String of Lights |

Me: Even though we usually drink it neat, I’m going to make you a very special cocktail using the very challenging mezcal. It’s challenging because it’s a raw and relatively, um, unrefined agave spirit. And it has a strong, smoky flavor, which means that it doesn’t really mix well with the traditional cocktail ingredients. But falernum, especially one whose simple syrup is made from piloncillo, will not only combine with, but stand up to the mezcal, prove itself an equal. Hand me that stirrer, would you? I’m not shaking this drink because I don’t want to bruise the spirit.
You: omg! You’re so emo.
Me: Nuh-uh. It’s a valid, um, Thing in cocktail building. Look it up.
You: It may well be, but come on. You practically said it yourself; what spirit is tougher than mezcal? And especially one named after Antonio Aguilar. Güey looks seriously badass.
Me: He may well have been un macho cabrón, pero también tenía su corazoncito./ He may well have been a badass, but he got his heart broke just like anyone else. Now cállate y drink your drink. It’s called “Tu recuerdo y yo”/”Your Memory and Me”. Like the song.  It had to be a two-ingredient drink. Get it? The mezcal is the “tu recuerdo” and the “yo” is the  falernum. Or vice versa.

You: Uh. Yeah, but in the song he sings about tequila not mezcal.
Me: Yeah. I know. Dammit. But I’ve had the name of this drink in my head forever and I knew that it had to be made with mezcal. I just didn’t know there’d be a brand called Don Antonio Aguilar. In fact, I was really hoping he was the same Aguilar who sang the song in that cantina scene in the movie Tal para cual ’cause that would be the coolest coincidence ever, but that was Luis Aguilar, who’s no relation…and he’s still singing about tequila anyway.
You: Well, don Antonio sang one called “Copita de mezcal”, ¿que no?
Me: Yeah, but then we’re back to drinking it neat, aren’t we? Maybe I should just make “Tu recuerdo y yo” like this:

~2 oz tequila or mezcal (both options work wonderfully)
~1/2 oz falernum (look it up or message me)
Stir for a full minute over ice cubes, preferably made from orange or lemon juice. Strain into a small (but not dainty) shot-type glass. Garnish with orange twist. Y ¡por el amor de dios! don’t drink it like a shot. It took me 2 days to make the falernum! Savor it. And by the way, this delicious and potent drink is not for pendejos (or other insults that start with “p”).

“And then he asked me if I’m Cuban!” I reported, excitedly. “But you don’t sound Cuban when you speak Spanish, do you?” “Not at all. He probably asked me that because I ordered a Materva, put salt on my green salad, made animated hand gestures while talking on the phone, and dumped 3 sugars in my café cubano without even tasting it first.”

I thought that offering someone a ride was the least I could do, having walked several times that day under the umbrellas proffered by others.

“I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” by Valerie Hecht

~2 part gin (Nolet’s, of course, would be perfection)
~1 part elderflower Liqueur
~1/2 part Meyer lemon juice
~Splash of rose water

Shake all ingredients over ice in shaker. Unless you actually are using Nolet’s, then don’t; shaking seems too violent for it, so stir it over ice for a whole minute.  Strain into dainty cocktail glass. Garnish with sprig of rosemary and/or rose petals.

Alternative preparation: G&T común y corriente, then adding of the Meyer lemon juice and rose water. Stirred, not shaken.

I guess that goes even for second/vacation homes.

Perhaps, then, this was Las Vegas’ way of saying “Welcome home!”

One of the promises I made to the city was that the next time I was there, I’d return to Pat’s, fill up the car and order chow mein.

I fulfilled that promise Tuesday night. And the chow mein fulfilled its promise of being properly and perfectly mediocre.

Fortunately, Pat himself was there to cook it. I think he’s always there. There’s no way he could remember me, but he came out to chat after the following exchange with the clerk: “Order of chicken chow mein!” “For who?” He seemed surprised that someone had ordered food, even though the customer in front of me had just picked up an order. “Her!” The clerk pointed at me. “Oh!” said Pat, coming out to greet me. “You look happy,” he observed. I confirmed it, “I am.” He looked harder at me, “You the teacher?” I never told him what I do. “How did you know that!?” He chuckled, and just said “Teachers looking like the kids…” and went back to prepare my order. I went out to fill my tank. When I went back in to pick up my chow mein, he again told me about  his own kids.

Driving to Las Vegas to pick up the housekeys, I decided to attempt to document my crossing the state line, assuming that at some point I’d pass a “Welcome to Nevada” sign.  I wanted that sort of souvenir; a welcoming sign under the late afternoon sky with its full moon rising over mountains seemed portentous. The first city you come to in Nevada going North on I-15 isn’t Las Vegas; it’s Primm. There are casinos there, too, of course, including the one with its incongruous Whiskey Pete’s sign hovering over a medieval castle-shaped building. Primm’s also the site of an outlet mall. “Too bad about all of that shit littering the sky- and landscapes,” I thought. That thought was immediately followed up by my recalling the unconscious promise I’d made to enter into the following agreement: even part-time residence in the state of Nevada implies accepting all of it, Nature and human nature.

So I stopped lamenting that my picture might be “ruined” by all those symbols of consumerism and decided to make a movie: instead of a taking a still shot, I’d just let the camera sweep over sky, mountains, buildings, moon, and Friday traffic into a city of a thousand different promises for the thousand different drivers entering it.

I was hoping the camera would take in all of that, but I knew I’d be happy if I could just get a hokey, in-focus glimpse of a sign welcoming me to my second state.

As I concentrated to both keep my eyes on the road and hit the little red “scene” button on my camera, Pandora cued up Bettye Lavette’s voice as I began to capture that section of road. 

When the song ended I hit the red “scene” button again and took off my sunglasses to let the tears caught behind the lenses drain out. I know they’re not the only reason why the movie (click below, on song title) came out blurry…

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

No, I don’t miss the days when we had to write the diacritical marks in by hand, but still…

Even though I didn’t have to use that keyboard “shortcut” in the last document I typed today, I still kept hitting command + e and goofing up the paragraph alignment, my thumb perhaps itself in alignment with one of the languages I was working in.  A reluctance to change the document because it sounded fine as it is, even knowing that to its audience, it wouldn’t be fine as it was.

I was translating an oral presentation that one of my profes is giving in New York later this year. It’s on the reception of Almodóvar’s films by audiences and critics in the United States – the quick and dirty version of what she’s been working on for a couple of years. This is the second document I’ve changed into English for her and this morning I thought that knowing her work was advantageous. I also have the advantage of knowing how she develops a discourse, having taken two seminars from her and worked on numerous projects with her. As I read her words, I could hear her saying them and I could see her standing at a podium. Again, I thought, “It’s a good thing I know how she lectures. And I know her voice very well. Both voices.” But as I started translating, I realized that I know her voices in Spanish (efectivamente, some of her expressions and words find their way into my own writing and my own lectures, and I have to ask myself if I need to find a non-peninsular synonym). I’ve never heard her speak more than a phrase or two in English. And even then, it’s a bit of fluent code-switching at most.  A brilliantly placed “What the fuck?”, for instance, while deciphering her family’s cell phone bill.

I hope I’ve kept her fluent in this presentation, too.

I just clicked “Retweets”  on my Twitter page to find the desultory results:

“You haven’t been retweeted yet. Check back here to see who has retweeted your Tweets.

I had my first session today. It’s already helped! And the most uncomfortable part was at the very beginning, when he asked me to describe what my running routine had been and I started sobbing. But that sort of thing can’t really be that unusual, can it? After all, what’s the second word in “physical therapy”?

It’s been almost three weeks since I realized that I have a real injury, one that a week’s rest didn’t help and one that I can’t just ignore and “run it out”.  And for the past two weeks I’ve been self-pityingly referring to my running in the imperfect, “I used to run…” “Back when I ran…”, etc. In fact, I’ve been sobbing about it sporadically and at often inopportune moments ever since it started. And I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have even an itch compared to others who are in real pain; I see my neighbor using a walker to inch his way outside to just sit in his truck, not even drive it and I know that I should just be thankful I can walk well enough to get me through my day. And I am. And I’m still incredibly sad. Running represents is more than just moving. It’s become something salvific. And I want it to come back.

My knees have been feeling the impact for a few months now, but it wasn’t anything I considered problematic until the 22nd of July. It was a Friday, a 60 minutes, faster-minute day. The pain in my right knee started getting pretty severe after 18 minutes, but I kept going, thinking I’d just forget about it, especially during the faster minutes or when a good song came on. But I didn’t do any more fast minutes; I thought it might be better for the knee if I kept it slow and steady. The important thing was to go the whole 60. In fact, I kept slowing down until I was only barely not-walking, like those marathoners you see struggling in the last mile, limping and leaning to one side. Each time I put my foot down, pain moved across my kneecap like those splinters that form across iced-over puddles when you stomp on them.  At 35 minutes, I realized I had to stop running if I didn’t want to have to reallyreally stop running.

So I walked the rest of the 60 minutes, stopping every few feet to stretch and flex and twist, trying to get something to “pop” and right things so I could continue the run. Every couple of minutes, I tried running again, only to find that the pain was worse each time. I was stifling sobs, but I don’t think it was from the knee pain. Not even then, when it was at its worst. I think I knew that I’d done something really bad, but wasn’t sure how.  So I rested. Longer than I ever have since I began running four years ago.

A week later, I tried to run again. The pain was already back 20 seconds in, but I kept going for another ten minutes before I had to stop. And when I stopped running, although the pain was a bit less intense, that’s when I started tearing up.  It felt like loss. And it has each time since that I’ve tried to run even a few steps. Not like someone died, but rather like getting dumped or leaving my study abroad family or watching a loved one leave my house or move to another city.

Trite and true: you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. All I knew for the four years was that running was good for me, that I felt good doing it. Now I see it as my main source of well-being, part of who I think I am.

There’s no logical reason for this pessimistic tone. I do hope to run again and the PT said I should be able to. He just didn’t say when. I don’t want to “jinx” the possibility of running again by thinking too much about it, let alone talking too much about it.

But maybe that’s what landed me here in the first place. Thinking a little about how, how much, and even how fast I run doesn’t necessarily have to take any of the joy out of it. Indeed, it could prolong it. Although…it was that unconscious joy that was one of the things I liked best about running in the first place, the never worrying about miles combined with feeling so hard-core and disciplined every time I increased minutes. Not knowing how far, but knowing that two days of  60, two days of 80 and 100 minutes on Sundays was just a hell of a long time was enough.

But thinking about running and actually running will be better than thinking about running and not running. If not-running’s worth crying about, then running is worth thinking about and maybe even talking about. At least in writing.