Ferocious, Fleeting Pattern

It’s coming.  It started miles from here but I heard it.  Now it must be moments away.  The drops will fall heavily and the back yard will be visible when the sound is right overhead.  Beijing thunder and lightening usually happens later in the summer, when we early evening deluges that overwhelm the sewers and force people into shelter.  My little one will be scared.  I should go up to read with her.

The music is the opposite of ominous.  I randomly pulled from the shelves a tabletop book someone had given me a few years back on great guitarists.  With a shaggy Eric Clapton on the cover, I’d probably had flipped through it only once or twice before placing it on the shelf.  Looking through, for no particular reason the other day, I noticed there were lots of jazz players, many of whom I didn’t recognize.  And with Spotify or Youtube, there is nothing to keep one from learning who Laurindo Almeida, for example was. 

This Brazilian samba with Bud Shank “Braziliance” that I have on is gentle, unassuming. Outside it is now violent and overwhelming.  The drops sound enormous like something a monsoon would bring in the tropics.  I don’t know that I will but I’m tempted to go out and let it all fall on me.  Walk to the road and wait for Zeus to cut across the sky in a ferocious, fleeting pattern connecting there and there, for only that second.

How do you make falafel stick together?  I think I must have added bread crumbs last time.  This time they largely dissolved in the deep, boiling canola oil. Peanut oil burns hotter but its worse for your gizzards.  Another egg maybe?  Mush the chickpeas more thoroughly?  The baba ganoush came a long way forward this time with a simple twist:  grill the eggplant, rather than boil it.  All the difference in the world. 

I only have a view out the back here to wall some ten feet out.  The front of the house only really let’s me look across to the neighbors.  I wish I were somewhere with a longer view.  Visually this isn’t much to consider, from the comfort of my desk.  But aurally nature has invaded the home and overwhelmed the music and the topic as it rarely gets a chance to and I’m thinking about the cave men of Zhoukoudian or the farmers who fret about crops and the myriad people who can’t conveniently escape from these demanding drops.  I need to go have a look.