Smorgasbord

I'm thinking tonight of restaurants that have dotted my memory.  When I was a boy, from ages 5-10, I lived in a small town in the center of Wyoming.  I remember going every Sunday to the Teton Lodge, a restaurant inside the hotel in the center of town.  Normally, I would order the open-faced roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes.  I can taste it even now.  The roast was so tender.

The restaurant I remember most from my junior high years is a cafeteria in Arlington, Texas, the Colonial Cafeteria.  Every Friday, because my parents were too tired to cook, we went out to eat.  Most of the time there I would eat the ground sirloin steak patty.  I would get it with its natural broth poured over it.  For dessert I would always get the Eagle Brand lemon pie.  So delicious.

By far, the restaurant I went to most in high school was Kip's Big Boy Restaurant.  It was a hamburger place that had the equivalent of a Big Mac before Bid Macs were a part of MacDonald's menu.  The guys from the basketball team frequented the place.  We would go there after the games on Friday nights and sometimes on Tuesdays.  It was the Thousand Island dressing they used in the place of mayonnaise that lingered on my taste buds.

In my 20s I would visit a place called Daniels on a regular basis.  It was only a few blocks from where I lived.  Their chicken fried steaks were to die for.   Lots of crust, lots of gravy, mashed potatoes with cream gravy also, a roll and corn.  It was always finger-smackin' good.

From then on, money flowed a little more freely, so I was fortunate enough to eat at many places.  There are some standouts, however.  There's really not a better flavor for steaks than the steaks served at Outback.  The seafood at Red Lobster is hard to beat even if you visit a coastal city and eat at a local restaurant. I have tried to eat at some really fancy restaurants like Aquarium and some celebrity owned ones like Planet Hollywood.  I have eaten at some chain restaurants on foreign soil like Hard Rock Cafe, Cancun, and a whole host of local color restaurants in states strung out from Washington to Maine.

Besides the fact that I love a well cooked meal, I think they represent something for me.  They help me place my important memories in space and time.  Those memories, too, are flavorful.  The people in them added meaning to my life and made me who I am today.  Along those lines, then, the "flavor" of three restaurants best all others - The Rainforest, La Hacienda, and Little Italy.  Sacred ground, those restaurants, till the day I die.

Enjoying my milkshakes

Once in a while I swing by Baskin Robbins to get a milkshake.  I go to Baskin's because of a particular ice cream that I want used in the shake - Jamoca.  I don't drink coffee anymore, but I do like that flavor still in my shakes.

As I look back on my life and realize that some things have not made it forward to the present, I also see that some things served as a foundation for some of the little pleasures and left a trace that they had been there once. So many past likes in my life have disappeared with no trace.

Today I stopped by a Baskin Robbins and bought a Jamoca milkshake.  The flavor of coffee made my day as did the traces in my memory of some past, sweet days that have indelibly stamped my present stage in life.

Sweet translation

There's always more than one way to say something. Translation work shows this principle best and interjections or expletives highlight the difference. Spanish speakers use ojala when they are excited that something is about to happen. They anticipate the event, counting on the event to happen and meet all their expectations.

Usually, ojala is translated as "hopefully." But that doesn't really capture the excitement and anticipation of the Spanish phrase. Hopefully is much too casual. It has too much que sera sera in it to be a decent translation. "I hope so" is the sister translation if one wants to expand beyond the single word to a word phrase. But even that leaves out the expectant factor of ojala. Perhaps "I can't wait" is an equivalent phrase for ojala, but it's a phrase rather than a one word equivalent. I think when people are anticipating something good for themselves, they smile and say "Sweet!" with great emphasis. Sometimes people will become really animated when they think something great is coming their way. They'll exclaim, "Yes!"

So, "sweet," "yes," and "can't wait" are sometimes the best translation choices for ojala. I've never heard it translated those ways, but that's because the Spanish phrase is a stock phrase, so it is set in stone. Translators want to make the matching English translation a stock phrase as well. So, if they can make it a one-word translation, they feel like they have achieved their objective. Of course, they have fallen short for the reasons stated.

I look at life's experiences in much the same way. It seems that people want to duplicate good experiences. So, they find some experiences that relate somehow and they're satisfied. But when I have an experience that I want duplicated, I will not use a stock phrase that doesn't capture all the same aspects.

And when I speak of that one experience in life that I have faith will recur, then I use the word that captures all the aspects I need. Ojala. But for friends who won't use Google translator, allow me to translate for  you... "Sweet!!!"

Distant twinkles

It's been a while.

I can still see the twinkling lights across the lake from my place on Lake Travis.  I would sit on the back deck overlooking the lake around midnight and gaze at the lights shimmering from their reflection in the water and twinkling from the actual houses where they were.  Double contentment.

I also have some definite associated memories with those glistening lights of  a time in Camelot when life was noble and there was life and light along my shore... a light that glowed... a light that was splendorously distinct from the darkness... a light that relaxed the fabric of my soul... one that centered me... one that I could see reflected in every experience... so, double contentment.

It's been a while.

Alike

On a particular day of the week when I go to work, I look across to the far end of the parking lot from where I park.  The car is usually in a different parking space, but it's always there.  It's not there on any other day of the week.  I look over at it because it reminds me of my own station in life.

I see the car, but don't go very near it.  Only once have I passed by it.  It was the first time I saw it on the parking lot.  I was on my way to Dairy Queen close by my workplace and didn't see it because I was looking the opposite direction.  So, I almost bumped into it.  It was hard to see inside the car because kerchiefs and dirty, worn towels covered the windows.

Inside the car was all the man owned - a couple of bundles of clothes, close-to-disintegrated sandals, coats with holes, bottles, food wrapped in paper, a can of beans or two.  The man himself was gray-headed, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, heavily bearded, and asleep (at midday).  The paint on the car was splotched, showing the paint of a couple of different layers, and looked to be a model from the early 90s.

Of course, I wonder what his life's story is.  But, no matter what it is, I am sure it is the human story.  Something brings us to the place we are in life.  Good things and bad come to us regardless of our position in life or of our location along the journey that takes us to our final destination.  I have a feeling the man is doing his best.  He may even be happy, living life with no regrets.

He and I are alike in that.  Whatever people see on the outside, my goal is to be content, doing the best I know how.

Time for landscaping

In one phase of my life, I lived in a house for 13 years.  I didn't really do anything to it as far as landscaping went - for the whole 13 years.  I did put a pool in the back yard after the first two years, but didn't really landscape the yard around it.  I did maintain the two trees that grew in the back yard.  They grew strong, tall, and thick over the years.  The bushes and trees in the front of the house maintained their luster.  And, the grass was cut and green during the summers.  Cooking barbequed meats was a pleasure under the roof of the patio, but I never really changed the patio's looks either.

I look back on that and see that it represented what I was doing in life.  I maintained the seeds of what had been engendered within me since childhood.  I added something pleasurable to my life that would add sparkle to it.  And, one season of the year the house looked really nice.

I don't live in that house anymore.  But, I have seen how much could have been done.  Of course, there's always a reason why nothing did get done.  Mainly my kids were growing up and any large amounts of time spent were dedicated to taking them places or spending time with them, their friends, and their events.

But, now... there is another agenda for me.  I can spend large portions of time however I want to spend them.  My landscape will better reflect the more aesthetic things in life and the more meaningful things.  I need to plant something in the right places that will grow.  I need to nourish what is in place or change the look altogether to a view more to my liking.  I need to invest in plants that return year after year.  And I need to make the overall look something attractive so that return on investment (resale) is always enhanced.  The housing market will someday be very conducive to turning a large profit.

No dinosaurs allowed

I drove up in the driveway to the house.  Immediately lights on the exterior of the garage and the porch light came on.  As I walked up the entry way to stand at the door, I could hear a voice inside announcing my presence by name.  I heard a click on the door and the voice from the speaker on the outside of the door softly spoke "Welcome."  The door was open, so I walked in.  The light in the entry way came on.  My phone vibrated as the projected 2- inch picture of my host appeared in 3-D, saying, "I'm almost through in the bathroom.  Be there in 5.  Have a seat and tell the TV what you want to watch."  I sat down and said, "Scandal."  The TV flashed on and asked, "Which episode?"

On the way out after supper, I noticed the pictures in the art niches in the wall.  In one niche, the artwork changed every 10 minutes.  They were beautiful pictures - paintings and photographs that had been digitized.  If I wanted one of the pictures to stay for more than 10 minutes, all I had to do was to say the name of the picture and give the amount of time I wanted it to stay present.  In a second niche, 3-D holographic images appeared every 10 minutes of famous sculptures and monuments like The Thinker and The Leaning Tower of Pisa.  The same voice command worked for them too.

There was more, of course.  I loved it.  Can't wait to see the 22nd century.   Ri-i-i-ght, I should live so long.

What's taught and what's true

Things plague me that probably shouldn't. When things are supposed to be one way, then suddenly they aren't that way, then it bothers me. I guess that has to do with trying to live life in the best possible way based on the information we have available to us. And it bothers me even more when people continue thinking in the vein of what changed when clearly the change has made something very different.

A number of examples can be cited. In history, I was taught how great a president Lincoln was. But, through the years, I have come to see that he barely won his presidency, and his administration was every bit as divisive as any that have existed in modern times. In English, I was taught that "proper" language was the basis of a good education. The truth is that educated people speak pretty much like everyone else their age, and the notion of "proper" is associated with a dying breed of grammarians who had delusions of a golden age of education in the country. In education, I was taught that having a solid foundation with a liberal arts education would propel me into the future with a solid base of financially appearing better than those without a complete education. But, the job market is much more complex than reduction to a platitude. Many with lesser amounts of education than I have are doing quite well and sport a higher level of quality of life than I will ever achieve. In geology, Tectonic Plate Theory is still new enough that many discount its ramifications that the Earth's crust has evolved over a really long period of time. In theology, I was taught that the Bible pretty much came from heaven. But it has a traceable history, signs of borrowing from sectarian culture, and a hint that politics determined some of the outcome of the books in it.

I watch many documentaries about what archaeologists have found from the ancient world. The more we dig, the more we find that it is a silly notion to think that the world of prehistory was crude. Toilets and hot/cold water capability was found in the Minoan civilization in the third millennium BCE. Cities have been found underground in beautifully carved caves, underwater with precision cut stones for highways and fortifications, and under existing towns with gold and weaponry in their burial sites. Relics have been found from humans at the time of the disappearance of the last ice age. Paintings have been found in cavern systems that illustrate the life and environment of people around 30,000 BCE. Three different species of humans inhabited the Earth at the same time, albeit a short time.

I guess my main beef is that all the changes make truth "a hard deer to hunt," to use Stephen Vincent Binet's term from his short story By the Waters of Babylon. I walk on a shifting foundation. What I thought I could count on turns out to be relative. That does something to my thinking. It makes me tentative.

Then again, who gave me the idea that I live in a black and white world anyway? I was one of the people that was taught that the world was stable and certain and dependable. I just need to forget that and move on with my life.

Miles

There was before me,
Mile up on mile
Of snow, ice, burning sand.
And yet I could look beyond all this,
To a place of infinite beauty;
And I could see the loveliness of her.
When I gazed,
And in my gazing, desired,
Then came again
Mile upon mile,
Of snow, ice, burning sand.

Stephen Crane

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It is so true that the desires of one's heart, the desires of a lifetime, are miles and miles away, and that only through burning sand and ice can one reach them - if he survives.  There is no doubt but that my vision is clear.  I just can't seem to overcome the miles even if I have walked a million of them already.

But my heart says to have faith.  So I will.

Pristine

Since nothing is 100%, I suppose not everyone does, but it seems to me that most people want the peaceful, serene, and pristine life - like a very private house on a winter day secluded among mountain peaks. One can wake up on a snow-set morning and gaze upon ice crystals covering the peaks, trees, and everything else surrounding the house. Who wouldn't?

Life is not always cruel, but it has a way of giving us desires even if only seeing them as dreams, or it allows a stroll down a path to see a spectacular setting, then quickly turning away from the splendor, leading to something much more mundane.

I prefer to live the unquestioned life, wholly compatible with someone who gets what I'm about, in a private house on a winter day, surrounded by snow-covered trees and peaks. Who wouldn't?

At present, though, the splendor-filled scene of my preference has twisted to the more mundane realities of living. Somewhere down the path, life will turn back eventually. I will venture upon a scene of splendor around some corner up ahead. I just need to keep the picture in front of my eyes until I make that corner turn. Then, talk about pristine...

Reading tea leaves

On the weather segment of the news tonight, the forecaster showed a disturbance in the upper atmosphere halfway between Siberia and Alaska. The computer that tracks storms from this area spit out 3 scenarios for the movement of the disturbance. According to one of the models, my area should get a soaking rain next Sunday. According to a second model, rain will come next Sunday, but the front bringing it will blow right through without leaving much rain. The third scenario shows the front coming through too far north to bring any rain at all. Weather forecasting is inexact still after many years of refining the technique of reading radar and clouds.

 And such are the days of our lives. Our minds can easily run some possible scenarios of what the future holds given the variables that face us each routinely. Some years are so out of kilter with the rest of the years, that it is impossible to predict what will happen very far down the road. Other years are much more stable and allow us to predict with accuracy what the next few months will be like.

 I've looked off the coast of Alaska on my horizon. But, I know that where I am now is temporary. Predicting the movement of disturbances and their timing for my area is still enigmatic, but I do know that spring is coming. It comes every year, and most of the time it is wet. Last year, not so much. The rain came early this year. Spring is early too. Rains should come in June. I'm running the models in my mind. But I'm living for the precipitation of June. Till then... chin up.