Scenes from Plays and Letters

Tomorrow's the last show. We came into Chile two weeks ago. There was an overnight stop in Mendoza along the way. We checked into the room at the beginning of my last tour and went out for a drink. Simon and I found a place in a row of bars, nothing special at all but a nice place to talk about what was coming next for a while. Obviously, this has been the running theme throughout the tour: what I'm going to do next. My castmates all have their vague ideas, and I mine, only mine are much closer to becoming reality. On that night, sharing a pitcher of Fernet and Coke with Simon, my castmate I still didn't have any real answers, there's little to plan without actually being back in the states, but as the date of my departure from the company neared I weighed my words a little more. I didn't bound around so carelessly through ideas and dreams. I through seriously, what would I do next. There still didn't seem to be an answer, but it didn't bother me too much. I was happy just to have another moment to think about it. The next morning, we got up early and left for Chile. The border was beautiful. The crossing point was at the top of a mountain pass in the Andes. I was held back for not having my visa up to date and the company had to pay the three-hundred peso fine. It took us a while to work this out, since we were first under-charged and the officer didn't want me to get through without paying the whole fine. Fair enough. When we finally passed through we had to make our way down the pass. There was a switchback road that must've looped around a good twenty times on it's way back to the bottom of the canyon. Everyone leaned to one side of the van and took pictures. The landscape was high desert, a beautiful scene of tall saguaro-like cacti and khaki-colored rocks stacked up to an empty blue sky. The silence was almost complete. After a few more hours of driving the cliffs leveled out as we approached Santiago. We didn't stop, but continued driving south toward Concepcion, a college town about three hours south of the massive capital. Concepcion didn't seem to be anything at ten o'clock on a Sunday night. We got out of the van and stood in the silent street outside the hotel, listening to the beeping crosswalk signal. We commented how annoying such things are and that at night, they had the import of an appliance left on after everyone has left the house, a crackling radio, an endless television soliloquy. In the morning, the city looked totally different. There were people out and the sounds of traffic could be heard outside the hotel. We had nothing to do until the evening set-up at the theater. I stayed on the computer writing e-mails well into the morning. Around ten o'clock, after too much instant coffee and typing, I went out into the city to mail a letter. I meant to put my headphones on, but found myself feeling too comfortable. I walked down the shady sidewalks and thought of little except the peace of smaller cities. I was headed toward the campus, as from a map, it looked like it led out into the deciduous forest that surrounded the town. I was hoping the campus would have some kind of interpretive trail, or just some kind of trail at all. It did, but it was blocked off with a sign saying not to pass due to danger of fire. I tried to ignore the sign, but having no idea what could've been back on the trail--there was a kennel of German Shepards near the trail head--I decided to try to find another. Every trail I found had a similar sign. I found a little one that didn't, but it ended in a cloud of yellow flower bushes. While the profusion of color was incredible, it was also disappointing because it impeded further investigation. After wandering around the campus for a while I found the main library. I had to ask to be let in as a visitor. Going straight up to the fiction section I found one book in English, a two-volume set about a 19th century exploration of Tibet and the surrounding areas. It was obviously someone's life's work replete with sketches and daguarrotypes by the author. I handled it with the reverence it deserved and read about the death of one of his porters, thinking of what it must've been like to be one of the people who devoted their life to charting the world around them and how through the efforts of such people we have Onstar and Google maps today. When I left the library, the sun was shining. I found another trail leading out of one of the northern corners of campus and decided to ignore the prohibito sign. I hadn't gone too far when I came across a backpack lying at the top of a little trail I had followed. I decided just to turn around since there were some things spread out around the backpack. It seemed like someone was trying to make it known that they were there and didn't want to be disturbed. I turned around and followed another trail, within five minutes finding myself in the same place, only now approaching it from a larger trail. This time, I decided that whomever had left this stuff in the middle of the trail had probably just been lazy. I stepped over it and continued down the path. I hadn't taken more than a few steps when a sheepish looking student goes running past me. I said hola to him as he passed. He returned my greeting and I assumed that he was trying to get back to his things, perhaps thinking that I signalled the beginning of a mob of hikers coming down the path or something. I glanced ahead to see where the trail went and saw a girl, also college age hurriedly putting her dress back on over her head. "Ahhh, so that's what it was." I felt slightly sorry to interrupt, but damn, they were right in the middle of the trail. I passed the girl not knowing whether to say hola or not. Since she didn't meet my eyes, I decided that to do so would just be harassing her. I continued on the trail until I came to a slight rise, there, standing slightly behind a pine branch was a groundskeeper for the university. I said hola to him and he returned my greeting, making no attempt to hide that he had been watching the goings on below. I walked on, somewhat put off by the lurid scene, beginning to feel like I had walked into a David Lynch movie set I shrugged it off and kept going, but it wasn't long before I came to a dead end. Dismayed, I found that I had no choice but to turn back. I thought to myself that surely the students had called it off, or at least moved after I had gone by. The groundskeeper hadn't moved at all. I could tell by the way that he was no looking eagerly ahead that the salacious pair had resumed their activities, if not in the same place, at least close enough to provide this pervert with the luxury of not having to change his peeping location. Sure enough, as I glanced up the path, I saw the girl once again hurriedly putting her skirt on over her head. When I reached the couple, they remained where they were the boy had a camera and seemed to be taking a picture of the, now clothed, girl's thigh. It was later suggested to me that perhaps they had been doing some kind of art project, which is entirely possible. Even considering this, I could not quite shake the vaguely sick feeling I had after witnessing the scene. Especially, because I'm pretty sure that the couple must've been able to see the groundskeeper from his lousy hiding place. When I came back down from the trails, I looked at all the other students going about their studies. I was glad that they all had their clothes on and tried to imagine that they were all very religious and celibate. I didn't want to have to think about how many others were going to sneak into the woods later so that janitor could watch. My trip to campus hadn't been completely terrible. I did find one short little trail that had a beautiful waterfall at its end. I took a few pictures of it and told myself that I would bring my castmates to it after we had finished setting up that evening. I never got the chance. After we finished the set up and my castmate and I put our swords together we decided to run the Tybalt/Romeo fight scene to make sure we remembered the whole thing since it had been months since we'd had to perform the play. While we struggled, I discovered that, not only had I forgotten some of the moves; I had forgotten most of my lines as well. With a little coaxing most of them came back, but there were still a few gaps. Instead of going back to the waterfall, I decided to get a few beers and run over the lines a few times so I wouldn't look like a complete idiot the next day. Since then, I was able to do the Shakepeare play about 7 times. They all went well. We had the last show today. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't know that it would be the last show, as I would've liked too try to put a little more energy into it, but, even so, it was a great run and I'm glad I got to do what is surely our most entertaining play at least a few more times with some new gags that I added in, for example leaving the set and coming back on dressed as one of the characters from the play for young children: a seahorse to be specific. A few days later after shows in Rancagua and Vina del Mar we came into Santiago for the last week of the tour. We were all excited to find that instead of the usual hotel we would be staying in an apartment building downtown for the duration of our stay. The apartment is so much nicer than the hotels we usually stay in, mainly because its got cooking facilities. It's the first time that I've been on tour that I've been able to cook myself food, meaning that I'm not going to return to Buenos Aires ten pounds lighter. After we had gotten settled into the apartment we went out for a few drinks as it was Friday and we weren't going to have any work until Monday morning. We stayed in the bar a while. Smoking was permitted so I took full advantage and set myself back quite a ways in terms of the good health that I was already struggling to keep waking up every morning at five, doing shows until 3, taking everything down and getting back on the road again that same evening, only to repeat the process the next morning. It was a great night though, and waking up at 11 the next day with a slight headache, and feeling like an ashtray, I had nothing to regret. Friday and Saturday I visited the largest park in the city which is Cerro San Cristobal. Friday, I went there almost by accident after walking around all day seeing the city and having no idea what to do with myself. Since I didn't get to the park until twilight, I was able to see the sunset from on top of the mountain (cerro means hill, but in the case of Cerro San Cristobal it's more like a small mountain.) The view was incredible. The streets lit up far below me like an inverted night sky, only much brighter. The next evening, I went back again, vowing to see much more this time. I was a little weary of the many dogs that roamed that park since I had been bitten by one, completely unprovoked earlier that day and had been chased by another the night before. In the streets, I never worried about these dogs, but suddenly coming across one on an empty trail through the woods, I was slightly unnerved, especially when he began growling and barring his teeth, all the while advancing on me. I tossed a few rocks in his general direction hoping to scare him away but it didn't to much good. He watched the rocks skid by in the dust of the trail, almost aware that I had no intent to actually hit him. Somehow, I managed to get by without being bit a second time, but I picked up a stick soon after that and spent the rest of the day walking around with it. The stick served me well in the end because I had to use it twice, sort of sweeping it in a fan like motion to keep biting and growling dogs at bay. That night, I ended up walking another lonely trail. I was still slightly worried about suddenly coming face to face with a Doberman or something in the deserted park at night, but I was also slightly unnerved at the prospect that I might also meet a person out alone in the park at night. San Cristobal being nothing like a regular city park. It's so large they can't close it off at night and anyone could get in there. Given what I had seen of Chilean behavior on hiking trails in Concepcion, I was a little nervous. Still, the sight of the city below and the nearly full moon overhead gave me courage and I passed a few hours in the park at night, seeing nothing but some mendicant's fire which I observed after going up the trail toward the summit of the mountain. The fire was a little lower on the same trail, meaning that I had passed this person in the night and had never been aware of it, which, was a little spooky. Tomorrow, we'll have my last three shows with the company. I've had a great time working for them, but I'm happy to be going. It was fun to screw around a little more, but, at some point I realized that working for a travelling theater company in Argentina wasn't getting me any closer to where I wanted to be. I've been fortunate enough to have some pretty great adventures all over the world. And working as I did for the past year, I was able to add quite a few next experiences to the list. When I get back to California, I hope to continue acting, having found here that I really enjoy being on stage. The prospect of not having to repeat the same show over and over again is also very heartening and, as long as nothing happens tomorrow to put me off acting forever, I expect that I'll keep doing it in one capacity or another, as for what else I'm planning on doing, I still have no idea. Perhaps when Gina and I are going through Bolivia and Peru I'll be able to think of something.

Song of the South

It’s cloudy again. In Buenos Aires, August is a rainy month. It hasn’t rained for almost a week now, but it’s been cloudy. The apartment doesn’t get much light. When it’s cloudy it doesn’t get any. It’s like waking up in a cave: cold and dim. There’s even a dampness. I don’t know where it comes from, but I can tell by the way the cold seems to cling that it’s a damp cold. The construction equipment is running, which means it’s after 8 o’clock. When they finish the building in one area they start it in another. Every morning the air is rent with the sounds of steel being separated from steel. You can smell the ozone and oil in the air. The men yell to each other. Sleeping past 8, you risk being woken up into a bad mood. I look out the window to see where the sun is. Sometimes, even when the light coming through our windows is all old iron and dried bone, I look up between the buildings to find that the sky is blue. Today, it is cloudy. It’s nice because it’s cold. The clouds make you feel a little warmed when it’s cold. I get out of bed and make some coffee. When it’s percolating, I take it off the burner and pour it into two cups, both pastels, yellow and blue. Gina gets the yellow one. I place it on the bedside table for her and then I go out into the living room. There’s nothing in the living room so it feels cold and every sound is louder. My shoes clap on the parquet floor and I flop down on the polyester loveseat that’s always cold. I take my first drink of coffee and look around the room a little. Trying not to think in case part of a dream should come back to me or I should remember something in the unexpected way that you do in the morning. I think about work for a while, but dismiss it as a viable topic because I’ve been thinking about it too much lately and it’s an exhausted subject. A bar of Zippidy Do Da hums in the spaces between my thoughts, growing each time until it’s got words and even a video of a cartoon bird to go with it. In a short time, I find myself wondering about the part in the song where the bluebird leaves. I think about where he would’ve gone. It’s hard to stop thinking about stupid things like this sometimes. When Gina comes in, still half asleep and cradling her coffee mug like a talisman, I break from my reverie. We talk a little about our dreams. Both of us trying to remember and listen at once. The metal is being torn apart outside. We don’t try to talk over it, but pause as if it were a party of our conversation. I want more coffee before the cup is even empty. I want the warmth more than the caffeine, or even just the feeling of having a full cup of coffee; the feeling of the beginning of the morning when everything is still new and delicate. I think about going to the embassy, about going out into the cold and crushed streets. McDonald’s has been giving away free coffee all week. We can stop and get a cup on the way. That will bring back the new and delicate feeling, but it will only last an instant. We won’t have time to sit and rattle newspapers and drink our coffee in the beige McDonald’s dining area. We’ll have to drink it walking to the embassy. It’s never as good that way. At least the first few sips will be nice, before the cold gets in. We leave our apartment and walk down the echoing stairs. There is not enough room for us to walk abreast in the hallway so we walk single file. The echoing hallway and the smooth tile walls and walking in a line reminds me of being in elementary school. Outside, the air is almost always warmer. It’s the clouds and the lack of the cold building materials. The pneumatic breaks of the buses wheeze and whistle as they coast by. On the sidewalk, people in front walk at a slower pace and the people behind at a faster pace. The tendency is to walk in the gutter; it’s less circuitous and there’s not as much dog shit. Next door, the vegetable stand is displaying wooden boxes of produce from other parts of the country. It makes me think of the grapefruits I found by the side of the road when I went up north and how I sat in a field eating them. There is such a disconnect from the quiet places where these fruits and vegetables come from to the city street where they end up, the prices per kilo changing almost daily with inflation and crop quality. I wonder if we should walk a block over where the McDonald’s is. I can’t remember which block it’s on and I know there’s another further down past the intersection with Puereydonstreet. We decide to walk over to get our second cup of coffee earlier. As we walk, the coffee sloshes against the lid of the cup. When it sloshes up to where the small opening is it jettisons out and lashes the back of your hand and the edge of your sleeve. You lick the coffee from you hand or wipe it on your pant leg. The old cloth smell of it will build up in your sleeve and will constantly remind you of cold coffee and make you feel dirty throughout the day. At the end of the cup, when I have become thirsty enough to drink anything and I drink the cold, thick coffee grounds at the bottom and make myself even more thirsty. The Bolivian embassy is in one of the major commuter train stations. The area around it is ragged. There is a conglomeration of stalls around it that sell many things, but mostly cheap-looking underwear. People in Buenos Aires say that anyplace where cheap underwear is being sold is dangerous. So they deem this place. I have never seen anything happen here. Once, a few blocks away, I saw a kid handcuffed and sitting on the sidewalk, while two cops stood by, neither interested nor disinterested in him. Since I have been here, I have seen this scene repeated all over the city. It doesn’t make the city look dangerous, but rather like it has a conspicuous lack of police cars to take young offenders away. We have to thread our way through the stalls selling cheap underwear. Because I don’t know what the embassy will expect, I am in no hurry. I pass the stalls looking at the likenesses of Bart Simpson on nearly every pair, on the waistband is sewn “New Kids.” The combination of the two anachronisms bothers me. I get sick of walking through all the people. I begin to feel like I am pulling Gina along so I let her go and walk quickly alone, hoping that she will understand that it is too crowded and that there are too many pairs of generic Bart Simpson underwear for us to keep walking together. Walking alone makes me want to go faster and I begin taking larger strides trying to dodge between the others passing through or standing at the stalls. We reach the stairs of the embassy and I take Gina’s hand again, feeling pitiful for acting so badly under a modicum of discomfort. For a moment I’m happy; we are at the embassy and I feel a sense of accomplishment just to find it open. At the top of the stairs we confront a 60 or 70 person-long line which I am determined not to stand in. Usually, the tourist visa department is in a different section of the embassy far removed from the troubles of immigrants or people trying to get a copy of their birth certificate in another country. I pass the line. Gina and I are the only two non-Bolivians in the building. We are taller than everyone. Children run between the lines with their mothers running after them. It is difficult to see them coming because the mothers are usually shorter than the men waiting in line. Every room has some kind of heading, there’s a caja, an emigracionroom but nothing that mentions visas. I find the only window with no line in front of it and ask where we should go for visas. We find the room and go in. There are only a few people in this room, which leads me to think we are in the right place. A woman asks me what we are there for and I tell her we need tourist visas. She tells us we’ll have to wait about twenty minutes. I tell her OK and that we’ll be back. Outside, we find a bare space of sidewalk behind one of the vendor’s stalls and I smoke. The cigarette tastes terrible because I’m smoking it out of frustration. The frustration itself is frustrating because very little has happened, but already the crowds have started to irritate me. I want to go back home but I don’t want to be back in our dim apartment where it’s colder than being outside and the cold had that damp feeling. I feel frustrated because I know that I am lucky to even have an apartment and a day off in the middle of the week to do things like get Bolivian visas for a vacation. These thoughts only irritate me and we decide to go to another McDonald’s nearby and get another coffee where Gina can use the bathroom. We wait in line. It’s not quite 11 when we get to the front, but the girl in her brown McDonald’s uniform won’t give me a free coffee. Gina can’t use the bathroom because there was water all over the floor and a perplexed-looking in a lap coat appraising the situation. Back at the embassy, past the lines again, we are told that we need to go downtown to a bank there to pay the 130 US fee for the visa. We also need travel ticket copies, hotel reservations, credit card copies (to prove we aren’t solvent and looking to leech off Bolivia)passport copies, copies of our yellow fever vaccination cards, two passport-sized photos and completed visa application forms (of which he gives us one and tells us to make a copy). The man who gives us these things is brisk. We have an hour and a half to bring them back. Of course, we could just bring everything back another day, but we already have our money, passports, credit cards and yellow fever vaccination documents. I feel it a sort of challenge to see if I can possibly do all the things required before the embassy closes at 1. The train is packed, the bank is packed, the streets downtown are packed, there’s a line at the photocopy store. I print off copies of our flight information and make up a fake hostel confirmation. I have gone through this sort of thing before in the former Soviet Union where I know the authorities to be much stricter than Bolivia’s. If I can get away with making up a hostel reservation there, I can certainly do it for Bolivia. I get upset when Gina circles YES for the question Have You Ever Applied for a Visa Before on the visa application. I tell her that there bureaucrats will throw away anything that isn’t expertly completed. As I tell her this I don’t really believe it myself. But having spent the whole morning weaving in and out of crowds and waiting in lines and drinking coffee and not being able to appreciate what I have, I feel very tense. I immediately feel bad for getting upset, after all, I’m making her fill out the form on the subway, supplying my back as a writing surface. She tells me she’s surprised that this is getting to me so much. She says she would’ve thought I’d be very comfortable with this process after getting visas before for countries like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan that are much more xenophobic. She’s right; I should be and I don’t know what to say. I used to be calmer. I used to be able to do things. I don’t know what happened. When we return to the embassy the clerk who gave us our brisk instructions seems happy to see us, he can’t believe we’ve managed to do everything so quickly. “We don’t have much time,” I tell him. And after I have finished, I can’t figure out why I have said this, possibly because my Spanish doesn’t permit me to say much, possibly because there is really no excuse for my maniacal rushing. I wanted to say, “I just wanted to get it done,” but I know that such vague desires are often difficult to translate. He asks us for each item separately until he has a lengthy dossier on both Gina and I on his desk. He staples these together, glues our pictures to two separate pieces of paper and tells us to have a seat. When he comes back he’s got two stamps that he’s holding with our passports; they look like visas. Outside the office we hug. It was an incredible task to have been able to get everything together for the Bolivian visa in one morning but my celebratory feelings are dulled by the nagging feeling that it was also completely unnecessary when we’ve still got more than a month before we leave. Back at the apartment, It’s still cloudy and cold and I’ve got nothing to do. We try to make a nice breakfast, but the tense feeling makes me want to control everything that’s happening in the kitchen. The food turns out Ok, not great. After we eat I try to do a few different things that don’t need to be done and finally, I relent and take a nap. Although I’m cold, and there’s a blanket right beside me, I don’t even bother to pull it over me and eventually, all curled up, I fall asleep. Outside, the construction team is still ripping steel from steel.

Gas Sation Coffee

Mikey and I walked down the street with a paper grocery bag of beer. There was no sidewalk and we walked only slightly on the side of the road. The traffic sounded far away on Alliance street, only two block back. The light had begun to fade and the sky took on the look of a burnished jasper. It was only different around the tree that Gina and I used to call the autumn tree. There, behind the dry branches, was a streetlight that threw out a baleful glow. It was low but also beautiful. From the low-income housing behind us kids could be heard crying and laughing. The sound of evening television floated in the air with a chirping sound. The gravel was not especially smooth and the rubber of our tennis shoes dragged very slightly over it. From over by where I lived, there was a fire burning. The figures of light reverie made their way around the fire, to the house and back out again. I was very thirsty and upon reaching the house went inside for water. I did not bother to pour the water cold, but turned up the tap so that it would be warmer and easier to drink. There were a few people that had arrived since I had left. I said hello to them and took a beer from the many that Mikey had placed in the refrigerator. Back outside, the fire was burning in the pit that Gina had dug about two months earlier. She had ringed the pit with stones so that it was clear that it was an intentional pit with a purpose and not just an unfilled hole in the ground. After she and I had begun burning wooden scraps in the pit, the rocks were no longer needed. Still, they served a decorative purpose and reminded one of camping trips and starry skies. The fire was now being fed by Gina’s brother Jackson who had taken over the job in my absence as he always did. There was a pile of wooden scraps by the fire that had already greatly diminished since I had gone to the store. Jackson and his roommate Nick sat by the fire, sipping their beers and talking very little. I sat down with them and opened my own beer. It had no taste but cold, which was good by the hot fire. I lit a cigarette. I don’t like the way cigarettes taste when there is wood smoke in the air, but I always smoke them anyway. Cigarettes balance my thoughts and resulting conversation. I joined Jackson and Nick’s combined taciturnity and listened to the popping of the knots in the wood scraps which were burning and the conversation coming from inside. I finished my beer quickly and went inside to get another one, stopping to eat a cookie from one of the many dishes on the countertop, arranged potluck style: desserts, main dishes and snacks of different kinds all heaped together with plastic cups and unfinished drinks. I wasn’t sure who it could be when I heard the gravel crunching outside and walked outside without excusing myself properly. Jackson and Nick, still sitting by the fire looked over to the car, but did not get up from the up turned logs they were sitting on. I walked over and waited for someone to turn off the headlights so I could see who had come. Away from the fire, the night seemed damper and the crunch of the gravel under my feet made me think of going to work early in the morning on my bike. Armen and his girlfriend got out of the car with a few Armenian dishes they had brought. One I had never heard of and had never seen in Armenia was very good and was eaten right away before anything was brought out to be roasted on the fire. I had not seen Armen for a while and asked him to sit down next to me by the fire. We spoke in eastern Armenian and this made us more excited to discuss mundane things. I noticed as we spoke that Nick seemed to be regarding us. I wondered if perhaps it was possible for him to understand any of our conversation. The others mocked us in a joking way and I remembered how once, when speaking to a girl in Italian on the phone, I had asked Mikey if the sound of the language had been annoying to overhear. He told me that it was, but without him telling me so, I knew this was only because we were in the same small apartment and that it wasn’t the sound that was annoying, but that it was forced on him. I went back inside to get some more beer. The light seemed harsh to my eyes. In the absence of the fire I could smell the smoke, now very strong on my clothes. Everyone had gone outside to sit on the upturned logs around the fire. All the plates and casserole dishes on the countertop were nearly empty; the floor was dirty as hell and I frowned slightly to see it, though I was really too drunk to care about it very much. Back outside I found Armen trying to explain the word in eastern Armenian for eggplant to Gina. He did this by saying ‘brother’ in English and ‘jan’. He pronounced it ‘baderjan.’Gina laughed at this and pretended not to understand saying Azerbaijan when she was prompted to repeat the word. I noticed that over by the fire they were roasting the eggplants whole without taking off the leafy green top or cutting them in half. The garlic and peppers had already been roasted and the smell was delicious, although I was not hungry. When I sat back down, Nick leaned over to me and asked me what language Armen and I has been speaking. I told him about Armenia and how I had come to live there; I would’ve started to get slightly sentimental since I was talking to someone younger than myself about an experience that had made an impact on me, but Armen came back over and he and I began to speak again. We spoke mostly in English now and when we used an Armenian word, I would stop to explain to Nick what it meant. We were using them for no reason at all other than to hear their sound and this made us use words in Russian, too, although Armen knew very few of them and I began to feel alone in my language. Mikey went to bed early because he had to drive us to Oakland the next day. Lyndsey was one of the last to leave and I offered to walk her back home. The entire walk she kept telling me that I didn’t need to walk her the whole way. At about the half-way point, I said goodbye to her. I walked back to the house with the lightness of the beer in my head. I began to feel disappointed that I was not going to leave the country the next day and that I still had to say more goodbyes and hang around Oakland for a few days. It had been a definitive kind of party. It made me feel like I should leave quickly and begin something else in another place. When I got back to the house, Jackson and Nick were still by the fire, only now they were in sleeping bags, lying next to it. I walked past them into the house to get a last beer. Inside, Gina was asleep on the bed under a pile of blankets; Mikey was on the futon. I couldn’t hear his quiet breathing so it was difficult to tell if he was actually asleep. The small house smelled of wet grass and wood smoke. I closed the door gently, opened my beer and took a long drink. I tilted back my head so I could look at the stars that I had looked upon for so many nights. I thought about all the jokes I had made about those stars that now seemed so serious to me. I sat back down by the fire and Nick sat up in his sleeping bag. He told me that he wanted to leave Humboldt county and travel. I told him that he needed to leave right away.

Flying into O'Hare

It’s best to write in a place where fiction and reality slightly overlap, otherwise, it’s like trying to teach something I hardly understand myself. I flew into O’Hare sometime in the afternoon. There was no one there to meet me. There hadn’t been anyone at the last four airports I’d landed at. I imagine that when everyone else came back they had friends and family waiting for them. I’ve never been any good at telling people what flight I’m on because I don’t like to think about them waiting for me. I don’t want to have that cruel existential moment of airport recognition. It’s better just to go home and look them up on your own time. Go and see them where you know they should be and where you’re comfortable with them being. That way nothing seems to change. O’Hare is a fine airport. No one really bothers you. I guess most American airports are like that, but being in Chicago is probably the best place to feel it. Europe and Asia are different. There are lots of tourists in Europe and Asia, therefore, there are lots of obnoxious, garrulous people. Not the tourists themselves, but the people that ply their trade to them. In O’Hare the tourists take care of themselves. It was a new America to me because I hadn’t seen it in over two years. There had been times, not many but they had occurred, when I didn’t know if I’d make it back. I wasn’t in a war, and I was never in any really dangerous situations, but, still, sometimes I wondered. But I was there, and it wasn’t even anticlimactic. No one greeted me. The customs officer didn’t even say anything about my two passports; one with a visa written in a different alphabet on nearly every page and the other with a few paltry E.U stamps. He just let me in. That’s what it felt like to be back home, and it wasn’t anticlimactic. To be so easily admitted into country, even my own, was surprising. Everything felt much more relaxed. I changed my remaining Euros at a horrible rate and found the El station back into the city. Somewhere, a taxi driver stopped to talk to me. We spoke English to each other and that, too, was surprising. I declined his ride offer and he hardly seemed to care. He knew I could take the train and he knew that I knew it. There was no reason for his cab for me. When I stepped outside I stopped, put my back down and kneeled down on the ground. I put my forehead on the sidewalk for a moment and then got up. I did this because I had told myself that I was going to. It was a good thing to do, because I had to do something to come back; with no one in the airport and no discerning customs officer, I had to do something. The weather was warm, and I could smell fresh cut grass. I’ve always loved that smell especially combined with cigarette smoke. So I lit a cigarette and found that I could hardly remember anything about where I’d been. It was already being relegated to memory, to the past. It was all already something I had once done that was now finished. It was colder downtown. I went to the greyhound station first to buy a ticket back home. There used to be a midnight bus from Chicago to Detroit that I liked to take. Since it didn’t exist anymore I had to buy a ticket for a bus that left around 10 am the next day. I thought about leaving my bag in a locker at the bus station, but they were too expensive. I didn’t call anyone, but went over to my friend Matt’s apartment. I hadn’t seen him in years. I hadn’t seen anyone in years. I walked with my hiking bag across two or three neighborhoods before I get there in the evening. I knocked and no one answered so I yelled, “Matt!” because the windows of the place were open on the second floor. It was not difficult to see him there. It is not difficult to see anyone from Michigan in Chicago. It’s always been our city anyway. I guess people from Iowa think about it in much the same way. There all upstairs playing video games. God, video games for years now. Ten years ago, I moved to Chicago and went back to Jackson to find them all playing video games. I have never understood the desire to play video games and I will never accept that my talented friends should spent any of their time this way. I am also the person who had spent almost entire evening staring out the window while living abroad. I also spend a lot of time preparing food that I eat alone. To me these things are still better than video games, but to others they would be the same, or worse. I understand that. Matt and I go to eat at a taqueria. I have missed this food terribly. I am almost sad to be in this place finally eating such beautiful food, drinking such an incredible tamarind agua fresca. Matt talks to his girlfriend on the phone. They were supposed to meet; I came and surprised Matt, now no one seems to know what the hell to do. He gets up and walks out with the phone while I am starting my burrito. There is so much memory in front of me, on my plate, in my mouth. I wish for others to be with me and I wish to be alone. I try but find I cannot eat slowly. When I am finished, Matt comes back. He tells me that his girlfriend seems upset. She told him that she wanted him and me to have a chance to catch up. I tell him I would like to meet his girlfriend and would be happy if she would come and join us. He told her this already. She insisted. Now he doesn’t know if she’s mad. She won’t answer the phone, he says, and when he finishes saying this, the phone rings. It’s her. I order another burrito and eat it for the taste. It’s as good as the first one. Matt comes back in and can’t believe I’m eating another one. I tell him that I’ve waited a long time. The cigarette outside tastes delicious. There is a little bit of activity outside the taqueria, but not much. There are a few other places to eat and their smells and some dry cleaning shops which in Chicago all have the same neon window displays of different colored hangers. We don’t walk while we smoke. It’s unclear if Matt has the same habit that I do, or if he remembers that I don’t like to do both at once. I’ve seen my friend Mikey ride a bike and smoke, eat and smoke, chew gum and smoke and I’ve never known what to make of it. The only thing I can do is drink coffee or beer and smoke. Matt’s roommates are still playing videogames, but now there’s beer. I drink whatever it is and it’s good and light after the burritos. We play some records and talk about who made them and when. This goes on for a while, as it always does. The discussion as to where we will go to drink beer somewhere else becomes more prominent and eventually we are going downstairs to find bikes for all of us. There’s one that someone left behind, a clunky mountain bike that suits me fine. We pass cans of beer around in the streets and stop to figure out where we are in relation to the bar. We don’t really stop but ride around in a circle at an intersection that’s not busy over and over again, laughing. I have to remind myself not to drink too many beers because tomorrow I will take the bus back to Michigan and I will see my mother whom I have not seen in over two years. But there are so many new and remembered things around me and the beer is still also new and remembered that it cannot bother me. The bar is dark and a few people are dancing to 1960s records that the DJ is playing. They are like the 1960s records in San Francisco, old songs that are better because you have never heard them, but also because they are familiar. Only in San Francisco, at that bar with the Scottish name, I remember there were always a lot more people dancing. I never danced and was happy just to be there holding a beer. Matt’s girlfriend comes to the bar and I get to meet her. She doesn’t say much too me, though, because she seems to have a lot to say to Matt. I go back in and order another beer and watch the people dancing, tapping my foot until someone comes to tell me that everyone is leaving. I wake up the next morning, before anyone else is up and take the blue line train back downtown to the Greyhound station. While I am waiting to get on the bus a Juggalo comes up and bums a cigarette from me. I am happy to see him, because he is such an American thing. He asks me where I am coming from and where I am going. I tell him I am going back home to Michigan and that I am coming from Asia, albeit in a roundabout way. He has a good way of seeming very interested in my story and this makes me feel like I have done something greater than I had previously thought and makes me like him even more. I cannot read and look out the window the entire bus ride. I get off at my home town and wait at the bus station for the city bus that goes by my parents’ house. When I get there no one is home. I go around to look in the garage and there’s a banner hanging up in there that reads “Welcome Home, Jonathan.” Around this message are multicolored clipart balloons and confetti strands. I turn away from the garage window and walk out toward the pond that’s up by the road, noting, along the way, that nothing has changed.

Drifters

At the end of the fourth week of the tour I decided to leave the company. Well, that’s when the idea first seriously occurred to me. I guess a lot of people know by now. This is a lousy way to disseminate news, I know, but there are good friends of mine that don’t even know what country I live in anymore, nor I they. Things just happen like that. I had thought about the idea of leaving on the more difficult days, when after a 12-hour day you have to be up at 6. Get in the van, drive to the theater, unload everything, haul it into the theater, set it up and then, after you’re bathed in sweat, but are beginning to feel the cold of the theater prickling your skin there’s an hour until sound check and another hour before the show starts. Instead of trying to read you wrap yourself up in one of the backdrops and drift into a nervous sleep. When you wake up there’s the shows to do, four or five of them, with ½ hour breaks between. By the end of the day the backstage area feels like a place you have lived in. But this was the work I had expected. The shows were still fun and the audiences receptive. The change came over me in the Misiones province of Argentina. For two months we had been touring and doing shows back in Buenos Aires when at home. Every place we went from Columbia to Brazil was a big city. Even doing the local northern Argentina tour had taken us to no place smaller than a city of 200,000 souls. Admittedly, I didn’t like Buenos Aires much, but somehow I thought touring other such large cities would be exciting. In Misiones, I realized I had been wrong about this. As I get older all cities are starting to blend together for me. The collective experience they provide has become a rhythm. When I have a day off, I walk around. I look around at what’s being sold on the streets. I make out the graffiti, whether large on public walls, or minuscule in bathrooms or near schools. I ask directions and I sit in public squares. I look at the architecture. I wonder how my feet are holding up after so many years of wandering. I drink coffee; I drink juice; I drink beer, all of these in different locations. I run across intersections. I go into churches. I walk through the aisles of grocery stores. I go down by the water. I pick up things; some things I keep and others I throw away. I consider buying expensive things but never do. I miss the people that I’d like to take such walks with, and I think about those people and the things we’ve done together, the conversations we’ve had. In a way, you’re always alone in a large city; there is so much loneliness around, that even those in company must bear part of the loneliness of others. When you are alone you deal your loneliness out to those around you. That’s my opinion, I guess I’ve cultivated it over the years. In smaller places I do not feel like this loneliness, not anymore. Smaller places, to me, seem like places where people actually live. As a result, they do not have the same vacuous atmosphere, when you go out into them you do not have to wrestle with the loneliness of everyone who walks by. Most of the places we toured in Misiones were such small places. The tour had been going for a month and I was tired. I had begun to realize that going anywhere where I could not expect to meet a friend no longer held any pleasure for me. All of the best trips I’ve ever made have been to visit someone, and I’ve made far too many where that was not the case; I went rather with the intention of perhaps making a friend, or at least seeing the place and gaining the title of one who had been to the place itself. I have met some nice people everywhere I have been, but few of them have actually become close friends of mine. I contribute this to the somewhat selfish nature of traveling alone. You have come to the place to have the experience of seeing it, if you meet someone to share the experience with, great, but this is not reason for the trip. For a long time, I thought that going and seeing so many places would furnish me with some interesting stories and, perhaps, teach me something. It has, and unless there’s another revelation that I have heretofore been too naïve to take note of, I don’t expect traveling to give me much else. As I get older, I seem less inclined to take advantage of the situations that might one day become stories. I don’t regret this. It’s not that I never take advantage of them, but that less and less frequently care about them. I am very lucky to have had the experiences that have led me to feel this way. Simply, for the time being, I feel full. After a week of the smaller tour dates in Misiones, we stop on Thursday to do a show in a town called El Dorado. It’s not a very big place, and since we did not even spend the night there I doubt whether any of my cast mates would even remember much about it. For me, however, it was an important place. El Dorado, like many places in northern Argentina, observes the siesta period, which is usually from 12 to 4 in the afternoon. After we had set up the stage, around 2:30 we had a break until 4. The first show was to be at 4:30, or so I remember it. I took a walk around the town for the break and soon found myself in a beautiful forest. Although the town is probably considered sub-tropical, the forest itself was of average deciduous rank. Walking around the path and listening to the whisper of the leaves and watching the dappled sunlight swing around in the branches I felt at peace. Until that point on the tour, the only time I’d felt any peace was before going to sleep, even then it was dubious. When I returned to the theater, I found the lights off. There was a problem with the power supply. Since there was nothing I could do to help, I went backstage, where I found a door that led out into a garden, long-neglected, but still charming. In that garden, the peaceful feeling I had encountered in the woods returned to me. I decided that there was no longer much use pretending to be interested in the amenities of large cities when the greatest enjoyment I could imagine seemed to come from such peaceful places as this garden I had found. Especially, I thought, if I could be so lucky as to be able to share such a feeling with someone else. When I came back to Buenos Aires a week later, I talked with that person with whom I hoped to be able to share the peace of such small and quiet places and the next time I went into the theater, I put in my notice of leave. The theater troupe was a great experience, and I hope you won’t think too harshly of me for leaving it early. I simply cannot ignore the drive to begin something new, much as I have never been able to do, but this time, I look forward to sharing the experience with my wonderful girlfriend and further acquainting myself with this new found desire to live quietly. } The last tour that I plan to make with the company will be in October.

Paraguay ya

I can´t remember an occasion when Friday ever followed Sunday, but it happened just the last two days. We came into Resistencia last Sunday from Jujuy. Jujuy being higher up and more arid. A place where they sell coca and bica at the kioskos, where there is a lot of influence coming down from the Bolivian border, not just cultural, but geographical influence, like the Andes that life La Paz have kind of dribbled down into Argentina. Driving across the northern part of the country to Resistencia you come down into the Chaco which is something like an endless scrub plain that´s not really worth talking about. I´d be tempted to compare it with eastern Montana, a little more thorny. Driving across the Chaco the clouds set upon us. I hardly realized; they seemed to go along with the landscape. With so many leafless branches twisting around us, it seemed natural that the sky should look equally barren. We got into Resistencia after dark, a nice square and pedestrian walkway, but otherwise fairly unremarkable. I went to bed and got up early the next day, Sunday, to go skate. The park was nice, and even under the leaden sky I enjoyed talking with the curious group of kids that had meandered over and later trying to play truco with a kid of about thirteen who was pretty good, but luckily, for once, wasn´t noticeably better than me. At some point I put my headphones back on and went back to losing myself in the unusual movements of skatepark skating, movements that require an indirect kind of attention that helps to quiet customary thoughts and actions. Standing damp and out of breath I talked on the phone for a while, feeling like my lungs were too big and my skin too warm, while the kids that had since come to the park skated around and occasionally looked up at me to see if I was still the guy speaking this plosive and rubbery language so loud into a cell phone or if someone else had since taken my place. I told everyone I met that I would probably only be in Resistencia for another day. That was last Sunday. I´m still here. We did our shows here on Monday. Drove to the Paraguayan border on Tuesday. Crossed it, after paying some extra fee. I walked through downtown Asunciòn at night, not even that late. It must´ve been about 8:30, around the time when life if beginning to stir in earnest in Argentina, even in the small towns. Not so here. Prolapsed streets, with dead storefronts and somehow very antiquated-looking streetlights with too many wires attached to them skirt between little marble and crystal hotels. I imagine the early 20th century looked a lot like this in the more industrial parts of the world. Here there were the opulent outposts of the robber-barons amidst the otherwise dark and empty streets. There was nothing minatory about the place, despite what I had been repeatedly told. There were very few people walking around, but those I met seemed to have nothing more on their mind other than their destination. It was cold and the squares (Uruguaya in particular) were empty of people. A few dogs trotted around, you could hear their papery scrounging sounds coming from most recessed areas. A few pastry shops were open and a cafè that looked modest but boasted clientele that all wore suits and had shellacked-looking hair. There was nothing to do but maybe buy a chipa and sit down and eat it in one of the silent cafes. I went back to the room. The TV didn´t work so I never saw Paraguayan TV. The rest of the city almost looked like one of those new suburban cities of the US. Everything was really spread out and inconvenient distances separated complimentary businesses. Very few people seemed to be walking. Traffic cops waved the cars through red lights, according to the flow of traffic in a given area. Coca Cola ads had attacked the cityscape. It looked as if the stuff had just been introduced into Paraguay and Coke had to rush to catch these people up with the rest of the world. These ads were not of the quiet forgettable type either. They were quite often of the flashing, pouring, vertical and legion shock and awe type. It looked like all the old Coke ads from time square had been sent to Paraguay. I don´t think anyone really cared. I didn´t once see anyone drinking the stuff, not even in the mall where we stopped just before driving back down to Resistencia. Two days later Fernando Lugo, the president, had been ousted in what some say was a coup. With all the Coke ads and silent streets, I never would´ve seen it coming. Thursday, it´s raining here. It rains all day, there´s some thunder in the late afternoon. With the day off, I wander around in the rain long enough to walk to the edge of town and back. When a street ended in a sloping lawn, I followed it. There was a pond at the end of it. The rain made little silver ringlets in the dark water. A dog eyed me suspiciously from a nearby doorway. The grass was long and filled with trash. Some kind of beautiful birds flew by and there were some large fish thrashing around near the surface of the water. The serenity didn´t hold my attention long, but it was enough for such a gloomy day, a Sunday that came out of a Thursday afternoon siesta, taking me by surprise, but I doubt the rest of the Resistencia population paid it much attention. They were probably all too busy napping behind the dim windows and the shuttered store fronts. I was a ghost, haunting the last day of Lugo´s presidency. The next day was Friday.

Moor´s Last Jive

I´ve got one of those computer screens that juts out at you; tilted back at a slight angle the TV-sized monitor seems to be thrusting its chest out at me, arms akimbo in a display of crude, but effective force. It´s seven am back in Argentina, but since we crossed the border into Paraguay yesterday afternoon it´s only six am here. Giving me an extra hour for breakfast before we´ve got to get back to the theater and roll out the same three productions we´ve been doing for what seems like eons now. After the trials and tribulations of three weeks on the road with (in all probability) two more to go, I have a new respect for touring bands. The bands, of course, are getting to play their own music and are free to chose different courses of expression in different places, but I wonder, how limited we all are by the accepted format defined by the venues we visit. If a band simply decided to talk to the audience or recite lines from Harold Pinter plays for two hours obviously the crowd would not feel their 25 dollars had not been spent wisely and would, as a result probably not be too receptive. It seems that we´re all limited by what sort of entertainment we are promising our audience and it is hard to know if there is an entertainment that could remain entertaining to the actors that perform it ad nauseum. We started leaving Buenos Aires for Cordoba on a late Sunday morning. It was a churchy time, grey and chilly, like March in Michigan or January in northern California. It was the first time that we´d be doing a national (Argentina) tour so it was the first time that we used the van for more than a drive to the airport. I was not looking forward to the prospect of having so little personal space for up to 14 hours at a time, but so far this has proved unexpectedly accommodating. I think on the road one begins to greedily search for something of which to make an approximation of home, whether it´s a car or the same motel chain room. I think, to some degree, we all take solice in being in the van. There´s still a part of the day we left Buenos Aires in there. All we have to do is sit back and remember it and Jujuy or where ever the hell we are doesn´t feel so far away. Of course, it´s not always so easy to feel that the van is your link to the world you´ve left behind after you´ve been in it for over 8 hours; at that point it starts to feel like something you need to escape from, something that has not been peacefully transporting you all the way from Buenos Aires, but rather some sinister thing that has been hounding you. You briefly escape into motel rooms, schools and theaters only to find it waiting for you again. The drive to Cordoba is Iowa-flat. There are a few clusters of trees on the horizon but very little to see otherwise. All day long the sun shines in the cold, bleary quality particular to Sunday. The light is tiring without being relaxing. Every time we stop for gas or to go to the bathroom, I find myself smoking again. We stop at a parilla on the highway about halfway. The scene inside is a perfect reproduction of the Thanksgiving holiday. Initially, there is no one inside the warm and lamp-lit restaurant. The smell of cooking meat and the cold sunshine mingle as the door repeatedly opens. The sounds of mirth increase as more people come in from the cold to join the meal. You can smell the cigarette smoke in their sweaters, the cold leather of their belts, the sweet heavy smell of over-applied makeup and lipstick. Gum and corduroy, the click of untied formal shoe laces and the scraping of folding chairs. The restaurant is suddenly full of people, talking, laughing and eating in what looks like the middle of nowhere. We are the first to leave from this phantasmal holiday scene, but even as we continue down the road the smells and sounds of it´s jubulence still cling to me. Arriving that evening into Còrdoba, I am confronted with a city, or what is regarded as a city, that is quiet and rarely over three or four stories. In Buenos Aires, the buildings are forever glowering over you, creating rifts in the streets that seperate them and agoraphobic squares and plazzas. By comparison, Còrdoba was something like a boutique city. It had its pedestrian mall, its churches and its Avenida Corrientes, but it was in a miniature. An observation that seems to actually encompass most of what we´re seen so far, but an observation that may result solely from too much time spend continuously in Buenos Aires so that everything should resemble it. The Còrdoba that started this tour was weeks ago, so there was a little more impatience to my wanderings after the shows at night. I hadn´t yet adapted to the road. I walked around at night trying to find a decent meal to substitute what I would´ve been eating at home. After eating supermarket food, I would grow restless sitting in the hotel room and would walk back out into the night with no particular destination, simply trying to cross over as much of the city as possible, to make the most of the experience, but actually doing very little. The last night I was in Còrdoba, I had a strange encounter. I had read in the Lonely Planet that there was a Middle Eastern restaurant not too far from the hotel and longing for a warm falafel sandwich I had decided to check the place out. I walked into the small restaurant of four or five tables immediately feeling embarrassed; there are some places that permit you to dine alone and others that render the lone diner pathetic and even contemptible by dint of the otherwise festive nature of the place. A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me what I missed about the states. My immediate answer was the notion of pedestrian right-of-way since this doesn´t seem to exist anywhere else in the world and, to me, seems both fair and good. But now that I think about the question further, I should have liked to have added ´general acceptance of solitary activities´to this list as well. It is indeed wonderful that other cultures are so unified and would never enjoy the pleasures of the opera or of a restaurant alone, but I cannot help the morbidly independent environment I was raised in, nor can I alter its effects on me. In the states you could eat alone at probably 90 % of restaurants and no one would pay you any attention. In most other countries the waitresses tend to at least look at you askance. In Armenia, I remember constantly being asked where my friends were, when trying to read in the cafe alone. The waitress´s manner always seemed so much more pleasant when I was in company, as if I were using the place for its proper purpose when in company, rather than souring it with my solitary coffee and quiet, bookreading ways. As I walked into the restaurant in Còrdoba, I had to resist the desire to flee out the door after I had seen the friendly intimacy of the place and the owner´s scowl, almost more like a wince, when he noticed I was alone. He knew he was against me when he offered me a chair at a table in the middle of the room. Nobody ever wants to sit in the middle of a room, but particular among them are those that are dining alone. What? Was this to draw attention to the fact that I was an anomaly? Was there something to see in me eating my food and trying not to catch anyone´s eye? Or was he simply trying to hide me between the otherwise sated, wine-flushed and jocose diners? I sheepishly pointed to a small corner table beginning to feel the anxiety so common to the misunderstood diner. Once at my table, I made it clear that I was not waiting for anyone by taking out my book. I didn´t begin to read it, however, for to do so would be to risk isolation. I have noticed that in many restaurant outside the US, the waiters will often think that a book is some sort of personal affront. As if you had gone to the restaurant to see them personally and now that you had taken out this book you were acting very rude by not paying them enough attention. After looking at the two-page menu that had no falafel, I bekoned the owner back over. Luckily, I had an ace up my sleeve, I know a few words in Arabic, I´ve been a few places in the middle east and, of course if he told me that rather than being Arab he was actually Iranian, Kurdish or Armenian (as it sometimes turns out) I, of course, would´ve been delighted. ¨As salamu aleykum,¨ I greet him as he comes over, still with that sour look on his face. I should´ve waited or his response, but I was too hungry and the atmosphere had made me feel too awkward. ¨¿Tienes falafel?¨ I am dismayed that he begins speaking English to me right away. ¨You want falafel?¨ He replies with a scowl. I can´t tell how good his English is so I continue in my lousy Spanish. ¨Si, pero no lo vi en el menù.¨ ¨We don´t have¨ he counters, in a tone that I´ve heard before in cowboy movies when someone is implying that the other should leave before bullets start flying. I should´ve left, too, but by then I was too hungry and I had my heart set on something warm. I think I could get maybe some nice warm bread with hummus and khaviar, which is the Russian name for that roasted eggplant spread, the arabic, I have no idea. I order this bizarre a´ la cart combination. The owner shrugs and walks off with the menu. When the food comes I see that it´s not going to be enough. I´m too hungry just for an appetizer and since I´m already in the restaurant, I decide to try to get a meal out of it. ¨¿Tienes arroz?¨ I ask when he comes back. For what it´s worth, I´ve never been able to pronounce ´arroz´ very well, but instead of asking for clarification the ownder just walks away. About five minutes later he is back with the biggest table plate of tabule I have ever seen. Shit. I don´t mind tabule in small amount, but a huge bowl of it. It´s almost like he was mocking me giving me such minuscule portions of hummus, which I wanted, and such a saladbowl of tabule, which I didn´t. Whatever, it was food, and, if nothing else, it was healthy food, all that parsley was sure to boost my immunity a little while on the road. After about five or six bites of the stuff, the admixture of sea salt and lemon juice that it was saturated with began to tug the wrong way on my esophagus. I began to mix it with what little hummus I had left, to no result; the supreme bitter-salty-sour combination of the dish permeated everything. About halfway through the bowl, I began to feel the gag reflex that I remember so well as a kid on on occasion when I had eaten a whole pellet of rock salt, from a bag meant to de-ice the driveway. When I finally finished, I stood up almost immediately. I didn´t want to wait for him to come back over. I was dreading the bill, as I always do when dining alone and ordering strange combinations of things that aren´t on the menu. As I expected he came back with the astronomical sum of 60 pesos. The place offered a set menu dinner that was only forty pesos, essentially this is what I had gotten, excepting the three meat dishes that went with it. So, while I had gotten less, I was somehow being charged more. I argued, asking to see the bill. By some absurd legerdemain, he produced a bill that, in reality, was 80 pesos. I looked at all the happy diners, eating together, probably on their third or fourth time in this ¨charming little place¨that they wanted to show of to their friends. I told him, resolutely I would pay him forty since that´s what the menu had said and not a peso more. I walked out having paid him fifty, with a little pride intact. The next night, at the end of four days of shows. We began our break for the weekend. After a long day in La Rioja. The last show had gone well and we were all in high spirits. After a few beers at the local kioscos with my castmates, I came upon a little middle eastern place, hesitating at first, least the situation from the previous night repeat itself, I went in. Maybe it´s because La Rioja is smaller, but this time my ´as salamu aleykum´ was greeted with a happy ´wa alayk salam´ and the Syrian owner and I had a great conversation about his native country, which I found to be one of the friendliest I´ve ever visited. In the end I bought some of the roasted eggplant spread to go. It was only 15 pesos. Allahu akbar.