monday night criollo

last night after work i was ravenously hungry.

i left my office and walked the 5 blocks along 11th street because the number 9 san bruno bus is unreliable. i figured i would get to mission before it came.

i was almost right, because it rumbled past me as i got to the corner.

i cursed the timing of the bus and proceded underground to the muni train to reach the embarcadero station.

as i descended the stairs and then sat, i re-entered salman rushdie's world of The Satanic Verses. The humor is beginning to grow on me, and I am imagining the "ch" dipthong in the chiding manner that the characters are speaking and that one of the protagonists is horrified he's rediscovered after spending time in Bombay in a stage production.

a few stops later and while i was admiring the concoction of a newsprint sari that the protagonist's mother used to wear. what the heck would that look like, i wondered? which newspaper? that actually might be really cool...

so far the two protagonists have been through several name changes. there's an evolution in the book i haven't quite gotten yet. i say evolution because i have grown up in judeo-christian america where we get the reincarnation thing as an afterlife boon. we don't travel along the karmic wheel until we get it right: we either get it right, pass pete, and chill in heaven or we get it sort of wrong and chill in purgatory (a spiritual time-out, perhaps?) until we get why we got it wrong and then pass pete, or we got it SO wrong that we're plunged into hell with a lot of other people who got it terribly wrong and live in fire and ice for all of eternity for these sins.

it was hard to explain to my non-christian friends in high school the whole christ-like figure/american lit thing. now i get that that perhaps i am needing a little primer into islam and hinduism to get some of the subtle-ties that are whooshing right past me in this book. i get that a pooja is a type of prayer and i am getting little hints about shuriya (sp? islamic law)...but there are the day to day things, like why i have an altar in my house and why i take it for granted to have symbols of saints and the cross and some pagan, jewish, and muslim symbols.

literature really is absorbed more if you have background about the story. which means i will be delving more into the world of encyclopedia. i want to get salman rushdie, dammit. and i will.

i got on the bus and continued to read. the fog-filmed evening enshrouded the bridge. before i knew it, the O transbay bus landed in Alameda, i requested my stop, and i stepped off, walked to my car, and figured out i would go to luka's to hear dj santero spin the world's music (focused on latin america). i also treated myself to a lovely appetizer of coconut thai mussels. the broth was excellent, spicy, sweet, and i sat reading my book, occasionally hypnotized by the disco ball and the light reflections off of it.

someone called my name.

i snapped out of it.

Shawna! She was coming back from the rest room and wondered if it was me.

So good to see her. She helped me begin to clean my apartment. Dad sorta finished her work last weekend for me.

We hugged, we'll connect next week, and I continued to read.

Next came a thai vegetable stew with jasmine tea rice.

Equally lovely. I wanted to be served and just escape into my book.

Erick came down from the dj booth and we talked about his return from NYC where he opened for Manu Chau among other gigs.

He's good peops. And it's always good to talk to him. His always glows positive.
We talked about the love you get in NYC just from the people, authentic.

It was good.

My stomach was stretched and I wanted to go home. It was almost 11 pm. I stood a bit at the bar before closing out my tab, drove home, and settled in to my bed with the Satanic Verses. Chapter 5. I am slowly getting through this book, very slowly.