Jelly Meat Dream World

It was on the menu of the day, Einbeinsülze mit Bratkartoffeln.

Now, I love me some Bratkartoffeln, but this Einbeinsülze, what, where, how? I turned to Johnna, trusted friend and arbiter of all things good here in Germany.

“Pig knuckle,” she surmised.

I put in my order expecting pig knuckle, something akin to what Steve here enjoyed.  I love taking chances on the unknown dish. But the plate that arrived quickly changed things.

My brother* is the world’s biggest fan of Better Home and Gardens’ Cookbooks from the late 60s when brilliant photography joined forces with adventurous typography and whimsical drawings to create something beyond cookbooks, more like works of art. We often tittered over the photos of ‘aspics,’ meat and vegetables encased in gelatin molds.

Who would eat this? Why would you do this? Can God exist in a world where this would be allowed?

Picnic table stage fright

This is what comes up as an image when you search scheiss Deutsch

I pulled up a seat at the Gut Ostler Farm Saturday Afternoon Open House in mid-October.

“Sprechen sie Deutsch?”

“Ja, ein bisschen,” I replied.

“Nein, Kyle sprichst gut Deutsch,” my friend interjected.

And then I froze.

As a person familiar with the stage and mostly comfortable in front of people, it was surprising how an intimate gathering of four around a picnic table could suddenly become the largest, most ominous audience in the world.

My throat tightened, my eyes searched for a way out and all looked at me expecting something to spring forth. And it didn’t.

I stuttered and stammered, and tried to remember how to say simple things. And eventually I excused myself to get some food.

My vocabulary continues to grow and my confidence has picked up a bit, but I am nowhere near to what I would call a good German. I’m not even sure if what I wrote up there is correct and I’m too lazy right now to go check, so please just apply a ‘(sp?)’ to it all.

I eventually returned to my table with a plate of meat.

When your language skills are right on the verge, you’re bound to occasionally end up with something you’re uncertain of (check out my next post for more on that). Being affirmative and smily can often carry you through to the the next contextual contact and may make the difference between interrupting the flow or finding a verbal lifesaver to pull you back into the conversation. Other times you end up with a large plate of gristly meat when you thought you’d be getting the potato salad platter with lamb shank.

My friends looked at my plate of meat and I proceeded to tear at it with razor-sharp incisors as if it’s exactly what I ordered. Fortunately, that gave me something keep my mouth busy until the conversation changed to a direction I could follow.

Lot of departures going round

I wrote about him before, but Andy Rooney has played a fairly important role in my life. I can remember back in high school when Brock Gourlie and I would compete to see who could check out “And more by Andy Rooney” the most. It was a good time and I fondly remember his sage response to the check out woman at the grocery store.

“Is that all you need?”

“Of course it’s all I need. If’ I’d wanted more, I would have put it there, bitch!”

I added the ‘bitch’ part because I thought it would make this post more entertaining. But that was the gist of a three-page story in this book and helps explain how I learned impatience and crotchetiness and how to be ornery.

It saddened me to see he will be retiring at 92 years of age. If you ever read this Andy, stop being such a lazy ass. Just kidding, I salute you and I’ll miss you dearly.

Here is a video you might enjoy.

RIP Doña Carmelina

Doña Carmelina was one of my best friends in the village where I lived in Guatemala from 2003 to 2005.

Tonight I found out that she passed away after talking with a friend. Even though she was only about 60 years old and looked like she was at least 73, she seemed so full of life that age would never suffice to describe her.

I think fondly of the nights when she’d show up at my door with fresh, handmade tortillas wrapped in a dirty towel, ‘Coma su tortilla, Don Ronaldo’ she would implore. And then we would have a chat about the weather and she would stroll back to her house. This is a brief story I wrote up about her back then.

Doña Carmelina

Doña Carmelina

25 August 2005

With a smile like the sun she waits in the fields watching her sheep as another day closes. Carmelina is an old woman with weary eyes ringed by wrinkles from years of happiness in the face of a rather tough life.

She’s only 55 years old, but her eyes and languid gait make her seem decades older. She’s tall and rail thin in contrast to the majority of stocky indigenous women in the area, and her black hair is tied back in two foot-long ponytails with ribbon woven through.

Every day on my way home from work I pass through her family’s backyard. Their home consists of one small adobe building with a terra cotta roof next to another small adobe with a thatch-roof. Black, inky creosote dappled with condensation hangs from the ceiling after years of cooking over an open flame on the dirt floor. Carmelina lives with her husband Pio, two sons, Faustino and Jesus, her daughter-in-law and her two grandchildren.

Each day I pass through her yard and Carmelina ducks out the front door and beckons me with, “Ma’ tzuli!” (You arrived’ in Mam), then she smiles and lets loose with a chest-rattling cough brought on by years of cooking over an open fire indoors.

Carmelina delights in hearing me struggle to speak Mam, the indigenous language, and so every time I pass she asks me questions and I stammer and stutter. Then I ask what she said and she tells me. And then I ask her how to reply and I reply. And the next day I forget how to reply and we do it all over again. But every time I say a single word in Mam her face lights up and she gives a hearty laugh before breaking into her trademark cough.

Carmelina’s family is typical of the poorer families in town. They cultivate 1/2 acre of potatoes a year and own 19 sheep of a dubious lineage. The family survives on less than $50 a month. Each day Carmelina’s husband and son hike over the hill to the forest to look for wood for fuel. Occasionally they slaughter the sheep for food, but usually they hold onto the animals in case of an emergency when they sell them for quick cash.

But there are no complaints of how tough life is. She doesn’t complain about the years she had to work for nearly nothing in coffee plantations when her husband couldn’t work because of a hernia. The hacking cough from cooking over that open fire? It’s okay. God knows and God is good because we’ve all lived to see another day.

And so she smiles while holding her grandaughter’s hand. Carmelina and her granddaughter are always together. Some days they’re in the backyard watching the family’s sheep eat. Other days I return and they are sitting at the top of the hill looking out over Chiabal as the sun sets.

And that’s where I would find her, like most days, waiting in the sun.

To my somewhat racist neighbor

Dear older German woman,

It's okay, don't worry. It's all good.

It’s okay. You don’t have to worry. When you came up to me that other night as I was walking down the street, you seemed very nervous and agitated. You talked at me for a while about something urgent, but all I could make out was ‘black man’, ‘fear’ and ‘I live down the road’. I figured it was no use trying to explain to you in my limited German that black people are just like other people. They have hair, and feet and noses too.

Maybe I should have stopped and introduced you to the person, but I was a little taken aback by the urgency in your voice. I thought that you were in some sort of legitimate danger. Instead of trying to help you understand, I decided to help you home.

Okay, though, I can understand. It was a bit dark out and I have to admit, I was carrying some fancy camera equipment and when I saw those two Turkish guys catching up to me rather quickly on the street I did a double take as well. But really, you don’t have to worry.