Fish Food

I returned from a 5-day jaunt through Malaysia and Cambodia this morning, and with many a happy tale to tell of it. I saw thousand-year-old ruins and the second-tallest towers in the world. I squeezed into a compact pick-up truck with eighteen Cambodians and was guest at the family birthday dinner of a dozen Kuala Lumpurians. I attended mass on a giant raft, and walked through the cabins of a Portuguese warship. I did and saw and met so many wonderful things and places and people...and at the end of it, what I think of the most was getting a fish foot massage.

What, you may ask, is a fish foot massage? The easiest way to understand is to walk around Pub Street in Siem Reap, Cambodia for five minutes, during which time you're guaranteed to pass by at least three fish parlors. The concept is straightforward. Big fish tanks, filled with schools of sardine-sized fish, are brought out in front of the parlor. A board extend across the top of the tank, for customers to sit upon. As you approach the tank, the fish start to swirl and mass toward you. "They know, they know!" says the man taking your money.

You take off your shoes and hop onto the board. Then comes the second-hardest part: you lower your bare feet into the school of fishes. As you do, you can see their little red mouths and dumb eyes gaping at your heels and toes. And then, when your feet hit the water, they go to work.

I said that lowering your feet into the fish was the second-hardest part. That's because the first-hardest part is keeping them there. At first, there's the tickle, which is hard enough to endure. Then, once the initial shock is over, the whole concept of the thing begins to prey upon your mind. The fish, you see, are eating you. With each little bump from their lips, they take away a tiny piece of your outer skin layer. They call this "exfoliation." I call it a half-click too far past creepy.

I didn't last long, probably only a quarter of my twenty minutes. Even so, when I pulled out my feet, I could tell that they were suppler and shinier than they'd been, probably since birth. As I left, I saw that another man--a friend of the man taking the money, it seemed--had come and was leaning over the side of the tank. His hand was trolling listfullly through the water, while the fish nibbled at the morsels around his knuckles.

Two Poems Called "All Saints' Day"

Seven years ago, I was inspired to write a poem on the Feast of All Saints, i.e., November 1st. Today I got the same urge. I thought I'd post both poems:


All Saints' Day (November 1, 2003)

This morning is cold and empty.
Last night’s decorations, the scarecrow on that porch,
the black cat cutout in this yard,
lay dead now—their ghoulish souls vanished ‘til
incantations at next summer’s campfires call them back to life.

Here the gory entrails of a pumpkin strew a gutter;
here yolk splatters a driveway;
here toilet paper clings like stale bandages to a skeletal tree.

As usual, the ghosts have gorged and titillated and made flight
before the frost descends
on the wrinkling pumpkin rot of unflickering cackles,
on the husks of bare vines in razed fields outside of town,
on the damp leaves clumped in the brown grass,

crystallizing time,
revealing what still moves in their absence.



All Saints' Day (November 1, 2010)

3 pm in Manila.

On Katipunan Street a man tries to sell me an umbrella the size of a golf course; half a block later, his tag-a-long grandchildren shout at me—brazenly, shyly—in Tagalog. Then they dash away, screaming giddy that such wickedness could come through them.

The banks are closed today. “Tomorrow, sir,” says the lonely guard, when I ask about exchanging Korean won. “You come back tomorrow.”

My sidecar ride back is fast, the streets being empty and the driver anxious to unloose his horsepower on the motorbike. My head nearly hits the roof.

“It’s raining,” says the gateman to me, a note of amusement in his voice, as he raises the crossbar for my gimpy, grocery-laden gait. And so it is. It’s raining. Not a fierce night-train typhoon like we’ve been having recently, but a soft rain, like a lamb’s fleece tossed into the air to unfurl, falling gently to rest upon the place beneath.

Across the street, under the carport, a dog perspires in his afternoon nap. He lays on his side on the cement, breathing slowly, regularly. He’s some kind of beagle or basset hound—probably the very dog that Socrates swore by in Athens. It’s enough to make a fellow wonder: O dog, where are you now? And what is your secret? All the people missing today, out at the cemeteries, are they going to notice you when they get back? The dog doesn’t answer; he just sleeps away to the patter of the rain on the roofs and cars and telecom poles and leaves and grass and the hardened patch of cement suffering Chinese water torture under the runoff spout, until he’ll wake up, shake himself off, and get about his business.

Weak Ankle

Reporting in from Seoul, South Korea. I've flown here for the weekend--Halloween weekend--to visit my high school friend, Andrew Brenfoerder, who lives here now, and who has graciously lent me the floor of his 6x12 foot bedroom for a few days. Floors are almost always heated in Korea, though, I discovered, and so with some down comforters it makes for a cozy arrangement.

Tonight I'm on my own while Andrew is on a date. I decided to venture out from the Hongdae district where he lives--a yuppie, university neighborhood full of hip shops, cafes, knit scarves and skinny jeans that reminds me of Portland, Oregon--and try to find my way back to the Hong River, where we went for a run this afternoon. Specifically, I wanted to stop and see the shrine of some Korean martyrs set up there.

I got lost. The route takes you through a darker, less populated part of Seoul, and I couldn't find the open path through the maze of apartment complexes and convenience stores to the riverfront. Fortunately, I found a couple of coffee shops where I could stop to ask for directions. The first barista I tried spoke only one word of English: "Sorry." The second place I stopped, a brightly decorated spot that's reminiscent of a childhood nursery, the barista spoke only a few words more. But she tried her best. We scratched out some words on a pad of paper. A lightbulb went on. She took me outside and pointed down the street, making an arm-pumping walking motion: "you long (legged, I assumed). Maybe five minutes?" Then she bent her wrist to the left. "Left turn?" I asked. She nodded. "Hill," she said. "Church on the hill?" I asked. She nodded happily.

On my walk back from the shrine, my ankle started to hurt. I remembered turning it during my run earlier, and supposed that this was just delayed payoff. I decided to stop back at the nursery-land cafe for a rest.

That's where I am now, surveying the remains of a good cappuccino, and a "sweet pumpkin tart," which the barista worked very hard to be able to pronounce in English when I asked her about food.

It's chilly outside, but warm in here. I've got a whimsical, wonderful novel, The Once and Future King, with me. I'm lonely, but also happy. This weekend is All Hallows' Eve, one of my favorite times, a time to glut on ghosts and black cats and spells and skeletons and all things dark and macabre and spooky. Then to know that all these vanish as the sun rises on November 1, because we are not left alone.

Boulders to Sand

Transportation in the Philippines is like a jar of rocks. To fill every space, you start with boulders (if your jar is the aquarium at Sea World) or at least some decent stones, like David might have slung at Goliath. Call the boulders "airplanes" and the stones "buses." There are a couple of national discount airlines that hop around among the various domestic islands; or, if you want to take the ultra-cheap route, you can stick out your thumb for overnight bus trips.

Once you've got your boulders and stones in place, and once you've arrive at your city, you need something more targeted. You need some pebbles. Depending upon whether you want to pay for the shiny, tumble-polished variety, or just pick from among roadside debris, you'll either hail a taxi, or hop inside a Filipino innovation known as the "jeepney." A jeepney looks like a smallish 1950s single-wide chrome diner on wheels. You can find hives of them under highway bridges, or just wave at one on the street if it seems to be going in your general direction. Climb in through the open back and inside you'll find vinyl-upholstered benches lining the length of the vehicle on both sides. It's best to grab a seat near the rear if possible, because once thirty more people squeeze in with you, you'll find that exhaust fumes are better to breathe than nothing at all. Most jeepneys have names: for example, "Miranda," "Roadrunner," and "Jesus Christ."

After adding the pebbles and reached your area of town, it's time to really fill in the cracks. You need something small, something fine-tuned, something that really knows the neighborhood. You need sand; which is to say, you need a tricycle. In the Philippines, a trike (as they're usually called) is not a red peddle-pusher for kids. It's a small motorbike--decade-old Hondas and Kawasakis are most popular--with an enclosed sidecar attached. Riding in one of these is similar to being dragged down the street in a tin lunch box. Though their top speed is only about 30 mph, the only padding between your rump and the road is the single bike wheel to your right, and the soldered iron shell around you. That said, because the trikes can only run locally, the drivers know their neighborhoods backwards and forwards, and if you remember to negotiate a price before climbing in, they won't even be able to extort you.

So there you've got your jar of rocks: boulders, stones, pebbles, and sand. Its a haphazard blend, but strangely beautiful the way it all comes together.

Contiguity

Since leaving Nebraska in the fall of 2002, I've not felt a desire to return permanently. The state remains at the center of my mapa mundi, the point around which, in my mind, the rest of the universe revolves. But I haven't wanted to come back. I blame the cosmopolitan east coast, or even moreso a year in Oxford during college. Once I began to move in those circles, I didn't want to leave them. People would ask me, "do you think you'll move back someday?" And I would answer: "I don't really know," while suspecting that the real answer was "probably not."

So I was caught off-guard when, upon returning to the state for a couple of days after a month of cross-country travel, I discovered that I saw my motherland differently than in recent years.

My view was from the balcony of a friend's apartment in Omaha. She lives at the western edge of the city, looking out over a fresh six-lane road with new developments on one side and alfalfa on the other. I arrived at the bottom of the magic hour, that thirty minutes or so after the sun has slipped below the horizon but the sky retains its sunset glow. Because there were no clouds that evening, the sky was a perfectly blended strata of colors, from dark purple overhead, to midnight blue, to muddy green, to yellow, to reddish gold right above the horizon. Sparse tree branches and power lines cut tangled black silhouettes against this backdrop.

In that moment, Nebraska did not seem like a parochial, sealed place to me. It seemed to be a place, a distinct place, a place where I am from, but one that bled into the wider world to the east and to the west.

Sommerset

Thought I'd try to use Paper Logic as a travel blog for a bit.

After just over a month on the road, with adventures to Hawaii, Maine, the Pacific Northwest, Texas, Memphis, North Carolina, DC, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New York again, and DC again...I'm now in a Starbucks in Sommerset, PA.

After a quick look around, I opted against pitching a tent at the Woodside Campground, and instead checked in at the A-1 Budget Motel. My room is off of what looks like a greenhouse for entirely artificial plants. Kathy, the front desk worker is exceedingly friendly and helpful. It was her promise of free waffles for breakfast that really drew me in.

In giving advice about restaurants in the area, she plugged the Pizza Hut. But she also noted the Ruby Tuesdays down the road, "which, as you know, is a more upscale restaurant. They usually don't build them in towns like this--only 5000 people or so--but they did so because we are located right off the Turnpike, so they do well."

Sadly, the wi-fi did not work, despite Danny's, the Indian maintenance man's, best effort. He wanted to know why I got an Apple. "They're the most expensive computer on the market. Did your family tell you you would get no viruses? My friend who has a new Apple paid $3000 for his. For that, you could get a giant-screened PC. The Dells, the Acers, the Gateways are so very, very cheap."

I've been kicked out of Starbucks. The nice girl who was happy to describe to me all the different flavors of tea--"since I've basically had them all," she confessed--and her manager, who might be her mother, informed me that it's time to go. And so it is.

Rainsummer

I love the hour before an evening summer storm. By seven o’clock, the long sunset has begun anyway, and the cloudveil merely adds to the darkening. It gives you the feeling of being a kid, staying out later than you were allowed tonight, because something special is going to happen. The air smells like a woman cooling off from exercise. You tilt your head upward and wince because you can expect at any moment the first pebbles of water to plummet down from three thousand feet above at tremendous speed and plink you in the eye. And once you’ve seen the drop growing bigger it’s too late to avoid it.

I remember in the summertime as kids, my sisters and I would go out into the driveway, or sometimes just out on the front porch and watch the leadgray curtain approach our neighborhood. Linen shorts and t-shirts, maybe thong sandals too, but most likely bare feet. We’d skip-toe out to the grass and roll around, daring the storm to come. The bugs had all fled, even the bees that gave us so much fear. It was just the prickly soft grass and its the hard dirt scalp, and we’d press our faces into it making our noses itch and run. Dane Espegaard was across the cul-de-sac, and if he and his brother Ryan appeared, and their big cat Abraham, I’d go to meet them in the middle, carefully picking my feet up to avoid a shard of brown glass or a larger tooth of gravel. Abraham would stalk the boulevards on the perimeter never looking at us.

The rain came and it was always too short. I loved the rain because something was happening. When you’re a kid, you get impatient for that. When you’re an adult, you just want someone to share the moment with.

The rain, the rain, the rain, fat and cold and riding a cool front. Abraham trotted for cover under the eaves in the bushes at the tall gray Barnell house. Sometimes we’d play in it and get our hair and cotton t-shirts plastered to our skinny little bodies. But I also liked to abstain, upstairs on my bed in the corner, reading the Hardy Boys in the gray light in the shadows, or else downstairs folded over the back of the couch, looking out of the front windows as the world got drenched. Never much liked it after the rain was done—everything was wet and muddy, grass clippings clung to your ankles, the late summer sun came back again and nothing was special anymore. No, I liked the rain, when the world was different and you had the sense that someday you’d share this with someone.

While Jesus Waits in Hell

Flip flops slap across the freshly mopped marble floor of the new Cathedral. Outside, it is the first hot day of the year in Houston. Inside, the shade is cool—people in t-shirts enjoy the feeling of their own bare arms, swinging free, uninhibited, putting flowers around the statutes of the saints, around the Roman altar, the brass-plated tabernacle, still open and empty, but without so much of the horror. We committed murder yesterday, but that was yesterday. We’re different now. Time has passed—last night, this morning—and things are different now.

The candles are still not out; all the sticks stand empty. The rose quartz basins of holy water at the entryways are still padded dry; nothing for the people in t-shirts to bless themselves with as they slip in and out through the heavy doors, going for another load of clean linens, reserved pew placards, boxes of new candles, more flowers—lilies, petunias, forsythias, hydrangeas—nothing to bless themselves with except their own hands. The baptismal font, though, has been refilling since early this morning and its granite lips are now brimming over again. The sound of the fountain’s trickle, running out of the mouth, down the chin, down the neck, shoulders, spreading over the torso of the interior column, soothes the anxious brows of the t-shirted people as they make the preparations. Tonight, the font will be the co-Star; right now it supervises.

Across town at a supermarket, someone has just purchased the last lamb roast from the butcher. Raise the interior temperature to 160º, says the meat man. It is high strawberry season in Texas, and you can purchase a whole box of them for 99¢ (limit of four). In dairy, the sample lady is giving out brochures and little medicine cups of ultra-active yogurt culture drink—new from Japan, she says, sold in little five-pack bottles, one for each day’s lunch. At the front of the store, Janelle is slicing samples of bunny cakes patted with coconut flakes to give Peter Cottontail the impression of fur.

Further out to the west, rollerbladers enter Memorial Park from the bayou mo-pac trail. The foliage is lush and green in many places now, but the leaves still droop limply, like a stilt-legged colt not yet used to its own weight. Wick-away mesh shirts and sports bras and a Big Brother throwing routes to a Nike-ed kid over a broad-blade grassy patch where the ground warm and damp with life. A man and wife push their rubber tire stroller under the shade of an oak and pull out foil wrapped sandwiches.

Houston bakes. It is Saturday, this Saturday, this one, holy Saturday. Inside the Cathedral, flip flopped feet slap the floor on their way out of the sanctuary—whap, whap, whap, whap—to return again soon in full-toed leather.