tonight...tonight...

Eighty-four degrees in the apt., nearing midnight...

wild swing for Seattle! Just this past Sunday morning--rainy and in the 40's!

It won't last, but a nice taste of early summer...

everybody in the Puget Sound area is giddy, if not complaining about the 'heat'...

'Tonight...tonight...'

Ring a bell?

From the musical 'West Side story.'

We went to a performance of it tonight at the Fifth Avenue Theater--what a fabulous place! Built in the 1920's for vaudeville shows and silent movies, with a chinoiserie-interior inspired by the architecture of The Forbidden City in Beijing...

Bernstein's music, even fifty years later (WSS premiered in 1957),

still sounds so modern...

And the themes in this uniquely American adaptation of Romeo & Juliet couldn't be more current:

young love...gang violence...ethnic stereotypes...immigration...juvenile delinquency...victimization...

With so much discussion in the media right now about immigration--illegal immigrants, reforming the laws, amnesty? animosity?--it made me think about a political cartoon that I clipped out a couple of years ago. Even though it's a couple of years old now (it appeared in the Seattle Times on April 7, 2005), I think it's one of the best commentaries I've seen:

Borderline, indeed...

So, about a month left before we move down to being an hour away from that schizophrenic line in the sand...

Link to view...

As more of you learn that my wife and I are moving
to Arizona,
here's a link that I've enjoyed.

It's to a webcam on the roof of a building on the Univ. of AZ campus in Tucson;
it shows the Santa Catalina mountain range from central Tucson,
live and with a time/temperature display.

...about six weeks left til departure day...

Anybody know anybody who wants to buy a piano?

Yesterday and today, the weather in western WA--
rainy and in the 40's...in late May!
another reason to look forward to the desert...

Travel. Writing.

Several years ago, I submitted an essay for the Travel section of the Seattle Times.
To my surprise, it was published.
(You can read it here, on the Seattle Times website.)
I'd written it, thinking back to that particular summer after my father's death.
I'd just finished college and was about to move out West...

And so it's been ten years now.

A decade is a convenient--and not-so-convenient--marker of time,
one that begs, insists that reflection and introspection take place...
Only then can time seem to move on.

I feel so fortunate that I've been able to travel during this decade--
not just throughout this country, but also retracing some of my father's travels, in Germany, France, Spain...
Then marriage, and introducing my wife to the fragrant, sun-baked stone towns of Provence,
taking the ferry from Marseille to Corsica, listening to howler monkeys in the Mayan jungle of northern Guatemala, climbing the stones of Macchu Picchu, standing in awe of soaring condors circling around us on the lip of the Colca Canyon in Peru....

This past decade of living in Seattle has been punctuated by a year in Paris and a year in Nicaragua.
And now, we're preparing to leave again. Not on a trip; this is a move.

New job--new climate.
We are refugees fleeing the grey climate and overpriced housing of Puget Sound, hoping to put down another set of roots in Tucson...
Plans just firmed up,
and now the reality of planning a 1600-mile move in less than two months is hitting us.

And I can't help but think now of that trip ten years ago,
a trip taken with my mother shortly after my father's death, before I would move out West...
Some of the most meaningful 'travel-writing' came from that bittersweet summer,
and I feel compelled to post it here, in its original form,
written in the present-tense, which the editor of the travel section felt compelled to translate into the more newspaper-ish, essay-istic past tense.
But feelings are always in the present-tense., even a decade later.
======================
--On the River, Québec, July 1997

“I never seen river so wide.”

These words became a refrain during our drive along the south shore of the St. Lawrence all afternoon yesterday, and they are reoccurring this morning as my mother and I prepare to board a ferry in the town of Trois-Pistoles. (My mother, who is Korean, has never completely mastered all the inconsistencies of English grammar; her “momspeak” is as familiar and comforting to me as her rice-dumpling soup.)

We board the ferry. Yes, here, several hours to the northeast of Québec city, the St. Lawrence’s banks are rightly referred to as “shores.” The river is wide, as my mother’s been saying—the ferry crossing to Les Escoumins on the north shore takes an hour and a half. Seals and belugas swim alongside the ferry, the temperature feels 10 to 15 degrees colder in the middle of the river than on land, and the damp wind tastes of salt.

I should explain. My mother and I are traveling a couple of months after my father’s death. He was born and spent his childhood in the French-speaking St.-Jean (St. John) river valley along the border of northern Maine and New Brunswick. Earlier in the year, the three of us had planned this trip—my parents and I all on one last family road-trip before I move across the country for graduate school. After my father’s sudden illness and death, the two of us decided to take the trip anyway—my mother had never been to the area—and to scatter his ashes in the St. John river.

The day before yesterday, we did that. Now we’re driving on…the balm of summer landscapes… We’re visiting the small towns along the St. Lawrence, settled in the 17th and 18th centuries, before staying with some friends in Québec City. In a few days we’ll drive back down to Portland to return our rental car and fly home.

So we’re on the ferry. “I never seen river so wide.” I smile as my mom’s now-familiar narrative resumes. From the deck, I scan the waters for more marine life, and then my mom decides to seek shelter from the chilly morning and she goes inside one of the ferry’s cabins. A few more minutes, a few seals later, I decide to go inside too.

Inside, I find my mother engaged in animated gesturing with a family of five—all six of them are warming their hands around paper cups of hot chocolate. (Ahh…the warm, sweet and somewhat chalky staple of ferry-beverages...) My mother and that family know only a handful of each other’s language, but they’re all smiling. It’s nice to see a smile on my mother’s face. When the family learns I speak French, the gestures become words.

They ask where we’re from and say that my mother is the first Korean person they’ve met. I ask where they’re from. “De la rive nord—from the north shore,” they say. “We have relatives on the south shore, and every other summer we take turns crossing the river to visit each other. The ferries run only in the summer—no ice.” The father explains that the nearest bridge, upstream in Québec city, is the better part of a day’s drive away, a bit too far. So, usually, they see one another only during the summer.

(I translate for my mom, pleased that I’m understanding the French-with-a-twang that is Québecois pronunciation.)

“Yeah, it’s kind of funny,” he continues, “in the winter, we can look across the river on clear days and see right where the family lives, but there’s no way to get across.” I happen to glance at my mom, still smiling among these strangers in the middle of this wide river.

“Yep, you can look across and see, but you can’t get there.”
========================================

And suddenly, we're a week into May...

...lilacs everywhere,
and the angle of light saying--finally--YES, summer WILL come
and the long shadows of this northern latitude will recede
as warmth accumulates and the greenery darkens...

A nest of starlings peeps and tweets in the ceiling of our balcony.
(Maybe our parrots will learn to imitate their baby-talk?)
I see the parent-birds come and go all day, after grocery-shopping in the treetops below us.

The Mountain is crystalline on the SE horizon.

Spring seems oblivious, here, to the headlines from Iraq--
everyday we hear--as background noise, unbelievably--
more dozens of deaths from suicide bombers in marketplaces in Baghdad;
errand-running lives snuffed out, so matter-of-factly...
Not to mention the Virginia Tech massacre
--"another school-shooting" goes the inevitable phrase...

These things came to mind ( again) the other day, when the following comic-strip appeared in the paper:


Question: why evil?
Needed: answers...
So many platitudes have led people to hands-up-in-the-air-agnosticism, at best,
and hateful atheism at worst...

-----

A few weeks ago, on the flight from Tucson back to Seattle,
I began reading Wallace Stegner's novel "Angle of Repose."
For years, on my 'list'...finally finished--what a great book!

(I guess I'm on a Western kick...
I've been reading lots of essays by Barbara Kingsolver as well, dealing with the West, among other things...
Incidentally, Kingsolver's essays come closest, in what I've read recently, to the spirit of Montaigne's essays.)

A passage from the beginning of "Angle of Repose" stands out, for me,
especially in this month of May. (My father died ten years ago this month, one day shy of 65.)

In the novel, the narrator, an aging partially paralyzed historian, is involved in researching and writing a book about his grandparents, who were among the first people from 'back east' who tried to 'carve civilization' into the West.

He writes of how the physical law of the Doppler effect 'teases him' as he tries to apply it to history:

"The sound of anything coming at you--a train, say, or the future--has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathetmatics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like hear your (his grandmother's) life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a sober sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne. I don't fine your life uninteresting...I would like to hear it as it sounded while it was passing..."

Ten years after my father's death,
with a bit more empathy and insight that comes from being an adult,
I wish I could 'hear my dad's life' as he did...

I wish he could hear mine.

AZ

The youngest of "the lower 48"...

The only state to have the Beginning and the Ending of the Alphabet

in its two-letter abbreviation.

So, here's the A to Z of our brief visit, (I returned to Seattle the day before yesterday),

an 'abécédaire touristique,' if you will...

A--ARID, but not desolate--such a variety of colors and textures in the surprisingly abundant life in the Sonoran desert; this is not the dune-dominated landscape of the Sahara...But you do have to re-train your eyes so that they don't equate 'beauty' with 'pastoral greenery.'

B--BRONZE. The French verb for 'to get a tan' is literally 'to bronze oneself.' Be careful though...Bronze easily turns to leather under the influence of solar alchemy. Legions of retirees are living proof...Use sunscreen.

C--CACTUS. Duh. Inevitable. But so cool...Saguaros can live for centuries and hold tons of water..Woodpeckers nest in them...Native Americans harvest the fruit to make wine...The blooms are gaudy, like pre-teen jewelry in thorny settings. Cholla-buds have more calcium than milk and more potassium than bananas. Got cacti?

D--DRIVING. Everything spread so far out...Tucson, although founded in the 18th century, really only grew in the 20th, and so it is a car-centric metropolis. The main E-W thoroughfare is prosaically named "Speedway Blvd."

E--ESPAÑOL. Well, obviously, yes, Spanish is the second language...although histoically one could argue it's the FIRST (European) language of Arizona. You hear it everywhere--from the poshest mall to the hiking trails in the mountains...I can't imagine living in Arizona and not knowing Spanish...Will the SW develop into a bilingual society, in the vein of Montréal? Time will tell, hombres...

F--FRONDS of palm trees, waving high above the asphalt grid, adding to the impression of living in an oasis...

G--GUINEA, as in Equatorial Guinea, the only Spanish-speaking country in Africa. We met a couple of families from this country, immigrants in Tucson. They'd also lived in Gabon for years, so they speak French as well. Most people don't realize that there is an African Spanish-speaking country, as one of the guys told me--so when he's on worksites, often his Mexican co-workers are surprised when they learn that he knows what they've been saying about him, ahem...Watch them racial comments, amigos...

H--HEAT, yes blessed warmth. 'But it's a dry heat,' people apologetically (and condescendingly and defensively) say when the thermometer hits above 100 in June, July, and August...

I--ISLANDS. As in "sky islands." More on this when you get down to "Z".

J--JUICE, the sweet magenta liquid of the ripe prickly pear, made into syrup, taffy, marmalade, margaritas...

K--KINO, Francisco, a Jesuit--one of the first Spaniards to explore southern Arizona and establish missions in the 1600s...The Hispanic roots go way back here...Those who insist that people 'should go back where they come from' should think twice...while they repack their suitcases for Wisconsin and Ontario, eh?

L--LACK of rain...Well, yes, this is a desert...and it's full of ruins of pre-Colombian civilizations that developed towns, agriculture, canals, trading routes that stretched into South America...all of that during relatively 'wet' centuries...Prolonged drought in the 1400's led to ALL the settlements of the period being abandoned...Cautionary tale of climate change?

(ruins of Casa Grande, Hohokam settlement built around 1300, abandoned by 1450)

M--MESQUITE. It's more than a BBQ-flavor--it's one of the predominant trees in the area, and the shade under them can be twenty degrees cooler than when you stand in the sun, dudes...They don't grow tall, they grow wide.

N--NEVER drive without spare water in your car..for your engine...for you...literally life or death.

O--OASIS. On the NE edge of Tucson, we spent some time in Agua Caliente park--a conspicuous grove of palms around spring-fed ponds where egrets fished--it looked like something out of 'The Ten Commandments,' a stand-in for Egypt; you half expect baby Moses to float by through the reeds...

P--PALO VERDE trees. "Green pole" trees. Korea and Japan have their cherry blossoms; Tucson has its Palo Verde blossoms in spring--bright yellow against the cloudless sky.

Q--QUAIL. Funny little birds with a feather head-dress that run around in single-file, parents followed by chicks as they dart around cactus and lizards...and roadrunners...

R--RED, for the omnipresent ocotillo blossoms--slender thorny arms stretched upward, waving fiery bouquets twenty feet above your head...

S--STRIP-MALLS...The inescapable blah-chitecture of modern America...But hey, if you're gonna have one on the desert's edge, you may as well have an Irish pub, a French bakery, and a Lebanese restaurant in it...as well as a pharmacy that sells liquor! Outpost of consumer-civilization? Blight on the wilderness? At least it's convenient and cosmopolitan...(But, all is not cookie-cutter in Tucson; there are some old historic adobe buildings:)

U--UNUSUALLY high number of senior-citizens on bikes. Perhaps only Holland has more white-haired cyclists than Tucson...VIVA bike-trails! Tucson is one of the bike-friendliest cities on the nation.

V--VAST. Wide open landscape--naked geology, almost over-bearing sky. Roads that continue straight; art-textbook examples of perspective and the vanishing point...Dust-devils in the distance...

W--WEST...as in the historically American mantra: 'Go west, young man, and grow up with the country." Would the modern version be "Go west, retiree, and grow old among the golf carts"?

X--XAVIER...Ha! You thought I couldn't come up with something for 'X' did you? Well, the Mission San Xavier del Bac, just south of Tucson, gives me something to mark this spot with...Founded in the late 1600's, the current mission dates from the 1790's--one of the last bastions of Spanish empire in the New World. It's an excellent example of Baroque architecture--built when Europe had already moved on through Rococo and on to Neo-classicism; the Tohono O'Odham tribe still uses it as its parish church and school. The white domes and spires stand out like an old-world mirage on the desert floor.

Y--YOUNG. The young were conspicuously absent from the above-mentioned French café where I went a couple of mornings for my café-au-lait; I was one of the only non-grey-haired newspaper-readers there! Retirees in socks-and-sandals (my wife will be glad to know I did NOT wear socks with my sandals there, hehe) made up the vast majority of the clientele...Logical, I guess; they have time to sit and talk...all the people who ordered 'to go' were the moms-with-kids and men-in-ties-on-their-way-to-the-office...

Z--ZONES. As in climate-zones. Sky-islands. In the Sonoran desert, several short-mountain chains with elevations up to 9000 feet stand out from the arid lowlands--as you drive up these mountains, the climate literally changes from cactus-dominated desert to pine-and-fir-forests! It's like driving from Mexico to Canada in an hour, as you climb from two to nine-thousand feet above sea-level. These 'sky-islands' are a summer refuge, since the summits are often 20 to 30 degrees cooler than the surrounding desert. The Santa Catalina mountains, on Tucson's northern edge are home to the country's southernmost sky resort on top of 9,157' Mt. Lemmon. We drove to the summit and took the chair-lift--still a bit of snow under the trees!

Out of letters.

Out of time.

...next time?

Saguaros tomorrow...

It's April...

...and yes, yesterday was sunny here (for any of you readers who live here in WA)...
...BUT
...the day before yesterday...
...it SNOWED!
Enough already.

My wife and I are heading to Arizona tomorrow, to Tucson.
I can hardly believe it's been over 14 years since I visited.
I lived in Arizona (about an hour and a half south of Tucson) from the time I was 5 to when I was 8.
When my parents moved to Georgia, I missed the clear night skies--for months I kept thinking "WHERE are the stars? WHERE are the mountains?"

We lived in a neighborhood on the edge of town--the last subdivision before the desert began, and being over a mile-high, the night-time sky was often more white than dark, so plentiful were the pinpoints of starlight...

This visit will only be a few days, but what a welcome change from the lingering reminders of winter...

Change of subject.
As the French say--du coq a l'ane...(from the rooster to the donkey)

If you've never seen the film "The Return of Martin Guerre," rent it.

So.
Time to expose pasty legs to the sun tomorrow...

March salmagundi

Ay...so a month has gone by...again...

Is this to be once-a-month activity, this blogging?

And yes, you read correctly above--salmagundi--
my new word du jour, which I just happened upon.
I meant to write 'miscellany' but synonymous salmagundi intrigued me...
(And, go figure, it even has a French etymology...)

DAYLIGHT is finally lasting past dinnertime up here...
Spring has been teasing us, not just with longer daylight, but also with a couple of days of temps in the 60's...
Cherry-trees are on the brink of blooming.
My first visit to the NW--TEN years ago this spring!--coincided with that year's cherry-blossoming, and I must say, the pink-tinged petals snowing down from gnarled branches were seductive... (Yoshino cherry trees, UW quad)

Since we have a balcony where we now live, we thought we'd go ahead and get a few flowers.

Primroses. I always thought the name was kind of funny--the flowers aren't really prim; they're rather gaudy.
Bright splotches of primary and secondary colors rising out of lettuce-ish bunches...
So I looked up the word. Origin--old French: prime rose, from the latin meaning first rose, since the flowers are among the first of the season, even if they're not roses. But in modern French, they're no longer called primerose, but rather primevère, as in primavera, the word for 'spring' in Italian and Spanish.

Word nerd, word nerd...

While planting those flowers in bigger containers on the balcony--the therapy of having hands in dirt on a sunny afternoon--I heard someone in the building down the hill calling out something, and I was instantly transported to Nicaragua of a year ago:
"Doh-gheeeee! Doh-gheeeee!" yelled one of the Hispanic neighbors.
Well, that's how it sounds. It would be properly spelled "dogui."
That is a common name for dogs in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Latin America, it seems
It's also a name of a popular Central American brand of dog-food.
"Puppy" is also a popular name for dogs down there. Pronounce: "Poo-pee." Exactly.

I felt like yelling down from our balcony to the dog-seeking neighbor down the hill,
"Where are you from?"
But I restrained myself.
Wouldn't want to be too neighborly.
Dogui ran back to her eventually.
The canine scolding was in English for some reason: "gwere joo tink joo gwere going, dogui, eh?"

This got to me thinking of some of the things that were in bloom in Nicaragua around this time last year....
We had this plant in a pot outside our front door:
Anybody know what it's called in English?
Down there those flowers are called "fósforos"--matchsticks.

And this:
...like a baby pineapple.
It's called a piñuela, and is related to the big pineapples. It's used medicinally, as a border-shrub, and to make drinks.

And then, one of the strangest fruits I came across--but I really grew to like these:
Bizarre little things, growing straight out of the sides of the branches. They're called jocotes. How to describe them...Sort of like a cross between an olive and a plum. When they're green you can toss them in to flavor a pot of rice while it's still cooking. When they're ripe and turn red, they're sweet and fragrant, and you suck the soft flesh off the pits...
My wife found them up here--frozen--in a local Latino grocery a while back--yay for Renton!
And these giant hibiscus were also in bloom around León last March:
The local name is 'flor de avispa', or wasp-flower.

I'm sure our local friends in Nicaragua thought we were weird for always taking photos of their plants.
So it was. So be it.

Here's a sunset--from our winter-sanity-escape to San Diego last month--to prove that we aren't just plant-photo-freaks...
(sunset behind Point Loma)

The few-day-stay down there was just what we needed. When we got off the the plane, the simple fact of feeling warm sun and seeing palm trees made us positively giddy.
Living back up north has turned us into palm-seekers.
The living, frond-topped poles--icons of the exotic--have become a fetish...Time to move on, perhaps...