12/07/07

Thoughts \ Developed Thoughts \ Rants \ Raves \ Writing

06/12/2007 23:39:45 -0600 GMT

Like Steinbeck Would

Clickety Clickety Clack. The fingers cross over the tracks...of my keyboard.

I was just reading some of John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flats, and his writing always inspires me. I wish I could write like that dude. Steinbeck is to writing what U2 is to music, in my view. Steinbeck writes with perfect grammar, and he writes in a poetic voice.  He writes simply, like Hemingway would, and he writes a story such that you can get a true sense of his characters.

I read and re-read Steinbeck's writing, but I try to leave enough years in between readings so that I forget how the story goes, to keep it fresh. One of my favorite books of all time is The Grapes of Wrath.

The first time I read The Grapes of Wrath reminds me of a story I can tell.

I had a chance to travel to Rwanda in 1998. Parenthetically, my transit through Nairobi left me passing through in a time frame within less than 24 hours of the bombing of the embassy there. I remember waiting in the departure lounge in Nairobi, flying to Lusaka, and landing a few hours later, sleeping, then waking to the news that a bomb had destroyed part of the the U.S. embassy there. Most of the people there who were killed were Kenyans, which I viewed as a sad failure by the perpetrators of this evil deed.

They aimed to make a statement, in a deranged way, but they managed to kill a number of people that were much more innocent than I imagine they had planned for.

Back to my main thread, transit between Lusaka and Kigali required an overnight in Nairobi, which gave me a full day in a more developed capital city than I was accustomed to. There were book shops!

I purchased The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

Now, in 2007, as I sit in my house in the southeastern United States, I have just grabbed these same books from my bookshelf that I purchased in Nairobi, and look for the telltale receipt that I usually use as a bookmark. There was none in either book. There was, however, a bookmark in East of Eden, dated 14/10/98 from Mosi-Ua-Tunya Lodge in Victoria Falls (P.O. Box 165, Tel 4336). According to that receipt, six hundred Zimbabwean dollars bought me residence there for a day or two, I guess. I would be surprised if 600 Zimbabwean dollars would buy me a meal today - such is the state of changed times.

I remember walking the side streets of Nairobi and happening upon a bookshop run by an Indian fellow. The place was teaming with books, wall to wall, as any proper bookshop would in any part of the world. I felt like I had found water after living in a desert. I knew I liked Steinbeck's work immensely, and I purchased accordingly. There was such a dearth of book shops in Lusaka at the time that, in this side street shop in Nairobi, I felt I had found an oasis; I purchased with glee.

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that The Grapes of Wrath was set in California, the place of my upbringing. It recounted the struggles of a segment of American people who had to escape the dustbowls of the Midwest, who were impoverished, and who suffered the disadvantages of the poor. The final scene of the book, which I won't reveal here for the sake of keeping surprise available to those who haven't read the story, is one of the few story endings that have shocked me, and made me think deeply about what is normal and how that could change under circumstances of duress.

Back to the present, last night I was reading Tortilla Flats, following the characters as they meandered through a drunken logic, living in ditches, transiently sustained from gallon of wine to gallon of wine, and I admired Mr. Steinbeck's writing style once again. Contemporary with Hemingway, he wrote simply, clearly, and with a message that can touch any human soul.

So now, with a deep breath of apprehension, I will attempt to write like Steinbeck does. I may very well fail, but in the course of my failure, I hope to not fail in some way that is meaningful.

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South Laguna is a township that doesn't exist on any map, but it is defined by a distinct community. It lies between Laguna Beach to the north, Dana Point to the south, and Laguna Niguel in the inland, queba direction. It's a slice of community on the hillsides of California that could generate forgotten souls if it could. But it doesn't muster that sort of recognition. Rather, it's as likely to be lost to time as any small town would be after a hundred years pass.

South Laguna is a place that no longer exists, but in the recent past, it was a place of great undiscovered wealth. Relative to those established surrounding towns, it was relatively obscure.

Traveling back a decade, the ocean, with all of its healing peace, is visible from the hill that raised Isaac and Ishmael. The surf of the Pacific, white, but far enough that the sound of crashing waves is only audible in the stillest, darkest hour of night, makes its presence known instead by the salty smell of clean sea air. The surrounding hillsides had shepherds at one time, before the masses arrived.

After the fact, after leaving the hillsides of South Laguna, Ishmael wondered if every one of the few hundreds who lived there had a similar experience of belonging and not belonging at the same time.

There is Tony, arriving in his battered blue pick-up truck with a white camper shell atop. Tony's smile comes from the sides of his eyes, and carries 'round to make circles with his moustache. He's got black ,greased hair in curls atop his head, with no balding apparent. Sometimes he arrives with his sons. Sometimes Hector comes by, fat and earnest, eager to learn about the guns that Dad has in the house. They might go shooting next weekend, the lot of them.

The grass is a straw color for most of the year in South Laguna. The only exception is when it rains for a few weeks, when suddenly there is green in this coastline desert. Suddenly, but very transiently, the place seems like it might be alive. But for most of the year, it is mostly the color of dry earth.

Oleanders border the front yard of Ishmael's home, with junipers and landmark stones marking the place. The driveway slopes upward, flattening into the driveway. Three massive stones garnish the front yard. Immediately to the left of the driveway, along the path to the front door. One is a flattish stone, a meter high and nearly twice as wide, grey-white in the sunlight, that captures a small pool or two of water in the rare instance of rain. It's large enough for a small child of five or six to climb up and sit on it with his best friend, where they can survey the yard, looking over the grass and junipers, oleanders separating the yard from the neighbor's to the right - the east - that much farther from the ocean.

Anther stone, which is more vertical, nearly two meters high, but only a meter wide, is more closely surrounded by the junipers to the right of the driveway as one looks at the house. This stone has a sloped ledge that requires at least a seven year old leg to get onto it. On the top of it, one can make another effort to stand on a tiny precipice that will enable a survey of six or seven yards in the neighborhood. There is the Tarver's, across the street. There is the Sullivan's next door, across the forbidden wooden fence. The Wergelen's are one more yard down from them, where Colonel Wergelen has a putting green instead of a regular lawn. To the right of the Tarver's is the Weil's place, with their only son, Peter living there. Over the Oleanders is a wrought iron fence, and beyond that is the yard of the Wilson's, or the Burke's, or the Allison's depending on the year. For some reason, that property has a lot of turnover. After the Wilson/Burke/Allison's is an empty lot. The sidewalk along Balearic Road is tainted by single curved line of black spray paint halfway between the Wilson/Burke/Allison's and the vacant lot. Then there's a line of graffiti that says "fuck you" in the scrawl of a preadolescent who knew fear as much as he knew absence.

After the Wergelen's was the Burn's place. They were old, and they had an organ in their house. Once, when Ishmael was less than ten, he and his sister visited for the random reason that only a eight-year old can explain, and Mr. Brown played the organ for he and his sister. On a rare occasion, Ismael visited alone, but Mr. Brown would never play the organ again.

"It's resting," he would say, and Ishmael was young enough to be satisfied by that explanation.

The back yard started flat, with a mound in the middle that had a tiny pond in it, bordered by volcanic rock. There was a rose garden to the right, toward the ocean side. Then stone gardens. The living room windows were on the right, with a patio that grew a wooden lattice covering as Dad's career progressed. led down a slope to Crete Road.

It was Ishmael's chore to clear the hill of weeds in the summer. It was an odious task, in the heat, when neighborhood peers were playing video games and traveling to Mexico or Hawaii, to work under the perfectionist dictatorship of a grandmother of incessant work ethic...

Halfway down the hill was a meter-wide plateau, marked again with oleanders. The grass would grow and fastly turn to straw. The most difficult were tufts of green weeds that would eat weed eaters for breakfast.

I remember an occasion when Ishmael's Dad and brother, along with Ishmael himself were working on a late afternoon on the hill. Dr. Vorbau spun by on Crete in his convertible Mercedes, and he stopped to converse with Dad. There was laughter, both from the hillside and the driver's seat. Iqbal complained after - "He was laughing at you,' he complained. Dad retorted, "So what?"

That subtle lesson remains with me.

It doesn't matter who laughs at you. Moreover, we laughed together. Laugh as you will, here I am, doing my work. I have never paid mind to someone who laughs at what I am doing. Carry on, I do, and that is that.

South Laguna, with privilege and wealth, lives on a hillside of a nondescript slice of southern California. South Laguna was an unincorporated but of heaven that was tainted by hell's angels. Later I found a lightened way of escaping - with friends that carried me through, with a perspective that made me understand both my privilege and my oppression.