A Stranger Remembers

 

The older woman sat next to me on the flight from Madrid.  She was very courteous and respectful of our confined community space.  On my flight to Portugal a week earlier I had sat between a large couple, "upgraded" to the middle seat in "Economy Plus Premium" from my preferred aisle seat in "Economy Plus".  They were both so big that I couldn't extend my arms away from my sides during the flight, trapping all my body heat inside my armpits and making turning the pages in my book an odd "wrists only" exercise.  It had been a long, long eight hours.

On this flight the woman quietly read her book and we maintained a shared non-imperialism of the arm rest, a good show of border respect.  About 45 minutes away from landing, after lengthy (and now expected) United Airlines delays, we spoke about our likely missed connections.  It was then I made a mistake and asked her if she was returning home, or visiting the States.  I then got a monotone response that was a run on sentence that triumphed over all run on sentences I've ever heard.  It reminded me of when this mentally ill woman that Leo had been dating would start talking and allow the contents of her mind to spill out onto the floor in front of you.

She spoke in a manner without any inflection which suggested enthusiasm or emotion of any kind.  "My parents had moved from the Plattsburg area at that point and my mother had begun to volunteer at St. Joseph's which had just added the senior center after Father McAuley had become pastor after Father Rollins had retired shortly after the parts plant had shut down which was about the same time my niece had become sick which they first thought was a virus but later turned out to be a cyst which they tried to remove surgically but required chemo afterwards about the same time her son David had all that trouble with his Uncle Michael who had quite a temper which had led to all the trouble from court that Spring."

I had no idea where any of this was going.  It seemed like she had just went into her mind and started flipping the pages of her personal history and dictated to me what she saw as she went.  During this pause I said, "Uh huh" to be polite, but that was unnecessary as she had momentum and wasn't really talking to me at the point.  She stared at the headrest in front of her and kept going.

"David had just come back from back East after all the trouble he had with Maria and had moved back in with my sister which was fine as he was able to help around the house especially after that Spring storm which had done all the damage which was when they added onto St. Joseph's after the fund raising drive where we had a series of potlucks every Thursday night which had me cooking late into the night on Wednesdays which had always been my book club night which got moved to Tuesday but only during that time before the Fall of that year which was unusually cold and wet like it had been in 1973 when my father had bought our house on second street next to the grocery store which had been sold to the Berras after they left their village when their father died."

The plane banked slowly left.  Pressure in my ear confirmed our drop in altitude.  She kept going on like that as the tiny specks of houses gradually grew larger and larger as we got lower and lower towards the runway.  "Prepare yourselves for landing" came over the loudspeaker.  She stopped talking and never changed expression.  Three bumps in the cabin and engine back blast announced out arrival.  The woman sat expressionlessly to my left staring straight ahead at nothing as we taxied to our gate.  

A Glass of Gran Reserva

 

The woman was curled up in the modern style furniture like a teenager, one leg folded underneath her on the chair.  Jet black hair at first obscured the fact that she was older than she first appeared.  Her legs were skinny.  Too skinny.  One platform soled designer athletic shoe pistoned up and down on the carpet with manic energy.  She looked at me from the corner of her eyes, pretending to be absorbed in the paperback book she was manhandling.  The spine of the book strained as she folded back the cover.  The waiter brought me a glass of Marques de Riscal Gran Reserva and artfully presented little dishes of olives and vegetable chips.  I asked if they had grown the olives on the property.  "No sir, but they are local.  Many of the area farmers grow olives in places where they do not grow grapes."  I had just come over from Portugal where the leading port producers had diversified into premium olive oils with luxury packaging and prices to match.  The woman paused until the waiter left and popped her head up.  "They have wonderful olives here.  They don't make the olive oil.  They don't."  

It is important to note that this was the vinotec of the Marques de Riscal luxury hotel.  I had walked onto the property and checked in at the gift shop to see if I could taste the wines.  The woman at the counter had told me that all tours were fully booked.  It would be impossible to have a look around.  I noticed a sign pointing to the hotel, a luxury hotel designed by Frank Gehry, a modernist architect with a flair for the dramatic.  I just wanted to see the building.  I walked out "authorized personnel only" door.  The woman at the counter yelled out at me.  "Sir!"  I waved and said, "It's OK.  I'm staying at the hotel."  

I wasn't.  

"Sir!"  I gave her a wave as the door shut behind me.  I could have been staying there.  There was a room available for $845.  I checked the rate online out of curiosity.  It should also be noted that I was wearing a cowboy shirt with a snake handler design, jeans and a pair of beaten up boots.  In theory I could have been one of those Cali tech bros, and I think that's the reason the woman at the desk decided not to pursue me as I walked onto the grounds.  I mean, if you're working there and you see some upper middle aged guy in a fucking cowboy shirt confidently walking though a security door like he owns the place, do you want to risk upsetting him if he actually is a guest?  Who needs that hassle?  I walked up the hill to see if there was a bar to try the wines.  As you see how things developed, there was, and I was treated quite nicely by the employees who assumed I belonged there.

So, I'm sitting there with my Gran Reserva, biting into an olive, and the woman was looking at me very intensely after giving me the lay of the land on the olive situation.  She had an untouched glass of white Rioja.  Her brows were furrowed by her nose, the crease lines suggesting a lifetime spent in mild disapproval.  I assessed the olives.  "Yes, these are quite nice."  She gave me a little snort.  I asked her, "Are you staying here at the hotel?".  I knew goddamn well she was staying there.  I also knew that just by me suggesting that she wasn't staying there would ruffle her.  She was American.  I didn't know from where exactly, but there was a solid LA vibe. "Yes... I am."  I said, "It seems very nice."  She looked down at the predominantly burnt red carpet as she pursed her lips.  "It's quite... red.  I mean, I understand the reasoning but...  It's quite red."  

She looked at me for a moment and then lowered her eyebrows again into a disapproving look.  It was just the two of us in the lounge.  It was completely silent.  I had specifically chosen one of the seats a comfortable distance from her so as to not freak her out.  There was so much energetic suspicion coming off of her, I didn't want any misunderstanding.  She was in the best seat by the huge windows overlooking the small village.  I took the small table two back as a buffer, but due to the arrangement of the chairs, we inhabited the same basic space.  She went back to manhandling her book pretending to read it.  She was about my age but had that SoCal dress code and dye job going that made her look like she was in her twenties at a passing glance.  Her foot nervously twitched again, clearly concerned I was going to ask her to go up to her room and perform depraved sex acts on her malnourished body.  I had engaged with her initial conversation after all.  I could see her chastising herself for putting down her armor.  Her foot kept bobbing.  I sat looking out at the village, slowly drinking my Rioja, eating olives.         

The Joy Of Interesting Times

 

In quiet little Avon Lake, hundreds (the Avon Lake cops said “thousands”) of ordinary people stood on the side of the road by a Walgreens and a duck pond waving signs and protesting the turns of events in the country.  What was especially noteworthy to me was the demographic makeup.  This wasn’t some lefty multi colored hair crowd.  It was grandmas, moms and daughters, conservative looking old men, and kids in wagons.  It seemed like everyone had their own particular issue that had brought them to a tipping point to stand around in the rain in a sleepy little suburb.  Take your pick… tariffs, cratering 401K accounts, Ukraine, illegal deportations, civil liberties, Elon Musk, Trump, you name it.  People were fed up and it’s week 12 of Taking America Back.

I’m thinking there were about 700 people, but I might be low.  They stretched along what is an entire city block while drivers coming through honked their horns in support (or counter protest).  Young men, high school boys I think, drove pick-up trucks and Mustangs with growling exhaust systems with oversized Trump flags attached like they were members of a radicalized Muslim extremist group (which you can effectively argue that they are).   The sneering boys had the jacked up confrontational energy of rabid college football fans, the kind of boys that played varsity football and swaggered around school thinking they have all the answers but don’t realize they don’t even understand the questions and they’ve already peaked.  

I drove south on Route 83 behind a red F-150 with two giant Trump flags flapping from plastic posts attached to the back of the bed.  Watching traffic coming at him in the other lane, a steady stream of people flipping the truck off was interrupted by the occasional guy that looked just like the driver giving them a thumbs up.  “Yeah Bro!”.  The chance of any of the flag guys being able to explain what a tariff is, what the CDC does, or understand how their heroes they worship like a pro football team on gameday were just grifters positioning them to be their low paid worker drones forever.  What are you going to do?  The country is really, really fucked up right now.  

What struck me most about today was the ordinary look of the protesters.  These aren’t the dreaded “outside agitators” the conservative media will rush in to claim took part in these events.  It’s retired teachers, stay-at-home moms, Dads pulling wagons.  I’ll bet 85% of these people never protested a thing in their lives.  While the hillbillies and dipshits drove by threateningly in their macho vehicles it only pointed out the irrefutable fact that there are a lot more normal people than teenage bullies and angry hillbillies.  The flag waving dipshits feel like they’re in a special club, but they can’t get around the fact that the real people that make the country run are looking at this shitshow and saying “Hold on a minute here, this is bullshit”.  

I don’t know if the protest movement can gain momentum, or if it will even do anything against what is increasingly looking like monsters that are intent to topple over all our societal norms to benefit themselves.  They aren’t going to pay attention to the legal system, and Congress isn’t going to do anything either.  It’s going to be up to the Moms, grandmas and Dads pulling wagons to try and prevent the country they grew up in from further slipping into an autocratic nightmare you’ll never wake up from.    

I spent the week in Portugal with an international group of MW students and Portuguese producers.  Off of the top of my head, there were people from England, Ireland, Greece, Canada, Austria, Germany, China, Netherlands, Poland, and Spain.  It was NOT easy being the American there.  Anyone with an education knows what is going on in the USA is self-destructive and utterly without long term logical planning.  It’s not even a debate over here.  It's other nations openly laughing about how inept and rudderless our leadership is in the country.  It’s like how adults laugh at children.  The downside for them is that until they disentangle themselves from the US, they are in for a ride as well.  As the minute-to-minute whims of our de-facto King changed, they laughed at the absurdity of it all and asked me to make sense of it.  Hey man, I don’t know what to tell you either.  

I was at a winery in Rioja Spain yesterday.  Rioja wines famously use American oak barrels, abandoning the use of French barrels after a tariff placed on the barrels by France over 100 years ago.  As a result of that tax, the Spanish moved to the alternative option coming from America and then never went back.  100+ years of lost business for the French who assumed at the time, “they can’t buy around us”.  Well, it looks like they did.  After this Tariff Show has shaken the world’s confidence in our economy, I think we are going to find out that people can buy around us too.    

Ah, the joy of living in “interesting times”…