From Brownsville to Canarsie

My mom’s worried about getting the vaccine.  I’m worried about her getting the vaccine.  Sounds like the place where my dad and stepmom live has them covered.  Sounds like my stepdad who is a spritely 91 can get it through the Veterans Administration.  But my mom is getting the run around.  If it was China you’d know what to do, even though everyone else would be doing the same, you’d start working your network to ask people in your circle to perhaps help you out somehow. And one assumes people do the same over here as well, if they can.  

Apparently, the original messaging about availability considered providing for a pool of people seventy-five and older.  And then, just recently the Trump administration, the font of so much sagacity, has now decreed that the pool for first shots should be larger by tens of millions, lowering the threshold to people sixty-five and older without increasing the supply.  I don’t begrudge anyone getting the shot who knows precisely what it is the Trump administration does that isn’t ultimately self-serving, but here we are with too many people and not enough doses.  Sure enough, there was piece in today’s paper explaining that New York was facing a crisis in this regard. 

 

My little one and I were all set on ordering pizza this evening.  But when it came time to call Rino Pizza and I considered the online menu, I was disappointed to see that they would be closed through the weekend.  I remembered this from last year.  We’ve had this place for a decade, but last year was the first time we lived here through the winter and, as this is a college town, many places close down during winter break.  There are, we discovered, many other pizzerias in town.  And soon a Sicilian pie, a calzone, an eggplant parm, and a two-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi were on their way over. 

Ehh.  I won’t get that Sicilian again.  No.  Too bready.  Sorry.  The little one and my wife said they liked it.  I felt the way my wife must do when we say positive things about very bad jianbingguozi in Beijing.  With far-away eyes I told them of driving from Brownsville to Canarsie in 1989 to get a slice at the little pizzeria there that served the most extraordinary Sicilian slices.  The tomato cuts they draped the top with must have been grown fresh and the dough had just the right crunch.  Back in the summer of 1984, I worked at Paragon Pool Supply in Pleasantville, and one of the guys used to go out to a pizzeria in Hawthorn and bring back calzones that made the world stop when you bit into them, and, and . . . the search continues.  We’ll try another local place next week.

Friday, 01/15/21

You Obfuscate And Try

Oooh.  I’m enjoying this version of “Yesterdays.”  The bassist Sam Jones and the worthy counterpart, also on bass Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, (NHOP) are gently coaxing each other along on this track from the 1977 album “Double Bass.”  Unlike some of the other cuts, which have Billy Higgins and Albert Heath on percussion and Philip Catherine on guitar, this is strictly the two mournful stand-up bass, calling responding.  It came to an end as I was typing this and I immediately put it on again and though I’m not sure, I think I can necessarily tell the lyrical NHOP from the sullen Philips. 

 

Are those flakes out there in the predawn dark?  My first glance at weather.com suggested there was no such precipitation.  Refreshing the page, there is, in fact rain forecast for the next few hours with the temperature just above freezing.  We won’t get any accumulation, certainly but it can’t help but change your mood, to what, I’m not quite sure, when you gaze into the dark and see flakes slowly drifting downward.   Now that I lean up and consider the grass, I can see there is a light, white covering.

Impeached again.  No one wants to be associated with you any longer, Donald.  Sulking, pouting, raging, lonely, punished, sanctioned, indicted, one imagines that you’ll continue thrashing till you're through.  Blood, cop-blood, supporter-blood, American blood most assuredly on your hands and even though you fly to Texas, even though you fly to Florida, even though you obfuscate and try to change the channel and create a new distraction, these people will follow you around like so many Banquo-ghosts, ensuring that no one will ever be comfortable around you again.  They will always be there, hovering over your stooped shoulders.   

I’m staring over at the pillow on the floor.  When I have completed writing this paragraph I will turn out the lights and sit there and breathe in and out and count from one to ten over and over and do my best to think about nothing, except perhaps one to ten and the willful effort to slow my heart rate.  But I’ve already had a strong cup of coffee and then some.  I suspect my aorta will be confused by these mixed messages. 

 

 

 

Thursday, 01/14/21

Find A New Morsel

My morning attention focus is not unlike the little grey squirrels down there in front of me going looking here and there for a sunflower seed to grasp, crack, open and consume.  Then, look around, check for owls, check for foxes and reach out and repeat this process.  I am not eating.  I was up from three in the morning on one call and then another and I’ve read all the relevant articles concerning the aftermath of the riot in the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Politico and Slate. And now, I keep returning to one or another web site expecting to see new “news.”  There are many other things I should be working on.  But I can’t help returning, expecting to find a new morsel. 

Cloudy day, but it should clear up.  I’ve got the master bop bass player Sam Philips “Something in Common” on which we have Blue Mitchell, Cedar Walton and the ferocious Bob Berg on this 1977 release.  When I went to check who had written the title track, the Washington Post homepage appeared when I toggled to the Chrome browser.  I noticed there was a live update on the Washington Post home page, in red.  Yes, I’m going now to shuck that sunflower seed.  Ahh, but it is only reporting that a new poll finds a majority of Americans favor impeachment, which had already been reported over on Politico about an hour ago. 

 

I had a call with one old friend today.  A tease.  We have had one, two and then a third false start call.  He left a message for me.  I left a message for him.  He called the other night when we were driving into town to pick up some take-out.  Broadcast aloud in the car, he got to say “hi” to my wife.  I don’t suppose they’ve spoken for ten years or so.  I steered the conversation to the construction of his house which I figured my wife would enjoy. But within minutes we were home and needed to put these Vietnamese bahn mi on the table.

 

And so, just like it was a business engagement we scheduled a slot in each other’s calendar for today and hopped on zoom together. He looked great with his Covid facial hair and he noting my Covid pony tail.  Interesting to organize the narrative of the last twelve months or so with someone who understands much of the arc of your life.  I’m not ashamed to share what was painful.  I don’t need to make excuses for what was wonderful. Business gnawed at the periphery for both of us though and it wasn’t long till we were talking about when we could schedule a time to continue.

Later that evening after, after I got an employment agreement out and reworked a proposal, all of which took much longer than expected and along with a cacophonous board call ate through the time that was to have been spent on a bike ride, I gazed again at the front page of the Times, the Washington Post, and Politico, noticing now that our president had definitively, been impeached a second time, and another old friend with whom I’ve been playing phone-tag called. When I heard the ring, I was anxious.  Who is calling me?  I’ve no time for interruptions.  And I saw his name on my phone.  And I breathed.  And I heard my wife cooking.  And I took the call, and pivoting swiftly, I sat on the couch and enjoyed another fragment of a conversation with another extraordinary friend out there in the Bay Area until my wife suggested that the dinner was on the table. 

Wednesday, 01/13/21

Nothing But The Lawn

Odd yell out in the forest.  Five-twenty in the morning and its pitch black.  It was an animal I suspect.  But it could have been a woman.  Unnerving, I was frightened suddenly.  It didn’t sound like my daughter, though I walked out in the hall to be sure.  It didn’t sound like me wife, either.  I thought of my older daughter.  But she isn’t here right now.  I put on the back yard flood lights.  Nothing but the lawn and the cedar tree out there to consider.  And now I am on two conference calls at once.  Both muted, turned down low. 

 

A book of Wang Anshi’s poems arrived yesterday.  David Hinton writes with brio about Chinese spirituality, about medieval poetry and in the introduction to this collection he points out that the great prime minister, who’d done so much to change Chinese state craft, took up a wondering life of Chan Buddhist reflection, meandering around, unkempt, writing immortal poetry form the age of fifty-five, which of course made me reflect upon my own fifty-four years of life.  I put down the book and sat there on the can thinking about that for a moment before commencing these calls.

My wife and I had a nice walk out on the trail yesterday afternoon.  I proposed trying to learn a classical Chinese poem, one from Wang Wei, one from Tao Yuan Ming, one from Du Fu.  I could memorize them and try to recite them at dinner.  But my real objective was for being able to use them in the wild, when I have my next Beijing cab ride, whenever that might be.  The poems chosen, therefore can’t be obscure.  I’m looking for “four score and twenty years ago . . .” -type familiarity.  Maybe more appropriately familiar for my homeland would be “Flintstones, meet the Flintstones . . .”

I tried to recite the Wang Wei poem a "On the Mountain Holiday Thinking of my Brothers in Shandong" (九月九日忆山东兄弟) over lunch just now.  I'd finished my bowl of papaya and banana and the Mrs. asked me to read one aloud.  It always sounds a bit absurd when you read along with tonal markers and inadvertently exaggerate the rising and the falling.  My little one speaks well, but I’m never quite sure how well she reads in Chinese.  Certainly, better than I but that’s not saying so much.  She only flubbed two or three of the fifty characters in Tao Yuan Ming’s “Drinking Wine, Number 5.”  She’d left “Chinese” middle school after grade six and literacy is less firmly anchored than for her older sister who left at the beginning of high school.  I'll let you know when I'm able to do one of these from memory.  

Tuesday, 01/12/21

The Clay Pellet Hemorrhaged

 

My younger daughter’s New Year’s resolution was to go veg for six months.  On the first day of her new regimen we visited a deli and I got a tuna salad sandwich and she an eggplant parm.  But ever since, I’ve been preparing vegie meals and joining along, abstaining from flesh.  I’d spent ten years as a vegetarian once, from the age of seventeen to twenty-seven.  And when I moved to Shanghai for what was to be a one-year assignment at the age of twenty-seven and sat down to stewed cabbage and white rice while the lazy-susan spun around with half a dozen enticing delicacies, night after night, at the table where everyone in our facility ate, I caved after day ten or so.  What a wonderful year of eating that turned out to be. 

 

The older daughter has been a veg or years.  When she’s here I necessarily make a veg version of whatever it is I’m cooking.  She’s been up in Toronto with her boyfriend this past week.  My wife made a “creative” veg entry for us all last Wednesday, and the sideways glance my younger one shot me made clear that it wasn’t working for her.  “Can you make dinner tomorrow?  Sure.  Italian one night.  Indian the next.  I attempted vegie burgers on Saturday.  And tonight, running out of new cuisines, I tried to make some sucaide Chinese dishes. 

Most things, like the broccoli and garlic or the sweet and sour brussels sprouts are things I’ve tried before.  I got it in my head to try madoufu, which, unless you’ve spent some time in Beijing you are probably not familiar with.  Made from fermented soybeans with a thick, funky taste, it isn’t at all like tofu.  I had to find a recipe online in Chinese and translate it.  Close.  But my madofu was a failed experiment.  I didn’t have all the proper ingredients (cooking in 'lamb oil' kinda renders the veg assignation null anyway, doesn't it?) and my creation ended up more like salty soy-mush.   My mapo doufu proved a closer approximation.  

If you want to buy a wrist-rocket, you can’t in the State of New York.  They’ve got them there on Amazon, but I was prohibited from sending one to my home.  I opted for the smaller toy one they have that is permitted for sale.  It arrived yesterday.  I’ve had it with the surly dear family that return over and over and over again all day long after being yelled at to leave.  I was just starting to get the hang of it when the small hole in the leather patch you pinch around the clay pellet hemorrhaged into a large whole.  Really?  Broken on the second day?  There is a spare patch and now I can’t get the rubber bands back in after taking them out to swap in the new one.  It’s lying there on my desk now with a chopstick on top that isn’t working as a means to push the band through.  The deer have returned.  They are smirking. 

 

 

 

Monday, 01/11/21

Return Our Greeting Odd

I usually miss him.  I only ever usually see the aftermath of his run down over the yard, where I lay out seed.  Today, I caught sight of the barred owl swooping below my window in tandem with rapid evacuation of everyone else who’d been enjoying a meal; mourning doves, squirrels, blue jays.  From what I could tell, the owl left hungry.  Later out on the porch I marveled how abruptly he either turned or landed, coming in at that speed, to have avoided smacking into the house. 

 

I’ve been heading up to the Trapps most Fridays with my dad for the last few months.  We had a lovely walk along Peter’s Kill the day before last and marveled at how the rushing stream had cut through eons of stone.  The snow still thick up in the hills and we didn’t get far but it was uninhabited and pristine and that was all that really mattered.  Descending from the hills I generally go on and on about how lovely it all is up there with the rest of the family. 

Today, the Mrs. suggested that we head out for a walk somewhere.  She’d suggested the Mills Estate over in Hyde Park, which she’d been reading about, but I reminded her that places like that were unlikely to be welcoming any guests during the pandemic.  I suggested we head up to the Gunks and she liked the idea and our younger one sullenly agreed. 

We’d need something modest.  Something without many people.  Something not too far away.  And I pitched her on a cool walk that was only a few hundred yards after which there would be a great view.  We made our way up over Mohonk and down towards Clove Chapel where I’d been before and after some creative parking we were out amidst the hemlocks.  A family coming our way wouldn’t return our greeting.  Odd.  One hundred yards further along we came upon a solitary young fellow around eight years old.  He was able to answer our “hello” and I suspected he was pouting or at least distancing himself from the grumpy family we’d just passed.  My little one was not interested in taking one step further beyond the view I’d promised on the trail and soon we were back in the car, heading home. 

 

 

 

Sunday 01/10/11

Gut Laughs With Friends

 

A fine talk this morning with my best pal.  We’ve traded places and he’s living in a hutong in Beijing while I’m back “home” in the state of New York.  He’s got a new job there and all seems to be going well for him, there in the land of hope and optimism.  It was good to unpack the insanity of this past week with someone who shares all the same mile-markers as me, understands the same references.  Murky thoughts I’d felt more than grok-ed were things I could now explore rather than shy away from. 

 

And we laughed.  It occurred to me in that moment where we were conjuring up some absurd scene where our mutual friend was feasting on something inappropriate with virtual reality goggles on, that gut laughs with friends was certainly one of the Covid casualties I’d endured this past year was the enjoyment of deep laughter with old friends. That isn’t easily or convincingly replicated talking to the just anyone. 

 

Not sure why but I’ve been listening to one Ron Carter album after another today.  I’ve something on with him, Tony Williams and Tommy Flanagan. Just now and they are playing a convincing, aching “Angel Eyes.”  There is a bottle of wine in my bedroom that was signed by Ron Carter when we saw him play the Blue Note in Beijing and the manager, who hails from the same home town as my wife had him sign ot he bottle for her, as we were attending, on her birthday. 

I’m going to go out for a bike ride in a moment.  And when I come back I have a whole lot of blog posting to do.  I’ve written everything and today, at last, am caught up.  To my side is a glass of Pheasants Tears white, which hails from Sighnahghi, Georgia.  The wine is made in amphora like qvevri, the Georgian vessel used to ferment and store wine.  The wine is white with grape skin and bees wax that they line the walls of the qvevri, with.  A thick consistency my gal didn’t like the look of it.  I think its pretty wonderful, myself. 

Saturday, 01/09/21