Turn a New Corner

Legs are sore after a good walk around Managua this morning and another few miles of plodding around Leon, this evening.  This second walk was done alone and it is a sharpened exercise.  Every other trip of your life flashes up when you turn a new corner and reminded of this Colombia, or Crete, in a way that never happens when you walk around in a familiar location or when you make your way out in a group.

Leon has a remarkable Cathedral.  It’s large and white occupying rise as one approaches from town.  There was a service on, that involved the clergy but was not a mass as the media were also there.  I tried to be discrete as I took in the construction and avoided the film crew.  I asked the guard where the tomb of the poet Ruben Dario was and she showed me to where the marble lion guarded his resting place.  I like a town that prioritizes a poet. 

Invariably one is drawn up to the next church that rises up a few blocks away.  And then, off to the right, a few blocks down is another.  I sat in front of the gate.  The benches in a small park were painted bright yellow.  A worn man my own age with impossibly dirty feet was asleep, drunk, on the cheerful bench.  I stared up at the pink plaster and considered how it was that this faith commanded so much of the world’s consciousness for so long.  This volcano-strewn causeway that rides up to Antigua and further up the spine to Mexico City, and down to Cuzco, home to millenniums’ old civilizations that were eradicated so swiftly.  An eradication so thorough and, to my thinking, unmatched in the Old World unfolded here in an historical heartbeat, where all that was and all that made sense was definitively wiped away, replacing the horror of human sacrifice with the horror of human sacrifice.  Christianity forced upon the population that remained, with seemingly complete, resignation. 

I am in Latin America.  In Vietnam the struggle against the United States is an ephemeral blink compared to the enduring theme of resisting China.  Here, the anti-Colonial struggle with Spain is distant echo, whereas the anti-imperialist struggle against the Yankee behemoth remains dominant.  My daughters have formed their American identity largely outside of the United States.  How could they know anything of this narrative?  And so we begin the New World version of the story.  I am grateful for the chance to remember why we all hated Ronald Reagan during his reign, before his hagiography. 

In Managua we began the day climbing the Loma de Tiscapa above the city to the former palace, and the former prison, beneath the austere shadow of Sandino the source of inspiration for the FSLN, who was murdered here above this volcanic lake.  We strolled to the vacant Plaza de Revolution through an outdoor avenue commemorating the revolutionary history.  We drove past the huge roundabout cartoon poster for Hugo Chavez, cast beside colorful iron trees the ruling party has planted for beautification.  And I thought of similar civic commemorations in Accra dedicated to the Burkinabe Thomas Sankara.  Revolutionaries venerated in foreign capitals; revolutionaries who are discarded by the dominant narrative that my country has the privilege of authoring. 

Having just read Jared Diamond’s latest book, about traditional societies, I spare a thought for the people of Nicaragua.  This food is fried.  It’s lovely for the first day or two. But, as I can recall from my visits to Guatemala in 1989, refried beans and deep-fried everything gets old, very fast, and even faster in the heat. My wife asked: “Why are the woman all so fat?”  Good question.  Whatever the indigenous diet of five hundred years ago must have been has now been tossed into a deep fat fryer.   Yankee’s are certainly responsible for all the Coke a Cola here, but I suspect the Nica’s must look within to address this salty, starchy, sweet and crispy, compeltely unhealthy comidas tipicas.

Everyone is napping into the evening.  I must go wake them, before it's too late.

“Hold it. It’s gone.”

Tucked into a window seat.  My wife is beside me, which is good, but she keeps trying to turn off my reading light.  I might prefer a stranger who didn’t take liberties.  My daughter’s are in the two seats behind.  We’ve got a long way to go.  Three flights: one across the Pacific, one down to Houston and another that leaves the US, flies over five countries to land in Managua in the middle of the night.  It should all be rather routine by now, but fortunately, magically it is not and I am still as excited as I was in my twenties, when expecting to land in a new country, a new city, for the first time. 

I’ve started “The Blood of Brothers” by Steven Kinzer.  We’ve spent the first fifty pages going over the events leading up to the over throw of Samosa.  I’ve read this progression now a few times in various readings since I sprung this idea, last summer.  What I’m drawn to in his narrative are his reflections of being there as a young reporter.  Staying with older reporters in a safe house, considering the murder of a fellow reporter.    

We have more protean problems here on the plane.  These old United planes still have only one or two screens for everyone to watch.  They are fitted out with plugs but the plugs never work.  My daughters have watched two movies on their lap tops and are now out of power.  I managed to get their chord to provide juice from the plug between my and my wife’s seat.  Now it has no juice.  And, they want me to hold it and position it and readjust it until some kind of current runs through.  “There!  Hold it.  It’s gone!  Do it again!”  I fiddle for a bit and then tell them to forget it.  This is a fool’s errand.  “I’m done.  Read a book!”

Now my older one has decided that flicking my hair, will be her revenge.  I reach up to stop them, which only goads them on further.  The map (which everyone must consider up there in front of us) has us flying much lower across the ocean than I would have imagined.  Usually we fly up to Siberia and then down over Alaska, and Canada.  If this map is accurate, we’re going what appears to be straight over the ocean, the way I’d always assumed took longer in the middle of a fat globe.  I’ll have to look up why it is the flight path’s can vary so much and whether or not it’s seasonal.

Soon it will be short sleeve shirt weather.   Soon we’ll be in the middle of this city by the lake. 

Supreme Ruler

Drop of the kids at school.  There’s no coffee at home and this is something that needs to be addressed, right away.  I swing by Starbucks and had them grindup a bag of espresso ground, toss back a double shot.  Driving home I glanced up at a storefront I should seen a countless times.  It was modestly named “Supreme Ruler.”  I laughed out loud and continued to drive.

Having just had an exchange with a friend, who is effectively an ethnomusicologist for Jamaica, I figured I needed a photo of that sign.  Parking in front of the establishment I considered this august advertisement and doubled back.  Supreme Ruler is one real estate shops.  I couldn’t tell you why they chose such a definitive name.  I snapped a few sun-drenched shots and continued on my way. 

Fifteen years ago, I welcomed my first daughter into the world.  I can still remember that bright, San Francisco morning, when we held her and considered this beautiful child.  More than any other time I can recall, the world really did stand still that morning.  There was nothing else to do but wonder, learn, love.

Evening time and we took the birthday girl and her two friends out to dinner.  The restaurant, which may have secured its English from the same agency that delivered “Supreme Ruler” was a high end vegetarian place, I’d been to before, known as “King’s Joy.”   Most of the dishes were of the mock-Chinese style menu that came out of the Mahayana Buddhist kitchens, and the presentation was lovely.   The food is splendid and the setting is yet again more refined. 

A one point I had to take a call.  Walking away from the harp and cello players I noticed a painting, which I am almost certain is a reproduction of a work that hangs in the Taiwan Palace Museum.  I will have to look it up, but I seem to recall that the painting of the two birds on a reed as the work of the last Northern Song Dynasty, who lost the traditional Yellow River core of the Song empire, ending one dynastic epic (Northern Song) and starting another (Southern Song). 

Back at our seat the harp player started playing happy birthday.  We signaled to the waitress to cut it.   Her friends were still in the bathroom.  She wound down and took a bio break.  I told my little one I’d head to the bathroom with her, as she went to try to find them.  I wanted to show her the calligraphy of the former Supreme Ruler.   (at least I think it's his)

Humble Suffix ‘Shire’

A friend who knows Jamaica very well, sent on a funny note, in which he referred to a place named “Hellshire.”  This caught my eye.  I could imagine lots of English prefixes to set before the humble suffix “shire” like “Hamp”, “Bedford” or “Shrop.”  But, “Hell”?  Was some landed gentleman being funny or spiteful to have named the hamlet “hell?”  The place in question appeared to be a beach on the outskirts of Kingston.  Nothing particularly ‘hell’-ish about that.

My buddy had sent on photos of Johnny Rotten there on the beach with the seminal Jamaican DJ U Roy, from what must have been around 1977.  This was an infamous trip of Mssr. Lydon’s immediately after the Sex Pistols broke up when he was apparently well-received as the man behind the scathing “God Save the Queen” which had been an unnamable number one, in the UK charts. 

I had a look on line and it turns out that the place is actually, properly known as Healthshire because it was a nice place to get away from town and enjoy the beach, but that the place became popularly known for the more infamous moniker with the “th” sound subdued, and this has stuck, ever since. 

I shared all this with my friend and in the conversation about Jamaica I asked him if he’d read anything by Marlon James.  I have read “The Book of the Night Women” and enjoyed, in particular the rough, plausible interplay between the Irishman there on the plantation and the slave woman, he was in love with.   He mentioned he was reading “A Short History of Seven Killings.”  I have it on my shelf.  He described it as fascinating and highly recommended.  “That’s it, I told him.  It’s coming with me on my trip.” 

Read a novel about the Caribbean while bouncing about in Central America. Some how a memory came to mind of making my way through the Uruguayan author Julio Cortázar’s “Hopscotch” in 1989, while recuperating from food poisoning in Jacmel, Haiti.  It could be read from beginning to end, by following the guidance to the next chapters provided at the end of ever chapter. Reading about Jamaica from across the Caribbean in Nicaragua,  seemed appropriately jarring.   

Uber in Beijing

Well, Uber in Beijing.  I requested a car.  The guy accepted.  He went to the wrong place.  I explained where I was.  He came over then, slowly.  It took forever for them to ring and ask me if he could enter.  “Yes.  He can.”   He got lost in the compound.  It happens.  I called him.  He figured it out.  It was an older guy.  I could tell in a minute he was not from around here.  Finally, he arrived. 

“Hi.”  “Hi.”  “So where are you going?”  I state the equivalent of “Union Square”, were we to have been in Manhattan.  He says “where?”  I repeat.  “Is that on the outer fifth ring road or fourth ring road?”  “You must be from out of town.”  “Yes!  I’m from Liaoning”  “Right. Great.  We’re going to Liangmaqiao  “Where’s that then?”  I see.  Look just head down the airport expressway to the third ring road and I’ll walk you through it.”  “Oh, but my car has the wrong plate number. I can’t go inside 4^th ring road today.”  “Are you serious?  My man, you wasting my time.”

This was the first time I was mid-Uber ride, and dialed for my next Uber. I could here my own request broadcast on his device. It all worked, out.  I got a young kid from Dezhou in Shandong, who looked like he could have been one of my wife’s cousins.  I got to my meeting about thirty minutes late, which is late, even for Beijing, but it was an old friend, and we had a pleasant conversation.  He had a call on the hour and so did I so we kept it crisp, there at the Deli in the Kempinski Mall, where we always go to celebrate Easter with their brunch.

Outside I hailed a traditional Beijing cab, which stopped.  I told him we were heading to a different mall, WuCai Cheng, which a dude from out of town would definitely not know, but this guy did.  We chatted a bit.  I appreciated the familiarity of his accent and pulled out my lap top signaling successfully that I didn’t want to talk any more, but  rather, get some work done.  Some times it’s good to have a professional

And Yell “dunr”

I am not one for cards, but we, the family, have been playing cards.  I guess it isn’t a bad thing if it gets the whole family sitting down together, rather than  staring off into everyone’s personal screen

My wife had introduced a Chinese game, perhaps an international game, referred to as “dunr.”   “Dunr” is what one yells out when one wins and it is a lovely word to yell.  The logic is to hold five cards, and keep holding until you can assemble two pairs (dunr’s) and then wait for someone to discard the card that matches your single fifth card.  If someone discards the card you need, or you draw it you can throw down three pairs of whatever you’ve got and yell “dunr.” 

Oddly, I nearly always win this game.  I have no similar claim to make with any other game introduced.  It is weighted heavily towards luck, so there isn’t much to pride oneself on, other than the odd regularity of my good fortune.  When I win, I spin around in the bar chair I’m sitting, yelling syncopated “dunr da dunr dunr” at the top of my lungs.

There are other games, but they never cause me to spin and shout.  In another game of winner takes all, you assemble cards by slapping your hand down on the table if you two of the same cards put down in a row or a sandwiched sequence.  She said her friends called it “Egyptian Rascal.”  There is a story there, no doubt.  This game is one that goes one till someone has the whole deck and I rarely make much progress.  There’s another called xianshangdao that seems to mean puncturing the upper class, which I am also a steady second or third placer, at.  Dunr’s my game.  And with someone yelling and preening in victory each time, it is nearly as fun to loose as it is to win, all hanging out spinning on bar stools, together.