This Rogue’s Town . . .

    Somehow, I’m supposed to be on an Amtrak Regional in twelve hours for a very dutiful jaunt down to Our Nation’s Capital, where I’m to spend the next three days with my family.  My brother is in town for a conference, and the parents being who they are have decided to turn this into some sort of long distance reunion for everybody.  You see, my family (and by this, I mean ALL FOUR of us) doesn’t do "together" very often, and usually when we do we’re left with little to wonder about why it doesn’t happen more often.  Still, I expect everyone to be on their best behavior: which for me will mean I will have to hold my tongue and not take any of it too seriously. 

     It’s been a long LONG time since I last went to D.C.  My previous trip was captured gloriously on the old blog.  And while I suspect this forray won’t involve completely idiotic inquiries into who built the pyramids (and how I learned to speak English so good), nor any tortured attempts to stay awake during Supreme Court oral arguments, I do expect to be indundated by more Arab-American Professional Networking than I generally ever care to do.  This conference even has a Buddha Bar night tommorrow, which I acknowledge shows some measure of pop cultural savviness, even if it is Buddha Bar.  Then again, I have to remind myself that this is Washington, D.C., and if there’s ever a place from my past where I’d have to step completely outside of myself as I presently am it would be here. 

     I now even have a tortured reference point to all of this that I didn’t have before, being that you know who(1) hails from McLean, VA just across the Potomac. 

     On the plus side, I’m scheduling myself for a run along my old route this Sunday (Foggy Bottom down through the FDR memorial to the Jefferson Memorial and then up a new leg back up and down the Mall . . . so excited!) and then meeting up with Mikey L. (aka Friendster Mo) later on for food, spirits, and incidentals.  It should be a swell time. 

     As it happens, though, I’ve been waylaid by the rain all day today.  Right now I find myself struggling to muster up the energy to start packing.  I thought it would be a brilliant idea to go running 9 miles late in the afternoon, THEN jet off to yoga, THEN make a completely unnecessary trip to the Barnes & Noble on Lincoln Square, THEN buy my train tickets, THEN . . . well, you get the picture.  Point is, it’s late.  I’m tired.  I haven’t packed yet.  And I have it in my head to squeeze in some pool time tommorrow morning too.  Methinks, writing at length about all of this on my blog isn’t helping much either. 

     But before I go, let me just make a completely tangentional observation about what a demented idea it is for Friendster to now show you who’s been visiting your profile.  Isn’t part of the whole idea of these online interfaces that you should be able to look at any profile for any reason without the awkwardness that might come with knowing that the person in question knows you’re looking at them.  And this is totally different from "Bookmarking", which is very self-seletcting and underused.  I mean, when did Friendster become so goddamn CLINGY?! All of a sudden, it needs to know everything I’m doing, who I’m doing it to, and whether or not they in turn are gonna do something about it?! Honestly, what gives?  It’s like any other bar in Manhattan, except way cheaper and alot less fun. 

(Exit Hani)

(1) Yes, that’s right . . .

I’ve long been a fan of the hydrologic cycle, at least from afar. Having never been one to do the type of gallivanting in the rain you only really see on t.v. commercials or at Phish concerts or t.v. commercials depicting Phish concerts, I happily resign myself to the interior view: bundling up with a cup of Mehmet Effendi and imagining myself one of the Spinners penning the lyrics to "I’ll be around".  I’ve always associated that song with the rain, even back when I had absolutely no one to sing it about.  Those numbers have grown legion in the past few years, of course.  But I still don’t mind the rain.  Not a bit. 

I even don’t mind that it keeps me and the bike indoors for now.  He needs a break much more so than myself.  And as the sunsets creep earlier and earlier into the day, rough trade for an extra hour of sleep, my trusted aluminum velo will find more and more downtime at its disposal; allowing it the chance to reconnect with its previous station in life as the principle barrier between my doorway and the bathroom.  Sometimes, it mopes-as we fancy inanimate objects would, if they were anything more than the sum of their assembled parts-about the streets, and the circles, and the pavement, and the sea.  And Flushing Meadows.  Riverdale.  Rockaway Beach.  Whatever part of Bay Ridge that was where SpongeBob accosted us both.  I let it mope because it’d would be pointless for me to do much the same.  The streets will be there next summer in more or less the same form.  To myself I can offer no such guarantee.  But he doesn’t need to know that.  We haven’t spoken about it.  Likely because he’s a bike, and doesn’t have any ears. 

Then I turn my thoughts to the bed, recently cleared after several months as storage.  It’s going through some changes too.  The degrees no longer justify sleeping on the couch before the fan as I did throughout exams, then graduation, then more exams.  I’ve forgotten how it is to wake up with the sun.  I can’t quite remember if the alarm even went off today, the reach-across to the far window having long since become somnabulic for me.  Then again, the sun hardly fulfilled its end of the bargain today, as is its wont in months of this cycle.  At least so I’ve allowed myself to believe.  And yet this is the first time in a while that I’ve really noticed it missing.  The past several months have been their fare share of muggy, humid, torrid, and gross. But no one turned off the sprinklers.  Or the fountains.  Not Prometheus at Rockefeller Center.  Nor the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows.  Nor those fancy new syncopated jets around Cristoforo Columbo.  My bed is also inanimate, though uncharasterically inertial.  It seems to notice something amiss too. ANd it may’ve figured it all out before I did. 

And for some reason, only now have I wondered about the sun.  And I certainly don’t mean "now" "never before", but more "now" "whatever happened since then".  I’m sure it’s gone away here and there and I simply haven’t noticed.  I may have been indoors with no windows before. Or indoors overlooking a campus, one of elms, hills, and romanesque revival, another of streets, concrete, and abandoned art deco.  I’m certain I didn’t misplace it either.  Or underuse it.  We’ve seen quite enough of one another lately.  Up the transverses.  Through the crosswalks.  Across Verdi, Times, and Herald Squares.  This is very out of character, I have to admit. 

But maybe we needed to take a break.  Maybe things have moved too quickly too soon.  And maybe it just doesn’t know how to tell me.  Maybe it’s afraid to commit.  Or maybe it’s just not that into me, as some have suggested in the past.  It won’t be the first time.  It happens very often.  They’ve grown legion, as I’ve told you. 

Maybe rain will give us the space we need.  Maybe the rain will draw us closer together in the end.  And then maybe I’d be on to something if I just kept things indoors for a little while.  And then I could remember the very point of saying

I’ll be around. 

sigh . . . anyways, moving on . . . So, the big upshot to cyclical unemployment is that you now have a lot more time on your hands to discover such hitherto dormant inner talents as 1) writing a completely adjective-free cover letter 2) being able to divine the precise public restroom-to-bikepark ratio on every square mile of the island of Manhattan and 3) learning how to be hung over more than four mornings out of the week.  At the same time, you’re also accorded the opportunity to reconnect with other previously-established talents: in my case, the ability to find oneself doing extraordinarily substantive legal work for no compensation whatsoever.  Not that I’m complaining, if there’s ever an affiliation I need to play up to the hilt these days, it’s the Immigration and Nationality Committee I sit on at the New York City Bar.  I’ve applied for a few immigration positions, and I’ve got my eyes set on one in particular.  The only problem is that the Committee is set to take action against one of the jobs I’m applying for in the next few weeks.  Since too few of you are indoctrinated to the Cult of Rea, I’ll just say that the job involves something that raises all sorts of Due Process red flags for immigration advocates in the Second Circuit.  And how did it come to be that I’m applying for a job against which the Committee I’m sitting on is currently mobilizing?

I emailed the Chair a few weeks ago when I was still applying and asked her if she knew anything about it.  She never got back to me and I went ahead and started applying.  Then, we had our first meeting, just after I had gotten all my materials together.  It turned out that the reason why she hadn’t gotten back to me sooner is because she was too busy making the job I’m applying for AN AGENDA ITEM. 

Well, the upside to this is that I got alot more information than I previously had about the job.  The downside is that it also created partial misgivings for me about same.  I haven’t been discouraged from applying, which is a good thing.  And indeed, I did hand deliver the redweld full of application materials to the Federal Courthouse last week . . .

Hani: "Yes, I need to make a delivery to Human Resources"

U.S. Marshall: "Are you applying for a job?"

Hani: "Yes"

U.S.M.: "Southern District?"

Hani: "No . . . Second Circuit . . ."

U.S.M. "Well, good luck . . . it’s through the door that way"

. . . but, as it happens, the committee is now availing itself of my downtime by asking if I wouldn’t mind  comparing the new Second Circuit policy with those of all the other Circuit Courts so that we can send "a letter of concern" by the end of next week.  So, here I am, sitting indoors, slogging through an 101-page Cornell Paper on BIA appeals in the federal courts instead of . . . I dunno . . . something else . . . whatever I was doing before.  That was fun.

Again, I realize that this is great opportunity to show what I’m made of to an extraordinarily well-connected group of people in the field which I am most interested in entering. 

But, I can’t seem to shake the impression that I’m working to cross purposes . . . with myself

Somehow, the past four hours of my life have begun to resemble a particularly mawkish E.L.O. song.  Try and guess which one.  Details to remain cryptic . . .

In retrospect, lacing up for a four-mile race while still in the act of being actively hung over was probably not the best course of action in this weather.  For those of you joining us from outside the NYC, Hurricane Ophelia is visiting us out here in the form of unbearably humid weather.  Though the official forecasts rarely clock in above 80 degrees, we’re approaching 80% humidity by mid-morning on most days.  This made this morning’s venture (on bike, no less . . . my broke ass needs me some transportation alternatives these days!) to Bethesda Terrace all the more challenging.  My registration form got all smudged from the good pint of sweat I must’ve been excreting by the time I arrived.  And crossing the finish line (at a completely unnecessary 6 minute 12 second pace) turned into a nearly vomitous affair for all the race photographers to capture (I was the 40th finisher so it’s not like I could get lost in the crowd). 

Afterwards, I met up with Thomas for breakfasting, return-shopping, and attempted museum-going.  He was left predictably strung out from what he said was a good five bottles of wine consumed the night before.  Though I had barely made a dent last night with the two post-cinema (oyez! all those having not yet viewed "Thumbsucker" are admonished to draw forth and go see it immediately, for that movie is fucking brilliant!) martinis at Rue B, suffice it to say we were both walking wounded through most of midtown.  Finding ourselves without a corporate membership to get us into the Whitney for free, we both called it a day at around 2:00pm. 

I biked home thereafter, collapsed . . . and woke up with what feels like the beginnings of a cold.  Sigh . . . at this price, glory! Or something feeling like a mildly half-assed version thereof.  I suppose I could do with 6 minutes 12, for what it’s worth.  Not my fastest pace, but certainly faster than I’ve ever run a four miler.  And beyond what I feel like doing right now: curling up into a ball, in front of the fan, continuing to baste in my own sweat and doing something less purposeful than dying. 

Hmm.  All of a sudden, my Friendster profile has adopted the same color scheme as my high school . . .

For anybody who’s managed to make it this far, read on. 

I google searched Inae Lathrop earlier tonight.  She passed away, it turns out, three years ago.  February 23.  She was 64 years old.  My mother will turn 61 in December. 

Inae was my first profile in my short-lived stint as a restaurant critic.  Senior year.  College.  The Badger Herald.  The column was called "Flavors".  Not of my choosing.  I aimed to add some class to the operation of Food Critic, having seen it previously overdone by some . . . some . . . I don’t know how to say it, but there were an awful lot of them back in Madison.  Innocuous White Folk. We’ll just leave it at that. 

I can’t recall what it was that drew me to Hae Ru Bong over on Williamson.  The Gateway Mall.  Across from Lake Monona and the Cardinal Bar.  My exposure to Korean food was limited to a few encounters in Cairo.  Zee, across from the Embassy in Zamalek.  Went there with Jaskaran and Friendster Rachel (nee Rachel).  Another place in the Cleopatra Hotel on Tahrir.  Can’t remember its name.  Never been, but my brother’s a fan.  Bui Go Gee I did enjoy.  Took a while to warm to Bi Bim Bop, and come the following winter in Madison, it was all I could think of.  Here, my first forray into gastrojournalism was born. 

I brought Mac along, so too Waldo (nee Ryan) and his roomate . . . Ed? Yes, Ed.  Ed was Korean, which helped us.  I had the Bui Kal Bee that night, about which I would later write, "taste triumphed over texture".  Mac had something with vegetables.  Waldo and Ed god-knows-what.  It all made it into the article, which also required a little interview time. 

Inae was a nurse who met her husband, an American G.I. during the Korean War.  They fell in love and he promised to return for her one day.  My inner cynic shuddered at the likely outcome of this tale but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that her husband did indeed return, albeit 13 years later, to ask for his hand in marriage.  They settled in Madison, where she gladly took on the role of housewife until his untimely death in the mid 1980’s.  Widowed with a high school aged son, Inae took to doing the only thing she as a full-time mom knew how: make food, and lots of it.  She worked the Marriot out by West Towne as a sous-chef, learning not only the complete range of Asian dishes, but Italian, Mexican, and American standards too.  She also worked nights as a pastry chef at Perkin’s, perchance easily impressing with her mastery the type of people who are wont to buying their wedding cakes at Perkin’s.  When a friend who ran a restaurant approached her asking her to take it over, she asked Jesus. 

Oh, I’m not being euphamistic here.  I only wish.  Because at that point in the interview she began relaying to me a dialogue between her and Jesus.  Jesus didn’t say much, from what I hear, keeping himself to one liners: "Do it", "Yes", and "Sure" it sounds like.  She showed up at Anchor Bank the next day, they approved a loan, and she took over Hae Ru Bong, Madison’s only Korean restaurant at the time.  Thanks to Jesus, she would say.  Hmm, I would bethink.  This part didn’t make the article.  I ran a purely secular food column. 

All the while, Hae Ru Bong was a one woman affair.  The image of this elderly Korean widow running a reasonably popular restaurant-kitchen and all-all by herself, was something to marvel at, especially considering the climatic realities one encountered on the outside.  She amazed me with her strength and fortitude, and while I’m alien to the impulses which informed them strongly, I respected what she was able to do with it. 

Hers outlasted other Asian restaurants, no small feat for a far-off location in a college town with no shortage of ethnic eats.  When the Thai place next door closed down, she invited the woman who ran it to serve her dishes from her kitchen.  By the time I came in for my third interview-by then, she knew they were not just interviews-she knew exactly what I planned to order: a big black rock cooker full of Bi Bim Bop, the perfect salve to a bitter-midwinter’s Wisconsin day. 

I remember little about that article, except the picture that Henry the displaced Brit staff photographer (this is Wisconsin, remember) took of Inae, smiling through the galley of her tiny kitchen, displaying a plate full of fresh vegetables.  I would conclude that article with the very mawkish line, "Ha Ru Bong may not be Madison’s best-known restaurant, but it gets points for being it most genuine". 

I roll my eyes at the thought of having ever written something like that.  My eyes fall short of a complete revolution before remembering what made me even think about it: Inae, her Bi Bim Bop recipe, and how I can scratch that off the list next time in Madison. 

I’ve never been down with J.C., but for all the work Inae wound up doing on his behalf, he better be hungry. 

I don’t think the Spanish have a word for Tagarista either, but if they did it ought to be Pollo Campero.  I’ve been reading about this place (Latin American’s largest fast food chain now gone gangbusters on the States, feeding appetite-lorn immigrants and curious gringo bystanders all the same) for a few years now, and when biking out to Flushing Meadow last summer noticed a long queu snaking out of their Corona Park location.  Feeling equal parts depressed and exhausted from the bike ride and the particularly drawing conversation I had with my mother somewhere around Courthouse Square, I thought I’d sneak in for a little comodidad just off the 103rd Street 7 stop. 

What can I say, they need more of these places.  Actually, no they do not.  I do not.  Stay in Queens, far far away from me! I do not need any more fried food in my supposedly-training-for-a-marathon regime than i already have, and yet . . . all I can think about is the fried-to-perfection saffron-tinged leg and thigh pieces that came accompanied with a side of patacones (fried green plaintain chips) and . . . and . . . the salsa bar! Pardon me while I slobber . . .

Chroist, this is gonna be a rough couple of months.  Tagarista, no matter the dialect, isn’t good for the ole waistline either it seems. 

"Tagarista", i’ve mentioned, means "those things that are the best" in Greek.  It’s an epicurean gem of a word encapusalating the most lofty of pursuits in a mere four syllables.  I’m no polyglot, but I doubt we’ll find such phonetic contrition in other languages.  The French have their "joie de vivre", three different words that don’t necessarily express the same thought.  Tagarista need not necessarily lead to joie de vivre.  Very often, in fact, the two run to cross purposes. 

Truth be told, they always do . . .

I’m extraordinarily conflicted these days.  We can take that as a given.  Presumably, there wasn’t much more room for this now than there was before, but I’ve had to make room.  I’m unemployed.  I’m free.  I’m burdened by the serious illness of my mother.  I’m revelling in my down time.  I’m training for a marathon.  I’m eating junk food.  I’m steeping myself in friendship.  I’m adrift.  I don’t know what to do.  But every morning for the past few days, I’ve dipped two tablespoons into a canister of Mehmet Effendi, stirred it into a cezve full of boiling water and sugar and allowed it to steep and rise like a souffle.  I’ve learned I’m far better at the art of preparing a cup of ah’wa ziyadda than any Turkish place I’ve been to in the city.  Same for the Greeks.  And the Egyptians outside of Queens.  "It’s Tagarista in a cup", I tell myself, wishing it can get me through the day. 

I make it just fine.  But, not everyone else is.  She and I had a particularly bad discussion today.  She came completely undone over the issue of a minor SNAFU with my bar application.  My mother doesn’t worry the way most people worry.  She’s always had a problem with proportionality.  I don’t know where this comes from, maybe a Generalized Anxiety.  She has her health to worry about, which she comprises almost relentlessly by worrying about a litany of other things: my job search, my brother’s assignment, my dad’s sanity, the condo, the house.  I’m not stupid enough to tell her to stop worrying, where I struggle is maintain a sense of calm in the face when this worry becomes manifest, as it so very often has throughout my life, in outright anger.

In a nutshell: she is sick and scared and feels abandoned by her sons.  She wants me in Chicago, with a completely different bottom line.  I call her on this and tell her to just say the word.  She doesn’t and falls back on, "I just want you to find something where you’ll be happy" before reloading on how cold and indifferent I can be.  It’s par for the course, I’ve learned.  What I’ve never learned is how to bogey.  Today, as she was unloading the full scope of her anxieties on me-and keep in mind that when she does so it’s in the form of a hysterical tear-soaked self-pitying tirade where I imagine her clasping at her face and repeating the same thing over and over again, you’ve seen the image all the time at Arab funerals on t.v., except that no one here has died-she inferred that among her fears is that . . . oh I’m not sure what she said exactly.  But the general gist is that she fears I’m going to fall prey to some woman who’s willing to give me alot of money. 

There it is, folks: my mother think’s I’m susceptible (ha!) to prostituion. 

As always, I’ve been able to rely on my Dad for edification:

Me: "Dad, I need to apologize. I’ve gotten her wound up . . . she said something about some woman who’s going to give me alot of money"

Dad: "Oh . . . do you know any women who have alot of money?"

And that was that.  Defused instantly.  A couple of hours later he called back thanking me for taking the time to call her and to just understand that she’s in a very bad place right now and she’s going to say things that may be very hurtful.  This is my sacrifice, he told me. 

And maybe I’ll just have to try.  And maybe tagarista is something best pursued one cup at a time. 

but am I wrong to find this all so very sad? Argue with me.  Please.