Explode A Moment

After a somewhat dull Wednesday spent doing my Chemistry homework and some stuff for English and for Communications, the Mrs. and I went out for dinner to celebrate being together for four months. :)  I know that's kind of high school, and mostly it was her idea, but it was an excuse to go and spend some time together and have a romantic evening that we could look back on and smile about when it's been a week since we've seen each other, and we're both stressed out and pushing each other's buttons when we finally do get a chance to talk on the phone, so I was for it.  She suggested Saffron, in downtown Minneapolis (almost into Near Nordeast, but not quite) on Hennepin and 1st. Middle Eastern/Mediterranian food is kind of what it's about, and after having been lusting after Thai food all week, this seemed like it would be just barely not what I wanted.  I was prepared for ok, but not great--and a little unsatisfying, if I'm honest.  But I was going there with my Mrs., and we were going to have a good time together, and I sort of made up my mind to at least try to like whatever was going on on the plate, even though I had it in my head that it wasn't going to scratch that Thai food itch.

WRONG.  This was the best meal of my life--everything about it was perfect.  We got in the patterned frosted glass door after the mostly nondescript vestibule of the building which houses the restaurant and several boring-looking office suites.  Red and black and soft, cozy, caraway-scented browns were on the light fixtures, the cushions around the overstuffed booths, and the candles on each table flickered against the dim, seductive glow of lights that barely illuminated the menus in front of us.  Our server, David, was about 5'7" with a five-o'clock shadow and a ready sense of humor.  We giggled and said we needed more time when he asked us for our order the first time.  Keeping careful watch at a distance, he waited until we had looked over all the options on the one-page menu, from which we determined we would have to come back--just so we could get one of everything at some point, and had made our selections.  We ordered the corn soup, the arugula salad, a plate of olives and pickles, and a lamb shank tagine.  With the smells of spices coming from the kitchen and the muted sounds of conversation coming from the few tables where other people were seated this late on a Wednesday (it was about 8:00), I felt lulled into a dreamy happiness, thinking of how much I love olives, and how happy I'd be to have lamb in thick, chickpea-studded tomato broth that's even better when you mop it up with pita.  I was already in love.  I didn't know that the best part was on its way.

The olive and pickle plate came--sublime.  Briny, vinegary olives that I could gnaw off their pits, tangy and spicy string beans and peppers and carrots and onions--it was so salty and so savory.  My palate was in fighting form by the time the soup arrived.  That's right.  The moment I'm about to explode really IS about soup.

David came out, carrying a creamer-sized white beaker, and a large, deep bowl.  In the bowl, there was this wash at the bottom of piquillo pepper-infused oil, and on top of that was a garlic-yogurt sauce nestled in a soft, creamy white circle.  On top of this circle sat charred-looking kernels of golden corn, and Spanish corn nuts for texture, and like punctuation at the end of that sentence of decadent, rich flavors, this mad alchemy of spicy pepper and cooling yogurt was topped with a modest-looking neat row of black fig quarters--all lined up with parallel strands of chive laid across them.  My eyes got wide, and I couldn't help it--I clapped my hands a couple of times in sheer glee, smiling like an elated preschooler with eyes the size of the tapas plates before us.  David: "That wasn't even the best part!  Here's the soup--it doesn't have any sugar or any cream in it--it's just the sweetness and texture of the corn you're going to taste."  And with that, he poured the delicately yellow, thick-looking liquid from the beaker and into the bowl--so artfully, not one little delicate wisp of chive was displaced.  Instead, the bottom of the bowl looked like all the colors of the fall, layered affectionately next to and on top of one another, and the sweet, grainy-but-vegetable smell of the corn seduced us into dipping our spoons into its depths.  Rich soup.  Velvety mix of the soup plus the yogurt.  Savory, crunchy, fresh-tasting corn nuts and chives.  Sweet, dark, complex figs.  Dangerous-tasting piquillo.  Comforting, soothing waves of happiness coming off of it in the aroma.  Warm spiciness without pain.  Pillowy, soft bites of the fig and the yogurt and the soup together.  The light felt like a halo around the plate.  Everything in my brain and my body and my environment breathed a light, fluttering, delicious sigh--I felt perfectly nurtured and relaxed and drowsy and cozy.  This soup made something cuddle up inside my mind, and put my anxieties and my nagging thoughts and my irritations so far in the background that they almost fell completely below the horizon.  Each bite was a renewal of this bliss, and i found myself dragging my finger through the viscous, autumn-colored wreckage to lick precious molecules of it from between the ridges of my fingerprint.  It was like reaching Nirvana, Zen, complete peace and light and warmth--and next time I feel stressed and wound too tight to function, I'm taking the Cure at Saffron.

Local and Amazing.

I heard this song about a year ago, and I thought it was beautiful, but I had no idea who the artist was, and it just sort of got lost as a passing thought at an inopportune time.  Then, after I started dating the Mrs., I discovered who this mystery artist was: one of her favorites: Dessa. 

On her album, A Badly Broken Code, Dessa has a number of spoken word/rap/folk-pop songs that I love, among them is Bullpen, a song that I couldn't find a video for on YouTube, and The Chaconne, which is at http://www.youtube.com/user/nerdsgethunk#p/u/26/gPDdb1LZ9fs.

Here are the lyrics:

Bullpen:

forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
walk with a switch, fire in her fist
biting at the bit
swing at every pitch
coach put me in like
forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
it's all in the wrist, fire from the hip
talk a little shit, roll thick,
whole clique
let's begin

it's been assumed I'm soft or irrelevant
cause I refuse to down play my intelligence
but in a room of thugs and rap veterans
why am I the only one
who's acting like a gentleman
good form bad taste
pity what a waste
all that style, not a thing to say
looks to me like
a little of your true school
is at the shallow end of the typing pool
all cloak, no dagger
just smoke and swagger
I hope that your battery's charged
cause I found this here ladder
now your ceilings don't matter
check me out,
now I got glass floors

forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
walk with a switch, fire in her fist
biting at the bit
swing at every pitch
coach put me in like
forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
it's all in the wrist, fire from the hip
talk a little shit, roll thick,
whole clique
let's begin

they love me, they love me not
pulling pedals off my bike
you gotta strike while the irony's still hot
no telling what the kids might like
and I love this job, but ah, good god
sometimes I hate this business
it's all love backstage but then the boys get brave
gotta say, I hope your mother doesn't listen
excuse me, where you going
Doomtree, Minnesota
population's growing all the time
and if you feel this
you know what the deal is
grab a chisel tip and add one to the number on the sign

forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
walk with a switch, fire in her fist
biting at the bit
swing at every pitch
coach put me in like
forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
it's all in the wrist, fire from the hip
talk a little shit, roll thick,
whole clique
let's begin

Her use of metaphor paints an immediate picture (the"bullpen" is the world of hiphop and rap music, the music industry in general, and life at large, and she is the "china doll"--a delicate, slim female artist in a man's world and generally male-dominated genre), and (without it being an actual word, as such--more how she puts a staccato, rapid-fire accent on the beginnings of words) onomatopoeia--she sounds like she's exploding onto the scene, a woman in a man's genre, and is taking no prisoners just by the way she can spit.

The other song I loved most was "The Chaconne," which was the song that I heard a year ago that I wondered about idly.  Here are the lyrics:

 

The Chaconne

 

now the bough breaks

the books i read
said you were a fragile kid
just as I imagined it, your story goes
another nosebleed,
roses on the pillowcase
the fever breaks
and you're back on earth again
you rehearse
in the living room
the nursemaid
comes mid-afternoon
to say you've practiced
long enough today
she takes your bow, it's suppertime
but oh, your only appetite
was fixed on the chaconne
you'd hoped to play

so soon you're off
to the academy
the honors
and the accolades
first a darling, then a marvel
when we met, I was still a young girl
but you had changed
already famous
your name was a contagion
you were vain and hard to take
all the same, I was brazen

how the tides rise

I don't suppose you'd tell the truth
so I won't ask you anymore
oh the things that we all do
to pass the time between the wars
I don't regret a single day
heard your chaconne
on every stage
but your love sleeps in a velvet case
so what'd you bring me,
bring me for
what'd you bring me,
bring me for

I hear you keep
your pretty wife alive
on only brie
they say a dozen years ago
she could have passed for me
she doesn't trust you with the baby
maybe better that way
safe in your study
going grey

you're at your best
when you're alone
above the fray
with your chaconne

now the bells toll

Her lyrics in this song tend toward hyperbole ("first a darling, then a marvel," "your only appetite," "your name was a contagion."--They intimate that the person who she was writing about was an incredible artist at some stringed instrument, and that she viewed this person in superhuman terms), and I love how she makes these beautiful musical phrases, basing her chord progression and her basic pattern for the song off of the muscial pattern of the chaconne, which is a way of repeating something throughout a piece in slightly different ways.  (A rudimentary explanation, but it'll have to do for now.)

 

I hope anyone reading this goes to the URL above--everyone should get to know Dessa and love her. :)

 

Personal Essay Primordial Ooze

List: Experiences I can't forget
-Pallbearer at GPT's burial
-Ma's wedding
-beginning my relationship with TC
-getting Josie
-WLO
-moving to Arizona
-MMS and GPT and the lake
-learning to ride a bike
-first kiss
-Sonja in the back yard
-Ricky born

Things that have bugged me:
-SSRIs
-my GPA
-No medical school
-not a grown-up yet
-not married
-no children
-wish i was beautiful
-my hair is too fine
-wish my parents had really loved each other and stayed married

Explore dreams:
I want to practice medicine.  I want to be a family physician, and get to know my patients, really listen to them, and advise them well.  I also want to be a nurse.  I want to make people comfortable and care for them, be with them in times of stress and discomfort, to make them feel better and be a liaison between physician and patient.  I wish I had studied more in my undergrad.  I wish I had gotten better grades, had gone on to medical school right away.  My cousin is about to get in, and she's four years younger than I.  I want to maintain my 4.0 from last year into this year.  I want to get into NCC's nursing program.  I want to be the person people turn to, with warm hands and a quiet, reassuring voice, who makes them feel cared for.

Confusing period:
I wish I had known more about life when I was a teenager.  I knew my parents were good friends, but nothing more than that, I knew I wanted to be in love and not have it mellow into platonic friendship like that, I didn't know what to think when they finally got divorced, I wish there was a way to put my life in order so it makes sense.  I don't know what the next years will bring, but I know it's something I can control by being the best student I can be.

Turning points:
-Graduating high school
-moving to AZ
-Ma and PB divorce
-Graduating ASU
-Moving home
-GPT passing
-going back to school at IHCC
-Katrina relief trip


I hope these gel into something I can work with for my personal essay.  I think there's a lot about identity as a function of education or career, which is how my family really measures people.  I think my hopes for medicine and nursing are the primary driving factors for everything in my life so far.

Making of.....Polka Dot Blues

In trying to find something new to do, I was sucked into polka.  And then, when the moment came, it was with dismay that we skulked away from the bar, tails between our legs, having not danced around like the idiots we might well have been, for all I cared.  By the end of that evening, I genuinely wanted to dance.  And we're going back soon.

We were sitting in a poly-something-blend booth, with dark, sticky wood, and listening to a cacophony of crooning and oom-pah, and our server was wearing a black and red bowling shirt, joked with us about our iPhones, and my unnatural attachment to mine (I was furiously taking notes), and he decoded the beer list for us (one of them, according to him, tasted "like sh*t"--we eschewed that one for another with a silly name that I can't remember).  He messed up our order for salad instead of soup, and we ended up with polish sausage stew instead of anything resembling a vegetable, right before our polish sausage and pierogis arrived, on a bed of almost obscenely fragrant sauerkraut.

All in all, it felt like a throwback to another time, when people took time over their meals, and laughed over the sounds of clinking flatware.  I can't wait to go back.  I loved that feeling.

Polka Dot Blues

When I was small, my mother and father would sing polka songs to my little brother, Ricky, and me when they wanted to embarrass us.  This was especially fun for them when one or both of us had friends over.  The favorite by far was “Roll Out the Barrel,” both for entertainment value for the parents (and its equal and opposite effect on us) and for the catchy, easy-to-learn lyrics.  I’ve noticed that a lot of polkas have easy lyrics.  The better to sing when one is….not fully sober.  My mother, in moments of exuberance, has also been known to ambush me with an impromptu polka around the room, jumping and bouncing me around until either we tripped on something, or I managed to get out of her surprisingly strong grasp.  I came to see the polka as my natural enemy, sworn from birth. 

As I sat, typing a list of things I had never done before, I decided to include “dancing polka” as a sort of good-faith item, that I wouldn’t really end up doing.  I even posted it to my blog.  When my girlfriend saw this, her eyes shone with an evil light.  No.  Oh, no.  “We can go polka dancing!”  Why me?  What am I being punished for, God?  I was reared in the suburbs, about half an hour’s drive from downtown Minneapolis, downtown St. Paul, and a plethora of things to do that did not involve beer, sausage, and/or strange bouncing dances that evoke Lawrence Welk-era ruffled dresses or (possibly worse) lederhosen.  I had several other entertainment options on any given night, thank you.  “Come on—you have to try it before you can really say you hate it.”  Damn.  Hoisted by my own petard.  And it’s Saturday night—I had been really hard-up for new experiences that were interesting as well as legal.  This might be my only option.

We went.  I was strangely looking forward to it, after spending all day at work—anything seemed like fun after that.  We got into my car, drove from her house in South Minneapolis to the corner of second street and Hennepin Avenue (Near Nordeast, for those of you who go by neighborhood).  Nye’s Polonaise.  Trying to find a parking space in the dead-end lot was impossible, so we parked in metered parking one block south.  It was about 9:15, and the night was a little chillier than I had anticipated—September weather for sure—but the chill didn’t seem to cut through the inescapable stench of cooked cabbage that seared my nostrils.  My miniskirt seemed like a poor choice in the breeze that flirted with the tops of the trees.  The Mrs. wore a black button-down and skinny jeans—she laughed at my wardrobe choices.  We crossed the street and had to walk through the noisy tail-end of a bachelorette party (“You may pass in peace—this time,” slurred a dyed-blonde woman, in a skin-tight black dress, who bowed imperiously, while the gaggle of similar-looking women around her giggled).  We got past the door, and polka music more than filled the air.  It was the air.  It reverberated through my body and it was….dare I say it?....cheerful and sort of welcoming.  In another bar, this would have felt sinister; here, it was like a broad wink to guilty pleasure.  On our right, there was a photo booth, and on our left was the bar.  We thought we’d have dinner first, though, before attempting dancing.  Best not to look like an idiot on an empty stomach.

We made our way through the crowded bar, into the restaurant behind. With dark wood paneling and a smaller, quieter bar, and tables and booths that looked like they were from the 1940’s, and an elderly gentleman playing a beautiful baby grand piano surrounded by more patrons d’un certain age, it was like being enveloped in the past.  Polka still blared in my ears every time the swinging door opened between bar and dining room, periodically drowning out the sound of the piano.  It was like listening to my fate beckoning me—like the flames of hell visible to Dante Alighieri protagonist in the Inferno before Virgil appears to lead him down.  The pianist had a beautiful tenor voice, though, and a tender, wavering vibrato as he sang songs that sounded like they predated Sinatra (and seemed like a blessed respite from the prominent tuba sounds from the polka band).  In a surprise move toward the end of our evening, he followed a sing-along version of “Edelweiss” with a sing-along “Sweet Caroline,” complete with drunken “Bah, bah, baaah” in the refrain, courtesy of some gentlemen who were enthusiastic, but off key.  In front of him at a shallow, long table, hunched over and looking for all the world like she could be focusing on a BINGO card, a woman about 70 or so years old was singing, too.  A sweet, crooning soprano.  Incongruous with her looks, which were decidedly ordinary.  In a sequined gown and with different hair, she could have been a torch singer in a smoky bar way back when.   She and the pianist traded songs—she did a seductive, teasing “Mack the Knife,” about twenty minutes after The World’s Most Dangerous Polka Band performed their significantly more oom-pah rendition.  These performers may look old on the outside, but they’re still young at heart.  My cockles were warmed by that, somehow (in between chills down my back from the impending polka—pardon the pun, but soon I’d have to face the music in a very literal way).  Likewise the manager, who wore a robin’s-egg colored blazer from the mid-1980’s, a bouffant Amy Winehouse would have envied, and earrings to match.  Somehow, the look worked.  I don’t think it would have anywhere else, though.  We ordered sausage and pierogis—stodgy, Polish food.  Starch wrapped in more starch and served with sauerkraut and as far as I could tell, and it made my stomach feel violated inside—like I had committed some awful gastronomic sin by placing nothing that could even be loosely termed a vegetable within gut’s reach.  At least we weren’t dancing.  Yet.  I waited.  Dinner continued.  I plied my girlfriend with beer, and encouraged her to eat more—if I could just get her to the point where she was too full to move, I could maybe avoid the dreaded dancing.  I even ordered a chunk of chocolate cake the size of a small dog for dessert (I would probably have done this anyway, but we’re remembering it as a strategic choice, to provide an insurance policy against having to actually dance).

Time’s up.  I’ve stalled enough—it’s been nearly two hours, and I’m on borrowed time.  Oddly, as the prospect of bouncing up and down in a bar full of middle-to-not-so-middle-aged patrons dressed like normal people (no ruffles!  No lederhosen!  Just mom jeans and the intoxicated “fun” dads from anyone’s elementary school soccer league to be seen!  Even young people! This….doesn’t seem so bad after all…) nears, I’m warming to it.  Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been in the Mrs.’s beer, or the food, or the old pianist and his beautiful voice and the manager’s blue Golden Girls blazer, or a truly impressive sugar high from the cake, or even the faint glimmer of my long-dormant sense of fun, but I’m ready.  I’ve made my peace with this last shred of my concept of myself as somehow “above” polka—too cool, you know—being a distant memory after tonight.  I’ve had my last meal as a polka virgin.  I’m starting to perk my ears up, since I heard the opening strains of “Roll Out the Barrel.”  They’re playin’ my song.  So, I tell my girlfriend I’m ready.  She has to use the restroom.  I let her go.  She’s gone a while.  In between wondering if she’s ok, a terrible thing happens—the band takes a break.  And I have to work the next morning, and write about this as well, and I finally got what I had been angling for all evening—we weren’t dancing—but I was struck by disappointment.  It felt unfinished, really.  Cabbage smell, heavy starchy food—it didn’t matter anymore.  I wanted to dance (finally!), and I had missed my opportunity!  We walked back out into the chilly night, over to my car, and we decided we’d try again soon.  Only next time, no pierogis.  Or, no pierogis followed by a hunk of chocolate cake that deserves its own zip code.