Eye Level Eye and Amber India

Eye Level Eye is a short play by Leah Halper. I'm thinking about it because my constant thought these days is how people overcome injuries. The play has just three characters: a young woman searching a military cemetery for the headstone of the father she never met; her brash and abrasive cousin; and an old vet in a wheelchair who has taken on the job of cemetery caretaker.

"Eye level, EYE level," the vet snaps at the girl when she tries to talk to him. He refuses to listen until she bends down to look at him face to face. I see this same tendency in myself. Unless someone makes the effort to come to my level, I staunchly refuse to listen. I can look absolutely engaged but inside I am as unassailable as a stone.

When I was driving through Morgan Hill last week and saw a group of tea party demonstrators, I wanted to pull over and engage them -- and probably not in the most peaceful manner. Rachey stopped me from getting out of the car. "Please, Mom," she said. "I have to be at work in half an hour."

It's like the three people alone in the cemetery in Leah's play. All of them come there for a good reason and yet the first instinct is to battle -- to throw out little verbal grenades.

Amber India is like a breath of air -- spicy, warm, lamb-scented air. Their butter chicken is the ideal combination of aromatically spicy and buttery smooth. The waiter spoons the chicken and sauce neatly over a small mound of rice, sparked by hits of yellow saffron. I love this: the person who made this rice has combined white rice with just a little saffron-tinted rice so instead of a monochromatic rice, you have rice confetti.

I wonder if just one tea party representative and I sat down over rice and butter chicken -- with a lovely mango mint cooler on the side -- if we could debate calmly and see each other's views eye to eye.