Leon: Friends in High Places
After reading two stinkers, I needed a read I could rely on for a good fix. I needed escape, mixed with good food, good clothes and some social awareness. I needed Guido Brunetti, Donna Leon’s Venetian detective, and his smart, savvy wife Paula, and his family meals of pasta with soft shell crabs and risi e bisi, his children, his disgust for the politics that impinge on his doing his job.
If you think Kuwait has “wasta” (doing business by connections, influence, calling in favors), you aint’ seen nuthin’ till you’ve seen how Byzantine Venetians operate.
Friends in High Places opens with Commissario Brunetti lying on his couch re-reading Anabasis when he receives a visit from a building inspector, who determines that the apartment he owns, on the very top of a building in Venice, was probably built illegally – there are no plans or restoration approvals on file at the bureaucracy regulating residential buildings in Venice – and may have to be torn down.
Wouldn’t that be a shock? It’s a shock to Brunetti and to his family, just as it would be to us. We learn all the ins and outs of housing codes, the impact of becoming part of the EEC, and how the clever Venetians devise ways around the codes, all while Brunetti is investigating one murder – and then three other murders.
It is a VERY satisfying book. I will share with you a lengthy quote from Friends in High Places as Guido and Paola discuss how to deal with the problem:
At no time did it occur to him, as it did not occur to Paola, to approach the matter legally, to find out the names of the proper offices and officials and the proper steps to follow. Nor did it occur to either of them that there might be a clearly defined bureaucratic procedure by which they could resolve this problem. If such things did exist or could be discovered, Venetians ignored them, knowing that the only way to deal with problems like this was by means of conoscienze: acquaintances, friendships, contacts and debts built up over a lifetime of dealing with a system generally agreed, even by those in its employ, perhaps especially by those in it’s employ, prone to the abuses resultant from centuries of bribery, and encumbered by a Byzantine instinct for secrecy and lethargy.
I am sorry to tell you that the only copy of this I could find on Amazon.com cost $99.98. I must have bought this one in England, where, I promise you, it was the normal cost of a paperback book.
I will warn you in addition, I was looking forward to reading a second Leon novel, Quietly in their Sleep, only to discover when I started that I had already read it, as The Death of Faith. The books published by Leon in England are often retitled for the American market. Leon fans, beware!
Lapsang Souchong
When I was in college, my aunt sent me a box of Lapsang Souchong tea. Winters were long and cold, rainy and windy, and lapsang souchong has a very smokey taste. Often as I was studying, I would have a cup next to me to warm me from the inside, but also because I was so totally addicted to the smell, which is like that of a wood-burning fire.
I checked lapsang souchong on Wikipedia, and this is what they say:
Lapsang souchong is a black tea originally from the Mount Wuyi area in the Fujian province of China[1], sometimes referred to as Smoke Tea. The tea leaves have been withered over pine or cedar fires, pan-fired, rolled and oxidized before being fully dried in bamboo baskets over burning pine.[2] The result is a smoky, robust tea with an overriding scent and flavour of wood smoke, which dominates the flavour of the black tea itself.
The name in Fukienese means “smokey sub-variety”, and is a variation of the older WuyiBohea tea.[3] In popular legend the tea was created during the Qing dynasty when soldiers camping in a tea processing company delayed the drying of the tea leaves. After the soldiers had left, the workers sped up the drying process by hanging the tea leaves over burning pine wood. [4]
Lapsang souchong from the original source is expensive, as Wuyi is a small area and there is increasing interest in the tea. [5]
the Wikipedia article on lapsang souchong (which you can read for yourself by clicking on the blue type) also says lapsang souchong is “an acquired taste.”
They are right. It is strong, not at all refined. I haven’t seen Lapsang Souchong on the menus anywhere in Kuwait. It is beginning to appear on a menu or two back in Seattle, where tea shops are plentiful and tea is widely appreciated.
I fixed some for a friend who dropped by the other afternoon, and revelled in the smokey scent that lingers, even this morning, in my clothing from having brewed it up.
I wish I had a fireplace!
(It is 2°C this morning in Kuwait (36°F) at 0800, and tonight is expected to be even colder than last night.)
Favoring Co-ed Schools
Fascinating defense of integrated classrooms in today’s Arab Times, entitled Students Will Be Made More Comfortable under Co-ed written by Kuwait University student Dalal Nasser Al-Otaibi.
I learned how American Universities became co-ed, and why. (I had no idea; you grow up thinking these things are a given.) This article must have been used as a paper for a class, as it is well documented, cites sources, etc.
Well of Good Will
There are some days when ideas just come tumbling into my head, faster than I can write them, and days that I struggle to think of anything that interests me enough to write it up, much less interesting you, the reader. This is one of those days, and then, a flash! an inspiration!
I read so many other blogs dealing with betrayals in love and friendship, disappointment, personal relationships gone bad, and grudges carried forever. When I read them, I get the image of Gollum, from Lord of the Rings:
Gollum is one of the scariest characters ever created, because we know how close to Gollum we are. As he hunches over his “precious” ring, we hunch over our grudges, carrying them, petting them, talking to them, and as we cherish our hurt feelings, our anger, our resentment, our feelings of betrayal, we feed them, they grow, they take up more and more of our attention. We hide these grievances away, taking them out and petting them from time to time, outwardly looking normal, but, in time, wasting away spiritually while we focus on our “precious.”
I prefer to think of The Well of Good Will.
In a relationship, the longer you are in it, the more deposits you make into the well of good will. It is the little things you do in a relationship – how you hold the door when the other is carrying a package, how you bring a bowl of hot soup if they have a cold, how you pick up their meal when they are short of cash, how you listen when a friend has a problem, or remember to ask about their mother when she is having a bout of ill health. These tiny, consistent deposits into the well grow, they earn interest, they earn dividends, small as they are, they fill the well to the brim.
The well of good will never overflows, it just grows to hold the treasures of the relationship.
From time time time, circumstances will arise which require a withdrawal from the well of good will. We all have circumstances in which we become selfish, we strike, even at those who love us, because we are in pain. We all have times when we are tired and say something mean. We all have rough patches in our lives when we have nothing extra to add to the well of good will, and make sizeable withdrawals against the good will of those who love us.
Fortunately, all those prior deposits have earned interest, and it would take a long time for the well to run dry.
In relationships which have not existed long enough to build up that well, when a person disappoints you or betrays you, you are much likelier to just walk away. There isn’t enough history, there haven’t been enough deposits in the well to make such a sizable withdrawal. We say “shake the dust from your feet”, it’s just another way of saying “move on.” Walk away from a bad investment. Don’t look back. Just move on.
If, like the Gollem, you focus on those losses, if you carry around your resentments and grudges as if they were something precious, you starve the well of good will. If you choose to nourish your anger, you neglect your well of good will. We carry negative energy at great cost, cost to our body, minds and to our spirits.
Choose, instead, to focus your investments in the well of good will, doing good even when you don’t see the rate of return. An investment in doing good, in doing the right thing, is an investment in yourself, in your spirit, in your character, reaping dividends in peace, serenity, calmness and good cheer.
Inheritance of Loss
Most of the time, if I don’t like a book, I won’t even bother telling you about it. This book, The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, is an exception for one reason – it IS worth reading.
Inheiritance of Loss showed up on the book club reading list for the year, and I ordered it. I read the cover when the book came, and it didn’t sound that good to me, so I read other books instead. The next time it came to mind was when a friend, reading the book, said she was having trouble with it, and asked me if I had started it. This friend is a READER, and a thinker. It caught my attention that she would have problems reading a book, so I decided to give it a try.
This is a very uncomfortable book. The characters live in the shadow of the Himalayan mountains. The most sympathetic character is a young orphaned girl, sent to live with her grandfather. With each chapter, we learn more about all the characters, how they came to be here, what they think, what their lives have looked like.
The author of this book has a very sour look on life. She has snotty things to say about every character. You can almost feel her peering around the corner, eyes slit with evil intent. She is that vicious neighbor who comes by and never says anything nice about anybody, and when you see her talking with your neighbor, you get the uneasy feeling she could be saying something mean about you, and she probably is.
The book covers a wide range of topics – Indian politics, Ghurka revolts, English colonization, Indian emigration to the US and UK, everyday vanities and pride in petty things, how people destroy their own lives, how people can be cruel to one another, oh it’s a great read (yes, that is sarcasm).
At the same time, this vicious unwelcome neighbor has a sharp eye for detail. You may not like what she is telling you, but you keep listening, because you can learn important tidbits of information from her. In my case, I learned a lot about how life is lived in a small mountain village in India, the struggles of illegals in America and how class lines are drawn, ever so finely, when people live together. I learned a lot about the legacy of colonialism, and the creep of globalization. This unwelcome neighbor has a sharp tongue, always complaining, and yet . . . some of her complaints have merit.
I don’t believe there was a single redeeming episode in the book. There was not a paragraph to feel good about. I am glad to be finished with the book – but, yes, I finished it, I didn’t just set it aside in disgust, or give it away without finishing.
Here is the reason I am telling you about this book – as uncomfortable as this book is to read, I have the feeling, upon finishing, that ideas and images from this book will stick with me for a long time. I have the feeling that it contributes to my greater understanding of how things work, how people think differently from other people, and on what levels we are very much the same.
Here is an excerpt from the book, at a time during which the Judge is a young Indian, studying in England:
The new boarding house boasted several rooms for rent, and here, among the other lodgers, he was to find his only friend in England: Bose.
They had similar inadequate clothes, similar forlornly empty rooms, similar poor native’s trunks. A look of recognition had passed between them at first sight, but also the assurance that they wouldn’t reveal one another’s secrets, not even to each other.
. . . Together they punted clumsily down the glaceed river to Grantchester and had tea among the jam sozzled wasps just as you were supposed to, enjoying themselves (but not really) as the heavy wasps fell from flight into their laps with a low battery buzz.
They had better luck in London, where they watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, avoided the other Indian students at Veeraswamy’s, ate shepherd’s pie instead, and agreed on the train home that Trafalgar Square was not quite up to British standards of hygiene – all those defecating pigeons, one of which had done a masala-colored doodle on Bose. It was Bose who showed Jemubhai what records to buy for his new gramophone: Caruso and Gigli. He also corrected his pronunciation: Jheelee, not Giggly. . . .
This it was that the judge eventually took revenge on his early confusions, his embarrassments gloved in something called “keeping up standards,” his accent behind a mask of a quiet. He found he began to be mistaken for something he wasn’t – a man of dignity. This accidental poise became more important than any other thing. He envied the English. He loathed Indians. He worked at being English with the passion of hatred and for what he would become, he would be despised by absolutely everyone, English and Indians both.
I consider this a review, and not particularly a recommendation. I read the book, I finished the book and I learned from the book. I didn’t like the book. I recommend it only as a challenge, for people who like to read and stretch their minds in new directions.
Online Friendship
Recently, my blogging friend Macaholiq8 posted a question asking “Do You Take Online Friendships Seriously?” The question pops up often, along with the “can men and women be friends?” question.
I like questions like that. You think the answer is easy, you have an automatic response, and then you find yourself days later re-visiting the question, pondering the question. That’s a good question, isn’t it, when it comes back and haunts you and makes you think some more?
In social environments, my mother trained me well. I know how to be pleasant, how to make small talk, how to amuse people with anecdotes that are short and funny. I know how to mingle, I can put people at ease. I have a wide range of connections; I have a lot of friends, i.e. people I know socially.
Only one of these friends knows that I blog.
There is another level of friend, friends with whom friendship has developed slowly, and usually cemented by some event during which we connected at a deeper level. I know one blogger, for example, face-to-face. I liked her anyway, but when my Father died, she sent me her real name and phone number and told me to call her. You know how wary I am – her compassion and grace, her trust, brought me to tears. She is the one exception to my “stay anonymous” rule; she broke through the barrier by her one act of grace – and by her body of work, which helped me to know her temperament and her character.
Most of my friendships occur online these days, but through e-mails keeping me up to date with those whose friendships I have cherished over the years:
* My college friend
* My childhood-live-across-the-creek-in-Alaska friend
* My Chinese-Mormon-Army Wife Friend
* Several mentors, hobby-buddies, church buddies, expat-abroad buddies, as well as family members, some of whom are also buddies!
AdventureMan is my very best buddy. When we met, my sister was getting married in the Heidelberg castle, and there was a lot to be done. I didn’t have a license to drive in Germany, and AdventureMan would come and get me and take me places like the florist’s or the officer’s club or wherever I needed to go to run an errand that needed to be run. We weren’t dating; he was just very kindly ferrying me around. As he would drive, we would have good conversations. The night my sister got married, he looked at me and realized he wasn’t going to see me again if he didn’t ask me out. We’ve been best friends ever since.
Friendship, deep friendship, doesn’t always mean you’re going to agree, in fact sometimes it is only your very best friend who can give you bad news and make you listen. When friends tell me about big fights with other friends, I tell them (whoa! when did I become a mentor???) that fighting and even hatred is not the opposite of love, disengagement and indifference and not caring is the opposite of love.
I have a good friend now in Kuwait who is helping another friend walk through a terrible situation. The friend gets really really angry with her, and even says behind her back (and to her face) “I hate it when people try to tell me how to live my life.” Because the helping friend is loyal and committed to the friendship, she persists. It’s like dealing with an animal in pain, when we are in emotional pain and don’t want to hear something, we might strike out at the person bearing the message. It takes a very special friend to stay the course, to be committed through that kind of emotional pain.
As I see it, there are an infinite number of levels of friendship, and different friendships for different times in your life, and different needs.
In times of crisis, when a friend needs someone to talk to who can keep her mouth shut, I’m there. If you are my friend and want to spend a lot of time with me, you’re going to be disappointed. If you need me to head up a project, I’m there. If you need me to head up a group – no way. Some people, mostly introverts, find me a great friend, and others, those who are good at hanging out, find me lacking.
I DO think you can be friends with bloggers and never meet them. In the days of snail mail, people had pen-pals who lived in distant places. They might write for decades and never meet, and yet there was a lasting and genuine relationship that I would call friendship. We meet in a realm of ideas and experiences. Meeting in person, the differences might overshadow that which we share in common.
You might think I am just blah-blah-blah-ing, but there is a method in my madness. I think we relate to one another and influence one another in ways we are just beginning to realize. I think there is great value in what we gain from our online friendships.
Later I will post on a hotel AdventureMan and I stayed in, a hotel I would never have known about or heard of were it not for the recommendation of a Kuwaiti former blogger (one who I hope will one day blog again) Gastronomica who now owns and operates The Slider Station and who hasn’t blogged for quite a while. His posts were so educated, so interesting and so reliable that I truly miss his presence in the blog world.
I am guessing that the secret to maintaining friendships is to understand who the friend is and what he/she is capable of. One of the great pitfalls is expecting more from the relationship than the friend, or the relationship can merit. Different friends bring different gifts to the table; I think you need them all to some extent, and it is up to you to determine to what level YOU want the relationship to go, depending also on the capabilities and needs of the other.
Feeding MY Soul: Blog comments
Today, on the day we honor the Wise Men following the star, I got the following comment on a blog entry I wrote back in August, on Buck Naked and the Yemeni Star from PetroOps, no hot link, so maybe he/she is a blogger and maybe not. This kind of comment feeds my soul.
Well that Star is called (Sohail) it is a Yemeni Star because it holds its place on the southern sphere’s sky. so it is to the Yemen side for Kuwait and other GCC countries. on the opposite side there is the (Thoraia – Star) to the northwest of our Sky and that was mentioned together in some poetries as the lovers that will never meet with each others.
I never knew that! I have sort of kept Sohail in mind as a name for the next female cat that comes into my life, and now I can see that the next cat will probably have a brother, whose name will be Thoraia. If those names are male and femaie, and I have assigned the wrong sex (in English, if a name ends in an “a” it is most likely a female name) somebody please clue me in so I don’t make a terrible mistake. Anyway, I don’t see adopting another cat any time soon, as we have our hands full with The Qatteri Cat.
A week after the first Yemeni Star entry, I wrote another, Yemeni Star to which I received all kinds of great informative comments.
A lot of time on blogs, every blog, it is just blah blah blah. What feeds my soul are comments like this one above, and the ones to the Yemeni star entry, comments that add something to my knowledge base, often comments that help me think in a totally new direction. You do that for me, my readers, my commenters. Thank you for delighting my heart.
Every Sunset is a Beautiful Sunset
We were walking along Clearwater Beach, in Florida with a couple who had been our friends for years. We have so many stories with this couple, stories that make us all double over in laughter.
There was the time we were dining at a castle in Germany, a very lovely place, and when we ordered dessert, it came . . . chocolate mousse, but carefully placed, a la nouvelle cuisine, and striped with a chocolate syrup. As it was being put before us, we didn’t dare to look at one another. Only when the waiter left did the giggles start, growing into full grown guffaws, as we laughed helplessly.
The mousse looked like dog poop.
My husband was laughing so hard he had trouble breathing for a while. The gales of laughter, the whoops of laughter continued as we remembered the utter shock as the dessert was placed before us. To this day, we still don’t know if this was seriously supposed to be haute cuisine or if it was some kind of German joke. It still makes us roll with laughter thinking of the horrified surprise we each felt, and our fear of laughing in the waiter’s face.
There are other stories, stories funnier to us than they would be to you in the retelling.
Bill had a heart attack earlier in the year. AdventureMan and I were going through career transition issues. It was a time of struggle for both couples, and we were talking about what we were going through as the sun began to set. We all stopped and watched.
“What a beautiful sunset!” AdventureMan said.
There was a pause, as we all watched the last fading rays of the setting sun.
Bill took AdventureMan’s arm and looked at him intensely.
“Every sunset is a beautiful sunset,” he said, and added “when you think you may never see another.”
It changed how we see the sunset. It changed how we see the sunrise. Bill died this last year, having had many more sunsets after our sunset in Florida, and we still miss him grievously.
“I Sparkle Like a Crystal . . .
. . . when I am with my pistol” sings Annie Oakley, from Annie Get Your Gun. It’s been running through my head ever since I heard about the Kuwait Bloggerettes outing to the shooting range. You’ve seen Megan Mullally on Will and Grace, but here she is, singing Annie’s song and hitting her target dead on:
And here are the lyrics:
Oh my mother was frightened by a shotgun they say
That’s why I’m such a wonderful shot
I’d be out in the cactus and I’d practice all day
And now tell me, what have I got
I’m quick on the trigger
With targets not much bigger than a pinpoint
I’m number one
But my score with a feller
Is lower than a cellar
No you can’t get a man with a gun
When I’m with a pistol
I sparkle like a crystal
Yes I shine like the morning sun
But I lose all my luster when with a crumple buster
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
With a gun! With a gun!
No you can’t get a man with a gun
If I went to battle with someone’s herd of cattle
You’d have steak when the job was done
But if I shot the herder
They’d holler bloody murder!
And you can’t get a hug from a mug with a slug
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
I’m cool, brave and darin’
To see a lion glaring when I’m out with my Remmington,
But a look from a mister
Will raise a fever blister
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
The gals with umbrellers
Are always out with fellers
In the rain or the blazing sun
But a man never trifles with gals who carry rifles
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
With a gun! With a gun!
No you can’t get a man with a gun
A Tom, Dick, or Harry
Will build a house for Carrie when the preacher has made ’em one
But he can’t build ya houses with buckshot in his trousers
And you can’t shoot a man in the tail like a quail,
Oh, you can’t get a man with a gun
A man’s love is mighty
He’ll even buy a nightie for a gal who he thinks is fun
But they don’t by pajamas for pistol-packin’ mamas!
Oh, a man may be hot, but he’s not
When he’s shot!
Oh you can’t get a man with a gun!
My Wish For You
A dear friend gave me a book mark with this poem on it. I had never seen it before, and I found myself greatly moved. I hope you like it, too.
This is My Wish for You
That the spirit of beauty
may continually hover about you
and fold you close within
the tenderness of her wings.
That each beautiful
and gracious thing in life
May be unto you as a symbol
of good for your soul’s delight.
That sun-glories
and star-glories,
Leaf-glories and bark-glories,
Flower-glories
and glories that lurk
in the grasses of the field . . . .
Glories of mountains and oceans,
of little streams of running waters
Glories of song
of poesy,
of all the arts. . .
May be to you as sweet
abiding influences
That will illumine your life
and make you glad.
That your soul may be
as an alabaster cup
Filled to overflowing
With the mystical wine
of beauty and love.
That happiness may
put her arms around you,
And wisdom make
your soul serene.
This is my wish for you.
By Charles Livingston Snell (1914)
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