Train Travel, December. 2013

Good morning!

I arrived home at nine last night after a train trip up and back to Concord, CA. to visit my son Ben for Christmas. 

I'll just record a few impressions gathered along the way.

Train travel is much less charged with anxiety than air travel.  Doesn't make much sense, given the gruesome reports we've lately had from crashes in the news...but it's the truth: as soon as that smooth roll-out begins in the station, you can just feel the spirit of pleasure spread throughout the train.  People just relax, and look around them with the happy anticipation of children.

Amtrak has improved its service, by and large, since I was last on the train fifteen years ago.  There's more communication, and more politeness. Of course, the last time I went it was on the Southwest Chief, and who knows if it's still bad on there...

This was a Pacific coast trip, and people were trying very hard to keep things efficient and happy.
The first part of my journey, toward the north, was very well managed. The shift from one train to another in LA was well managed with a cheerful Mexican people-mover driver who shuttled me rapidly to a good lounge with coffee, breakfast (if a commercial muffin is a breakfaast)...and newpapers.  And as promised he came back to get me when my train was due and whisked me to my roomette, where I spent most of the day.

I ate lunch early since I'd been up since four, and had a pleasant meal of salad and chile and blood-orange sorbet. The quality of the meal was about that of a Denney's, I'd say, but clean and quite edible.  After lunch the attendant in my car made my roomette into a bed, and I snoozed for three hours, more or less, before arising. He made the bed back into chairs for the rest of the trip, and when I decided that I didnt want to hazard the 3-car trip to the diner again, he brought me my chosen supper of a child's meal (Kosher hot dog), mashed potatoes, and string beans, plus more sorbet as they were out of the vanilla pudding.  It was dark by then and I gazed out the window till the train arrived in Martinez and Ben picked me up.

Coming home was another story, as my mother would have had it.  I chose the confused inland route because it gets one home three hours earlier than the direct one. Don't ask me why; I dont understand it. You get a morning's ride in a coach car, a one-p.m. change to a bus, with arrival at blase Union Station at four, and another train ride from there at five until eight.

When I got to Santa Fe Station in San Diego at eight, I found that my bag had preceded me.  It was inside in the waiting room already. I am still puzzled about that. How can it be?  If my bag, which was accepted onto the same train in Martinez that I rode on, how could it have eluded el bos and arrived in San Diego earlier than eight? And if it could, and it obviously did, why shouldnt I be enabled to follow the same route? Curiouser.

The only hitch in the whole works is that I was already tired by the time I was in LA. It was a pleasure to see the Union Station again, always a place of interest, but it was only by my own initiative and not waiting to be called as they told me, that I was able to grab my own people-mover and be taken to my train on time.  But carrying my ten-ton purse around is difficult, and the extra handbag though light is another preoccupation. So by the time I was on the train to SD, I was very tired.  I'd made a chicken sandwich in Concord, to bring along, and a very nice lady on the train gave me a burrito (small) that she'd made in her kitchen in Richmond, so I was adequately fed.  On the rushing stop-and-start Surfliner train from LA to SD, the attendant gave me a bag with lots of little snack packages, and my choice of water, soda, or wine. I chose water.

Upon arrival, I was told that my bag would be inside perhaps and that I would get it and the taxi afterward...I was the last person from my train to look for a taxi, and there was one man left.  He was cheerful and an efficient driver, and got me home by nine.  Thus concluded my train journey.

The only real question in all this is ME. Do I have the endurance that it takes for an all-day battle with my possessions, my physical limitations (having to go to the bathroom), my reluctance to use the train stairs or go too many cars to the food car...do I??? In general, though, I'd say that the service on Amtrak was very good, and that the people on board in general were polite, relaxed, and happier than fliers.  YAZZYBEL

Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today I made chocolate chip cookies from almond flour.  The other ingredients were oil ( I used almond), chocolate chips, agave syrup, vanilla, a nip of baking soda, and a tiny nip of salt. That's all.
A very vegan dish.

They are quite tasty, and their only fault is delicacy. The second panful came out stronger because I added another 1/2 cup of almond flour to the mix. They came out of the pan better but were less sweet. It was okay , though, because most cookies nowadays are too sweet anyway.

These cookies are gluten free, wheat free, animal product free, and altogether pristine and innocent. They bake up nicely and look good.  Would I just as soon have them as regular wheaten cookies with eggs, etc, in the mix? Yes!  I am going to send some to my son and grandkids and they'll probably arrive in the form of crumbs. I'll see what I can do to protect them, but--

At church now, we are offered gluten free communion wafers at a separate little station from the glutinous throng. I always go to the gluten free station on the principle that it's there, take advantage of it. The gluten free wafers taste terrible, not that the others are any better.  But we are not supposed to be thinking of taste, at the Holy Table. Are we?       YAZZYBEL

Banh Mi

Good morning!

Last night I was a bit hungry at around four in the evening,  so I went to pursue the Banh Mi at the local Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Hiep and Grill.
This cafe is in a strip mall near my house, the same strip mall where I get my hair done, often, and where I go to the supermarket.  Theo and I used to eat at the "pho" from time to time, and would have eaten there more often had he been not so dedicated as a meat and  potatoes guy.  But now they have put the Banh Mi on the menu, which he would have appreciated.

The restaurant is pretty; as you go in the door you are confronted with a waterfall running down a tall panel of embossed glass.  There are quite a few table, neat and clean wood, with dark wood chairs. All the dishes used are white. Pho, if you get that, is served in huge half-sphere white bowls.  With nearly any meal you get a little dish of hot sauce and a little dish of sauce with carrot and jicama in it, with a sweetish water-vinegar sauce.

The Banh Mi is the "Vietnamese Sandwich," which is a pretty standard sandwich on a French baguette, using whatever kind of meat you choose (I had the ham/sausage one) plus the usual graceful Vietnamese garnish of grated carrots and herbs. There was absolutely no dressing on the sandwich of any sort, and it tasted pretty good that way.

The menu said that if I ate the sandwich in the restaurant it would come with chicken broth plus a side of chicken salad.  What more could you want? I ate the hot clear soup.  I nibbled the refreshing Vietnamese chicken salad, which is shredded chicken plus shredded cabbage and other leaves and carrots and herbs with the lightest imaginable dressing of vinegar, perhaps, and water.  It was sprinkled with sauteed green onion slices and peanuts.  Very delicious.

The Banh Mi waited in state on its white plate. It was on a narrow French baguette cut in two, with plenty of ham and so forth.  I could only eat half, and could only eat half of the salad too.  SO, when I finish this I am going to go to the refrigerator and have my lunch, which I brought home at five o'clock last night.  Oh, and I had a fresh lemonade too, with the thinnest slice of green lime in it. Everything was just perfect.  YAZZYBEL

Out of Inspiration

Sister no. 5 tells me I'm overdue to write on my blog.

I just don't seem to have much to say. I came home from my trip refreshed and looking at things with new eyes...but something has bogged me down again.

Not that I feel so sad and lost any more (except at dusk).  No, I just feel rather aimless and complacent here in my peignoir.  Not even a green parrot to keep me interested.  I want to be somewhere else but I don't know where it is.  Doing something else but I sure dont know what that is either. Drifting towards Thanksgiving and Christmakkah, as they call it on the radio.   This is not good, but we aren't supposed to judge our lives.

 So I am not judging, just noting.  "I'm just sayin'." YAZZYBEL

Oh, there's the Range!

A long number of years ago, after a very difficult and traumatic passage in my life, I mounted a plane in Brownsville, Texas.  My parents had bought my ticket, and I learned as the day went by that it included nine stops before the eventual arrival in Denver, Colorado.

It was a beautiful Texas June day, sunny and clear, and as we journeyed northward, and went down in every possible stop we could take in Texas, and a few more, it became afternoon and we were flying I guess over Kansas, and I was becoming more and more frazzled from the unfamiliarity of travel and so many landings and take-offs. I felt nervous and fatigued, and wondered if we'd ever arrive in Denver, Colorado.

In midafternoon an older lady boarded the plane and sat next to me by the window. I'd been looking out all day at oil reservoirs, square planes of fields in greens and yellow and browns, so wasn't interested in the window seat.  She was pleasant and chatty, and it turned out that she was the mother of the rector of the Episcopal Church in Colorado Springs, our next to the last stop. She was so nice that I positively began to enjoy my trip, and as we talked I began to unwind a bit, distracted.  After a time, she looked up from her knitting and remarked with pleasure, "Oh, there's the Range!"

I looked out the window and had the surprise of my life.  Up from the flat terrain  that we'd been flying over all day, sprang--the Rocky Mountains! All of a sudden, just like that!  Vistas that I'd never imagined!  Huge, spiky, rocky, jutting up into the sky in blues and greys and whites, for the afternoon had turned cloudy now...They sprang up out of nowhere, for me. I didn't know what I'd expected of Colorado, but the reality of the huge prospect was truly overwhelming.

The lady got off the plane in Colorado Springs, her family with son in clerical collar and straw hat, looking just like Robert Morley in The African Queen, teenagers standing by too...for airports were very different things in those days and greeters would wait outside by the fenced gate for the arrivers...and I never saw her again.  Off she went, leaving me with one immortal phrase of pleasure and discovery: "Oh, there's the Range!"

When I left Denver 3 days ago, I had the great pleasure of flying over the snow-covered peaks of the  Range again on a clear bright midday. And I remembered the past and the old lady.  Lesson learned: we never know what's going to turn up for us to know, to learn, to love, to wonder at. 

That was the great gift of my trip this month.  You never know.  There's a range I have not even imagined before me. There are choices to be made, but nobody is hurrying me.  I came home calm, ready to make the decisions when I have to. YAZZYBEL

Stranger in a Strange Land

Here I am, ici, (I say ici because I can get the radio in French at some place on the dial at night)...anyway, at this moment, ici in Cedar Rapids am I.

I have been a stranger ever since I left my house in Chula Vista nearly 2 weeks ago.  It's strange. I have never traveled and felt to be in a strange place, just because I wasn't at home. I think now it's different because there is no home; no person at all waiting for me or holding down the fort. I was kind of single in the eighties but I had the kids in and out to tie me to something.

Now I am eager to go home but who will be there to say HI?   The teenaged boy next door who's coming over to feed the cat and water my kale plants.  Perhaps. The cat Himself, perhaps. He'll be offended and not want to be friendly.  Perhaps. He's had about all the abandonment he can take this year.  He nearly went bonkers when Theo went to the hospital and didn't return.  I hope he's glad to see me and forgives me and lets me brush him.  The bite he gave me on my hand before I left is hardly visible. (He couldn't help it.)

Will a different person walk into the house than walked out of it? I won't know until I do.  I have passed time in two houses as different from each other as houses could possibly be. I have related to my sister, her husband, my son, my daughter in law, and my grandchildren. I am ready to take my burden upon myself again, by myself again. I hope. Lots of decisions to be made. Lots of new possibilities on the horizon. 

I am physically a bit weaker than I was when I left home: not good. That's because I have not been doing anything but loll around and watch TV or read, since I came to Cedar Rapids.  There are things out there to do perhaps but I have not done them.  Note to self: next time, rent a car whether you want to or not.  I need to stop writing for a while now so I can walk around in a circle through the LR, front hall, DR, and kitchen and back here again.  So will sign off.  Someone will sign on and write this blog after I get home.  Exciting to see who will do that!  I'll let you know. YAZZYBEL

Movies and Memories

Yesterday, Cyclo arrived in the mail. I watched it, and I need to watch it again as I was in my exhaustion phase and fell asleep during my nap. So I did not see it all, but I saw enough to know that it is the "dark" side of life as compared to the other two films in the trilogy. They are about home and family and love and relationships.  Cyclo, about a poor young man who has to drive a bicycle-taxi about the streets of Ho Chi Min City in order to support his sisters and grandfather, shows the other side: street life, gang life, prostitution, illness, and violence.  It is hard to watch and I will watch it again.  Just not today.

I love the other two films because they reminded me of so many things about my childhood, and show me again why I feel such a closeness with the older Indian films too. People live simple lives.  They make life beautiful where they can do so, with gardens, and their possessions if they are lucky enough to have any.  Old people look old, like the Aunty in Pather Panchali, so old you wonder how they can make it, creeping around from day to day trying to find something to eat. The weather is hot.  It rains, huge tropical rains with drops the size of fifty cent pieces like the ones I used to watch falling onto the canna lilies when I was little.
     In the Vietnamese movies, there are always people coming around. Coming around to sell things, to borrow things, to bring things, to take away things, knock knock knock...in our world we'd hear the sound of a little man who went in a truck to sell vegetables and fruits...toot toot on the corner and you went out to see what he had to sell.
There was the piruli man, who had a big cone of paper and stuck into it were little cones of paper-wrapped candy, sweet and soft.  We loved pirulis and I would like to have one this minute.

There were bakers who would come and knock and take you out to their cars where there were trays of breads and rolls..and how good they were.
And at night--the serenaders!! Bands of strolling musicians, usually four violins, would come around. You'd hear them softly playing in the front yard, and you'd all go out front to listen in the dark, while someone in the house grumpily scrounged around for change to give them.  If you gave them something, they'd play another tune; if not, they'd move on.

In Mexico City, there was a huge enormous music box, a beautiful and complicated machine, that used to come around in the Colonia where we lived. I'll never forget the main tune it played, and just thinking of it transports me back to those evenings. 

And in Vietnam, in the movies I saw there were so many animals in the gardens of the houses...little lizards, and different kinds of frogs and toads.  We had them too...we had Mediterranean geckos (though nobody in my family knew the name of them then) which actually sang a beautiful little musical call...they were shy sweet creatures with big eyes and soft bodies with little tubercles all over.  I was sung to sleep by them many a night when I was very small.

Nowadays nobody hears those little animals or is very aware if they are around. Perhaps children are...I am told that the geckoes are no more, finally finished off by the deep winter freezes that Global Warming has produced.  But I'll bet somebody has them still.  Lucky them.

You have to go outside and forget the air-conditioning for a while in order to find out. You have to look for the vacant lots in order to find the tortoises that we used to encounter by the dozens as kids...and the water turtles too, big lumbering creatures.  But now they all have less natural habitat to proliferate in.  People have chopped down lots of the mesquite brush to use for BBQ wood.  The resacas are tamed in the City of Brownsville, I guess totally.  It isn't raining as much lately and the winters are colder. 

But there are parrots! Lots of little green Mexican parrots took a tip from their 2-legged compatriots and came across the border illegally.  There are flocks of them all over Brownsville, Texas, or so I hear.

And there are alligators.  Really, there are.  I am just going to have to go back to visit, to see if there really are any alligators, or little geckos, or strolling musicians left in this world, outside of old movies.  YAZZYBEL