Can't a Man Get a Decent Salad Around Here?

Dateline: Paris, France, July. We were looking for that unique, elusive culinary experience, Carrie and I, in the Marais neighborhood--hoping to stumble off the beaten tourist routes. We'd been walking for hours. A warm evening, we strolled the quieter streets of stone, whiff of urine reaching us from alleys and doorways, narrow art studios and shuttered shops. The wind drifted us this way, that way, until we located on a slow side street a hip, shiny, busy restaurant, "Glou". Pairs of diners gabbed and laughed within steel, glass, soft pastel painted walls, smoked on sidewalk tables over gleaming salads and grilled succulent steaks. A tad pricey, but we plunged ahead and tiptoed in. Paris swarms with beautiful people, and the young and urban and rather local and professional frequented the place. We felt a bit frumpy, but felt at east when given menus by a pretty, vapid young server. How shall I say this diplomatically? We were afforded ample time to peruse the menu, me glancing over my shoulder occasionally scouting for the server. The retro menu offered new French cuisine, along with stalwart classics. For starters, I picked a salad of octopus, fennel, and arugula. Sounds promising, yes? Perhaps, I imagined, it would look something like this: Glimpsed in mind: arugula, fennel, and sea creature splashed with, say, champagne vinegar, Brittney Coast sea salt, fresh pepper, this initially tossed, then a light drizzle of virgin olive oil, tossed once again, then a festive dousing of fresh lemon juice followed by a light rain of lemon zest. The image came as a divine blessing; I saw the ingredients and concocted their harmony. What finally arrived was a poor imitation: the whole was drenched in olive oil (why would you do that? You, hey, idiot, I'm talking to you; put the, will you put the damn iPhone down and answer me? No, look at me!). If there lurked even a hint of sparkling lively vinegar it had been maliciously kicked to the side like a groggy parolee shuffled onto a Greyhound bus with a one-way ticket to the exburbs of nowhere. Where the arugula should have had a peppery herbal bite, oil; where the fennel could offer a delicate root sweetness, oil; when one should have tasted the octopus's recent memories of floating in an ocean wilderness, oil. One-dimensional, criminal, hopeless, and bloody inexplicable in a pricey restaurant in the Marais neighborhood in Paris, France, one of the queens of the culinary world (addendum: I have since been chided by a few friends who shook their heads and pointed out that I was still in a tourist area, that the French are not known for salads so why would I order one etc. True, and beside the point). Doubly criminal, I actually foolishly ate most of the salad--at least the arugula, a bit of octopus, the fennel--before realizing how bad it was. Note what a romantic imagination/expectation can wrought? The wooden tables, the carefully arranged lighting, the vibe of a side street culinary find that sizzled the air and buzzed the street all conspired to make me believe I was experiencing a delicious salad, bewitching my very own knowledgeable salad taste buds. As I peered down miserably into the pool of oil in which bits of pink octopus bobbed like sunburned Englishmen in the viscous Mediterranean sea, I felt betrayed, wronged, the cheek of Jesus stinging from a traitor's kiss. I called the waiter over. "This is the worst salad I've ever eaten," I announced. Not really true, come to think of it, but I was heady and pissed and over the line. She called the manager over. I patiently explained to him--who should know better--how this salad should have been orchestrated. After I'd pointed out the oil puddle on my plate with accusing finger, manager weakly replied "Oh, you do not like that much oil in your salad?" My head twisted like Linda Blair's on a bad night: dude, I brazenly offered, there IS too much oil in the salad, and it's ruined; this is objective fact, not a flutter of personal preference (I mean hello: there shouldn't be an oil spill in the plate, period). Who, I wondered, was the rookie who created this mess? A wiry fugitive from a banana boat bent on self-destruction? Was he on his iPhone the entire time? When the check finally arrived (note the continued adjectives modifying time duration) we found the salad had been comped, small but welcome mercies. We walked into the warm Paris evening uninspired, a little wiser, and then it hit me: the enchantment had dissolved. I needn't pilgrimage to Paris for a fine meal--though fine meals could be had in Paris, and we had a few (not many, but a few spectacular ones). No, let me get to that place where I will cook the fine meal myself. Perhaps then the beautiful people of Paris will come to me.

Thanksgiving It's Friday!

I see the red brake lights flashing like danger flares a quarter mile up, and my foot reluctantly slides from the gas pedal to hover over the brakes. I’m driving the I-80 freeway coming into Pinole, which is a suburb city about a twenty one minute drive from San Francisco’s Bay Bridge. I crossed over the Bay Bridge in pretty good time, I thought, cutting out of work a bit early to miss the Thanksgiving holiday traffic this Wednesday afternoon (I lived and worked in San Francisco at the time, working hard, always poor). I was looking forward to seeing my family in Sacramento, Mom, Dad, and younger brother, Jonn. Since I’d moved to San Francisco some years before, and worked on weekends, going to school during the week, I didn’t have many chances to visit family and old friends. So I was looking forward to a relaxing few days, eating, drinking, and laughing, frequenting my old haunts with friends who still hadn’t fled Planet Sacramento. Driving my white, square Plymouth, which looked like some government inspector’s vehicle, I sped past Emeryville, Berkeley, Albany, El Cerrito, and Richmond dreaming about a glass of good wine, my dogs romping around, my family all smiles. Then the red brake lights. Traffic. Must be a stall in the left lane. Happens all the time. We’ll crawl for a while, go around the poor shmuck with a flat tire, or the two clowns examining their fender-bender, then off we’ll go, KFOG blasting on the car radio, cool November sharp slant of sunlight in the air, the briny wind sifting off the Bay, and a few miles ahead the sunset in my rear view mirror; I’m rolling home at last. But there was no accident. No stall. No overturned big-rig. No police sting drug bust. From Pinole we crawled, and crawled, and crawled, brake lights flashing hotter as the night came on and the air cooled. Past El Sobrante and Rodeo. Past Hercules, Crockett, Benicia, Vallejo. We slithered and huffed and lurched all the way to the Carquinez Bridge. After paying bridge toll, suddenly the traffic lightened, and wide freeway opened up. We floored it, our cars roaring like rockets at lift-off, thinking angrily we’d make up for lost time. But then, no, not again: brake lights. The gods were toying with us. Traffic ground to a halt. And then we resumed the crawl. Past American Canyon and the turn off to the Napa Wine Country. The freeway by this time was four lanes heading east, and all lanes were clogged. This tragedy was made worse because highway 12 coming from Napa, Sonoma, Petaluma, and Santa Rosa poured more desperate cars into our choked freeway. My patience was gone, evaporated like dew under a Sahara desert sun. I cut over to the right lane—I may have cut some old lady off, didn’t care, out of my way!—and took the next suburban turn off, which connected to a road over the freeway and into a new housing development. I suddenly felt like the intrepid pioneer, an adventurer, carving a new path through the suburban wilderness, finding the secret passage up and over the Coast Range Mountains, some two-lane country road used only by farmer’s wives doing errands to the feed store, and wayward ministers driving their VW van en route to Wednesday night Bingo. Get me out of this suburban development, and I’ll be home free, dropping down into Winters in the Sacramento Valley, then speeding country roads all the way to Davis, and Sacramento’s only fifteen minutes away at that point. So on through the suburban development I flew, barely slowing for speed-bumps, and tearing up their freshly poured asphalt. The local road dropped me and my spitting out of range KFOG into a forested country road: eureka! This was an older road, roaring past nameless established towns. Just keep driving east, I told myself. Turn right. Straight. Slow down for the horses. Another right. Straight. This kept going for a half hour. I must be making good time! I told myself. Suddenly after a few more turns, I found myself entering another new suburban housing development. The old country road came to an end, turning into another freshly paved clean street with young trees and street names like “Dream Circle” and “Patriotic Lane”. What the binko? Up one street, down another. Up another, and another… No exit. There was no secret passage. I may have screamed. Cursed the gods. What I did was double back the way I’d come. All the way back. Having lost what would end up being an hour of my life, just to get back to the same place in the freeway, an hour later, and no closer to home. A few hours later I finally lunged into my driveway, 6501 Vernace Way, corner of 48th Avenue, South Sacramento, tired, impatient, gloomy, hungry, wild-eyed, and in desperate need to punch someone. Luckily, my dogs were happy to see me, and my Mom and Dad sympathized sincerely, lamented the traffic, was glad I was home, poured a fat glass of wine (my brother nodded from the TV; he didn’t give a shit if I’d arrived the following week). After I’d returned to semi-normal, smelling from the kitchen corned beef, boiled potato and cabbage meal my Mom knew I loved so well (Irish staple), I announced to my gathered kin that from here on into the future, I wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday. At first they all looked at each other as if I said I was moving to the Midwest to become an atheist trans-gender coal-miner. But then I explained that, remember people, I was the one driving from the Bay Area to share Thanksgiving with the family. I had to fight the traffic. Did it really matter what day of the week on the calendar we celebrated giving thanks for the food and being together as a family? Do we even know that the Pilgrims sat down with the Native Americans on a Thursday? We don’t even know any Native Americans, let along invite them to dine. Being teachers, both my Dad and Mom got Friday off anyway. My brother I’m sure couldn’t give a rat’s ass either way, as he only lived in an apartment a few miles away. So let’s shift Thursday to Friday. Same turkey, same mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stewed greens, green beans, pumpkin and apple pie, but a day later. What do you say? They couldn’t say or do anything but assent: my logic was flawless. So from then on we had Thanksgiving on Fridays, and it worked out fine. Times changed. My father passed away, so it was just my Mom and brother (who’d matured). Then I got married, and my brother married, and the new additions adapted to the Friday Thanksgiving tradition at my Mom’s. We just had to bring out the extension for the table to widen for the five of us. But the food was delicious. My sister-in-law cooked amazing collard greens she learned from the Deep South. My wife found a recipe for winter vegetables baked in cream, heavenly. The wine flowed, the laughter rose. In the later years my wife and I would take our Thursday holiday and drive to Point Reyes National Seashore to gaze on the Pacific’s wild blue ocean, or walk out on the peninsula to whisper past the grazing, silent, proud mule deer. We’d lunch on fresh oysters from Tomales Bay and a crisp Riesling. Few people were out in the world (they were all stuck in traffic, desperate, brake lights burning into their eyes). We returned home blessed, retrieved the good china, and made a special Thanksgiving dinner, just the two of us. We clinked wine glasses, giving thanks, our cats curled up on the couch. The next morning we’d drive a freeway uncluttered all the way to Sacramento. House unchanged, the silver maple in the backyard taller, grander. The winter’s cool Delta Tule fog hushed over the quiet light. The dogs, older now, would jump around a bit. My Mom would smile from the chair, older too. My brother would rise to shake hands and give my wife a hug. We’d shop, no lines, and cook through the afternoon. My Mom would say a prayer, thanking the powers that be for our being together as a family. Then we’d raise our glasses for a toast. In another year or so my mother would also pass away, following my father across the San Francisco sunset, over the Golden Gate Bridge, to the western lands in another time. But for now we raised our glasses, feeling blessed, a family, here and now, together.

Diebenkorn at the de Young: Let's Watch Representation Melt into Bold Contours of Form and Color!

Richard Diebenkorn, Abstract Expressionist, retrospective at the de Young Museum, summer 2013, "The Berkeley Years: 1953-1966". Abstract means to draw from or separate. In this sense, every art is abstract...a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts. ... Seems to me the power of AE is the tension developed between possibilities of representation and its dissolution in powerful swaths of contours of color. In representing works with human figures they are passive, quiet, introspective, emotionally immersed, in the latter painting paired yet ambiguous in their relationship and intentions for being present--for a pose, for art's sake? Far from the pride evoked in the subjects' gaze, dignity in earthly peasants or humble folk generally, Diebenkorn's people are not expressly passionate. Isn't representational painting terribly tiring? they seem to murmur. In "View from the Porch 1959" the represented view only later comes hazily into focus...or "view": vertical railing lines spear the canvas suggesting the squaring off on geometrical sections in non-representational painting. Your preconceptions shimmer and hover and disappear like ghosts returning to darkened musty parlors. Unspecified tension in waves through nearly empty room. Faces aren't rendered; woman's hand at her elbow suggests impatience (with perhaps being a subject?). Something frantic about drops of brown against background of head (me looking closely leaning in)...painting on a narrow canvas using small table or even a stool...couch behind: woman has either just gotten up, withholding sitting down, or has been standing for a time in pose. She could walk out any time; whether it would surprise the man or not, who knows. These two figures, off left, empty space. A narrow glimpse of verdant fields, and brown fields lying fallow. Turquoise rug with yellow background atop dark brown canvas; windows ambiguous as whether glass of an empty canvas... These are the magical "Berkeley Series" named in numbers (22, 38, 44 etc). Colors and even forms are allow--freed--to portray their own coherence and coalesce in a vibrant balance. Shapes abstracted from traditional landscape, hills, fields, blue ocean, deep horizon but to cohere into a painting is the artist's responsibility, desire. A figure against the ground--this is landscape: colors of machinery and civilization against rural cultivation (see Kiran Chandra's "This Place, That Place") and nature--gray burn iron white stiff red fluttering cream purple hint of flesh, lines of roads, paths, fence boundary...themselves borders of the canvas

Worlds in a Sandbox and a Street

I want to remember a time in life when I was an integral part of the world: when a child at play--indeed in the proverbial sandbox in our backyard in Sacramento. My young friends, brother Jonn, and I built elegantly planned roads of curves and turnouts, underground car ports, sad dwellings of found materials for our Matchbox vehicles and imaginary citizens. At play was not a diversion but the creative point of living a long afternoon. Bridges spanned hand-dug rivers into which poured water from sticky green garden hose. Intricate care was taken to smooth the roads and distance the dwellings. None of us in the south Sacramento neighborhood possessed miniature railroad gear to pilfer from--trees, depots, people--to make our town more colorful and "realistic" -- What did we bother with realism? There was no interest in "recreating" what a miniature town should resemble. We recreated nothing. We carved and patted and smoothed sanded roads, dug and fortified dwellings for small toy vehicles; the narrow roads were real as were the tiny gasless cars and pickups our imagination fired and wheeled not to develop imaginary worlds but to create and build in the real one: our town had no center, no economy, no police force, no rest home, no library, no adults, no animals, no arrogant, no lonely. We had narrow winding roads engineered for toy cars to smoothly glide from their stick-covered shelters to nowhere. But the roads were smooth! They curved elegantly. As night came on we worried over the coming storm we overheard the weather man on TV news warn about when we drifted by the living room to the bathroom to pee. Night falling, wind rising, we tucked our vehicles inside their dwellings and sheltered with makeshift garage doors. We didn't want to leave our sand and water world, return to warmth of lights and family and television and our place-mats at the dinner table. We relished darkening and threateningly cooler winds, iron in the air, desired not the ordered stage but to watch over our sand and water dominion out back by the puffy white Viburnum opulus (Snowball bush)... -- The internet kills play. Play is unprogrammed, unrehearsed, open-ended, relatively untimed, and so timeless, bounded only by the borders of the twin tyrannies of sleep and school. It is a testament of the purity of play that I remember few details of how we passed the time of childhood. Ditch Em, the game, would have recurred. This activity consisted of breaking into two or three "teams" of around three boys each--whomever we could scour from the neighborhood that particular afternoon after the game popped into somebody's head while lounging on the porch. Our teams had no uniforms, no names, no hierarchy. Brothers were never allies. Ditch Em--did we create this name or inherit it from ancestors?--began when someone unpicked and random yelled "Ditch Em!" and we bolted with our tribe in opposing directions. Could be running down a long block, catapulting over the chain-link fence of our elementary school, hoisting up onto the wooden-planked backyard fence (didn't matter whose backyard), heaving into the silver maple, dropping onto the back lawn and crossing quickly, then up and over a neighboring fence (didn't matter whose fence). All backyards had hideouts: honeysuckle and pussywillow, hemmed-in weedy empty dog pens, burrowing under citrus metallic-tanged shade of sturdy thronging juniper bushes, the dusty oil dark cool of garages. The motive and mission of the game: to see and remain unseen, to scout and monitor enemy positions, their stealth movements. The endgame was to gain the controlling eye, to adjust your movements, retreats, advances, and escapes according to your enemies'. To know and be unknown was the point and only power. Usually a few blocks radius whirling out from the corners of Vernace Way and 48th avenue encompassed the boundaries. With bikes, it could be miles and miles, and then knowledge of enemy movements shone like diamonds in your mind. You traveled and hid, spied and ducked, burrowed and waited and listened. If your team was spotted, you made fast and furious escape; for although there was an initial and formative spurt of chase by the enemy when they surprised, no capture ensued. There was only the advantage of knowing. Pursuers and pursued would slink and sneak again into hiding, create and maintain strategies of concealment and witness. Summer rolled on.

While the Girls are Off Shopping...

"...wondering who the f*** is on mad McCarthy's porch..." is a snippet from Jack Kerouac's vast grand beatific wild experimental novel Visions of Cody penned in 1951-2 but its glory remained unpublished until 1973, and it's just Ti Jean gazing, examining, watching, peering, wondering, contemplating, running, driving, drinking, thinking, and penning, and I picture him slumped in a porch chair in October: cool, dry, long afternoon slanting light across pale warped wooden planks and just brushing a peeling weathered railing pushed against the azalea thicket. Mrs Smith is carting home groceries in a wheeling squeaky black wire basket, Tide and cornflakes box bumping along behind her, she chewing gossip fed her by Mrs Peterson around the block beneath a sycamore regarding minister Ralph and the new choir director Miss Angel behind the eyes of the sanctuary, and here she spies Kerouac slumped leaning back in frayed wicker porch chair, his pen in hand poised in delicate thin air, paused in fury like a hummingbird hovering inches from the spiral writing pad, pausing to glance from cool shadows into which he'd retreated to record in hermitage silence--broken only by the spooked untamed horses of his mind--a flooding memory of nights and nights ago a nonstop dialogue with poet Allen Ginsberg, the two unkempt and hungry almost running talking at the same time finishing each other's thoughts and beginning each other's sentences, interrupting dreams, beaten leather dark brown shoes flapping and skidding across the rising sidewalks of upper Columbus, sniffing the spicy brine of a San Francisco August, the drifting Bay, yeasty bread, coffee grounds, oregano, honeysuckle, lavender, pine, the two men wild-eyed, grimacing, laughing, raising artful fists to heaven's iron gates and spitting scorn on hell's burning glass boardwalks, sharing Blake Genet and songs of Whitman, Charlie Parker's sax blow of young jazz America, the ring and hum of Autumn night, the running of the bullish, Buddhist helpless and hopeful children burning fuses and not waiting for the ink on crinkled page to dry. This Mrs Smith returning moment's glance sees in the glassy eyes of Kerouac's shadowed slump--not the tempest and lightning flash but the inward gaze--and this short phrase I remember while penning in a spiral Steno Notes 80 pages 6x9 sitting at the Sunset Bar and Restaurant at the edge of Guatemala's Lago de Atitlan in the bustling lake coast Mayan town of Panajachel, and I too am slumped but the gleaming daylight warms and the cool clouds bless. Diamond flickers of sunshine dance upon the metallic green of the water. A Mayan woman sits on a low wall above the lake bordering the coastal paved walk selling peanuts, cashews, almonds in gallon bags. Scoops buried in the bags stand waiting. Colorful Mayan traditional dress of vibrant greens and deep sea blue and fiery orange, and she lets the billowing girls hang. Her dark-skinned husband accompanies her on late lunchbreak, new blue jeans, gray red and white checkered flannel shirt, earth-brown Stetson. They both slowly lower strands of take-out spaghetti into their tiny daughters open mouth (I didn't see her behind the cart she was so small and unmoving). Volcanoes tower on the southwest coast in shimmering dark jungle green. Hot afternoon smoky white and ship's hull gray clouds churn and tatter in the Guatemalan rolling sky winds throwing shadows over the waters and summoning emerald bands of current and sparkling sunshine to race west across the long lake. Mountain ridges slope and stomp on onto Atitlan in greater enclosing hazes to the misty western ridges far along. Taxi boats skate across soft waves to ferry gringos to pleasures in Mayan towns of San Pedro, San Juan, or villages hidden in coves. Heavy white hull gray clouds bulge and plosh across the sky exploding flowers behind the volcanoes and dip and bow in the valleys between peaks, not two separate weather phenomena but a primordial dance of earth and sky.... A mariachi band has like an incoming tide drifted into the bar to serenade the Guatemalan afternoon, steely vibrato cry of horns. I hear the singer fill the valleys of quiet between the swarthy and pleading trumpeting peaks rising. The Mayan nut seller has I spy over my beer lifted her dirty-face tiny daughter up to stand upon shoulders to see and hear the trumpets and song. The little girl cranes her neck to see, toes pointed into her mother's dress...she waves at the music, and smiles wildly.

Smoke on the Water, Ceviche in the Bowl

Tuk-tuk means vacation. The ubiquitous little rattling buzzing three-seater scooters you dodge on streets from Bombay to Amapala, the latter a volcanic island off the Honduran coast within the Bay of Fonseca twice a day heaving what the tides of the Pacific feeds her. Carrie and I spent a long weekend on this island. After settling into our room in the "best hotel on the island"--yes, tongue firmly lodged in cheek and eyes rolling into head--we were bumping along the rough narrow streets around to the west side of the island, and we both to ourselves unbeknownst to the other felt that giddy relief of "Ah, this is fun, this is freedom", feeling that flinging into adventure and unmapped afternoons that tuk-tuk rides always herald. For westerners on vacation, that is. But the journey began in Tegucigalpa, Friday morning day off from school. Early morning I found thin small wiry weightless strands of black curls resting on my toilet seat. I picked one up and it dissolved: ash. Fires in the mountains. The dry season is upon Central America. And either farmers are burning their fields, or hillsides are burning because idiots want them to burn and choke out any possible clean air that blows into our bowl through the high forests of La Tigra--I've heard both sources and it could be either, or both. But this is clockwork: you will expect the smoky air every season around this time and the devil will not disappoint (if nothing else, devils are punctual). Ash had fallen during the night, lighter than angel feathers, to inverse the metaphor: it was good we were getting out. The drive out of Tegus was winding and ugly, our fresh-from-the-shop car whose expensive repairs Carrie memorialized by giving a finish to her previous name from "Flora" to "Flora, the Expensive Ho" chugging up and around the dry scrub mountains toward the coast. Eighteen wheelers and motorcycles and pickup trucks belching exhaust. Around one turn we come upon cut piles of round leafy branches positioned in the road. Carrie intimates that these are warning signs to slow down. We did, and coming in view we saw an upturned smashed vehicle, beside it huddled were officers and locals, and below them quiet and at peace under ragged blankets lay the dead person. Carrie almost instinctively made the sign of the cross--and I suppose she'd tapped into the deeper meaning of "catholic" with that gathering together on a human prairie the small "c"--but on we drove the two lane road. Towns we passed were functional, nothing endearing. Particular long stretches of highway saw locals, often teens and children, holding up bags of fruit or other easy delicacies, waving them to the traffic; dozens of folks bunched along a stretch hawking the exact same thing...how to choose? Stands of sunny orange mounds of citrus, pale green boulders of melon, rainbows of hammocks.... The right turn off the highway would lead to Coyolito, the town pouring into the pier at the end where the la lancha, or small boat, would from our hotel ferry us to Amapala. Newly paved perhaps a year ago, already the road was pocked with potholes; we didn't much drive as slalom, veered around young boys on horseback shouldering machetes, the odd cyclist. Zoomed past a checkered landscape of shrimp ponds. The air cooled as we neared Coyolito's ocean breeze and parked under a canopy for 100 lempiras a night (roughly $5). Dutifully, we called the hotel to announce our arrival and request a lancha to retrieve our light baggage and ourselves. Friends suggested we go the hotel lancha route, though more expensive, because the normal taxi lanchas were cheaper but also waited until their boats were filled to set off: we could be sitting there awhile, we were told. The hotel clerk said a lancha would be fifteen minutes. You can, reader, probably see this coming. After twenty-five minutes, clerk assured us: "Five minutes!" After fifteen minutes more: "Five minutes!" We've encountered this problem before: as though we'd rather be told what we'd like to hear rather than the truth. If you don't have a boat coming, proprietors the world over, please just goddamn say so. The afternoon heat rose and settled on our clothes as we wandered from one end of the pier to another. The rising volcanic Amapala was only a half mile away in full view: one side smoldered, gray smoke bubbling sluggishly skyward and drifting west. Another island in the distance retreated into a smoky haze crawling up its own flank. Some of the boat taxi captains, scruffy, sweaty, some oddly misshapen, brown-sugared by the sun, kept inviting us onboard, as clearly we were tourists hopelessly a-waiting. We kept refusing. Finally, no lancha on the horizon, we clamored aboard at a cost of 40 lemps total (two dollars). Across the bay, we first deposited cargo for small stores at the town's pier. Then we dropped of some Honduran tourists at another site. Finally we land at our hotel; I tip the captain 10 lemps. And here's where the eye-rolling commences: when checking in, the adolescent clerk tries to add on a 250 lempira charge for our boat ride over. The word that comes to mind is audacity. We say absolutely not, as we'd waiting for nearly an hour. Sheepishly agreeing, and either seeing our point or refusing to challenge the gringos, she leads us to the building of rooms on the bay facing north. Reader, there is no one else we could see in this hotel. Coming in, we view the rooms right over the bay, two stories with an unfinished third littered with concrete, buckets, re-bar and rubble. Fronting the bay are rooms with balconies, our obvious preference. Clerk girl leads us into a dark open hallway, a lower room--it has no balcony. Why can't we have one of the upper rooms, as there's no one about? The girl goes back to the desk, returns with a key, beckons us upstairs. Dark hallway leads not to one of the balconied rooms, but one off to the side--dark and dingy, with only a curtained window look o'er a rather blighted bay coastline with ragged bushes and a few empty plastic bottles in the briny grasses. And here's the lesson: woe to those who think that common sense is common (Wouldn't the guests enjoy our balcony suites, and as they're unoccupied, invite our gringo guests in?) It is not. Common sense is an app downloaded by our thoughtful parents, new versions updated as we grow and acquire education and even modest critical thinking skills. We convinced the yokel to give us the balcony room with a view, and, ensconced, enjoyed a coldie, a hazy north, and ploshing salty tides flapping and receding below our reclining selves. DAY 2: we're off early in the tuk-tuk, our driver, Alex, a young local, zooms us swerving potholes into the center of town. We slow near the central plaza, then stop. Alex explains he needs to attend the church on the plaza to say a prayer for his mother who is ill. Carrie and I wander the hot air concrete plaza, passing a scraggily old man on a bench who greets us good morning. The church has no windows, just high arching open frames through which the ocean air hums and swirls. Back onto the scrubby road, Alex after three kilometers drops us at Playa Negra, beach of black sand maybe two hundred yards long; he'll return to retrieve our sun-drench selves in three hours. Before he leaves he points to a wooden shack at the south end, a thatch hut shack twenty-five feet square feet or so, breezy open-air restaurant with rickety tables and plastic chairs. Very good food, he intones. We step up to the shady deck and motion that we'll be eating here, and can we deposit our books and bags at a table. The restaurant is mere feet from the short running waves, into which we wade. Islands in the hazy distance, and between two the endless Pacific. This is ocean, the mineral cool dark emerald churning healer. Along the beach are similar encampments--they seems both house and restaurant, hastily assembled, but pulsing with Honduran cantatas and their wooden plank sides flashing flowery reds and purples and blues and yellows against the grainy dark sand. No one else here but the folks who live in these hovels; we are far away from tourist traps. Looking landward, dogs find shade beneath the logs propping up the restaurant from the oncoming tides and heavier seas. These people are poor. Yet the children playing on the beach laugh easily and often. A toddler wanders onto the sand from somewhere following older but still young children. The toddler follows, and it's a mystery where or to whom he belongs. Suddenly, the older children are scooting along the sand on their knees pushing large pea-pod shells like motorboats, revving engines and banking left and right against the negra sand swells. The day is warming. Carrie and I swim and read and have downed two beers and it's not even noon. At the cool tables we order ceviche. Carrie actually goes back to the makeshift kitchen to place our order. The wife/cook assures her that the ceviche will be good, that we'll get what they have. Everything is fresh; the seafood comes from no farther than the boat a few yards away bobbing in the languid surf. Everything made by hand. The ceviche is briny and pungent with lime, and we can't discern whether it's shellfish, or squid...but we get the tang of the sea in every mouthful. Later in the afternoon the boat returns. A slender cat sleeps under my chair. Two teenage boys brown and stern unravel and wrap their nets. A younger brother who's been running around the restaurant sits on the edge of the bow watching his brothers intently. Instinct: he'll be manning the ropes someday. Three visitors arrive, Honduran, and sit beneath the awning. Soon the woman brings them plates of fish grilled, the same fish we saw coming off the boat a half hour before. Workers who'd been digging in back trudge in and sit themselves for a meal. Grimy, one is wearing old tennis shoes, and his big toes are sticking out. A TV blares cartoons. We have woven ourselves into a their family's daily living. Personal and guest is a hazy line, like the horizon we see smoked over for the fires of the season. We feel naturally at home in this shack; never once were we made to feel rushed. Tranquilo...an Honduran phrase. That night I awake hearing the tide ploshing in again. The night is still. I wander out to the balcony under a million stars. How long since I've seen the night sky awash in their sparkle. I wake Carrie to witness. Before we return to bed I point out the big dipper directly north, low against the bay, clear and bright. I wished the water was fresh, and that the dipper could heave down and scoop tons and tons of water and pour it lovingly on these dry mountains, on these islands, over and over. Give me fires in cold stone heaths or in a rocky pit in the Sierras at nightfall.

Man Says Goodbye to his Dog

A back room at a veterinarian hospital, darkened softly in late afternoon. A willow tree bends with the wind gently against the building. The presiding doctor who will administer the euthanasia has left briefly. The dog, Jumper, tired, about fifteen years old, lies on a cushioned table. The man, in his middle forties, eyes straining and fretful, leans over the dog with arms wrapped tightly around his fur. His face is against the dog’s. 

 Man: [draws dog closer] I ’m sorry, Jumper. I’m sorry… 

 Dog: I don’t like it here. This is a sad place. I can hear them in the rooms. No one wants to be here.  Man: I didn’t know what else to do. 

 Dog: We’ve been so sad for so long. 

 Man: I didn’t know what else…do you hurt much? 

 Dog: The same. It’s just different now. 

 Man: I hated your pain. I hated seeing you crying. Not being able to get up the stairs. 

 Dog: It used to be so easy to run up and down. Sometimes I’d jump all the way. 

 Man: [smiling sadly] “Jumper”. 

 Dog: Then it got harder and harder. I got so tired. 

Man: You’re the best dog in the world…I can’t… 

 Dog: That was a long time ago. 

 Man: [trying to hold together] We did so much, Jumper. All the places we’ve been. 

 Dog: Mountains and rivers and dog parks and forests. 

 Man: The long trail in the hills we used to go. Man, we traveled those trails a thousand times. 

 Dog: More than that. 

 Man: The great backpacking adventures in the Eastern Sierra…you never got tired, always out in front. Dog: So many smells! I couldn’t categorize them all. A lot of them I still don’t know. 

 Man: We had great times. 

 Dog: I guess I won’t need those smells now… 

 Man: [shuddering] We had great times together. The best. 

 Dog: Boy, what’s going to happen? 

 Man: [remains silent] 

 Dog: What’s going to happen to me? 

 Man: You’ll go to sleep. A sweet, peaceful sleep. 

 Dog: Will you be there when I wake up? 

 Man: [chest swelling painfully] I’ll be here. 

Dog: But you’ll be there when I wake up. You’ll be there. 

 Man: Remember the ocean? 

 Dog: [smiles vaguely, yet warmly] I loved the ocean. Sun on the Pacific. Great white frothing crashing waves.

 Man: You loved those sticks.

 Dog: All kinds of sticks. Tennis balls. 

 Man: Soaking wet, your legs shaking from the cold, and still you dropped that stick at my feet. 

 Dog: It was so much fun. Good exercise too. 

 Man: We loved the ocean. 

  The veterinarian has quietly entered the room and is preparing the needle. He is behind the dog out of view. The man raises his head briefly to acknowledge the young doctor. Nothing is said between them.

Man: Jumper, the doc’s just going to give you a shot to help you sleep. 

 Dog: [his spirit spins and rages] Boy, don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be here. 

 Man: [trying to remain calm through his tears rising] It’s okay, Jumper. It’s okay. 

 Dog: Is this it? Is this all? 

 Man: I’m right here. I love you. You’re the best dog in the world and I love you. 

 Dog: Was I not good? Why am I here? I did everything I was supposed to. 

 Man: [crying now] It just got too bad. Your pain. I couldn’t bear it. You couldn’t bear it. 

 Dog: Don’t leave me, boy. Take me home. I promise I won’t cry. I won’t whine. I want to go home. Man: I’m sorry, Jumper, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! 

  The doctor has administered the shot. The work should be done in minutes. 

 Dog: Boy, there’s something wrong. There’s something…it’s fog, it’s dark fog… 

 Man: [holding the dog tightly as humanly possible, feeling his heart] I’m right here, Jumper! I’m here! Dog: I’m scared, boy! I’m so scared! I don’t want to be alone. Where am I going? 

 Man [beside himself with profound grief, for his dog, for himself] I don’t know…I don’t… 

 Dog: Don’t leave me, boy. I’m scared. Man: It’s all right, Jumper. I’m here. I’m here. I love you! 

 Dog: I’m so scared. 

 Man: [terrified] Wait for me! I’ll find you. Find an ocean. Wait there. I’ll be there, I’ll find you… 

 Dog: [he is drifting] Where am I going…hold me, boy. Please hold me. 

 Man: I’m sorry, Jumper! I didn’t know what to do! I’m so sorry… The veterinarian has eased softly out of the room. 

 Dog: The pain is gone. It’s gone. I feel so strong, so alive. 

 Man: [sensing the dog’s shallow breathing] No, no please. Jumper, don’t go! Oh god! 

 Dog: I see things. There. Who are they? 

 Man: Oh Jumper, I love you so. You’re the best dog in the world. 

 Dog: [barely hearing the man] I know them. Boy, I know them. Your parents. I see them. They’re alive.

 Man: [cries softly and holds his dog]… 

 Dog: I see them. They’re smiling on me. They’re reaching out to me. Oh it’s been so long since I’ve seen them. 

 Man: [realizing his dog has passed, holds tighter and breaths into his fur] Jumper… 

 Dog: The cats and dogs. I recognize some of them. I know them. So many of them, all yours. They’ve all waited. 

 Man: [feeling the life has gone] Wait for me, Jumper. Wait for me… 

 Dog: [turning to the man] Nothing’s changed. I’m not scared. I’ve been here all along. I’m right here, boy. 

 Man: I love you, Jumper. 

 Dog: [knowing the man can’t hear, but whispers anyway] I love you, boy. I found the ocean. It's here. The same one. I’ll be right there. I’ll be waiting. I see the trail to the clouds far off. Oh it's beautiful. I’ll wait for you. We’ll all go together. 

  The man resolves to leave, inhales deeply, then, sliding his arms from the dog, begins to let go…