A Warm Embrace Awaits

An old-style calculator sits on my desk, almost hidden beneath the computer monitor.  “Old-style,” meaning a stand-alone desktop device dedicated to arithmetic functions.  Mine is a latter-day old-style calculator, a small dual-powered (battery and solar) device.  I justified keeping the machine, in the event a power loss prevented me from using Excel on my computer. But when smart-phones came along and I had a calculator available whenever I had my phone with me, that rationale disappeared. But the calculator remains; a relic of an odd attachment to a machine that has long since been made obsolete by advances in technology. I do not use the calculator. I simply keep it close at hand for reasons that are essentially indefensible. Occasionally, I daydream wistfully about finding and restoring my 1971 Ford Pinto, my first car, which I owned for seven years until I replaced it with a 1978 Datsun 200SX. Perhaps the car and the calculator are physical manifestations of nostalgia for a less complicated period in my life, before hope became an unrealistic, naive aspiration for the future. It’s well past the time to make a little more room on my desk. My attachment is not to the device, perhaps, but to a moment in time when it actually served a purpose.

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I received two email messages within the last couple of days that included attachments; photographs of my oldest brother’s face in the aftermath of tripping on a hole in the side sidewalk in the nearby Mexican town of Chapala and falling face-first onto the concrete. Thanks to the assistance of locals who came to his aid, an ambulance came and took him to the Red Cross hospital. There, he got several stitches in his nose before taking an Uber home. The locals took care of his car for him after the incident and he took a bus back into the town the following day to retrieve his car. At least that’s the story that accompanied the photos. The photos look to me like he was involved in a bar fight with several bigger, younger, and stronger guys. The swelling and redness around his eyes, the scrapes on his forehead, and the obvious damage to his nose suggest one of the guys used a baseball bat and another hit him with a piece of steel rebar during the assault. Another couple of the assailants probably relied on their fists, alone. While the bar fight story is entirely fictional, it is only slightly less alarming than the reality of suffering such an injury only a few miles from one’s home. The fact that he is conversant in Spanish probably was useful…but if my face looked like his after such an incident, I doubt I could communicate in any language.

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A huge Bavarian-style beer garden is planned for west Houston, joining several others that apparently have come into being in the years since I lived there roughly forty years ago. At least 100 beer taps are planned for the new one, which will sit on 21,000 square feet of land in Ashford Yard, a multi-use development in Houston’s energy corridor. One one hand, the idea of such a place is appealing to me because its beer offering will be so diverse. But it will be big and crowded and attractive to young-ish patrons who I expect will be loud and raucous and more-than-likely poor matches for reclusive old loners like me. The last time I spent time in a beer garden was several years ago, when I was in Houston with several family members. My niece took us to a little neighborhood beer garden relatively close to their home; it was small, intimate place with outdoor seating under some big trees (if I recall correctly).  I miss having ready access to such places. The population density is insufficient, I suspect, to support a beer garden near where I live. I used to equate beer gardens with friendly, casual, progressive conversations; no longer, though. Nasty conservatism, coupled with maniacal religious fervor and delusions of moral superiority seem to have taken hold of even the most appealing locales.

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Despite the fact that I know today is Sunday, I see a very different day when I look outside my window. This is an unnamed day that’s held in reserve for an imaginary rail journey through a non-existent countryside. The vistas outside my window include rolling hills, rocky cliffs overlooking the angry waves of an ocean storm, winding highways slicing through enormous pastures dotted with sheep, and small villages where the residents are as friendly and welcoming as close family members. Unlike the rest of the world, beer gardens in these environs do not rely on dense populations; they rely on small populations of intelligent inhabitants who enjoy the camaraderie of sitting beneath shade trees, discussing philosophies of life, death, and the adequacy of “enough.” The huge public vegetable gardens that surround these places supply all the food resources one would ever need. Social media components of the internet in these places is years…maybe decades…away from becoming reality. Except, of course, a select group of applications available only to people whose psychological profiles confirm their humanity and fundamental human decency. The junipers in these areas have been cultivated in such a way that, when tapped, they yield buckets full of crystal clear Bombay Sapphire gin. Farmers in these spots have developed the means to raise vegan versions of prime rib that, when roasted, taste and smell and feel and look exactly like the beef version. Olive orchards surround these hamlets. Nearby, tamale ranchers work hard just before the end of the year to provide ample supplies of lab-grown pork tamales, perfectly-spiced with locally-grown jalapeños, for the Christmas season and beyond.  Okay. If I can imagine it, I can experience it, right? Still, I cannot see the sheep…or the cliffs…or the beer gardens…or the friendly denizens. Obviously, I am lacking a little something to elevate my ability to become physically enmeshed in my illusions.

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Staying far, far away from the sharp edges of a brutally angry and violent world is an ambitious and admirable objective. It is, unfortunately, physically and mentally impossible. However, emotionally, one can corral one’s mind to stay within the boundaries of a safe psychological delusion, where a warm embrace awaits.