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Monday, June 13, 2005
The Hero
In each of the umpteen books I've read over the last months you find a hero. The individual author's concept of hero distinguishes these books from one another much more than does the plot, setting, time, etc. A book I read last night showed off a hero who said to another character, "You don't want to make an enemy of me," and later the hero shot that character between the eyes...cold-blooded execution, but he was the hero. Another hero refused to complete his assignment which was to shoot a man who certainly deserved to be shot. Then there is the hero who rigidly applies the law to one and all and for whom the law is a religion, but whose wife is a vigilante killer and he looks the other way. In another book the hero is a muddle-headed type who never really gets down to it. He doesn't act so much as he angsts. He's the hero because of the effect of his emotional upheaval on all the other characters. Another hero is a practically robotic fellow, a creature of great intellect but no appreciable reactions and interactions. He's the hero because his analyses decisively influence the plot. No females come quickly to mind as heroine other than Stephanie Plum in the Evanovich books about her career as bounty hunter. She's the heroine because no matter what, she's still standing when the dust settles. Nothing can extinguish a person with her combination of neediness and brainless elan.
In my opinion John LeCarre creates heroes with the greatest complexity.A LeCarre hero is the heart of everyperson, all of it, good and bad and in between. No one should close one of those books without feeling found out. The worst are good, the best are bad, embarrassing, depressing, hopeful, grim, completely, painfully real and worth knowing. My guess is that future generations will consider his thrillers the greatest writing of the second half of the 20th century.
More Boards
Going and coming to/from the ghetto grocery I noticed yet more boarded-up windows. The yellow apartment sides face red brick apartemnts looking out onto the cross street. This space is just some more hell hole like the yellow apartments. In January that's where a guy who parked on the sidewalk refused to move his truck 6 inches so I wouldn't have to take my shopping cart out into the street, and when I pleaded with him, the crazy old drunk came out and screamed at me, told me, "Get out in the street and die, you old white bitch." Well, every single one of those places is boarded up, all six of them. Of course the cosmic balance exists. Those people are gone, but I discovered a huge cockroach in my kitchen. There's just no such thing as getting rid of all the pests.
Big C
Recently I was in the hardware store waiting to get the ear of an employee who stood listening to a drama queen, "Oh, I'm so ashamed! If my poor dear dead mother knew that her daughter had found a cockroach in the house, I do think she'd roll over in her grave." Yeah, right. Ha.
Well, I have not actually ever seen a live cockroach until last night, not once in my whole life. But now I live in the south and it's the steamy summer time. I have ants in the house, and last night I saw a cockroach conservatively as long as my incdex finger. I didn't think regular cockroaches got that big, maybe the Madagascar hissing kind, but not the run-of-the-mill household variety. Oh, well, now I've seen one and I'm still alive and I guarantee that my mother is not rolling around in her grave over it. Actually the cockroach was so big, I thought probably a person could saddle it up and give pony rides for kids. What a whopper. I was afraid to try to kill it for fear it turned on me and beat me to death with it's super-long feelers. It was high up on the wall over the stove.
For all I know, my house is just swarming with cockroaches I have not met owing to the fact that I'm not up and about at night. I only saw one, but he must have friends. I found him because yesterday I was sick most of the day, didn't eat. Last night I was having another readathon. About 2:00A.M. suddenly I felt better and was hungry. I decided that a bacon/lettuce/tomato sandwich was indicated and went to the kitchen, got the ingredients out of the refrigerator, turned toward the stove, and there was the BIG C up on the wall.
At first I didn't have courage to approach the stove thinking the bug might jump down off the wall and bite me. The remembering that I was hungry, I went toward the stove and was relieved that Big C ran up the wall and disappeared into a tiny crack. so he's still here. Doubtless I'll see him again. Maybe sometime I'll get up the nerve to whack him. Oooh. That would be a lot of bug squish.
Many years ago my sister lived in Spanish Harlem for a while. She had lots of horror stories some of which involved cockroaches which she claimed to at times swarm over her kitchen floor so numerously that they left no place to set her foot down on a non-roach spot. She tried every single anti-roach preparation available on the market at that time and none were successful. Someone told her that the only way to get rid of them was to create an absence of food, to maintain sterile technique like in a lab. She conscientiously tried that and it didn't help. The roaches thrived on chlorine bleach.
Last night, watching the giant cockroach, I remembered my sister's dilemma. That's one reason I didn't try to kill the thing. I had that fatalistic feeling, "Once they're onto you, you've had it. If they ever arrive, they never leave." I surely do not want to have to pick my way over the floor through clicking, hissing piles of hungry cockroaches, hope it doesn't come to that. I suppose I could call a pest exterminating company and pay them to poison my environment.
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Long Grass
I hesitate to venture into the back yard. Since the yard man's equipment went wrong, vegetation yelled, "Whoopie!" and leaped for the moon. Gigantic weeds, huge, evil green grasping things reach out to seize my ankles as I steer Pork Chop around her little potty experience. Squash plants overnight grow as high as my head. This isn't right. It's only June 11.
I suppose I could do a Dan maneuver. He so thoroughly napalmed all green things in the Netzer yard that when at last he changed course and planted a few flowers, those flowers began to wither as soon as he turned his back. The question being, which is less desirable; out-of-control veg or bare dirt? Summer in the south. Absent rigorous discipline of mower and weed whacker, one may only choose an extreme.
Friday, June 10, 2005
Yet More Chuzzle
Now my score is 650,000. Help. Please. Someone do a Chuzzle intervention.
Thursday, June 9, 2005
YES!! YES!!! THANK YOU, LORD!!!!!
Of the two yellow apartments, one is empty and BOARDED UP!!!! It is entirely empty and every window and door is covered with heavy plywood. This is what you would call an answer to prayer except that I did not even dare to pray about it. It is a gift from God. I did see piles of mattresses and old, junky furniture on the curb this week. Of course, I assumed this meant that someone had been evicted. Now I know the whole lousy, rotten, drug-dealing, prostitution station full of gun-toting lunatics is empty. Oh. I am so thankful.
Chuzzle On!
My Zen Chuzzle score...the game never stops...you just accumulate until, well, forever...my score is now 450,000. How much Chuzzle can one person take?
Ants
Up-north, if you want ants, go for a picnic. Sit on the grass outside, scattering crumbs. Ants will arrive sooner or later.
This is down-south. Ants are such a fact of life. I am tortured by ants. If I fail to completely clean and sterilize all kitchen surfaces each day, if I fail to completely sterilize the kitchen garbage can each day, if I fail to vacuum up every tiny crumb strewed around on the carpet by Sadie and Benny, then lines of busy ants toil back and forth from someplace into my house. In self-defense I must be cleaner than clean. My kitchen must sparkle. And that's not enough. They found my snack food cupboard, high on the wall. There goes a busy little black line.
Lydia guessed that if we interrupted their line of march with fresh lemon juice, they'd give up. Didn't work. With children around all the time, with a small chihuahua here sniffing the fooor, I don't want to use pesticides. I'm getting desperate.
This is ridiculous. No one needs to tell me that all down-south women are cleaner than I am because I know better. I have seen dirty houses. How do people get rid of/prevent ant infestations? This clean business is sick and wrong.
Since I have to be ultra clean, I've begun to make a fetish of lavendar-scented cleaning products, hoping to ameliorate the gloom of all that scrubbing. The other day at Williams-Sonoma, I spent over $200.00 on everything lavendar. There's separately labelled lavendar for floors, counters, windows, bathrooms, sinks and tubs, dishes. Lavendar for hands, to use in the shower, for bathing. Then I went to Yankee Candle and bought lavendar candles plus little packages of lavendar for in drawers of clothing and towels, lavendar to hang on clothing hangers in the closet. Finally at Crabtree and Evelyn I bought a lavendar powder to sprinkle on the carpet, wait 10 minutes and then vacuum. Of course I also bought lavendar water and talc for me. Now my house is clean and smells delightful but I still have ants.
The other day following Benny's recital, I briefly endured the after-reception. A mother passed me, trying to find her little girl, calling out to her. Realizing that she had yelled into my face, she apologized, "Oh, sorry. I'm trying to find Ciarra. She wanted to go home right away to see her new ant farm."
I asked, voice trembling, "You BOUGHT a container of ants and brought it into your house? Deliberately? You didn't already have ants?"
She looked at me as if I'm crazy and replied, "Of course not."
Fortunately, I have a life-long habit of not hitting people who upset me. If I were one of the residents of the yellow apartments, that woman would have been picking herself out of the wall paper. "Of course not..."
Fresh Fish
I live in one of the world's great ocean ports. About a block and a half from my house, you start meeting fishing boats out on the water. All the time, men and boys ride by here on bicycles with fishing poles and tackle boxes tied to the back. I am an easy hot-weather stroll from restaurants backing on the water, places that get fresh fish delivered to the back door right off a fishing boat. So why is it that the other day when I set out to make crab cakes, I had to use shredded crabmeat out of cans? The answer is that I have no idea how to go about buying Chesapeake blue crab right off the boat. And why is that? Because I've never tried to buy menu items from anywhere but a grocery store. I need to locate a dock where members of the public may purchase just-caught and cleaned fish. Not in a store. Fish in the store looks long-dead.
And I most certainly do not want to try catching my own fish. Yecch. Once a while back I asked school kids to bring in fish so that we could make Japanese carp prints. A little girl showed up the next day with a cooler full of fish. They smelled hideous. They were covered with mucoid slime. First I scrubbed off the slime, using lemon-scented ammonia. Then we painted the fish and pressed fabric onto them, peeled off the fabric, and therefore had carp prints...all the while wearing surgical masks dipped in lemon oil. I have no desire whatsoever to again in my life encounter uncleaned fish. I simply want to make authentic crab cakes using real, fresh crab. Right now is supposed to be peak season for Chesapeake blue crab, so where are they?
Another thing...I need a better recipe. The whole crab "cakes' thing didn't happen. Yes, I know that I was making it up as I went along, but it shouldn't have been so hard. What turned out was a soppy mess which could not be formed into cakes. I flattened it into a big iron skillet and put it in the oven at 400 degrees. After a while, it was almost possible to cut it into wedges and serve it like pie slices, but that wasn't my plan. My neighbor supposedly makes great crab cakes but she works long hours and I see her very seldom. When I do spot her, she's coming in tired from work and I haven't the heart to ask for a recipe. So anyone reading my blog, if you make good crab cakes, please e-mail your recipe. Also, anyone from Norfok who reads this, where is the place to buy fresh crab/fish?
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Zen Chuzzle
I have left the house and a Zen Chuzzle addict now inhabits my body. That crazy person has so far racked up over 200,000 points and the end is not in sight.
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