Well, I was contemplating writing another piece responding to Janisse Ray's essay (theme: the joys of being "in the choir") but then Chris Clarke tagged me with a meme (eyeroll) so I guess I'll do that instead (fetching groan).
(It's a pretty good one. jo(e), pica, you're up! And anyone else who'd like to do it!)
Below are five questions Pilgrim/Heretic asked me, after she did this meme on her blog and I asked for some questions.
If you would like me to email you five questions, composed with you in particular in mind, please let me know in the comments. Be sure I have your email and your blog URL! (If you don't have a blog, and I don't know you very well, I'll still ask you questions, but they may be more generic.)
On my table by the window sit a pothos and a lily of some sort (it never blooms, so I'm not sure what kind it is). The pothos has been twisted around and around itself, like a snake coiling up to sleep, so that it doesn't take over the place, like pothos so often do when allowed to roam free in yoga studios and vegetarian restaurants. I did start four plants off of it; they are growing in plastic containers saved after I used up the yogurt and margarine they originally held. The lily is not as assertive as the pothos; it grows quietly, filling up pot after pot if I let it, letting me know when it needs water by genteelly drooping.
The rest of my plants are outside; with the exception of the geranium, chosen for its bright red petals, a jade plant I rescued from the garbage, and some infant spider plants (which are hard to find in stores these days -- too retro?) they are all edible.
There are several pots of tomatoes, one of which is now starting to bloom. There is a bell pepper plant, which I am growing for D. (I dislike bell peppers, he dislikes tomatoes -- it all works out). There is a terra cotta pot with balconies and pockets that I've filled with strawberries; they produce small intense fruits, more red and rich inside than any store-bought berry. An ungainly patch of spearmint and peppermint inhabits another pot; I rarely pick the leaves, but I love crouching over them when I groom them to remove bugs and dead vegetation. The sweet minty smell rises up as I run my hand along them. Next to them is a container of sprouted sweet potatoes. I have an uncanny knack for sprouting sweet potatoes and other roots and bulbs. You bring them into my house, and they start sprouting. I have learned the hard way that if I want to be able to eat potatoes more than a day after I buy them, I have to boil them as soon as I get home from the store and put them in the fridge. Otherwise, they are soon covered with little alienesque roots and whorls and strange purple knobs. Onions and garlics are equally hopeless.
Moving along the row of pots, the next one contains a rosemary plant, a tough creature that I almost killed when I first got it. It's now in a larger pot, and I've figured out just how much water it actually needs. When I run my fingers through its branches, plucking out yellowed needles to toss, they pick up the scent of the rosemary. Someday I want to learn to make rosemary chicken like my mother does. The only plant with a fragrance as strong as the rosemary is an ornery basil. I do not have good luck with basil plants; it is probably a testament to this one's character that it is still here, strange and leggy and woody. I nip the end leaves off with my fingernails to keep it from blooming and going to seed, and I save them to dry for later. I don't know why, really; I do not cook much with basil, and have never made pesto (and this plant, with its tiny, spicy leaves, is not likely to inspire me). I now have a large plastic box filled with dried leaves. A more fruitful collection of dried materials comes from the chamomile plants. Although they have been infected by some kind of mildew, they continue to send up great profusions of blooms on green, untouched stalks, blooms which I pinch off and put in an plastic box that used to hold gummi bears. Their sweet fragrance promises a tasty tea, if I am patient.
I would add more plants to the menagerie, picking up seeds I find on the ground to sprout, rescuing succulents from the trash bins, uprooting interesting weeds growing in sidewalk cracks, potting the babies of wandering vines... but I'm worried enough about moving with the ones I have. At least plants don't wail from the back of the car like cats.
The weekend edition...
Feel free to recycle earlier suggestions, or to come up with new ones!
The woman and I stare at each other across the desk. We’ve been trying unsuccessfully to communicate with each other for a while now. It’s clear to both of us what the basics of my request are, but it’s the details that are confounding us. We stare at each other some more, then she throws up her hands in exasperation and retreats through the door behind her; I raise up my hand weakly, as if to pull her back, then let it drop. With a sigh, I look down at the battered wood surface of the countertop, fingers tracing the grooves and nicks along the edge, and try to hold back the tears.
What am I doing here, anyway? D. and I almost always travel together, and never have we tried to do it separately in a foreign country. It seemed like such a simple idea when we discussed it over the Sunday paper a few weeks ago. He’d go to his conference in the capital, a grim industrial city with little charm, then join me in this small country town a few days later. I’d use the time to write and take photographs for the travel piece I was doing for World Traveler. The cobbled streets and winding alleyways of this place would make for a stunning photo essay; the small local churches and street-side markets had already caught my eye. I even hoped to visit one of the town's famous pottery studios and see if they’d be willing to do an interview with me after D. got here and could help with the translations.
It sounded so simple before. Now I’m wondering what to do. Our plan rested on me being able to find a local hostel or pensione or the like for the two of us. But we hadn’t counted on the complexities of the local accents, or fully appreciated how inadequate my language skills would be for the task. I found the train here just fine; people in the capital are used to clueless, misspoken foreigners, and signs in English are abundant. But after I debarked from the train, it was as if I’d passed through a veil into another world entirely. The women speak in a rapid, high-pitched fashion, as hard for my ears to grab onto as a dog’s whistle. The men rumble like gravel in a mixer, and the children… you might as well listen to birds.
No one has been unfriendly, not at all. The small man with the big head who helped me at the station was cheerful and smiling, even if my broken Spanish meant nothing to him. The kindly older woman who patted my arm kindly when I sat on my too-large suitcase to rest, confused by all the twisting streets, didn’t need a shared language to see I was in need of help. The laughing pack of children who dragged me to this place in which I now stand could tell at a glance that I was a stranger in need of a place to stay.
But what I’ve been totally unable to explain to anyone is that I am waiting for someone, that I need accommodations for more than one person. The notion of a woman traveling alone is puzzling enough to them; adding an absent partner to the mix has taxed my language skills past the breaking point. Even pantomime and doodles in my sketchbook provoke more confusion than understanding. I’d been trying to convey my needs to the proprietress for nearly an hour – a testament to her patience and my stubbornness – before she abandoned the fray. Now what? I sit down on my suitcase again and despair.
Wait! She has returned! And she’s dragging behind her a gangly young man with hair in his eyes. He flips it back with an unconsciously arrogant ease, like a cat flicking its tail in annoyance. She bounces around him, impatient but eager and shoves him toward me. “How can I help you?” he asks, in perfect, American-accented English. Saved!
Saved by the foreign exchange student program that taught her son English, back when he was fifteen. Thank god. Quickly I explain my needs, pay the deposit, and haul my suitcase up the small, crooked stairway. After I settle in, I realize how hungry and hot I am. I wonder, does the son like ice cream? Or pottery?
Ooh, great suggestions. Some of them rather challenging, too.
Okay, by the expedient of numbering them and then tossing numbered bits of paper in the air*, and picking the one farthest from me, the winner is Garnet's:
"Write about finding yourself in a foreign country where, unable to speak the language or be understood, you must communicate your wish to stay in a small, local hotel until your husband arrives several days later."
I may skew this one slightly to being in a country where I do speak the language, but badly. Partly this is because I write best when I have some actual experience to draw on (in terms of describing the place, setting the scene, etc.) and partly because then I can inflict a written version of my execrable Spanish on you. And I'll have it as me waiting for D., as, like I told gzombie in the comments for the initial post, I don't have a husband.
But I'll give it a stab in the original version before deciding which to post.
I'll post the results later!
*I was going to roll dice instead, but the only die I could find was from my Harry Potter trivia board game, and it is numbered 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11. Not very useful outside the game! (Or maybe I'm just a poor ignorant Muggle who doesn't quite get wizard dice.)
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