurt ‘cha!” Jesus, to a six-year-old staring at Timmy the Tortoise scalded alive in his own shell, that’s not a very convincing sales pitch.
I’ve digressed--back to lunch. For Marta, the nephew and herself, Mom slapped onto a platter three chunks of raw steak fried just enough to gray the flesh of the outer mini-milimeter. She took a pair of scissors from the drawer and with them cut an inch of fat from the edges of each with the agility of a four-year-old cutting snowflakes out of shag carpet with sheep sheers. Marta had told her mother that I don’t eat red meat, which to me means anything that stands on four legs, but to Spaniards only seems to exclude creatures that they wave red flags at and then run from. So, she pulled from the oven for me a round dish with the ribcage of some vertebrate fanned out in a spiraled pinwheel. It was pretty, no denying that, but of one thing I was sure, if I partook of it, I would be sick. I can count on one hand the number of times I have eaten 4-footed animal flesh in the past twenty years. Every time it has been due to a social obligation I couldn’t squirm out of, and every time I paid the price. My body is just not accustomed to digesting red meat anymore. If the source of protein swims or clucks, it goes down just fine, but if it moos, oinks or bhaas, I may as well ingest a hot coal and have a gasoline hot-toddy before retiring.
My stomach twisted in my abdomen, I twisted in my chair and thought to myself, how in the hell am I going to get out of this one? The woman who I most need to impress the daylights out of has gone out of her way to prepare something special to accommodate my dietary restrictions and for me to reject it will get us way off on the wrong foot. As I eyed the costal windmill and racked my unbaked brains to come up with a strategy, I spied floating in the grease around the ribs, a brown, slick ball. Mushrooms! God had provided some sort of vegetation, kind of, for me to eat! That it was cultivated in manure, at that moment, was the least of my concerns. I stabbed one eagerly.
“You know that’s a kidney?” Marta’s mother says.
“No, I thought it was a mushroom. I saw you come in with a bag full of them.”
“No, no,” she responds, “those are for tomorrow.”
Indecision. Return the perforated organ to the platter or put on that I’m a connoisseur of animal innards. I wimped out and scraped the thing off my fork on the edge of the dish and it plopped back into the grease. What was I to do? These were the people with whom, if this relationship works out, I’m going to have to deal with weekly, if not daily. Eat the meat and have a bellyache for a day or refuse the meal and live with bellyaching for the remainder of my days? The choice was clear. So I pinched a rib and delicately brought it to my plate. For about three minutes, with knife and fork, I tried to remove the quarter size piece of meat from the bone and drag off the kite tail of fat glued to it. I’m sure out of pure pity Step Dad says, “The best part of eating ribs is sucking the fat off the bone. Just pick it up with your hands.” Without a word, Mom discretely took a rib and modeled. Just as discretely I observed out of the corner of my eye the slurping in of a string of pure, 100%, unadulterated fat, as if it were a spaghetti noodle. I almost gagged. I tried to do it once, with moderate success, but just couldn’t stomach a second attempt. So, I nibbled off all of the reddish flesh and decided on the magic number of four. If I could just get down four of the sixteen in the dish, that would be one quarter of the whole, which is one half of half and my dad’s nickname for me is Half-Pint…so when they comment on how little I’ve eaten, I’ll tell them I’m living up to my name, which, whether or not they actually find amusing, will force them to laugh because it will be obvious that I meant for it to be funny and social norms dictate that they at least release a sniggle. That will break the tension. Done. Four should suffice to keep me in good graces.
I arranged and rearranged the discards on my plate trying to make it look like there were more there than actually were. I know the in-laws were appalled by the amount of “food” I left clinging to the bones, but I just couldn’t eat them clean after the one attempt at fat slurping. Almost immediately, nausea started swimming laps in my stomach. With a sweaty palm, I man-handled my greasy, mangled napkin to distract myself from the throwing up I knew I needed to do. With the bathroom directly across from the kitchen there was no way they wouldn’t hear, so I just kept swallowing hard, for two hours, through dessert and politics and sports and brags about the grandkids.
It’s six hours later, and here I am prostrate, rolling around in front of the fire, writing to you and praying that the reptilian tactic of basking in heat will promote digestion. Other than the previously described familial hiccup, all is well. I’m living the country life of my childhood, cutting wood for the fireplace, hanging the clothes out to dry and waking to rooster crows. We go to town most days to use sister Alma’s internet and take care of practical matters.
Hope all are well. Send news. Much love, G
Today I went to meet The Parents, Marta’s, of course. It was not the social encounter that has caused this indigestible indigestion, but rather the meal itself that’s got my guts all twisted up. First out of the oven came Marta’s step-father’s lunch, baby goat brains, baked in the very skull that houses them. He scooped them out with a spoon as if he were savoring the ripe flesh of a rare, succulent fruit. He offered me some, and I politely declined, which I’m sure he knew ahead of time would be my response. Thank God there was a vase of carnations between my end of the table and his. When he ran his tongue along the xylophone of intact teeth bridging mandible to sinus cavity, I ducked behind the flowers like a lightweight in the ring with Ali.
Really, none of this scene should faze me as I have seen my father devour the carcass of all the indigenous creatures that run, hop, crawl, swim or fly through the forests, streams and meadows of Mangus Hollow, Virginia. I remember one night he plopped down in the middle of the supper table a boiled mud turtle, fully intact, but, of course, with its head hanging low and its eye sockets empty. “Ya’ll dig in,” he announces to my brothers and me as we squinted up a face of disgust. Then he gave the same response we heard every time we protested a mystery meat, “Aww, just eat it. It’s good! It won’t hurt ‘cha!” Jesus, to a six-year-old staring at Timmy the Tortoise scalded alive in his own shell, that’s not a very convincing sales pitch.
I’ve digressed--back to lunch. For Marta, the nephew and herself, Mom slapped onto a platter three chunks of raw steak fried just enough to gray the flesh of the outer mini-milimeter. She took a pair of scissors from the drawer and with them cut an inch of fat from the edges of each with the agility of a four-year-old cutting snowflakes out of shag carpet with sheep sheers. Marta had told her mother that I don’t eat red meat, which to me means anything that stands on four legs, but to Spaniards only seems to exclude creatures that they wave red flags at and then run from. So, she pulled from the oven for me a round dish with the ribcage of some vertebrate fanned out in a spiraled pinwheel. It was pretty, no denying that, but of one thing I was sure, if I partook of it, I would be sick. I can count on one hand the number of times I have eaten 4-footed animal flesh in the past twenty years. Every time it has been due to a social obligation I couldn’t squirm out of, and every time I paid the price. My body is just not accustomed to digesting red meat anymore. If the source of protein swims or clucks, it goes down just fine, but if it moos, oinks or bhaas, I may as well ingest a hot coal and have a gasoline hot-toddy before retiring.
My stomach twisted in my abdomen, I twisted in my chair and thought to myself, how in the hell am I going to get out of this one? The woman who I most need to impress the daylights out of has gone out of her way to prepare something special to accommodate my dietary restrictions and for me to reject it will get us way off on the wrong foot. As I eyed the costal windmill and racked my unbaked brains to come up with a strategy, I spied floating in the grease around the ribs, a brown, slick ball. Mushrooms! God had provided some sort of vegetation, kind of, for me to eat! That it was cultivated in manure, at that moment, was the least of my concerns. I stabbed one eagerly.
“You know that’s a kidney?” Marta’s mother says.
“No, I thought it was a mushroom. I saw you come in with a bag full of them.”
“No, no,” she responds, “those are for tomorrow.”
Indecision. Return the perforated organ to the platter or put on that I’m a connoisseur of animal innards. I wimped out and scraped the thing off my fork on the edge of the dish and it plopped back into the grease. What was I to do? These were the people with whom, if this relationship works out, I’m going to have to deal with weekly, if not daily. Eat the meat and have a bellyache for a day or refuse the meal and live with bellyaching for the remainder of my days? The choice was clear. So I pinched a rib and delicately brought it to my plate. For about three minutes, with knife and fork, I tried to remove the quarter size piece of meat from the bone and drag off the kite tail of fat glued to it. I’m sure out of pure pity Step Dad says, “The best part of eating ribs is sucking the fat off the bone. Just pick it up with your hands.” Without a word, Mom discretely took a rib and modeled. Just as discretely I observed out of the corner of my eye the slurping in of a string of pure, 100%, unadulterated fat, as if it were a spaghetti noodle. I almost gagged. I tried to do it once, with moderate success, but just couldn’t stomach a second attempt. So, I nibbled off all of the reddish flesh and decided on the magic number of four. If I could just get down four of the sixteen in the dish, that would be one quarter of the whole, which is one half of half and my dad’s nickname for me is Half-Pint…so when they comment on how little I’ve eaten, I’ll tell them I’m living up to my name, which, whether or not they actually find amusing, will force them to laugh because it will be obvious that I meant for it to be funny and social norms dictate that they at least release a sniggle. That will break the tension. Done. Four should suffice to keep me in good graces.
I arranged and rearranged the discards on my plate trying to make it look like there were more there than actually were. I know the in-laws were appalled by the amount of “food” I left clinging to the bones, but I just couldn’t eat them clean after the one attempt at fat slurping. Almost immediately, nausea started swimming laps in my stomach. With a sweaty palm, I man-handled my greasy, mangled napkin to distract myself from the throwing up I knew I needed to do. With the bathroom directly across from the kitchen there was no way they wouldn’t hear, so I just kept swallowing hard, for two hours, through dessert and politics and sports and brags about the grandkids.
It’s six hours later, and here I am prostrate, rolling around in front of the fire, writing to you and praying that the reptilian tactic of basking in heat will promote digestion. Other than the previously described familial hiccup, all is well. I’m living the country life of my childhood, cutting wood for the fireplace, hanging the clothes out to dry and waking to rooster crows. We go to town most days to use sister Alma’s internet and take care of practical matters.
Hope all are well. Send news. Much love, G
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)