Sunday, January 24, 2010
I went for brunch to Manny's, and took my book Snow, for a time to read without distractions. I had huevos rancheros with a blue corn tortilla. It was accompanied by hash browns and whole beans and topped off with lettuce and a pale slice of tomato. My other choice of place had been Bandido's Hideaway;in fact the thought of going out for brunch today came to me when I was there for the Pena last night. Now I'll really have to go there for breakfast one day, to see if their huevos rancheros are better. The one thing that Manny has, however, is fresh-squeezed orange juice. It's a large glass and I couldn't finish it, so I asked for a cup with a lid to take the rest home. Before I left the restaurant, I noticed, on the wall above the cashier's head, a sign proclaiming that it's a Google Favorite Place. So you can find it if you want.
As I drove down Monte Vista on the way home, I did look at mountains. First, before I left the parking lot, I noticed that the sun was shining and the sky was blue. The storm clouds that had been here for the last 3 or 4 days had blown away, probably off to the east to bother other places more used to snow. Once on the street, I could see that there was still a small halo of clouds casting shadows on the mountain tops, but mostly I noticed the snow, sparkling white confectioners' sugar decoration. It was beautiful up there on the mountains, as long as it wasn't down here clogging the roads and blocking our sidewalks.
The book I mentioned reading, Snow, is by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish 2006 Nobel Prize winner for literature. Starting from the first page, he describes events happening to the main character that take place during the fiercest snowstorm in the memory of the town of Kars. I never imagined so much snow in Turkey, since I had only been there in the month of June. Reading it during the heavily overcast days this past week, with moments of snow and hail, it was easy to imagine being in an environment so thoroughly wrapped in constant snow and darkness. Perhaps it's because I lived the first part of my life in a northern climate, where I experienced a few fierce snowstorms, that I was able to imagine the hero walking through the streets in the snow. I wonder what it's like for someone who has lived all their life where there is little or none.
The other book that I've been reading woven between the chapters of Snow, is Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson. Strangely, the first part of it is also about snow, but this time about the glaciers at the tops of mountains, as he makes his way down from an attempt to reach the summit of K2, in the Karakoram mountain range. It is an arid and inhospitable place but that is its beauty. The topography often consists entirely of glacier, bare rock and mountain peaks (thanks to Wikipedia). Mortenson, in case you don't recognize his name, is the one who established a foundation to build schools along the Pakistani/Afghanistani border. The villages where he build his schools are incredibly poor. The people may be hungry much of the time, but it is their hunger for learning that was most striking to him.
Lately I've been troubled by minutes of sleepiness, probably due to my medications.. If I close my eyes, I do start to fall asleep, and then I fall into a bit of a dream, a story about something. Just now, it was about a promise I had made to a friend about her unmarried daughter, purely fiction. Maybe I should collect these little bits and weave them into a story. But for now, I think I should just lie down for a nap.
As I drove down Monte Vista on the way home, I did look at mountains. First, before I left the parking lot, I noticed that the sun was shining and the sky was blue. The storm clouds that had been here for the last 3 or 4 days had blown away, probably off to the east to bother other places more used to snow. Once on the street, I could see that there was still a small halo of clouds casting shadows on the mountain tops, but mostly I noticed the snow, sparkling white confectioners' sugar decoration. It was beautiful up there on the mountains, as long as it wasn't down here clogging the roads and blocking our sidewalks.
The book I mentioned reading, Snow, is by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish 2006 Nobel Prize winner for literature. Starting from the first page, he describes events happening to the main character that take place during the fiercest snowstorm in the memory of the town of Kars. I never imagined so much snow in Turkey, since I had only been there in the month of June. Reading it during the heavily overcast days this past week, with moments of snow and hail, it was easy to imagine being in an environment so thoroughly wrapped in constant snow and darkness. Perhaps it's because I lived the first part of my life in a northern climate, where I experienced a few fierce snowstorms, that I was able to imagine the hero walking through the streets in the snow. I wonder what it's like for someone who has lived all their life where there is little or none.
The other book that I've been reading woven between the chapters of Snow, is Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson. Strangely, the first part of it is also about snow, but this time about the glaciers at the tops of mountains, as he makes his way down from an attempt to reach the summit of K2, in the Karakoram mountain range. It is an arid and inhospitable place but that is its beauty. The topography often consists entirely of glacier, bare rock and mountain peaks (thanks to Wikipedia). Mortenson, in case you don't recognize his name, is the one who established a foundation to build schools along the Pakistani/Afghanistani border. The villages where he build his schools are incredibly poor. The people may be hungry much of the time, but it is their hunger for learning that was most striking to him.
Lately I've been troubled by minutes of sleepiness, probably due to my medications.. If I close my eyes, I do start to fall asleep, and then I fall into a bit of a dream, a story about something. Just now, it was about a promise I had made to a friend about her unmarried daughter, purely fiction. Maybe I should collect these little bits and weave them into a story. But for now, I think I should just lie down for a nap.
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