Small experiences, saved

Blonde, yellow and flaxen-streaked blonde, natural I think. Loose ponytail. A tiny bit past first youth, and knows it. All the rest is diamonds -- ears, fingers, throat -- and the polished white, paper-white teeth everyone seems to have now. It even, the polishing I mean, seems to change the way they talk, as if suddenly they have a new and attractive slight underbite; the polished-teeth people slightly thrust out their lower jaws, do you notice? and enunciate better. Once years ago I overheard a dental hygienist advise a young woman not to get them, because they look so odd. Now those of us with natural, dusky teeth look odd.

She wanted advice for wine for her dinner, and the man who normally gives her advice had the day off. "I could try," I offered. (I love the brief line from the fine character actor John Abbott in an old Star Trek episode called "Errand of Mercy." As Ayleborne he says humbly, "I am the head of our Council, perhaps I would do," when Kirk has landed on a planet Much Like Earth and asked who's in charge here. Of course it turns out that Ayleborne will more than "do," he is actually a projection of some sort of pure energy field, deigning to look human to give Kirk a "reference point.") Anyway, I offered to try the food and wine pairing game for La Blonde.

She was planning that night to cook roast pork with bacon gravy, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and green beans. And her husband had said, to go along with that, she must "Get a big cab."

No, no, no. Why impose a fudgy, blueberry-spice Napa cabernet on that delicious meal? Instead buy a richly gossamer Chablis, or an Alsatian pinot blanc with that aromatic streak of honey down the middle, or get a fine sparkling wine from anywhere. If you must have red get an old ... no. I was going to say a Gran Reserva Rioja, an elegant brick colored Barolo, but no. No reds. 

I said all this with the utmost in Aylebornian humility. But of course it would not do. "My husband only drinks cabernet. We never drink whites. He said get a big cab."

Okay. I managed to ding the husband by selling the wife a Chateau St. Jean "Cinq Cepages," great, big, suitably expensive, but not -- completely -- a cab. And why has the Man with the Day Off, who always give her such good suggestions, not led her and her husband's shared palate elsewhere by now?

I really must cope with my lack of charity. It's the writer's stock in trade, though. How else can one observe the world from one's own irreplaceable and precious angle?

Spring wildlife has not really returned yet to the sloughs near here that we like so much. The water that will be covered with green lily pads in summer is now open and shining blue, with only the curving shores made of rank upon rank of last year's washed-beige reed stalks showing where land actually is. The woods beyond are an endless tangle of brown and sunlight. A bit of patience and a pair of binoculars were rewarded only with a river otter crashing out of the reeds and swimming through the cold water, then a red tailed hawk overhead, and a lone songbird nearby, like a dull dun sparrow with stripes on his head, that I don't know.

Do you remember the old movie The Greatest Story Ever Told? It's not so great -- see the intelligent review at the charmingly named DecentFilms.com --  but one part struck me as right and as giving information necessary to know. We see scenes of chaos in Jerusalem, as we are to understand it, just before Christ's time: everything and everyone is a whirl and a welter of brown and gray rags, violence, sickness, panic, and at the last, bloodied hands bringing up and steadying a lowing black calf for sacrifice, the huge knife under its neck. The camera swoops up and out to a bird's eye view of the city, with the Temple at its center, and then to white dots of people in a wilderness below and outside the walls, all journeying to the river where John the Baptist stands shouting "Repent!" Now any city anytime may be, in places, a welter of violence, sickness, and panic. But the strength of this visual teaching message, I thought, was good.

You will have to pardon me for "publishing" this, a bit unpolished. But I had an unfortunate event recently, wherein a blog post saved in draft was in fact utterly lost after hours of work. No very great loss, but still.  I learned that if you go ahead and publish, and then hit Ctrl and P, you can at least preserve the wonder of it all the old fashioned way, on paper.  

Stories that are now moot; or -- Two women, one house; or -- Three English words: privacy, nice, and moot

Moot. From the ME [Middle English] mote, via OE [Olde English] mot, gemot, a meeting, and prob. ON [Old Norse] mot, both from the IE [Indo-European] base mod, to encounter -- "an early English assembly of freemen to administer justice, decide community problems, etc.;" ... "a discussion or argument ... subject to debate" ... finally, "so hypothetical as to be meaningless." As in, a moot point.  

Many years ago there was some kerfuffle in my family about my grandmother perhaps moving in with us. I was perhaps sixteen, my parents in their fifties. She did move in, briefly, but it didn't work out. When the mistake became inarguable my father ruefully and sympathetically sighed and said, as if it was the wisdom of the ages -- "Two women cannot live in the same house."

It was the wisdom of the ages. He was standing in the kitchen as he said it, so I think of him also as saying "two women cannot run the same kitchen."

I proceed carefully because the analogy I am going to draw will link ever so discreetly to the workplace, and I remember the famed blogger "Dooce" who got fired from her day job for just such writing. To be sure, that was in the primordial ages of the internet, when privacy still mattered perhaps, and when there were so few bloggers that all five or six of them stood out, and their bosses read them and got mad. Things have changed, completely, by now. Everybody blogs, or has moved on to Instagram and Snapchat. Privacy is unknown (from the ME priuace, pryvat, by way of the L privatus, "belonging to oneself, not to the state" (ah hah!); from privare, to separate, "prob. akin to the OL pri, see PRIME"). How do I know the dangers of blogging indiscreetly are less? Dooce herself, Heather Armstrong, relates breezily that now "blogging is so flush with money" that the writers of them, no longer five or six but numberless, simply skip over telling the "messy" personal stories which earned them their salaries at first (no kidding?), and instead "curate," "monetize" images of their lives, a la Instagram. I'll say. Remember the beautiful young fashionista who directed me to a fashion blog for seventy-year-olds? She had a baby. She now therefore understands all about refugees, through nursing her infant son and wondering how she would ever do that, and get fresh diapers and things, if she were a refugee. News reports seem to show that most of the strong young men who are refugees have other concerns, but we move on.

In sum I think I may link my dad's wisdom of the ages, from a girlhood kitchen to a current workplace, without worrying too much that it will be seen and will offend. Besides, my small tale of one woman coming into a job and supplanting another woman who thought the job was hers, can be quickly told. Here's the real interest -- is it possible to read someone else's thoughts?

Of course you can guess people's thoughts by their behavior. The annoyed sigh, the rough picking up of a phone when the newcomer is not familiar with all the buttons; months later, the soft "tsk-tsk-tsk" (so faint I almost don't think I heard it), and the pointed walking away, when a certain plan is not what the Other would have allowed.

But can you read someone's thoughts merely through the air, when behavior is nice enough? (Nice: interestingly, a word derived from the Latin nescire, to be ignorant, as in ne, not, + scire,  to know, see SCIENCE. In ME the word nice meant "strange, lazy, and foolish," and has since gone from what I think of as eighteenth-century-novel meanings -- delicate, precise, subtle, "minutely accurate" -- to our own "generalized term of approval" for anything pleasant.) Is it, mind-reading, a vital human ability or is it just imagination? I remember learning somewhere the psychological opinion, the result of a survey perhaps, that most people perceive positive comments as neutral, and neutral comments as negative. We hear "you have a pretty houseplant" as houseplants are pretty and we hear "houseplants are pretty" as ... yes, but not yours. Now in my workplace we both of us have pleasant, light conversations about family or romance or the weather, and yet our hearts don't seem to be in it, not remotely. But am I right, and can I therefore read thoughts, and she the same? Or am I hearing positive-as-neutral and neutral-as-negative, and she the same? Of course the tsk-tsks and the pointed walking aways do linger in the memory. I'm sure whatever I've done lingers in hers. I exist, mostly.

One great proof of two people not getting on must be the absence of good-natured everyday mockery between them. There wasn't much of that sort of fun when Grandmother moved in. If you know someone well enough to see his flaws but still enjoy his company, happy mockery is possible. Lacking same, mockery is too dangerous a ground to tread on. I wouldn't dream of making light fun of my co-worker who thinks I have her job, and she the same. We're just nice. 

It matters because if something could be done to improve the relationship, if we could stop reading or sending thoughts or if we could dismiss it all as imagination, then that would be good. So much more relaxing, so much less silly. A certain amount of bitter, piquant excitement would be lost, which I am sorry to say does keep human feuds boiling doesn't it, whether between persons or families or nations probably. Love can cool, perhaps it matures, but hate is always fresh and fun, always righteous. We don't hate, my co worker and I. How else could we talk nicely? But I see workplace hatred elsewhere and so I see the freshness and the excitement of it every day. So do we all, if we look at the news.  

Which brings me to this: now don't blanch: we laugh along when Harriet the Spy asks "what kind of a pill brings a Bible to the beach?" (or lugs the Bible into everything) but this does shape our civilization. You have heard it was said, do not kill; I say, do not be angry at all ... you have heard, do not commit adultery; I say, do not even look; ... love your enemy, greet more than just your brother; be perfect. All this is from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 5 only. Here we have instructions not just to control our behavior but, almost ferociously, to amend and control our thoughts.

Why on earth? Unless yes of course they can be read, and they are the source of everything?

Years ago Grandmother eventually moved in with independent granddaughters, and later, when it was inevitable, to a nursing home. Two days ago co-worker got the news that she is moving on, too. So it's all moot. "An assembly of freemen ... debatable ... so hypothetical as to be meaningless."

Atmospheres

You can keep your Cabo and your Florida. Most of the time.

Would they be as atmospheric as this? Would they inspire you to think of Yorkshire fogs -- all right, suburban Chicago fogs -- and ravens perched on bare branches, and footsteps echoing along the stone-flagged passageway to the ruined chapel?

Best of all is the knowledge, amid the weird January thunder, that you have the day off tomorrow. Let the freezing rain freeze as it may. You have Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, just bought this afternoon; you have a Bombay Sapphire gin sour in your glass -- two lemons a day plus that flu shot in September seem to be keeping you safe so far; you have a filet of salmon to cook, and Hildegarde of Bingen's chants from a thousand years ago on YouTube to listen to. How she would marvel! Or possibly not. She might take it as merely the good Lord's due.

My friend has lost a friend, moving to Miami because his wife leaped at the chance for a better job, with a better future than his seems to have. My friend actually introduced his friend to the wife to begin with. She was a waitress. "I know a young stud I want you to meet." I don't know how two tough guys, forty years apart in age, who have worked together for twelve years, say goodbye.

Then again, guys are different. They're already talking about the charter fishing business they will start. 

Flexicore and neighbors

It's funny. When I first moved into an apartment complex, I was instantly introduced to the Neighbor Problem. I believe I have chronicled it here. Awakened by strange loud slapping sounds, which had entered my dreams as a little girl (why a girl?) in flip-flops running to catch the bus with her father on her first day of school, I came to slowly, looked bleary-eyed at the clock, saw 2:00 -- and realized no child was going to school at that hour, talking to her father; I awakened a bit more and realized my young asinine neighbors were having a loud vigorous conversation on their porch -- one of them slapping a cigarette pack against the palm of the hand, which I guess is a thing --  at 2:00 am. So I put on my white robe while shaking with adrenalic fury (I thought this was my future, forever), went out on my porch, and leaned on the railing and stared across the fifteen foot gap between us, until they noticed. They looked abashed or "creeped-out." They shuffled inside.

The next day I complained officially to the management of the complex. My neighbors were sent a letter. Or so I was promised. For the whole following year, the noise directly on the other side of my bedroom wall, and on the porch outside, seemed to get better. I also grew somewhat accustomed to the fact of having neighbors directly on the other side of my bedroom wall. When the video game thumping started on the occasional Sunday morning ... ba-boom...ba-boom...ba-boom-boom...ba-ba-boom-boom-boom... ba-ba-BA-BA-BOOM...BA-BA-BA-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM BOOM! -- I reasoned, it's Sunday. I suppose they must have their fun.

Then the complex was sold and the new regime raised rents drastically. I dug into the savings and moved to a condo building. We are all owners, not renters. Granted the units themselves are glorified apartments. Granted people move like crazy no matter where or what they "buy." Still you feel you have a "stake in the place," because at least on paper we have, all of us, vowed this will be home for the next thirty years. Somehow you surmise therefore it won't be as noisy at night. The association even has bylaws: the right of silence after ten o'clock. (I haven't heard of that since my school trip to Europe more than thirty years ago. We were scolded about disturbing people in the hotel. At that time my teen friends and I could not imagine such an outrageous, fuddy-duddy demand.) But why surmise that owners are quieter than renters? Perhaps it's really because there is no buck-stops-here landlord, for whom conflict resolution among probable transients is a very low-priority. We just keep quiet. Good fences make good neighbors because no landlord oversees the fence.  

(As an aside, thank God that when I unthinkingly watered my orchids on my old apartment porch just by sloshing water through them, and it all ran down in floods to the next two balconies, -- thank God  those units were empty by that time, with no one in them to complain about me.)

At least we mostly keep quiet. It happened, and this is what's funny (odd), that when I was awakened one dark early morning, here, now, by what I thought was the sound of raucous laughter above, from two people perhaps watching a movie, although startled enough to really feel the deep weakness in all one's limbs that comes from being jolted out of an absolutely sound sleep, I nevertheless wasn't as enraged as I had been before. Maybe renter's transience makes neighbors' habits seem more threatening, just because there are so many of them and you don't know your or anyone's future there. But, when I meet this one on the stairs ...I can sleepily vow... there are only twelve of us. When I go to the next association meeting ....

What seemed like laughter turned out to be sobbing. It went on and on, and moved from room to room above, varying with shouting. The f-bomb dropped frequently. It was entirely the woman making the noise, so exclusively that as I sat up and listened I thought she might have been on the phone with the ne'er-do-well. Certainly, there was a ne'er-do-well in the picture. Someone was the f-ing idiot and f-ing animal. Someone was told "I don't do that. I do not do that," a strange and serious thing to abruptly tell someone over the phone, weeping, at 4 in the morning.

After about half an hour, the noise stopped. If I had met her on the stairs anytime soon after, I might have asked -- somewhat nettled -- whether she had passed a bad night; or I might have said, my dear, it's none of my business but I know much more of your business than I should. You might want to keep it down. Only I have not seen her since.

There is nothing sinister or Hitchcockian, nothing murder-mystery going on. I think she may have thrown him out. More weeping resounded from above on a few odd afternoons the following week, and once when she and I were leaving our apartments at the same time, she took care to hold back her dog and stay on the third floor out of sight until I had gone. A week later still, the man upstairs, I'm almost sure it was him, pulled up in the dark of night, and seemed to trudge upstairs and down carrying bags. Then he drove away. Then, curiously, he returned. For there he was again, I'm pretty sure, taking the dog out himself one bright morning.     

What am I to make of it all? One of the selling points of the condo was the building's "Flexicore construction," the same as in parking garages I was told. "It's not going to come down," if the upstairs neighbor has a flood you won't be the first to know because the water won't go anywhere. "Practically soundproof." Yes, almost, except for serious and outraged, non-renter's sobbing. 

I think I'll just have a Brunello in the garden

It takes years before you begin to understand, that is, unless (I suppose) you make a frantic study of it, in order to become a "somm." We have a new staff member in the department, promoted yesterday God bless him, and I can only imagine what the tossing sea of shelves crammed with bottles looks like to him.

To refresh our memories, re: -- oh, I don't know, pick one. Italy. The simplest thing is to imagine a map of that country, with two spots highlighted, Piedmont in the northwest and tourist Tuscany in the central west of the peninsula. In Piedmont, we have the wines Barolo and Barbaresco, grandest of the grand. Both are made from the nebbiolo grape.

In Tuscany, we have that slew of wines all made from sangiovese or its close relatives and clones. Chianti, Chianti Classico. Brunello di Montalcino. Rosso di Montalcino. Whenever a fine Italian wine has a sort of humbler little brother, it's called Rosso, "red." Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. Rosso (ah!) di Montepulciano. Still Tuscany.

It takes years, sans frantic study, just to get that straight. Then comes the tasting. In sum, know that Barolos and Barbarescos (back to Piedmont, or da capo you might say) are magically silky, startlingly brownish, but are also so acidic and full of tannin that, after one swallow, they can seem empty and disappointing. The lady buying her birthday treat from our cellar last weekend described to me just such a Barolo. I knew, and could confirm for her, exactly what she meant. You must drink them with great food, or else wait until your bottle is twenty years old or you are on vacation in Milano before opening it, or all three. For a sure thing right now she chose Verite La Muse instead, all plush merlot velvet and Sonoma-cult price (circa $400 a pop).

Brunellos, now. Brunello di Montalcino, Tuscany. They are different. At least they seem so to me, but you know my Barolo problems ....

Brunellos also are among the grandest of the grand. In starting to like them, in noticing "they are different," one's years of experience are, perhaps, beginning to tell. They are silky, again, but they suffer less tannin and acid, and give more agreeable depths of fruit flesh; in a Brunello the sangiovese grape that makes a Chianti of  black tart berries and dry sandpaper, and a bit of olive brine and horse stable thrown in, remember? -- in a Brunello this same grape and this same region (did you remember? Tuscany) make a lovely, light, complete and liquid thing inexpressible in mere and discrete greengrocer's metaphors. Similar to a Rioja -- that's in Spain -- it's just wine. And it's the kind of thing you look forward to coming home to and planning a meal around. Almost like a person, no? A guest.
 

  
2011 Sassetti Livio Pertimali Brunello. Retail, about $40.

Now moving on, to the garden. It's best not to have your Brunello there, really, since in this late summer we find ourselves again in the season of the yellow jacket or "meat bee," hungry for any and all food and drink. They will pester you and your picnic right indoors, although Wikipedia tells us that Vespula maculifrons is a valuable predator of other annoying insects.

One of the attractions of this particular condo building, otherwise no different from the several tucked along a quiet street here, and all backed by their parking lots, open land, and walking path beneath the huge high tension wires, is the garden. Somewhere in the details of the condo association's thirty-year-old bylaws I saw something about every owner having approximately an 8 percent stake in everything. I thought, "won't it be nice if that means we all get 8 percent of the garden, to do as we like with?"

One evening my gentleman friend and I approached. The sun was setting. Everywhere were red cannas, yellow Black-eyed Susans, and purple phlox; and huge lavish green prehistoric-looking leaf clumps that turned out to hide butternut squash, hanging in modest salmon-hued glory in the shade, and acorn squash too, sitting modestly green on the earth beneath more yellow blossoms of the same, shaped weirdly like elegant drooping half-clenched yellow hands. Gentleman friend is a grower of cannas and begonias and a tender of tomatoes, too. This gives him an almost professional interest in everything. (An ex-girlfriend taught him to garden. He still shakes his head. "I never thought I'd like it. If anyone ever told the guys...." ) "There's someone who can tell us," he now remarked. A middle-aged lady had straightened up from her work in the really huge plot.

 We asked questions. Who started this, who participates, etc.? "Oh, no, it's just me," Carla said. She told her story of dismay at seeing nothing but a stand of dead, collapsed poplars from her third floor balcony -- with its view of the high tension wires -- when she moved in twenty years ago. So she planted a little plot of zinnias. And then, over the years, her project expanded.

"Just me." I should have guessed. How many people like to garden? I can only measure it in human terms. How many people like to garden, such that a plot as big as this, about forty-five paces broad and ten or fifteen deep, might be maintained by the enthusiastic common effort of an at least occasionally-changing cadre of owners in this one building, across twenty years? Count twelve units, times twenty years, plus or minus, let us say, three owners leaving and three more arriving per, let us say, -- every five years? Already the arithmetic is too complex to think about. Far more likely that it's just one person, everlastingly, who likes to garden. Just Carla. That explains the variety too. A group effort would have installed flowers by committee consensus, and you would have nothing but petunias and vinca vine ground cover.

"Things come and go over the years," she went on. The wagon wheel was an anonymous gift. "The bench is made of deckwood," so it proved too heavy to steal. She spotted it one summer morning, halfway across the greensward under the high tension wires, on the way to the woods beyond and to some other home and garden. But the thieves had given up. The beautiful heavy glossy brown bench returned, thanks to the efforts of honest condominium owners, to its rightful place. Carla's father built it.

Sometime during our evening talk, when gentleman friend and Carla were quite hitting it off -- he was telling her all about the feral parrots of the inner city, and they do exist, I have seen them -- I said, dear me, I would like to play a part in this garden, but I wouldn't want to intrude.

"Oh, it wouldn't be an intrusion." So kind, but I couldn't help but wonder. Really? Human nature being what it is, and considering her twenty years of effort, and never knowing whether or when the condo association, or ComEd under their high tension wires, might say Stop That, we're going to get sued for something or other, I couldn't help but wonder. No intrusion? You mean I could help clean it up, and get rid of the Welcome mats and strips of carpet keeping down weeds at the back? How about less dead brown vegetable growth and more interesting things? The cottage garden look is all very well, but then where are the foxgloves, delphinium, and hollyhocks? No lavender, no potted orange or lemon trees? I see a few remnants of lilies, but otherwise no glorious peonies, no spring bulbs? No cinder paths where one  may really walk, almost no bushes or trees (except Rose of Sharon, which I am sorry I do not like), "the bones of the garden"? And why the huge central bed of raspberries? I am glad to feed the birds and voles, but it looks a bit exhausted.

Then I had a fresh thought, which may seem soapy but I hope is not. Anyway "she'd probably appreciate the help," my friend had said. And I thought: the garden is a metaphor for the world, isn't it. You find it lacking; yet here it was before you arrived. Step back and look, and you may find suddenly you see, you metaphorical insect, that it is a privilege to participate.

In a tearing hurry, again, but "ancora imparo"*

Sometimes Saturday nights are a tad slow at work, so I use the time to self-crash-course my way to more wine knowledge. Last night, what started out as a simple mnemonic project, with the computer and a couple of encyclopedias at hand -- write down all the names of the 61 Bordeaux chateaux from the 1855 classification -- turned into an interesting bit of sleuthing. And now I know a wine I want to try, but that I don't know how to get.

In the middle of the official list of the classified growths, right in the middle of the "Troisieme crus," is Chateau Langoa-Barton. I had never heard of it, even though being in charge of the French wine section for the past four months has left me with at least a working knowledge of Bordeaux. My plan for last night's self-crash-course was to focus on the chateaux I did not know, cross-reference them in our store's chainwide inventory, and, if it turned out we did not sell them, investigate if possible why.

This turned interesting quickly and it showed a pattern quickly. I really needed to look up only one or two names, here or there. (We sell a lot of Bordeaux.) Rauzan-Gassies was unfamiliar; turns out it is known as an underperformer. Same with Durfort-Vivens. Both are "second growths." Then came Langoa-Barton, as I say in the middle of the third growths. If you scroll down through its reviews at a site like Wine Cellar Insider, you see it gets a lot of scores in the high 80s or low 90s. We don't carry it, either. That's the pattern.

But Langoa-Barton is not regretfully labeled an underperformer. I took notes on its reviews because they, too, all showed a pattern: "tannic." Masculine. Strict, classically styled. "Classic personality." Tannic, classic, earthy, cedar tobacco. Tannic and firm. Tannic, classsic, old school. Austere, tannic, firm. Powerful, masculine, beefy, "well suited for fans of traditionally styled wine." And tannic -- did we mention tannic?

So it's interesting that this low-pointed wine, I should say this chateau's wines, high 80s and low 90s, is not faulted by its reviewers as unsound. Only they seem to struggle to give it fruit metaphors, while images of dryness and inanimate things, or vegetal things, abound. It's as if the wine is less like fruit and more like the wooden box the fruit came in. Yet they keep calling it classic and traditional, and thus my curiosity is piqued, all the more because my research tells me Langoa Barton is the only classified growth still owned by the same family as in 1855. That's good, surely, if you want to reach back in time and get your hands on a bottle of a cabernet-merlot blend (that is what we are talking about) not overwhelmed by the modern love of 95-point, blueberry-pie-with-caramel-fudge "monsters."  

I'll let you know where else my self-crash-course wine learning takes me. Thank God I found out what Abacus is before the nice man browsing the wine cellar pointed it out to me as one of his favorites: I was able to do something besides nod and smile about it. He left not with Abacus but with a three liter bottle of Chateau Giscours 2005 (Troisieme cru). That was fun. It's amazing how the store staff suddenly seem to lurk while a purchase like that is being gently cossetted out the door. I mean, we're not on commission or anything.

Now I have to pack up and move.

* "I am still learning," attributed to Michelangelo at the age of eighty.

I entered the Hendrick's gin contest

Captain Tarquin Shakespeare met the great alien Zephirine Felicite immediately upon leaving the galaxy's edge. She was all wings and eyes, and did not understand time. "How is it," she asked, "that your planet, merely in orbiting its star, causes living beings to 'age'?" 

See here.

Step by step

So you are buying a house or a condo, after thirty years of renting through marriage and divorce? How interesting. Here is what happens.

Step one. Look at online real estate sites, endlessly. Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com. Plug in location and maximum price tolerable. You've been doing that for a while anyway.

Step two. Notice a stroke of luck. The owners of that promising little yellow house very nearby are hosting an "open house" on your day off. Set yourself two tasks that day, one, go see it, and two, go to the office of the realtor whose business card you saved just for the heck of it, back when his mass-mailing envelope stuffed full of information -- and business cards -- ended up in the mailboxes of everyone at the apartment complex last February.

Step three. Day off. Go to the open house. Wear a dress to impress the potential neighbors. (You've been watching three-minute instructional videos from Realtor.com advising on all aspects of home-buying, including when to look professional.) Imagine yourself living there. And mowing that huge lawn -- oh dear.

Why does it all look so impossibly perfect? Professional landscaping, wonderful, but why the everlasting stella d'oro daylilies? They are a mess to clean up when their bloomtime is finished, as you learned from gardening around the old rental farmhouse belonging to your ex-brother-in-law. Of course there are more important things to think about, but still. The lilies will be there too.

You walk around to the yard. How quaint. Actual clotheslines, as of yesteryear. It's very quiet. The neighborhood is charmingly of yesteryear, too. Now where are the owners of this cute little yellow house? The sign on the door says "Please knock." You do. A cat appears in one small window, and then another in the other. No one else answers. You begin to wonder. What if it's some psycho in there, who has not the remotest intention of "showing" the house? Seriously. What if it's a man, alone. Do you follow him in? One thinks not, somehow.  

Step four. After five more minutes, give this adventure up. Drive to the realtor's office, he of the mass business card mailing last winter. Explain briefly to his secretaries that you know nothing. Take a brochure, and give them your name, plus the address of the little yellow house.

Step five, and so on. Pretty soon you're going to forget what counts as a new "step" and what is simply unfolding with tumbling, not-quite-kaleidoscopic-but-still events.

In less than an hour the realtor calls. "I can show you that house tonight."

My goodness. Okay. I'll meet you at 6:45. 

"The sky is red, dumb ass," or -- humor in Matthew (we found some!)

If you are reading it for the first time in twenty or thirty years, it may strike you as something out of a Seth Rogen movie. Just one small paragraph, seven verses. In fact, let's pretend it is a movie script, and we are millennial hipsters writing it.

***

(Working title: The Sky is Red, Dumb Ass)

Scene: ancient Israel, during the Roman Empire, about the year 30 A.D. The frenzy of Jesus of Nazareth's career is at the height of its -- well, frenzy. He travels about a smallish quadrant of a very small land, mostly staying near the sea of Galilee, preaching, telling the Jews their religious authorities are corrupt (a la James Kirk -- "your Bible is a lie!" though of course, not that exactly), and especially healing people. People being what they are, they mostly come out for that. In droves, in crowds, in throngs. Over and over again we are told "the crowds were so great," "great crowds followed him," "they brought him many" to be cured. Once they are cured they tend to go away. Or he sends them away, perhaps knowing what they are. We don't often hear "and the paralytic stayed and listened to what else he had to say." 

There have also been huge miracles and bizarre sights. He has calmed storms at sea, he has caused a few loaves of bread and fish to be enough to feed thousands, he has walked on water from shore to his disciples on a boat, pitching about in a storm on the sea of Galilee. 

Frequently, after some course of miracles and healings and teachings, the presumably exhausted Jesus goes away by himself somewhere. Usually when he comes back they all climb into a boat and cross "the sea," and the cycle of working the crowds begins again.

As this scene opens, not only is that new cycle beginning, but food and bickering about food is on everyone's mind. (Incidentally we're talking about a world in which hungry men eat grains of wheat off the stalk in a field, or pluck figs off a tree by the road. Memo to casting director, everybody is skinny.) In his most recent fracas with the religious authorities, Jesus has had to answer questions about why his followers don't wash their hands (ritually?) before eating, plus he has had to deal with the Canaanite woman who rebukes him about 'dogs eating the scraps from the table.' Then he feeds another several thousand with a few loaves and fishes.    

***

Dawn on the sea of Galilee. A few minutes of gray coolness, even mist, are left before the heat begins. The boat glides in to the bank, and the disciples splash wearily one by one into the water, to pull it all the way in. (Memo to set director, were there wharves and piers? Did guys just run boats up on to the sand? Is the shore of Kinneret sandy or rocky? Find out.) Jesus also gets out and helps pull. Well, he would. He is the farthest ahead of all of them.  

The last couple guys picking up their stuff from inside the boat, before they get out too, notice that nobody has brought any food. In all the everlasting hubbub that their lives have become, "they had forgotten to bring bread." Or, maybe they had been saving those last few loaves that he just used to feed the crowd. Present are: Simon called Peter, and Andrew (brothers); James and John (also brothers); Philip; Bartholomew; Thomas; Matthew the tax collector; James "the son of Alphaeus;" Thaddeus; Simon "the Cananean;" Judas Iscariot. Jesus.

THADDEUS. (Still in the boat. Rummaging in a bag.) Ohhh ... (Did the disciples ever use oaths? They were, after all, ordinary guys before.)

JAMES SON OF ALPHAEUS. What?

THADDEUS. You're not going to believe this.

SIMON THE CANANEAN. What?

PHILIP. What's the matter?

THADDEUS. Let's just say it's a long walk back around to that bake-shop woman.

SIMON. Are you kidding? We don't have bread?

BARTHOLOMEW (breathless, working in the water). I'd go. She was cute.

JUDAS. (Furious.) Fuck. (Yes, he would say it.)

MATTHEW THE TAX COLLECTOR. (Looking up, knee deep in the water, a rope over his shoulder.) Don't. What is it?

JUDAS. It seems we've forgotten bread, because we're all so brilliant like that. (He jumps over the side, followed by Thaddeus, James son of Alphaeus, Philip, and Simon. The boat is empty. The men heave and push it to shore. One tosses the anchor up on the grass (the sand? The rocks? Find out.) They wring out the hems of their clothes. They would normally gather to sit and eat now. Judas stalks a little away, to get his bearings, to look for a road.)

BARTHOLOMEW (approaches Simon Peter.) We'll have to live on mutual admiration until the next town. We forgot the bread.

SIMON PETER (turning, then grins). At least there's no lack of water. 

ANDREW (the disciples have begun to gather in two knots; Andrew crosses from one to the other, drawing them together). I hear we have ...

JAMES. Yes, yes. Now what?  

JOHN (shrugs). Move on, find a town, buy bread. Or beg it. 

ANDREW. They'll love us.

JUDAS (returning). They might.

PHILIP. They often do by the time we go. 

JESUS (He has been standing a little away. Now he comes toward them, brushing the dirt from his hands). What is it? 

JOHN. Nothing too serious. Just annoying. We forgot bread.

JESUS. (Still slowly brushing his hands. His mind is always working at a different level. Food -- bread -- the Canaanite woman -- scraps for the dogs -- healing -- the sick, the sick, the sick -- why don't you wash your hands? why do you pick grain on the Sabbath? -- the crowds, the crowds -- the sea, the sea -- bread comes from grain, all you need otherwise is water -- but also leavening, yeast -- show us a sign.) Well. (He smiles, absently, a bit grimly.) Rather beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (He walks a little way off, up the rise toward the road.)     

THADDEUS. I'm sorry, what? 

JAMES. What was that? 

SIMON THE CANANEAN. Do you think he's mad? 

JUDAS. I don't think so. 

JAMES SON OF ALPHEUS. Who would forget bread?

THOMAS. We all forgot it, do you mind? 

SIMON PETER. It's those loaves he used the last time. The second time. That's what we packed for now. 

JOHN. Would you rather he not have fed hungry people? 

SIMON PETER. No. I'm just saying, we're not stupid, that was what we planned. 

JAMES SON OF ALPHEUS. Well then, we should have made adjustments in our plans. Look, what are we, a bunch of women here? Can we move on? 

THOMAS. I agree. I’m starving.

MATTHEW THE TAX COLLECTOR. I agree. Let's go. 

ANDREW. What about the boat -- 

JESUS (Suddenly he is just there, as if they had forgotten about him for years). What is it? 

JUDAS (After a pause). Nothing -- we're sorry we forgot --

JESUS. It's not the bread! You've seen bread. You've seen five thousand people fed with five loaves, you've seen four thousand people fed with seven. You've collected the leftovers yourselves. Have some faith. What I said was, 'Beware the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.' You know, the powers that be? 

SIMON PETER (actually squinting). You mean ... the leaven...

JOHN. What transforms. A small amount changes everything.

PHILIP. All through the bread.  

JESUS. Yes! 

THOMAS. Makes it what it will be. You can’t unmake bread.

THADDEUS. Makes us what we will be. What we might be.

PHILIP. Their teachings are like leaven, in people.

BARTHOLOMEW. And, going forward ... because we'll meet them again. 

JESUS (Gestures a 'hello, dumb-ass' Yes, not to any one of them, but more to the day in general. 

(They all turn to go, Jesus first with Judas close behind, followed by the rest. As they walk, one disciple quietly explains to another, in snatches and whispers. "He didn't mean the bread. 'Leaven' is teachings, how they work in you like yeast works in dough ...." 

(The straggler is Andrew. Once or twice he looks back at the boat.) 

ANDREW. What about the boat? Should we just leave it? That's not our boat, right? 

They keep walking, and he runs to catch up. 

***

END OF THE SCENE BASED ON THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW, CHAPTER 16: 5-12.

(Minor note: it’s amazing how often, if this were set in modern times, the characters would have said “Christ” or “Jesus” as a throwaway oath. Frequently had to stop myself from typing it in automatically.)