The Elephant Whisperer and Alfresco

Alfresco isn't a restaurant but a kiosk in downtown Santa Cruz. Walking by on my way to the Del Mar, I smelled something spicy: cinnamon and cloves, slow-cooked vegetables. I stopped walking. As I stood there, deep breathing, the guy waiting in front of the kiosk smiled at me. "Such a big smell from such a small place," he said. The woman inside the kiosk handed him a bowl (biodegradable, of course) filled with chunks of spicy soft eggplant, raisins, chickpeas, and tomatoes on a mound of couscous. I forgot all about my movie and asked for the same thing, the North African Bowl. Then we sat at Parisian cafe tables on the sidewalk taking bites of this earthy, aromatic, completely satisfying sun-drenched food.

This bowl fits in with the book I'm reading, The Elephant Whisperer. (Yes, bad title. I walked past it in the library and thought, "Cheesy.") Okay, maybe it does bear a little resemblance to Born Free but once Lawrence Anthony, the author and owner of the game reserve Thula Thula, begins telling about the elephants who arrived by a fluke at his property, I can't stop reading.

Elephants have had a tough time of it what with humans taking all the land and deciding that it's much more expedient to shoot elephants than to find them appropriate homes. Anthony, who's lived in South Africa for much of his life, is struck by the fact that elephants -- once plentiful here -- haven't lived on this land for over a century. Many of the native Zulu people surrounding Thula Thula have never even seen an elephant. He fights to save his little band of elephants, fights to build a lodge that will help eco-tourism replace poaching, fights to convince the ranch owners that the land could be more viable and lucrative as a reserve than as grazing grounds for cattle. He falls in love with the elephant herd, with the matriarch Nana, inquisitive and stately, the second-in-command female Frankie, who charges first and asks questions later (I feel a curious affinity for Frankie). He tells of the arrival of Mvula and Ilanga, the first elephant babies born on this land in 100 years and how the elephants will not let him near the babies but later, bring them to his house to show them off. Lawrence will take his first grandchild to the elephants (while his daughter-in-law nervously wrings her hands), and the elephants meet the human baby with the most gentle touches of their trunks.

I've been recommending this to people as a beach read but I think it's more: when a book can take you to African lands and let you stay with elephants, let you meet a particular group of elephants with their endearing and not-so-endearing traits, isn't that the reason we read in the first place?

Here's a link if you want to see the very appealing kiosk that is Alfresco.

http://www.alfrescosantacruz.com/

And you can hear (in lovely Brit accents) how Lawrence Anthony saved many of the animals in the Baghdad zoo:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audio/2009/feb/20/conservation-wildlife-lawrence-anthony

And you can google Thula Thula too.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack

Lit (part 2) and Alice's Dark Hot Chocolate

I've underestimated Mary Karr. In Lit, she calls her mother after checking into a mental institution when she's come too close to killing herself. Her mother refuses to come help with Mary's son, Dev, while Mary is hospitalized.

Her mother says, 'I just can't honey. You know I've had this trip to Mexico planned for a while.'

Mary says, "After she hangs up I cry because part of me still wants to drag her behind my car. But the other part still wants to crawl into her lap."

And then there's this conversation, held with Jack, a schizophrenic from Mary's AA group who works in a box factory when his meds keep him stable:

"But what if I don't believe in God?," Mary asks Jack.

"Get on your knees and find some quiet space inside yourself, a little sunshine right about here." Jack holds his hands in a ball shape about midchest, saying "Let go. Surrender Dorothy, the witch wrote in the sky. Surrender Dorothy."

Mary says, I want to surrender but have no idea what that means.

Jack goes on with a level gaze and a steady tone: "Yield up what scares you. Yield up what makes you want to scream and cry. Enter into that quiet. It's a cathedral. It's an empty football stadium with all the lights on. And pray to be an instrument of peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is conflict, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope...."

"What if there's no answer?" Mary asks.

"If God hasn't spoken, do nothing. Fulfill the contract you entered into at the box factory, amen. Make the containers you promised to tape and staple. Go quietly and shine. Wait. Those not impelled to act must remain in the cathedral. Don't be lonely. I get so lonely sometimes I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger. But I have to go to the AA meeting and make the chairs circle perfect."

I read this page five or six times. Every time I read it, the knot in my chest loosens a little more. If someone battling schizophrenia can keep this kind of contract, then so can I.

I go downstairs to make toast and hot chocolate. Forget toast from a toaster -- it's soulless, hard and unforgiving. I put little marks of butter all over really good bread and then slide it into the oven under the broiler. I stand there watching because otherwise I know I will wander off and forget the toast entirely until it's smoldering and dark smoke is curling out of the oven door.

I make Alice Medrich's hot chocolate:

6 ounces of a really great dark chocolate, like Scharffen Berger
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 1/2 cups milk

Chop up the chocolate, put it into a saucepan and pour half of the boiling water over it. Stir until smooth. Add the rest of the water and then the milk. I like to froth it up with a whisk. Then I dig around in the cabinets for my stainless steel coffee carafe that I love even though it's dented and old. I pour in the hot chocolate and set the carafe on the table with a good white china cup and my plate of perfect toast. Screw Weight Watchers. I bring Mary Karr to the table so I can finish reading.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack

Lit and Roasted Cauliflower

Roasting cauliflower is easy. You hack the head into florettes, toss them into a big bowl, pour on a few tablespoons of olive oil, add some salt and pepper and then toss with your hands. Spread the oiled florettes on a baking sheet, and roast for 25 minutes at 375 degrees. It's forgiving, this recipe. Leave it in the oven a little bit longer and it's no big deal. I like them a little more browned anyway.

Made a whole white meal, just trying to use up what was in the fridge. Beige plates of Swedish meatballs, roasted cauliflower, and scallops and then we all sat at the table eating in a kind of bland-induced trance. I am stuck here, in white.

Mary Karr is the opposite of white. She is shiny black, obsidian dark, with a jagged tear of scarlet that stays in your brain after you've turned off the light. I go back and forth between loving Mary Karr and really resenting her.

I wonder why so many of us move forward in white, afraid to leave the path, doing everything we can to cover what shames us, while Mary Karr steps into the dark, writes about the dark, travels through it. "Nice" enters into it. ("Nice" is tangled up with "insidious" and "strangling.") Swedish meatballs on a beige platter -- how did I end up here?

Poetry makes me love Mary Karr. The fact that she is unsure about poetry's validity until she teaches poetry to a group of mentally challenged women. Somehow their ability to hone in on what is moving lifts Mary Karr above her uncertainty and lifts me above the whiteness. This is a poem by one of the mentally challenged women in Mary's class, Katie:

MONKEY FACE
Far away St. Paul
People like robots
Wash their tables
Scrub the floor
Bored things
Washrags on the window
Put it away now
Look at your leg
Tie your shoe. Look
At yourself. A monkey.

I read this and think that maybe poetry is not about intellect. Not about being adept with words or good in school or nice to your mother. I'm thinking about the purpose of poetry. Mary Karr writes about a teacher she had early on, Etheridge Knight. He told Mary to picture a woman climbing five flights of stairs in a Harlem apartment building in the summer heat, then having to go back down with armloads of garbage. "If you're standing on the corner of 116th Street, poeticizing," Etheridge told Mary, "what could you possibly say to help her climb back up."

So I'm thinking about what I could say to help her climb back up. Those words sure as hell wouldn't be found in a cookbook. They would come from leaving the path, from leaving behind "should," from sitting in the dark and letting the words come to you.

copyright 2010 Ann Krueger Spivack