Got Proof of Age?

After work, I needed wine. Something about being around it, listening to people talking about it and drinking it made me want to stick my nose in one of those glasses, smell, swivel and savor.

No such luck for employees.

So when I was off my shift, I went straight for the next restaurant to wind down with a wine glass.

The bartender, right when he was about to pour the deliciously smelling Malbec, looked up into my eyes. Bottle down. So close.

"Umm, how old are you?" he queries.

I know where this is going. My hand is already reaching for the straps of my purse. "Sorry, almost forgot." Rifle, search, locate wallet.

"I'm 26. Wanna see some ID?"

The bartender's eyes widen just a smidge before "Yeah, please."

He inspects the card in his hand as the rest do; they do the math twice, just in case, look at the picture, look at my face and incredulously give me my driver's license back. They consider asking for something else, but I smile and reassure them. Anyways, if it was a fake, it would have been a damned good one.

"You don't look 26."

"Yeah I know. What if I had told you I was 22 or 23?"

"I wouldn't have IDed you."

Go figure. One of the perks to looking Asian, I guess!

A Tiger in Grosse Tete, LA

“Live tiger exhibit.” How often do you see a sign like that enticing you on a U.S. highway? To the chagrin of my passenger friend, and to the imagined horror of the person I cut off (but why didn’t they follow??), I made a lane-changing last second exit.

The first things we saw of Grosse Tete, Louisiana were a Tiger Restaurant, Tiger Trux Stop, and a few dilapidated houses scattered along the I-10 highway. “But where’s the tiger?” my friend observed. We pulled into the trux stop, spotting three empty cages and two families complete with small children crowded around an enclosure.

“Do you see it?” A familiar question spoken near almost every space containing animals. Quickly followed by the common reply: “There it is!” In the midst of a trux stop’s attempt to stave off the bad effects of this economy, lied a full-fledged tiger, trying to stay out of the inhabitable heat of the deep American South.

Parked beside the cages was a trailer on cinder blocks. I poked my head in, looking for answers.

The tiger keeper told me that Tony was one of three tigers adopted by the town’s well-connected man twenty years ago. The other two had died, leaving Tony to live out his retirement by himself. The guy was trying to commission the town to let him buy a companion for Tony, as his last mate, a white Siberian, stood stuffed in the trux stop. Disturbed by an old memory, I opted not to go see.

Unfortunately, the town had passed an act several years back banning the ownership of tigers. Apparently, you can buy a cub for $5,000, but you forget to include the expense of food, shelter, and the search for an exotic veterinarian, and I guess the town had enough orphaned tigers on their hands. Fortunately, Tony could be kept under a grandfather clause. Getting him a friend of the same species, however, is a different matter.

Fie, fie to obvious questions!

I don't believe in favorites.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but favorites, to me, implies that you will always choose that favorite thing over everything else. And I'm just not like that.

The most irksome comment I hear from people when you choose something unexpected is "But that one's your favorite!" What's wrong with liking things equally? Why is it, as humans, we must place everything on a vertical hierarchy?

I like variety in my life. I like trying different things, and I like different things for different reasons. No need to get exasperated by my inability to choose because "favorites" tend to change with mood. I'm simply acknowledging that. You have your way, I have mine.

Restriction may be the kindling of creativity, but it is the bane of imagination.

I do have things that I tend to choose over others. And there are definitely things I like more than others. But Life has taught me that the more I proclaim my favorites, the more evidence I can provide on the contrary.

Now, if you want to know what I take pleasure in more than others, that's a different and much more notable question.

I could only get halfway through "King Kong"

I like kids.

There is something about spending time with kids that reminds you about how simple life can be. If you listen, really pay attention to them and let their hearts sink in, you can see how wonderful water feels caressing your skin or just how awe-inspiring the mechanics of an old carousel is.

I went to the water park with my cousins today. Being so small, they had to wear life jackets. It made it a bit easier to keep track of them, as you didn't spend the whole time worrying whether or not they were going to drown among the many other children. What you did have to do, however, was to bring your patience level. Kids like to do the same thing over and over. They continually delight in the same thing over and over. And over. And over.

This exploit was to ride the current of the river around and around. There were jets that pushed you forward, a purely ecstatic occurrence that happened when the water was churning.

At first, it was annoying. But you agree because you're older and for some reason, the added years mean you are supposed to give up what you want to do for the sake of the little ones. (It's one of the most decisive reasons one doesn't want their own kids just yet.) Then, to keep your sanity, you remind yourself that you used to be like this.

And then you really think: I still do this. I watch movies over because there is always something I missed the last time. Or I think about the message a bit differently and compare what you used to think to what you think now, leading to pondering who you are now from who you used to be. And maybe THAT will help you pinpoint who you want to be a month from now, or three, or even five years from now. Ten years. Twenty.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

On our fifth time around, Daphne was on my back, racing her mom and sister. The finish line, unfortunately, was blocked by an older large lady. Pushed by an inner tube, my head struck her ass. In a very noticeable fashion.

It was so horrifying, I couldn't help laughing even after my stomach hurt.

The art of getting lost 2.0

I get a bit confused with a GPS. Without it, though, I'm a complete mess.

I should disclaim this segment with a little factoid about driving in America. In Texas, we have these convenient little roads by the highway called "feeders" that "feed" you onto the highway. They are also known as access roads, frontage roads, and what-have-you; each region has their own name. That is, each region that HAS them in the first place.

For a person who has grown up driving with feeders that allow you to u-turn underneath highways when you go the wrong direction, not having feeders is...not easy. Having to drive on freeways that form clovers, however, is just an exercise in validating the 8th amendment's existence. Needless to say, freeways are not so well marked for your average non-Virginia/DC/Maryland-er.

Which is my explanation for how a 15 minute ride home turned into 2 hour debaucle depositing me in Accokeek, MD, where the first sign of civilization I saw was the B&D Tavern, which touts the coldest beer in the area (where there are no other bars).

It's okay, though, because inside this peopled oasis was a taxi driver who gave excellent, if somewhat patronizing directions (which I welcomed at this point), and a subsequent game of pool with him and his friend, Omar. Omar enjoys this place so much he drives 30 minutes out of his way to be there (he used to live in the area). Everyone there knew each other, probably better than their families waiting for them at home. There were 3 pristine pool tables and a room full of ye-olde computers with which to play things like poker and trivia with pixels the size of your fist. What else could you possibly ask for in a bar?

Sometimes, you just have to get really, really lost before you can find what you are looking for.

Disclaimer: it ain't pretty

There are just some ideas that smack you so hard in the chest it becomes difficult to breathe.

In the past, I've looked over the Grand Canyon, overwhelmed that anything could be that big, and thought about myself, "How could something so small mean anything in this vast, vast world?" I was fifteen. Later, I was to rediscover theatre and realize that, as small and insignificant as a human is, when you put us in a group, we can move something. And something isn't nothing.

Or when I was 11 and noticed that my life's choices probably didn't mean much, as life moved on whether you were prepared or not. I had a bit of a identity crisis at that point, which has since turned into a curious pattern of being able to redefine myself in different environments.

I've gone through the phase where I thought that everything I've ever believed in is wrong, and I've done the "whatever I do, it doesn't matter, nothing really matters" moments. I won't bore you with details. Suffice to settle the scores with the simple fact that I've come out of these mind-f**ks altered, and yet the same.

Now, living with the presence of a happy couple who has shared over 50 years of their lives together, I wonder, when did I stop believing in love? Did I ever?

As a child of divorced parents, I got a first-hand account of how love between a couple can fail. I've watched it fail parents, I've seen it fail siblings, I've felt it fail friends. Lord only knows I've failed it and it has failed me. So why do we trust in this concept that continues to fail us? Why do we hope for better when precious few of us have ever seen, much less experienced, it succeed? What am I missing?

The subtext to all this is that as of late I have reason to believe that, while it's no picnic, it does have a way of existing in a strange, inexplicable way.

Cognitive dissonance all over the floor!

Grrrog!

I was out with buddy Whitney last night, who was in tune enough to take me to the local pirate bar. Kitsch doesn't begin to cover it. With flags on the ceilings and skeletons and swords and olde maps on the walls, it looked like a dressed up storage facility for the Renaissance Fair. There was even, I kid you not, a fully garbed pirate, complete with an eye patch sitting atop his pirate 3-corner hat. I think there was a feather involved.

Sitting outside with some cheap grog (pirate's ale, definitely worth the money if you're looking for a reeling good time), the discussion of what one puts one's faith in came up. Whit had a customer the previous week ask her what she put her faith in. She replied, with a bit of trepidation, that she didn't believe in religion.

"That's not what I asked," he said. "I asked what you put your faith in."

Now THAT'S an interesting question. She has come to the conclusion that she believes in art; the ability to look at a sculpture or painting or what-have-you and see something personal, something inside your soul, at any given moment. She can explain better than I can.

I, on the other hand, have since worked out that I believe in (da-da-da-dah!): Narrative. I believe in stories, in metaphors, in comparing something to another and linking them with yourself. I believe in books, episodic TV, films, theatre, people's ideas in written form. I believe that all these things come together to help you understand the world a bit better. Or at least, manifestations of the world through the eyes of different perspectives. How you see the story, what you take away from it, is yours and yours alone.

There may be nothing new under the sun, but there's always that rock that no one has looked underneath yet.