Daily Themes

They are staring into their tupperware bowls. I don't have tupperware, but aluminum foil, and I'm looking at it and admiring the fact that it is both metal and flexible. Out the window, a flock of gray geese swoop down in sync, as if tethered together to a string in the sky. They land on the lake. "I thought the geese go South in the winter," I say.

Kris, a skinny British woman who talks often of tea time and her love of overcast weather, says, "Not all of them. And they're just an atrocious nuisance in the winter."

I ask her to elaborate, and she explains that their droppings harden and then melt with a brief thaw just like the snow. There's doo doo slush everywhere, all over the grass and the walkways.

Everyone but Lillian is looking out the window now. Lillian is my close colleague, and I like her. She's seventy-one, and I wonder if she's in the early stages of senile dementia. She tends to enter long periods of impenetrable silence, during which times she stares blankly at the wall. Today she's sitting across from me, which means I'm constantly wondering if she's staring at me. Sometimes I think, "Who knows?" Maybe she still has her full mind and just likes to brood on facts.

"Oh, look at those colors," Kathy says. Kathy is the clinic nurse. She's skinny, but not British, and is kind of kind and a super worker. She's 42, married, with three teenage boys who are active in sports. Every weeknight it seems she's off to some Detroit suburb to watch high schoolers run hard/jump on top of each other/bounce balls/fight.

Someone mentions how brilliant the colors must be up North. Kris promptly shuts this idea down, saying how it seems silly to drive six hours, glance at trees, then turn around and come back. The way she puts it, I tend to agree.

On the table is a box of donuts from Meijer that Kathy brought in to celebrate Gillian's recent engagement. Thinking that a Meijer donut couldn't be good, I take a bite of a glazed and am pleased by the familiar fatty sweetness. It leaves no film in the mouth. I eat the whole thing.

Gillian is a tech. She's a little bit husky and has a round face and pinchable cheeks. She blushes easily. She's been blushing all day today. We all take turns gazing at her ring, which sparkles enough that it makes my eyes hurt. Pat, a secretary, says, while looking directly at me, "See, you have to make sure that it sparkles." Pat is from Florida but has a New Jersey accent. For some reason, I'm not irritated by her comment. I laugh.

Pat starts talking about the Monday night lineup on NBC. She names all the shows. The only one I remember now is "King of Queens." Pat loves them. "I like to laugh on Mondays," she says. (cf Fellini, "There is nothing sadder than laughter...")

Suddenly, Kathy starts talking about horror movies. She's constantly filled with enormous energy and rattles through a series of scary films her sons like. "They loved 'The Ring Two,' she says. They thought it was scarier than 'The Ring One.'" And on she goes. Nightmare on Elm, Halloween, the entire Stephen King oeuvre, we get the entire list, and everyone except Lillian, who still is gazing at the wall, affirms their scariness. And then finally Lillian speaks up, "Those kinds of films never scare me. I have a way of detaching myself."

It's the only thing she's said all of lunch. A long silence follows, during which Kathy stares at her huge bottle of ranch dressing. I look at it too. I wonder if the bottle is actually white with black specks in it or if it's transparent and it's the dressing that gives it that color. I try to figure out what Kathy is looking at, and decide it's the label, which has "99% fat free" written on it as well as a cartoon depiction of rolling hills surrounded by fall trees. Realizing that that's the exact scene outside the window, I avert my gaze that way. And then Kathy joins my line of vision. Lillian is back to examining the wall.

I guess it's all a matter of vantage. I think these people are becoming my friends.

Is this guy boring you?

UNIVISION PRESENTS:
Una Escritura para Una Telenovela Existencial

SCENE 1

[Static-garbled Spanish pop facilitates the conversion from sleep to 2:55 in the morning, replaces the confusion of disturbed r.e.m. with the disorientation of half-received Latin pop.]

Paco Pico Piedra: [Confused, tumbles from the bed and finds the ground, his Gap carpenter pants with the stylish hammer loop, a rumpled long sleeve T-shirt. He struggles into the clothes on autopilot and lurches out the door and down the stairs with sack-of-potato grace. He coughs, then faces the camera and speaks.] Outside, the moon pierces through rippled clouds, waifish vapors seeded by exhaust from thousands of airplanes braving the city smog to deliver millions of haggard businessmen and tired tourists from various Asian countries into this teeming, sleepless, cliché-ridden metropolis. How poetically the light dimly reveals the paisley sofa sitting squat in the college quad. The couch should be lonely, here amongst the sad palm trees and scrawny grass that would wither up and die without constant watering and attention from teams of Mexican gardeners, but it is not, thanks to the comfort provided by a Mr. Coffee machine that burbles happily to itself on an equally misplaced endtable. Strewn about are donut boxes, at this hour containing only those pastries with unidentifiable jelly fillings.

Paisley Sofa (played by midget actor): [sighs contentedly]

Paco: [Eats too many peculiar donuts and excitedly whispers three-in-the-morning delusions.] Occasionally we abandon our assumptions (gestures towards paisley sofa) to saunter about the dormitory buildings, stumbling drunkenly with early morning inebriation. Campus is quiet but the raccoons are noisy, seven little babies and two large parents as big as Rottweilers but of indeterminate ferocity. We crumple bits of cake into #4 unbleached cone coffee filters and feed the raccoons pastry, which they appear to enjoy. On past evenings we have made offerings of lime-flavored Tostitos, but icing seems more to their liking.

Raccoon Chorus (animated, a la Mary Poppins): [pensively] We live in a big hole under the “annex,” which is really a trailer but can’t be called such because of the negative connotations. Only a single family of raccoons can survive in this particular isolated area of Southern California, so a great deal of inbreeding occurs amongst our folk, giving credence to trailer stereotypes.

(Camera pans up from animated raccoons towards heavens, where stars shine brightly as they slowly arc across the sky. Occasionally stars veer off of arc and can be seen doing the "hokey-pokey.")

[By four, giddiness has subsided into exhaustion, and those who cannot find a place on the midget's lap curl up into fetal positions on the concrete.]

Time: [sludges by]

Consciousness: [retreats upon itself]

Rosa: [raising her head from the concrete and looking alarmed] Wayward sofas are irrelevant in the witching hours, and the donuts are obsolete. Five o’clock oozes forth like cold honey, finally relenting and letting us stumble back upstairs to warm beds or creaking sofas or hard floors to sleep with no time for dreams.

[Fade to black]

SCENE 2

[Raccoon chorus stands on each others' shoulders to make the shape of a “2,” then scamper off past the coffee-stained reception desk of a dirty Travelodge]

Travelodge Receptionist: [Peering at Paco and Rosa over the top of half-glasses on a chain of the type popularized by grandmas and librarians] Even during the day, Tijuana is not Mexico; at night, Tijuana is barely Tijuana. You will pass through the clanging turnstiles with no small trepidation, the act feeling illegal and somehow dirty. Silent streets greet the border-crossers, not completely empty, but apocalyptically quiet. Here and there individual males trudge in ebbs, coming and going from somewhere unspecified in the night. Fearless Americans will pursue the human trickle towards its source, passing the occasional locked cage with a fearsome mechanical bull, a gyroscope with boots attached for strapping in those who have had too much to drink and agree to be strapped into a gyroscope.

[Paco and Rosa wave farewell to the Travelodge Receptionist, turn their backs to the reception desk, and cross a concrete bridge over the Rio Tijuana, an unglorified drainage-ditch channel replete with stagnant, unpleasant smelling water.]

Paco: [to Rosa] See how the tide of strangers grows as we walk through the deserted streets. Like raccoons after a tortilla chip we follow unthinking, the dull thump of nightclub music slowly seeping into our ears, whispering against our ear drums.

Downtown: [in a swirl of neon and drunk pedestrians] No cover! Half-price and topless! [Gives Paco and Rosa a sour look, less empty but no more wholesome.]

Teasers: [bad suits, bad english] No cover, half-price, topless...

[Paco and Rosa accept an invitation, slap Teaser on back, climb dimly lit stairs into a throbbing inferno. Rosa is asked for ID despite being sixty-seven years old, Paco is briefly frisked. They drink two-dollar Coronas and tip the waiter after he demands to be tipped. Bad dance music penetrates the skull and bounces about in the sinuses, the head convulses against the beat and the hideous lyrics. The tequila bouncer lurks menacingly in the shadows, pouncing on each table in turn. He stings from behind, wrapping a towel around the neck with the left arm and thrusting a putrid bottle of tequila with his right. Physical force is needed to rebut his advances, but at last he withdraws.]

Paco (holding aloft a skull, to which he speaks): That man there is as a wasp in the room. I keep my right eye on his whereabouts at all times, but my left eye roves across the dance floor to ponder a lone, rotund lady sitting at a bar stool and jiggling up and down to the music. She looks like she would enjoy being asked to dance, but I decline. [Paco becomes uncomfortable from having each of his eyes looking in different directions.]

Paco and Rosa: [singing, each to a different tune] We leave and wander, no cover, half-price, topless, eventually passing through vinyl curtains into a little yellow bar. We crowd into a confused, circular booth, the unevenly round chair threatening to tip us plunging into the small table, drowning us in rounds of Coronas. Movies dubbed in Spanish play silently on yellowed TV screens overhead. We ask the bartender for directions to Senor Frog’s, a club we have seen advertised on billboards, T-shirts. He gives us directions but we speak Spanish badly. The bartender fetches a taxi-driver friend of his, who informs the bar is too far to walk but he could drive us for cheap. We decline because we fear being murdered.

Taxi Driver: [proudly, undeterred by Americans’ refusal to ride in his taxi] You like cocaina? Best cocaina en Mexico. You come right here si want coke.

Paco’s Nose: I must agree the yellow bar would definitely be my first choice for future coke needs.

SCENE 3

[Paco’s Nose appears and grows larger and larger, until the camera is snorted up into the left nostril… hairs hanging from the nostril roof brush against the camera lens like greasy stalactites, leaving little trails of snot. A little further inside the cavernous nostril, we see all of Tijuana laid out before us as if we were approaching by hot-air balloon.]

Tijuana and Time: [slipping in and out of little pieces of consciousness, they perform a dance resembling the Tango, but occasionally utilizing the “pinkie swing” from a basic square dance. Time leads, Tijuana sometimes follows.]

[Somewhere inside Tijuana's dancing streets, Paco wanders into an ornate church, where a high school graduation appears to be taking place. Avoiding the crowds of Mexican teenagers in paperboard hats and their anxious mothers, he staggers into the confessional box at the rear of the church and kneels.]

Paco: Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.

Father: No eres Catolico, verdad?

Paco: I have seen unspeakable things, Father.

Father: Lo siento, mi nino, pero no hablo Ingles.

Paco: The horror! The horror!

Loud voice: ¿Qué hizo Paco? ¿Hacen cuántos "Avemarías" él tiene que hacer? Averigüe el próximo tiempo... aquí mismo en Univision!

END SCENE

Autumn Meditation

The trees were yellow and red. The leaves on the trees were of a yellow hue dotted with black rot, but the red was initially brilliant and remained so until the papery leaves, the papery, silky, shining, greasy leaves fell as leaves tend to fall to the ground --- that is, reluctantly, bobbing, cradling in the wind as if the real comfort were not in the tree or on the cold, soft ground but rather in that insubstantial middle, that place where words and notes go, dreams possibly go, and all the things invisible but existing, and so somehow meaningful. Surely, the drama is in the chasm. And then that is not the lesson. No, the lesson is in the leaves, the jagged, shimmering, silent, dull leaves hanging like heavy, inutile hands on the end of the bodies of silent, skeletal ghosts, in a world haunted by the dim memories of previous losses, in a world cold and then warm, in a universe endless and incomprehensible in its black, blazing continuity, in its persistent, perfect-fifth hum, its speed. And that incomprehensibility is the lesson. And, surely, then, it is not. No, the lesson is in the bark on the trees that holds the yellow and red leaves, the bark rotten and indigestible and dry and hard and cold, the bark the dry, thin, filmy covering over the rings of the years inside the massive diameter of the unhuggable tree, the years that circle each other in perfect order. But then the distance between each line begins to lessen as each year goes by until the lines have become indistinct and inseparable, have in fact become one continuous line going around and around, forgetting the hops and leaps, the poignant peaks, the memorable trinkets, the things a tree holds onto because there are not many other things to hold onto and so each one can be accounted for and glanced at on occasion and even loved. Painful, profound, the tree digs deep, its roots descending steeply at first and then gradually, because a tall structure needs a wide base. And storm after storm blasts its husky frame. Over and over the needling rains impinge upon its leaves, and the leaves fall and turn downwards and the tree sways and bucks, and the branches snap and splinter and fall on houses, on cars, on the ground, on dogs, on people, and the gray sky looks peaceful despite the water flooding it, the wind pursuing it, the shocks of light speeding through it. And then there are the deep cries after, as if somewhere in that roiling sky there is a sad person, face contorted in a mask of grief, indeed a grief large enough that it can only be manifested in this way, as if the storm, and the tree falling to the ground and destroying the mud and the house on top of the mud, and the floor in the house, and the beds and pianos and sofas and tables on the floor, as if the storm that crawls over our landscape is all of the pain of the world come together. All of it. Every tear and moan. Seeing it in this light, it is not at all unsurprising that the next day everything is on the ground, that the leaves, rot red and yellow, flattened and two-dimensional, are on the ground, next to everything big and small. And now everything is still and quiet, indeed almost comfortable, as if this is where it all belonged, as if this is the way things were supposed to be, as you look out over the miles and miles of disorder, as you pick up something small, like a pendant, or a wedding ring, or a music box, or a record or book, or a picture of, say, lovers, or a family, or a dead son, and look, yay, stare, yay, glare, at everything that could have come of it if not for all this pain --- this hulking, huffing-and-puffing, obese and snorting pain --- and everything that still could, despite all this death, despite the night that is coming although the sun has just risen.

Oh? Oh.

That man is not an astronaut...

He thinks the falling stars, are falling to the ground.

He prefers the seedy bars, there's no beer in space.

He's been around the world and he, he, he, he can't find his baby.

He's kind of short and smug, he's got real greasy hair.

He's way too commonplace, his jacuzzi is lukewarm.

He was born on a farm, he wants to milk the cows, to till the fields, to hack the oats, to gather the corn, kill the cows, play in the hay.

It's not as dark in the bar, as it is in space.

His feet stay on the ground, his steps are very small (allusion to giant steps on the moon).

He's not hip to the Buzz, nor aware of Neil.

In 1969, he was taking a crap.

Who? Me? What? Ohhhhhh!

That man is not an astronaut. He prefers to catch the stars, in empty pickle jars.

That man is not an astronaut. He doesn't drive a car, his mailbox is too far.

" " There's so much shit on land, he doesn't understand.

" " He's lazier than me, and I'm no astronaut.

He's lazier than me, his leisure gives him glee.

He's lazier than me, he's happy with TV.

He's lazier than me, the choice is wide and never free.

He's got no initiative, sometimes he's downright plaintive.

He's got a lot a girth, he can't get off the Earth.

He's not so into that, he's not a fan o' that.

Though fifty years from now, he'll have his own space cow.

In many ways he is, he doesn't realize it.

If only he would see, all the things that he could be.

His own small vehicle, is plenty powerful.

He doesn't want to be, all the things he wants to be.

He's got a spaceship head, it's keeping him in bed.

contributions

Friends,

As it turns out, Mars is currently as close to us as it will ever be during our lifetime. You can see it burning red in the southeastern sky, early in the cold night. Clearly, the juxtaposition of the God of War upon my return to the United States can only be a heavenly portent, a celestial dictum requiring me to write and record the ethereal song "That Man is Not An Astronaut." To do so, your assistance is needed.

As you wander through these gray days, please take some time to think about potential verses for this still-gestating song. Examples will be given below. Submit your suggestions via email or the blog.

Verses are remarkably short, so short that some might question whether they are truly verses. Examples include:

1) "That man is not an astronaut- He's too afraid of heights, he's sick on Ferris wheels"
2) "That man is not an astronaut- He never drinks his Tang, he's got no Velcro shoes"
3) "That man is not an astronaut- He can't do calculus, Spacemen need their calculus"
4) "That man is not an astronaut- He's never been to Mars, I've never seen him there"

Thank you.

Good Food

Lunch with Sam -- friend of sixteen years or so -- and talked about the indefinable nature of relationships and experience, about the warring instincts of wholesomeness and sordidness. Riding in his new Cadillac SUV, we listened to Mobb Deep, hip-hop act of the mid-90s. Crisp production, minor key loops, light voices, light but menacing music. Good groove. You could sit in the groove, you could lie down in the groove, you could dance in the groove, you could contemplate the groove.

I will head down to the jazz festival again tonight and engage in the perilous games of my existence and the minor but significant pains they cause, the feeling behind the eyes. There are canoers out on the river. The river is no longer iridescent and the sun has receded slightly behind some clouds, although this would only be a partly cloudy sky. In fact, this is probably the epitome of a partly cloudy sky. The clouds have a gray film over the bottom, like they just ate a large order of McDonald's fries.

There is an inherent sense of the tragic in all experience because of the unavoidable awareness of time passing. Everything you do could be the last, or second-to-last time.

Trickster

I think Bob Dylan is probably some kind of prophet. Never have I heard someone without appreciable musical talent make music that is so affecting. Of course I'm not saying anything new, but it bears repeating. His lyrics are perfect. I'm probably briefly in love with him, and wish I had such jauntiness and bravado. If you'll send some over here, Bob, I'll take it gladly. Actually, I think I've got it already, here in my pocket. Thank you sir. I'll see you at the Hall of Fame.

George Orwell on Being Shot in the Neck

Everything was blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting -- I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well.

in the night

The lack of electricity in my house in the highlands is less bothersome than one might think. I find the kerosene lantern soothing, its constant yellow flame a reassuring tongue of warmth in a cold, remote place. When it is not raining the stars shine gloriously, and the loss of electrical appliances seems a small price to pay for having all of the cosmos apparent overhead.

I'm fairly certain I would feel differently if the place was crawling with bugs. In the house I rented in rural Mexico I had electricity at the flick of a switch, powering my blowing fan and even a small refrigerator. Yet the place was awful because of the constant encroachment into my personal space by all manner of startlingly ugly, and occasionally dangerous, creatures. The Kenyan highlands, however, are far too cold at night to be so invaded.

There are, it's true, the occasional giant cricket-esque insect. They are quite large--let's say the size of a deck of cards (also, coincidentally, the recommended size of a serving of red meat)--and they climb the walls and scuttle behind my bags in a moderately alarming fashion. At first sight, I thought they must be cockroaches, but closer inspection reveals that they are entirely too crickety.

Generally we avoid each other, me in one of my two wooden chairs, the cockroach-cricket contentedly lurking on the wall. Once, though, it jumped off the wall and landed with a resounding thump. There is no furniture in the room other than my chairs and a small stained table, making the room amplify even the small of sounds. It is a delightful effect when I sing to my guitar at night, but a horrible one when it involves the thumping of an insect. Bugs should alight softly, never thump. Thumps are intolerable.

I sleep under an untreated white mosquito net. The villagers assure me that it isn't necessary, since the fierce cold at night reduces mosquito numbers to insignificant levels, but I use it anyway. It isn't for the bugs. I saw only one mosquito in my house during the time I occupy it, and although the empty concrete room amplified its gentle buzz alarmingly so that it reverberated throughout the night, the insect did not seek to feed. I use the mosquito net because it makes me feel safe. It is a torn, porous shroud, but it cocoons me into a manageably small zone of existence, walling me off, even if only slightly, from the dank gloom of my bedroom and the infinite glow of the galaxies outside it.

digression

Last night I was thinking (I have a lot of time to think these evenings), and it occured to me that "Panico en la Discoteca" would be a good name for an album.

For those who do not know, "Panico en la Discoteca" was a short novella we read in high school Spanish class under the tutelage of gay Senor Kutz. It was written with small words and short sentences so that even we novice Spanish speakers could follow the story. The gist, as I recall, was that a handfull of teenage friends go to enjoy themselves at the discoteca, but their night of revelry is cut short when the discoteca catches fire. The eponymous Panico ensues.

A digression from this digression: I remember being required to improvise a scene culled from the exciting mid-section of the novella, in which two of the friends attempt to escape the fire by climbing through a skylight or trapdoor or somesuch. Details escape me, but let's say I was supposed to be Raul. My friend was played by my actual friend Pablo. That was his real name, but let's say it was also that of his character so that this admittedly weak story isn't also needlessly confusing. Anyway, during the course of this escape Raul becomes increasingly frightened by the smoke and Panic and says "I'm scared," or "Tengo miedo." Only I misspoke and said, "Tengo mierda," which means, "I have shit." After an unrelated episode involving a particular vitriolic excuse for an absence from the community-service organization (which, despite its hilarity, will not be printed here) of which Senor Kutz was also the advisor, he would later threaten me with the words, "Nacho, I know your mother."

"Panico en la discoteca" is more striking than either its authors or Senor Kutz could have intended because of the poignant juxtaposition which it contains. The book is written like one intended for small children, since high-school Spanish students have roughly the same vocabulary. "Raul sees his friend Pablo. 'I am scared,' says Raul. 'The window is very high.'" The elementary prose lulls the reader into assuming that the book really is meant for naive tykes, making it all the more jolting when several of the teenagers die at the end from smoke inhalation or being trampled to death during the Panic.

I found the intrusion of these dark themes of realism into the happy "see Jane run" story to be disturbing. "'It is a nice day,' says Jane. 'Let's go to the discoteca.' 'Yes,' says Raul. 'It will be fun.' 'I can't feel my legs,' says Jane." The result is shocking because it is not intended to be as such.

Waking In The Morning

The morning after my first night at the jazz festival, I cut through Ann Arbor and away from the north side of town, driving along the Huron Parkway Prarie, cattails in the middle. In the space of a mile I've seen six or seven joggers, people biking with their little children in tow, some orange construction barrels. Trees abound. I pass a high school, a recreation area, expensive cars, more trees. The sky is blue, clouds are scant, sun is shining. Now I'm going over a bridge over the Huron River. From this elevation I see the sun iridescent on the water. The water opaque in the sunshine almost. I pass a golf course, most people finished with their early morning rounds. There's a lone golfer walking on a path. I wonder if he is that unskilled, or just woke up late. Another jogger. Greenery, greenery, trees, greenery. I'm driving slow, enjoying, taking in the morning.

philanthropy is

I have become very tired of people asking me for money.

I knew that it would happen, but I thought it would be easy to say, "Look, I'm just a student. True, I have white skin, but that does not make me inherently rich," after which the supplicants would leave me in peace, disappointed but understanding.

I did not forsee that those who would come in hopes of a handout would almost invariably be those who did not speak a word of English. It turns out that it's difficult to describe one's poverty to someone who doesn't speak ones language when one is dressed in nicer clothes than they and is carrying around a laptop. Further complicating my determined no-handout stance is the amount of cash requested: a boy initially pleads for five shillings (one shilling is approximately 1.3 cents), until my stonewall refusal has him bargaining for one. A young man, sans several teeth, comes reeking of alcohol and hopes I will give him the equivalent of a quarter. This request follows intense negotiations, none of which I understand. They include the laborious writing of the words "cita misonae," "unisaine," and finally "mainti," in a shaking, spidery script, which I belatedly realize could only mean that he is asking for money to buy booze.

I give him the money he asks for and the next day offer an old man the same so that he can repair his bicycle. I give them money not because I am a good person, but rather because I want them to get out of my house. These transactions make me feel awful. The sums involved are so pitiously insignificant to me that it seems illogical to deny them unless I am obstinately steadfast on doing my best Scrooge imitation. Yet many well-meaning individuals have warned me that these sorts of minor handouts quickly snowball into hundreds of selfish demands.

A group of little girls comes to see me periodically dressed in their Sunday best. I am certain they want money, but they don't know the English words necessary to ask for it. As the days go by, I am also increasingly certain that their parents have put them up to it, which makes me angry. I think so because they are always dressed so nicely and are immensely shy, timidly hiding behind one another and staring at me fearfully. I greet them, and then we stare at each other for several minutes. Eventually I become uncomfortable, or at least even more uncomfortable, until I pass some vague threshold of uncomfortableness that makes me retreat indoors and draw the curtains.

One of the microscopists who works in the clinic assures me it's ok to turn the beggars down. "They don't understand you're a student," he tells me, corroborating my own thoughts on the matter. "They see you with your equipment and your white skin and they assume you're rich." I comfort myself by trying to think he's right. The boy who asked for one shilling--one goddam shilling--had been very friendly to me, and I ended up giving him a whole ten shilling coin. The look of astonished joy on his face was horrible.

I Wish I Was a Baller

We spent the first hour at the free jazz festival buying mediocre, over-priced food and drink. I had a forgettable gyro and Kim some kind of sausage concoction. She also had an expensive wine cooler, and I a beer. Twenty bucks and some mild indigestion later, we caught the end of David 'Fathead' Newman's tribute to Ray Charles, and promptly discovered that Fathead has the speaking voice of a woman. (He was portrayed as much more manly in the movie 'Ray'). Luckily, he plays saxophone. After Fathead we pushed our way forward and sat down on the grass twenty feet or so from the stage. A bunch of people joined us, and the Funk Brothers came on.

Apparently the Funk Brothers are really famous in the world of Motown music. This I did not know. They had a large band with them. For much of the show we thought the Brothers were two old white guys, since everyone else on stage was black and about a decade younger. Turns out they use the word 'brothers' loosely -- they're one white and two blacks. One of the blacks wasn't playing secondary to some kind of feud. The white guy has the look of a New Jersey pizza man, if you can picture it (fat, big nose, balding, eating pizza on stage - actually the last one is not quite true).

The band was mostly middle-aged musicians with ample soul and sagging jowls. There were three singers. One was a guy in a sequined, glittery, silver jacket who did a ton of smiling. One an overweight woman in a sheer blouse who sang quite well. And lastly there was a woman in tight black pants and a holter top whom Kim affectionately called a 'middle-aged hoochie mama.'

The show was a good, but a little too 1950s. It was like listening to a stretch on an oldies station. They played 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered,' 'My Girl,' and a bunch of Marvin Gaye, among other stuff. People seemed to dig it. I would say there were about 800 there, and many were dancing, old and young. I even got into it a bit myself at one point and started rocking back and forth.

An intoxicated man in front of Kim kept looking back at her and smiling and staring at her cleavage. Every time he did that I put my hand on her leg. Then this other dude turned around, said something to her, and touched her foot. What the heck? Then it happened again! By the end of the night I was conspicuously fondling her.

We left around 10:45 pm, sober and wholesome. What I needed then was an incredibly large Johnnie Walker on the rocks. In the car, at a stop light, we watched four men in green T-shirts, almost all with enormous guts, crossing the street. "Why are they all in green T-shirts?" Kim said. "That will remain to be seen," I said, "not by me."

On the way home this guy on a motorcycle riding next to us all of a sudden decided he was going to lie down on his belly while going 80 mph. He did so, and Kim said "Oh my god!" I gave him the thumbs-up, and a toothy smile, then stepped on the gas and left him in the dust.

Back in Ann Arbor, the contrast could not be more stark. College kids, partying on a weekend night, dressed up in their Sunday best or what have you, invariably white. The town polished and dull. I found my craving for large amounts of alcohol deadened by the young crowd, which made me feel like I was at camp. "But camp was fun!" Kim said (she was an earnest band-camper back in the day, still sort of is). Suddenly I was craving Diet Orange Tropicana Twister. This means we had to stop at Speedway, which is the only place I've been able to find the drink, and interact with the amusing man behind the counter. He's fat, bearded, and dirty. He's a cross between John Candy and a hobo, kind of John Candy gone destitute. Perhaps to keep his job interesting, he never stops talking, quite literally. He mumbles a lot to himself. Some people are distinctive without even knowing it.

I found my glee at the cold refreshing taste of the Twister sullied by an argument Kim and I embarked upon. I couldn't repeat details. Suffice it to say that it culminated in Kim yelling, "I'm not having your baby!" At this point my Twister was still half full. I closed my eyes and took a huge swig, savoring the artificial orange. In a perfect world there'd be no aftertaste.

Older and Wiser

Naivete and youth deceived my brain into depositing Nutella into the same little neuro-bin in which I categorize other foreign spreads that I never wish to consume, particularly Vegomite. Imagine my surprise to encounter a jar of the stuff in the pantry this week, not just to encounter it but to open it and to discover that it was, in fact, filled with delicious Italian nutty chocolate in convenient lickable form. Since I now admit to have officially dipped my index finger into the jar, I can clearly not leave it, contaminated, in the pantry, and have no recourse but to eat it all.

the Kisumu museum

So I made it back down to Kisumu with my cell phone as the only casuality. It was an awful trip and I plan on not repeating it. Back alone in my little house on the outskirts of this sprawling city, I found myself staring down the barrel of another empty weekend. To fill the void, I attempted to accomplish three goals. First, I went for a little run away from the city to a peninsula called Hippo Point. Lonely Planet remarks on its nice view of Lake Victoria, the eponymous hippo potential, and the nice little restaurant there that's popular with the expat community.

The view was clouded by morning mists, the hippos were grazing elsewhere, and the restaurant had burned down. Nevertheless, it was a pretty spot, and if I had the ability to disconnect that place from last year's shooting of the son of the researcher in whose house I'm staying, I might have lingered. The son is fine and does not appear emotionally scarred, but if the hippos weren't going to make an immediate and dramatic appearance, I was going home.

Second, I bought a new telephone. For those interested, the number is 0725 926 339, preceeded by the appropriate international and Kenyan codes. I'm not sure if the number will work, since immediately upon turning it on, I received a number of text messages clearly not intended for me (including one that reads "Baby gal am so grateful 4 wat u ave done 4 me ope day i get 2 repay u bt as always u wil always b in ma prayers gnit").

Third, I went to the Kisumu museum. The original museum building is a small room housing dusty exhibits of the sort common to dull museums worldwide. These included a number of stuffed birds and monkeys wired into unlifelike poses, a tableau depicting early tribal life, and a collection of ancient bowls and tools used for the storage and preparation of various grains. When I later left the museum, I wandered through the nearby marketplace, where wizened old women could be found selling clay and wooden bowls that were, as near as I could tell, identical in every way to the museum artifacts, with the distinction of being a thousand years younger.

More interesting were the various exhibits scattered around outside the museum proper. One was an avowedly accurate replication of a traditional Luo homestead. It featured a number of thatched mud huts in which a Luo man would live with his assorted wives and sons. Again, the exhibit was made somewhat less dramatic by the fact that the actual Luos living in the slums a few blocks away still live in very similar huts, albeit with less wives. However, I found the earnestness with which the exhibit was constructed to be touching. The inside of the huts were decorated with a few clay pots and other traditional artifacts, but were generally uninteresting; in one hut, however, I found one of the museum workers stuffing newly harvested bunches of bananas into the narrow neck of one of the pots. I can't imagine any of the handful of visitors to the very dark interior of the hut wondering whether there were any bananas still lodged inside the pots sitting in the corner, but I'm pleased to be able to report that the answer is yes. Other unexpected touches included the live sheep sitting in a huddled mass inside the traditional animal enclosure. I hope that they are taken out for grazing purposes at least on occasion.

Clearly not taken out for any purposes whatsoever were the other animal exhibits. These included a snake pit, a snake house, and a crocodile pool. Gracing the crocodile pool was a sign titled, "Danger Crocodile" that admitted that despite the fact that crocodiles were "useful and valuable," the museum strongly discouraged use of the stagnant pools in which they were kept for purposes of playing, washing, or bathing. The museum hoped that such measures would help curtail the incidence of death, and advised me to warn my children as such. The crocodiles looked like they were unlikely to cause many deaths, since they lay unmoving in their pools even as the other museum-goers prodded them with branches.

The snake house featured species from around Kenya. All were marked as "very poisonous" except for the enormous rock python and a certain mamba, the later of which was instead labeled as having an "extremely virulent neurotoxin." In related news, I nearly stepped on a large viper of unknown species in the highland forest last week. I did manage to take a picture, so hopefully we can ascertain its degree of deadliness at a later time.

Vulnerability

Clearly, Sphere, you're correct that fear makes one unusually observant. I think it's all part of the stress response. I'm guessing the hypothalamus is to blame, but that's really your department. All I know is that slow-burning fear causes a steady hormone drip drip drip into dilated blood vessels, making your heart beat faster and your brain seize upon little details that it would have let slip by otherwise. Details like the deactivated speedometer in the cracked dashboard of the matatu that's hurtling you down the Nandi escarpment, or the quiet chuckles in the back that precede the information that you are to be wildly overcharged for the pleasure of that hurtle. These observations are usually welcome rewards the next day, when you sit in your kitchen, sipping tea, and ruing the loss of your borrowed cell phone. At the time, however, they are the unnecessarily taxing by-products of a daylong adrenaline buzz, leaving you a strung-out, nervous wreck by the end of the day.

Day - twa

We enter the Detroit streets. If you saw only this, you'd think us grand. The Renaissance Center towers above. It's bright and black. The river is less than a dreaming distance away. The evening sun shines dimly. On the corner of Randolph and Monroe we pass a place called "Chicken Bunchies Biscuits." Detroit. Wooo! I see the unlit lights of Comerica Park. The new Hard Rock Cafe comes up on the right and we start to come up on the festival. There are some white tents and people walking around. We're going to try to find some secure parking, so as not to get jacked. But there's also this sense -- Benny P in Kenya do you agree? -- when you go into a place that renders you a little bit more vulnerable than usual that you're not complacent and that you may see things you don't normally see. It's a question of travel. Plato was happy to sit quietly in his room. cf Bishop, "The choice is never wide and never free."

Beginner's Luck

All this also reminds of a trip I made into the city as a 16 or 17 year old with the expressed purpose of playing at a jazz club jam session. I think the place was called Bomack's. I was dating a girl named Molly Stout -- who was, oddly, a little stout -- and I asked her if she would come with me because I was a little afraid. When we got there, I was afraid to get my sax out of the trunk. We entered the club. We were the only non-blacks in the place, and there was a pretty full-fledged jam session going on. The stage was lit brightly in yellow and at the mike was a good tenor sax player of middle age, wailing away on a spirited blues / r and b tune. There was more than a handful of musicians standing around him, getting their axes out of their cases, sitting at tables with their glowing instruments in their laps and sipping on a cocktail perhaps to deaden the nerves, or ward off withdrawal. I wished for a spirit then. Molly and I sat down and looked at each other. She has a beautiful face, round like an apple, plump lips, diminutive nose shaped like a ski-jump, and well-tended-to, sandy brown hair that rises from the front of her head in a wave and falls quickly around her chin. She's got a warm, knowing smile. When I remember her now, I remember her face in that club, the dim light softening her features. Soon enough a big guy set down napkins on our table and brusquely asked for our IDs. "Over 21," he said, and we had to go. On my way out I passed a large table of teenagers digging the music. And that was my first, and I think last, attempt at playing jazz in Detroit. On the way home I think I touched Molly's hand and thanked her for accompanying me on such a silly brainchild. Still I thank her.

Steeple and Skyscraper

Driving into Detroit is redolent of my romantic youth when I was in love with cities and wanted to run away to New York or wherever. As you come down I-75 and get into the city for a few seconds in front of you there is a church steeple in front of the Renaissance Center -- the city's tallest building -- and they are perfectly aligned. The steeple is green as if it is copper and the skyscraper is a gleaming black cylinder. As a high school student on a night out, feeling gritty and a little bit on the edge, I had this sense as I saw them shadow each other that everything would work out swimmingly. I always had that feeling. It was a moment of --- what do you call it --- confluence? Synchronicity? Of course things always changed, the structures again fell dolefully out of sync. But for a minute there I was benevolent and brave.