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Sunday Morning Walk

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Along Broadway in Santa Monica

Along Broadway in Santa Monica

This morning I got up early and prepared to take a walk into downtown Santa Monica. My ultimate destination was a Barnes & Noble Bookstore about three miles from where I live. It was a sunny, cool morning, with the temperature predicted to top out at 64° Fahrenheit (approximately 18° Celsius).

The stretch along Broadway between Centinela Avenue and 26th Street is particularly attractive, with lush plantings of palm trees, cacti, and other decorative flora. The photograph above is looking north on Yale Street as I headed west along Broadway.

At Barnes & Noble, I picked up a book about Iceland. I am trying hard to talk Martine into coming to Iceland with me this summer. Back in 2001, I went alone. I resolved at that time that I wanted to return with Martine: She would love the puffins, the waterfalls (seemingly thousands of them), the glaciers, and the volcanoes. It is a truly strange landscape, and a largely treeless one.

There is an Icelandic joke that runs: What do you do if you’re lost in an Icelandic forest? The answer: Stand up. Because of the strong winds, few trees are very tall. Whole forests, such as the extensive one at Asbyrgi, near Húsavik, look as if it were miniaturized.

I have my work cut out for me. Martine is still suffering from back and shoulder pains, which I am beginning to think are symptoms of fibromyalgia. On one hand, the activity would do her good (she has a tendency to be a couch potato). On the other, I cannot survive the rigors of a tax season without planning for an escape, and Iceland strikes me as a good one.

 

What Matters …

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Martine and the Moose

Martine and the Moose

If there was no blog post yesterday, it was because Martine was ill, and I thought I would have to take her to the hospital. Fortunately, after two weeks of illness, she suddenly got better.

It all started two-three weeks ago, when she started complaining of muscular back pain. It was her decision to go to a clinic and get some sort of pain killer. And that’s what almost did her in. The physician on duty prescribed hydrocodone acetominophen. Literally minutes within taking it, Martine developed a nasty reaction which, while not alleviating the pain in her back, made her feel week and took away her appetite for food.

Martine’s bad reactions to prescription drugs are hardly new. She has been suffering for over a year from the anti-malarial chloroquine she took on our Argentina vacation. Then, when she had the flu, she developed a bad reaction to cipro.

All week, I was haunted by this feeling that I might lose Martine. Although we are two very different people, I love her such that it would be difficult to imagine my leading a happy life without her soft voice and gentle smile.

People who know us sometimes have a hard time imagining the depth of my feelings for Martine, but that’s because they do not necessarily know about how our relationship functions.

Nothing in this life is guaranteed: I know that, at some point, I will either lose her or she will lose me. Fortunately, it has not come to that yet.

Of Heaven and Hell

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Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

I cannot ever stop thinking of Jorge Luis Borges, of his poems, of his stories, of his diamond-like essays. For the better part of a half century, the man has guided my steps, sent me off to the Iceland of the Sagas, the paradoxes of G. K. Chesterton, the fantastic stories of that forgotten writer Rudyard Kipling, and the paintings of Xul Solar.

Today, I want to share with you the ending of a poem called “Of Heaven and Hell,” which I found in a Penguin Borges collection entitled Poems of the Night:

When Judgment Day sounds in the last trumpets
and planet and millennium both
disintegrate, and all at once, O Time,
all your ephemeral pyramids cease to be,
the colors and the lines that trace the past
will in the semidarkness form a face,
a sleeping face, faithful, still, unchangeable
(the face of the loved one, or, perhaps, your own)
and the sheer contemplation of that face—
never-changing, whole, beyond corruption—
will be, for the rejected, an Inferno,
and for the elected, Paradise.

For me, I think that face will be that of Martine. (My own face is out of the question: It is trapped in some mirror that first time I recognized it reminded me more of my father’s features than of my own.) No, Martine’s face frequently forms in my thoughts, as a special gift given to me by a God who showed me a gentle pity that was, I have always believed, more than I deserved. Does that mean I am one of what Borges called the “elegidos,” “the elect”? Time will tell.

A Tale of Three Restaurants

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Bertha’s Famous Tamales

Generally speaking, I do not cook on weekends. It’s a special treat for Martine to be able to go out from time to time, and Saturdays and Sundays are usually it. Now you would think that Martine would not be a tamale person, and you are right! While she lolled around in bed resting after an all night bus ride the night before. (She had taken a Greyhound Bus to Sacramento to see her doctors, her old friends from her days working at the old Sacramento Army Depot, and her mother’s grave.)

So, instead of rustling breakfast up for myself as usual, I drove out to the Farmers’ Market in Santa Monica at Pico and Cloverfield. There, accompanied by a thermos of my own unsweetend Darjeeling tea, I had two pork tamales from Bertha’s Famous Tamales, well slathered with their fiery hot sauce. Then I bought some Deglet Noor dates, some Asian pears, and some Fuyu Persimmons.

Attari Sandwiches in Westwood

Lunchtime I took a chance with my little sweetie. We went to Attari Sandwiches in Westwood, a busy Iranian sandwich shop where I had a mortadella sandwich and their delicious home-brewed iced tea with lime and mint. Martine had a chicken sandwich which she did not much care for. If I were in Teheran, I would have no difficulty adapting to their delicious cuisine—except I would eat too much Basmati rice, which is more or less forbidden to me because of my Type II Diabetes. Martine, on the other hand, would have a rough time of it.

Attari Sandwiches is a key focal point for the busy Westwood Iranian community. The restaurant was really hopping when we were there, but the owner and his staff know me well and always give great service (and delicious food). Their osh soup is fantastic, but it was too hot for it today. (It got up to 90° Fahrenheit today.)

Pepy’s Galley (AKA Pepy’s Chili) in a Mar Vista Bowling Alley

I had to make it up to Martine for taking her to a lunch spot she didn’t care for, however much I love it. For dinner, we went to Pepy’s Galley located in the Mar Vista Lanes Bowling Alley on Venice Boulevard. Pepy’s is an American/Mexican comfort food restaurant where Martine could get her hamburger steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, cooked vegetables, and a salad for a reasonable price. The food is down-home good, with good American dishes and a chilaquiles plate that will knock your socks off.

For dinner, I just had a navy bean soup and a plate of cantaloupe with iced tea. I had eaten enough earlier. The important thing was that Martine was placated for making her eat strange “Muslim” food for lunch.

At The Petting Zoo

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Mother Goat With Baby

It has become a tradition for Martine and I to go every October to Oak Glen in San Bernardino County to buy fresh-picked apples, a pumpkin for Halloween, and (for Martine at least) to eat a giant piece of apple pie a la mode at Apple Annie’s Restaurant in Oak Tree Village. Also at Oak Tree Village is a petting zoo that Martine loves to visit.

I had hoped to find some Honey Crisp apples, but they’ve been sold out for a couple of weeks. I had to settle for some Pippins and Fujis from Snow-Line Orchard, my favorite purveyor of pomes.

For starters, I decided to rent a car. My 1994 Nissan Pathfinder needs some maintenance, and Oak Glen is a hundred miles east of where we live. I know it costs money, but the thought of getting into car trouble somewhere in the so-called “Inland Empire” makes it worthwhile. Eventually, I’ll have to get a new car, but I have too many irons in the fire right now to contemplate such a large expenditure.

In all, we spent an hour at the petting zoo, looking at (and feeding) goats, a donkey, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, roosters, chickens, a Jersey cow, alpacas, Barbary sheep, and aoudads. I enjoy seeing Martine enjoy herself this way, talking to the animals and trying to tell them where some dropped food is that they can eat. The animals have their own agenda, and are well enough fed without the corn we have to offer them; but watching Martine become a happy little girl before my eyes is a precious experience for me.

The momma and baby goat shown in the above picture were like royalty in the petting zoo. Everyone was trying to feed them, but neither of them were hungry. Nonetheless, they accepted the homage of the crowd. And the baby’s fur was so silky smooth.