Cowboys and Indians

I first encountered Larry McMurtry when the old man made his way across the stage, sporting a tux with a Bolo tie, to accept his Oscar for his work on the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. In his short speech, he thanked not his family or his friends, or God -- but his typewriter. "I couldn't have done it without you," he said. I liked him immediately.

A few weeks ago, coming off a good but claustrophobic and navel-gazey John Updike novel, I wanted something sprawling and airy, and I remembered McMurtry. I'd never read anything about the Old West before, but that seemed just the medicine. I picked the most popular of his books, the one that earned him his Pulitzer.

My first impression of Lonesome Dove was that the writing was overly simple. The vocabulary is no more than a fourth-grade level, and it tended to point out the obvious. On top of that, it was too like Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman -- a little mushy and mainstream. But the Pulitzer Prize logo on the cover made me keep pushing through the 1,000 page novel.

Now, by page 900, one thing is clear: Larry McMurtry is a genius. The Doctor Quinn tone was a tease, and I'm sure he did it on purpose. When characters start getting their balls cut off and shoved down their throats, and burned, and drowned, it's all the more shocking.

There are few stand-out passages in the book, which actually makes the book itself feel more memorable and solid. Rather than catching certain things in your memory, the consistency lets the whole thing build and accumulate in your brain. It never hits you over the head with its greatness -- but at some point (for me it was around page 600), you out-of-the-blue realize that it's been amazing. Then you worry about it being over too soon.

I'm enchanted with the world of the Old West, it turns out. My sense of fantasy has always been rooted in sci-fi and super-heroes. Gun-slinging cowboys and saloons and Indians and the Great Plains seem like a new invention to me. And Lonesome Dove is one of those books you read for the world it presents as much as for the characters, similar to Lord of the Rings. Given the level of detail, I find it hard to believe that Larry McMurtry didn't actually live in the 1870s, the same way I can't imagine Tolkein not spending time in Middle Earth -- the places and customs both books describe are so real as to be alien.

I was happy to learn there are two sequels to Lonesome Dove (and both are its equal in length). Guess I should be thanking McMurtry's typewriter too.

Nice Digits

I just made an appointment to have my travel vaccines for India. When I gave my phone number, the receptionist complimented me on it: "Nice number!"

That's a first.

Snake Boat Races

I will soon be traveling to New Delhi, India for work. I have been warned about everything from not drinking the water (perhaps I'll learn how babied my body has been in America, as Ben mentioned a few weeks ago), to not going anywhere except with my company-assigned driver, to turning a blind eye to the bleak poverty that will surround me.

Upon reading about India, I learned of an upcoming holiday that includes music, elephant parades and a snake boat race. I'm terrified of snakes, but the image was intriguing. I mentioned it to my roommates. Jon in turn asked me and Trish what image came to mind when we pictured a snake boat. "I imagine a boat made of snakes that are woven together," he said.

Trish imagined a glass boat filled with snakes, so they can be seen slithering within the interior and exterior walls.

I imagined a simple wooden row boat that sat in the street on top of hundreds of snakes, who moved it across the ground by slithering.

Of course, it's none of the above, though I'm not sure what it is. I guess I'll find out soon enough! In other snake news, I hope I get to see a snake charmer. This photo is from a colleague who was in India for 3 months last year.

Traveling Show

Last night I went to the Barack Obama rally on Boston Common. 9,500 people. A couple good speeches. And, of course, the man himself.

I was too far away to get any good pictures, but Barack warped that distance between himself and me. (In my personal experience, he runs a second place only to Bono in his ability to hold a crowd in his hand.)

He Baracked my world, even if I don't agree with everything he has to say. Being in the crowd underscored my belief that he's the man for the job -- because of the crowd's diversity. Here was the black woman affirming each line of the speech with a church-like "That's right. Yes, yes." Here was the white-white college kid whistling for hydrogen cars. What I think America needs, more than any particular policy, is 1) a person who can bring us together, and 2) someone who can help restore our position in the world. "When I'm President," Barack said, "I'll tell the world, America is back!" It was my favorite line.

No, actually, my favorite line was when he mentioned his "cousin Dick Cheney." He continued for a bit, then gave in to the laughter: "We tried to keep that under wraps. Hey, what can I say? There's a black sheep in every family."

For as closely as I've been following the presidential campaigns, this was my first campaign event. What struck me most was how like a traveling show it is, how really old-fashioned it is. In spite of the media blitzes, in spite of the millions of dollars, it all boils down to a person giving a speech, trying to make a sale. One on one. Asking for your vote. It's kind of beautiful, really.

Learn It From the Side of the Box

Seriously, I can't cook. I love to cook, but it never turns out well: I don't read the directions and stuffing ends up like soup and rice ends up burnt. I'm starting to wonder if the recipes I'm making are what's bad.

See, most things that I cook are vegetarian or vegan, which admittedly doesn't always equal tummy-patting yummy-yummy. Last night I made this sweet potato and barley risotto which was okay when it was hot, but as soon as it started to cool, it tasted gross. The barley dried out and I couldn't choke the second half down. (Meanwhile, Mike is happily chowing away on beer beef stew I made him.)

The same thing happened with this chickpea casserole I made -- delicious at first, but I couldn't finish it. That seems to be the way with healthy food: I can eat half a banana, but the second half makes me want to vomit.

The vegan cookies are sugary enough, but somehow taste off; the whole-wheat baked ziti with fake-meat crumbles in it tastes too wholesome, too filling, too many hyphens.

Last night, after I choked down the sweet potato risotto and packed the leftovers up in the fridge, I ended up staring into the cabinet at Jon and Trish's boxes of Mac N Cheese: sweet hollow carbs with bad-for-you powdered cheese. I ended up eating the last of the tootsie rolls to console myself.

Last Drive in a '94 Sunbird

I got my first car, a Pontiac Sunbird, in the summer of 1998. I drove it my senior year of high school, and when I went to college, my brother drove it. Then my mom drove it. For the last few years, though, it'd been kicking around my parents' driveway, not driving much at all.

Last fall I decided Chris and I could use a back-up car, so we brought it down to Providence to be our spare. But we didn't use it much, and it developed a squeak, and there was some question about whether it would pass inspection when the sticker ran out. So I decided to give it back to my parents, and since no one needed it anymore, they'd donate it to charity.

I drove it back home on Sunday night to drop it off, to say goodbye. It was a lot sadder than I expected. Now, in my apartment lot, the empty space glares.

Every boy loves his first car. But I feel especially attached to my first car, I think, because of its unique smell, a smell I've never smelled in any other car. The closest I can come to describing it is to say that it smelled of warm, dusty cloth. I don't know how it got to be so pronounced. In all the years I owned the car, that smell never changed or faded. It even outlasted the air freshener Chris added last winter. I was afraid it would be overpowered by mango-orange, but no.

Because our sense of smell is so closely tied to memory, every time I got in that car was like every other time I got into it; a sniff of a memory bouquet. Driving to the train station last week made me think of driving to high school almost ten years ago. Did every time.

I feel sentimental about the loss because that car was my only link to high school. Not that those were good days (there are reasons why a car remains my only link), but they had their good moments, and most of the latter were spent in that car -- driving to movies, stopping at Wendy's late at night for square burgers with pals. Burgers that in my memory smell like warm, dusty cloth.

Sight can remind you; sound can jog your mind, but smell can make you remember and chuckle to yourself; it can make you cry. Smell can also make you ache.

That warm, dusty-cloth smell, in its bouquet, held an ache to the last: ah, the ache of first love. Driving the car home to my parents' the other day, I happened to glance in the rearview and spotted a gray Blazer behind me, and I wondered, without thinking, whether it was a boy I went to high school with -- the one I looked for and hoped to see back when I drove the Sunbird. Always him (hopefully!) in the rearview back then. Sometimes even him in the passenger seat. Like square burgers, like movies, like Pine Street and Gold Star Boulevard, he smells that same warm, dusty-cloth smell.

Hm.

I almost hoped the car would break down on the last drive to Leicester -- break down severely. I almost hoped the engine would seize, or the whole undercarriage would fall, kerplunk, onto the pavement when I rolled up outside my parents' house. Just so I could be the last one to drive it, and so I'd know beyond doubt that its days were over. But the car drove fine, and smooth, and its easy speed belied its years and wear-n-tear. It will probably drive for another 50,000 miles that are not my miles. And the warm, dusty-cloth smell, to the next owner, will mean nothing.