Tortillas, Beans, and More

Alicante is one of the more diverse cities in Spain. It certainly has large percentages of Arabs (Algerians, mostly) and Latinos (Colombians mostly.)

Unlike the US, it has relatively few Mexicans. As a result, though Mexican-labeled  food abounds, the quality varies widely from abysmal to tolerable. For the home cook, 

it is difficult, because you have to look around to find basic ingredients in this city. The ordinary supermarket tortillas are generally a disaster even if they carry US brand names.

That is the opinion of this afficcionado of the food of Mexico.  I am sure there are people who will disagree with me. 

Yes, the tacos in the market are good as are those of the Tres Carnales, but they are only so-so good, rather than I need-to-go-back good. In any case there is so much more to Mexican food that tacos. 

I do have to confess that I have not been everywhere such as to the places in suburban and touristy San Juan. 

I stopped at a green grocers shortly before they closed yesterday evening. The owner was working the till. 

On my way home to cook dinner, people eat late here, I had come to buy some limones (called limas here and limes in the US). I

 was making chicken milanesas with french fries and rice, as well as a sopa de tomate with fideo like Mexican mothers make. As a result I needed limones for the milanesas. I could have used the wonderful yellow lemons here, but I prefer limes for this dish. 

 While I cheated on the milanesas and was using pre-breaded ones from Mercadona (sigh), the soup I made myself. The tomatoes are so good right now, it tuned out scrumptious.

At the register the man, who I knew was from Pakistan, asked in somewhat hesitant Spanish (unfortunately I do not speak Urdu) where I was from

He has seen many many times but this is the first time he has broken the ritual of “6,50 Euros…Adiós”.

He recognized my Spanish and said he had lived for 7 years in Houston and then in New York but had left the United States for Spain after being robbed by armed men a few times. It is much safer here, he claimed.  He has two green grocers and a Colombian bakery-cafe in Alicante. 

He told he he loved Mexican food with emphasis on loved. 

But he was frustrated here because he could neither find the food nor the ingredients he needed. The food seems insipid here to him because of a lack of understanding the flavors of Mexico and because the ingredients that come here are not the best. 

We compared notes and agreed. 

Though I did not tell him, I have often thought there is a line running from South Asia through Persia to Mexico as reflected in moles (as if a type of curry) and in the flat bread, not corn tortillas but the flour ones that fit in the world of South Asian and Middle Eastern flat breads. 

In any case, I was delighted by the conversation, not because he agreed with me, but because he made me feel good by seeking me out. He has seen me at his stores many times and this is the first time in a year and three months he has wanted to talk. 

There are a number of Pakistani or Bangladeshi establishments near here. They dominate the green grocery business and the kebab dine-in / dine-outs,  while Chinese merchants dominate the five and dime stores just called Chinos.

In any case, I am going to make my way to a small, Mexican-owned store that competes with the more numerous Pakistani owned grocers to find dried chiles and hopefully good tortillas. 

In the meantime, I shall think about how the Pakistani grocers also dominate the vending of Colombian products in this neighborhood. 

Where a Geranium Blooms

 Miles are a measure of distance in space; they do not accurately measure connections of the heart or the soul. 

I’m perched, having migrated to retire, on the edge of the Mediterranean, very close to Africa though within Europe.  Large ferries depart from the port near my flat several times a week for Algeria. Everyday, I cross paths with Algerians and Moroccans; often women in beautiful scarves, although there are also men with families and men alone, as well as numerous sylph-like youths who show great soul. I also see and hear Europeans of every type on the streets around me, many tourists, others refugees, and some retirees like myself.  The majority of people, like the National Police having breakfast across from me, are from here, Spain, a rich and varied country with its own terrors as well as rich political traditions and joys. 

Still my heart and soul are tied to people on the other side of the Atlantic, and to the vast country that used to uphold vast ideals and dreams to humanity, It saw itself as a torch lighting the way, a vision of hope for humanity. Now most everyone shakes there head and wonders what happened. 

Those things tear at me. More so, the recent assassination at Utah Valley University. It has filled me with a generalized anxiety, interrupting sleep and demanding my days, and I am across the world, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and Iberia. 

This morning, the television news is filled with images of police attacking protestors who interfered with a major, international bicycle event’s final in Madrid. Yet my heart cannot escape what happened, the faces of my students, and a governor’s tears when he realized his state and people were not a safe haven but a part of a vast and cruel world. He would reduce it to the influence of social media and the dark web, but it is so much more. 

My questions here are not what happened. We know the bullet and the name of the assassin and the fallen. We know their backgrounds and we even know what is engraved on the bullet’s companions.

My desire is to find peace, for myself and others, and move past this event. I wonder how to strengthen and cultivate that peace in my soul and among those with whom I associate. 

My name is not Polyanna—far from it. I have never been an optimist. Storm clouds are simply storm clouds and a riot a riot.   

For self preservation, I need that peace inside. 

I think of people that to me are images of peace and how it accompanies them like robes moving in the air.  It also emanates from them like a wonderful and fragrant perfume where, when you walk by, you smell it for a moment just feel good. 

Were I a religious leader or a guru I could propose a path to it for other people, a kind of nirvana. I cannot, That is not my path nor my reality. 

However, to find it, I turn both outward and inward. Though the TV blasts images of violence in Madrid and in Gaza, I see green plants and flowers around me. I look into the heart of the flowers to see the multiplicity of colors inside and dream of the bees that may have visited them. 

I lift a basil leaf or a mint leaf, rub it and smell it.  Its redolence fills me and calms me as I focus on it.. 

I see the beauty of the sky—though I am also aware of how quickly that can turn. Still I see it and let it inside, where I also hold to the majestic sea with its calm waves lapping at the beach and the feet of children and their elders. 

But I also turn inward to create peace.  For me that involves writing. But, according to a conversation I had yesterday afternoon, it also involves cooking: the satisfaction of preparing ingredients—even pungent onions that make me cry, seeing the cook and smelling them on the stove, and then serving homemade food to my friends. 

In the conversation it also came out that many people crochet or knit, mostly women but increasingly men. Manual arts like that focus the body and can also calm themind and the heart. 

I go out and walk. While moving I focus on what I am seeing, including something out of the ordinary to photograph and perhaps post on my social media. 

And, I pay attention to my breathing, the how the oxygen enters my body and flows through my blood relaxing tension inside me. 

This is no manual. It is simply a list of practices and desires. Though anger and anxiety may visit, I shall do little more than greet them, hear them, and bid them farewell. 

Today, I shall work to cultivate peace and till my garden where it is planted and grows next to bougainvillea and geraniums as well as hot peppers. 

A Vivid Fear

There you are, and we are talking.  It doesn’t matter who you are, whether I love you or just barely know you. You are a you. 

We are talking and I am happy. I like to learn about you and generally enjoy sharing myself with you, whoever you are.  

To be honest, some times I am shy and find it difficult to be with other people. A social anxiety can take over, and has often, since I was young, where I absolutely fear you might see me and find me worthless. 

That was not an uncommon experience when I was a boy. I would meet another boy and hope I had met a friend. After we talked and it looked like things were going well, they met the other guys in the class or the neighborhood. Then, they turned on me, sometimes violently. They realized there was some sort of stigma on me—I never really knew what, just that I had been judged a pariah. 

That was then, when pubic hair had only a year or two on my body. It laid a pattern and became a model of fears deep within me. I have lived some sixty years since then and have slowly relaxed my fears and come to really like other people and enjoy talking, even if there are still triggers that can make me cringe, turn inwards, and try to proactively wall my self up and lock the gate. 

That minefield, I have learned to negotiate, mostly without explosions. A new one has appeared. Like yesterday. 

We were having a good conversation. You had told me about a friend of yours who had just been diagnosed with advanced bone cancer. In turn, I was sharing with you my experience of having AML, Acute Myeloid Leukemia as an older than average patient. 

In the midst of my sentences, when words just came from inside and found my voice, suddenly a silence, a gap. 

A word was missing. I knew its content and where it should be, but there was nothing for my voice to deploy. 

Ok, I vamped. I talked around it hopefully without making its absence obvious. After a bit, thankfully a relatively short one, the word appeared. I spoke it, relieved and continued with my portion on our conversation. 

Another gap, another silence, and another. 

My path to interacting suddenly seemed a cobbled path  with lots of dirt and few stones to step on. 

Shame wanted to take me over. I did not let it, but had it insisted, I would have spoken it and the problem I was having instead of keeping it inside.

Sometimes this silence came attached to another within me.  Normally, when I stumbled because the stone was not there, I remembered that there was a ground and that I knew what the word was supposed to say.  

At times, the lost stone pairs with a loss of the ground. There is a bigger whole where I seem to have not retained a memory, even one important to me. 

Before you can say, there, there. this is just part of growing older. I know that the massive chemotherapy that saved my life caused the loss of much memory and I am slowly learning what. It is when I loose that ground beneath me that I realize chemo had its way.

There is more, my friend. Believe me, I wish it were that simple. 

When my energy level drops, or when I am not exercising enough, It feels like my mind is actively throwing away knowledge and experience. Once I eat or get a bit of a workout, things may return to normal, but I become aware of how fragile this mind is and how easily iI could be treading that slippery slope towards forgetfulness that claimed my grandfather and my aunt. 

So my friend, when the rhythm of my conversation slows for a fraction of a second, and you become aware I am searching for a word, please see it for what it is:

A desire to engage and interact, even if it becomes more difficult as the days advance. Sadly, I realize, my will, my commitment, may not be strong enough to overcome this challenge as my years continue. I may really be facing the end, pasting a vapid smile on my face while my eyes show little comprehension.  I sincerely hope not, but of that I have so little control.