Harbin 08

I'm in the midst of errands, but secretly I'm in the midst of confusion, hurtling under battery power along the lanes and byways and thoroughfares...all three quarters of a mile of them...that comprise Central Menlo Park.  I have a map of the suburb, but the map of confusion, well, it's not exactly available at the Automobile Association, is it?  And what is available?  Only moments before my shopping expedition began, I rang Menlo Park's only extant sporting goods store, inquiring if they had fanny packs.  This drew a blank from the young woman at the other end, such a blank that I almost thought of describing my desired purchase as a 'bum bag,' the American name being a perennial source of ribald merriment in Britain.  But, no, as the exchange developed, the woman didn't know what I was talking about.  Woman, meaning someone approximately one third my age.  Fanny pack?  Either the name no longer applies, or the product has been supplanted by another, or 'sporting goods' means something it did not mean 15 years ago...and so I gave up.  Perhaps I didn't need a new fanny pack that badly.  What was wrong with the old one?  A complex question.  The simple answer being that I am the old one and rapidly losing confidence in my ability to speak to the young ones in a world changing faster than I can comprehend.

What I can comprehend is that the evening waiter at the Kurdish restaurant is on the street posting tonight's menu.  We have our usual jocular conversation.  The man is so erudite, it's like having George Orwell wait on your table in his down-and-out Paris days.  It's pleasantly warm in Menlo Park, we agree.  Unpleasantly warm in Kurdistan, he tells me.  And what do I think of the new menu?  In this moment, I realize that we have reached such a level of frankness that he genuinely desires my response.  I start rattling off the obvious marketing writer's critique.  'Salad' is not spelled with a 't' and King Chicken is utterly nondescript.  King of what, I want to ask, but he supplies the answer.  This is the chef's signature dish and takes upwards of 20 minutes to prepare.  I tell him that he has both a marketing problem and a marketing opportunity, and I will elaborate on how to turn this 20-minute dining lag to mercantile advantage, but there isn't timejust now.  There's no time because I still haven't purchased three cornmeal pizzas for tonight's dinner, the province of Trader Joe's, I have to get back to my desk and I just have to get...getting being a byproduct of caffeine in the form of the afternoon's double latte, consumed just minutes ago.  I am nothing if not predictable.

Tell you what, I tell the Kurd, give me your menu and I'll have a go at it, in my home, at my leisure.  He offers effusive thanks.  I watch this, conscious of whatever cultural tradition underlies it, absolutely convinced of its sincerity, and feeling my heart burst open like a ripe peach.  This is what I need, perhaps what fate was steering me toward when my wheelchair burst through the door and bounced up the street, ostensibly to go shopping.  Looking for groceries and finding my place in the community.  You know, he says with the sort of world-weary shrug that links me to our mutual Fertile Crescent origins, we are thinking it's not such a good thing to have a restaurant with a Middle Eastern theme.  I am thinking he's probably right, though I don't like to admit it, not less than a mile from Stanford University.  A good question, I tell them.  Let's go over the menu on Tuesday.

In short, retired, crippled, easily convinced that I am not much good at anything but drinking too much coffee and rolling around suburban streets, I now have a job.  The pay?  That is no issue.  Trade is the answer, of course.  I'll take it out in trade.  And this whole caravansary motif is feeling pretty good, destined as I currently am for Trader Joe's.  Where the trade is brisk, but the pizzas remain.  Have I tried the house Pinot, a checker asks me?  Hard to say if I'm talking to the Kurdish waiter or a grocery clerk, but it doesn't matter.  As I say, I'm in the midst of confusion.

I got more than a hint of this checking in at the front gate of Harbin Hot Springs only a couple of days ago.  The drive, which takes me four white-knuckled hours, ends just beyond the outer reaches of the Greater Bay Area.  The hot spring, a new age, post-hippie enclave, is in the arid pine mountains of southern Lake County, population nil, roads torturous.  I needed a getaway, some guy time.  And so I was meeting a friend here, a men's group veteran like me.  The guard shack at the Harbin entrance was looking awfully good by the time my two-ton Ford stopped there.

Harbin wasn't exactly designed for wheelchairs.  Odd when one considers the marvelous effects of its hot waters upon the orthopedically compromised.  There are some ramps leading here and there.  Mostly there.  And I was here, at the entrance, tired, old and dusty.  I yelled at the open window that I was in a wheelchair and could not approach.  'What's your problem?'  This from the middle-aged French guy currently performing guard duty.  Harbin is international.  I yelled back that my problem was that I was in a wheelchair.  I was also in a mood, a rising mood, the sort that can spark a remarkable neuromuscular recovery in an awesome hurry.  It wouldn't be that hard to pull really close to his window and make my presence known with a few short raps from my aluminum crutch.  A customer waiting at the window spoke to someone inside.

A young woman emerged.  She suggested that I park.  I maneuvered the white Ford vastness into an empty patch of dirt.  Let's see, she said, you want to use the baths, is your membership current...I'm sure it is.  This irritated me.  Everything was irritating me.  I have a reservation, I said.  A room, I added.  Oh, oh, oh.  You have a room.  As this information reached her, it occurred to me that I was being short on details.  I was trying not to be short.  But it was hard.  I just want to park this thing, I told her.  I have a friend waiting for me.  Oh, she said, looking inside the van, why don't you and your friend....  It's not an imaginary friend, I told her, but a real one.  He has already arrived.  Oh.  Yes, I think he's wearing a hat.  Just drive on up, and you'll find him.  Thank you, I said, jaw tight, voice clenched.  It would be good to cut this exchange short.  She was urging me up the hill, but I was going to have to turn around, so I took the lower road toward the parking.  No, no, no, yelled the Frenchman.  I found this gratifying.

In less than an hour I was soaking my naked, life-battered body in the sulfurous waters of one of California's numerous volcanic zones.  The leaves were appearing on the trees, water was bursting from a stream that by summer would barely ooze.  The water was so hot, the swimming pool so impossibly cold, that my cardiovascular system, not to mention my nervous system and, probably, my operating system, whipsawed from the obliterating to the bracing.  I learned, in the course of two days, that there's a reason why a good washer puts clothes through hot and cold cycles.  This is the secret to washing.  To purifying.  There is much to be said for starching and ironing, but one can't have everything.

There is electricity at Harbin Hot Springs, but not much.  At night, the stars predominate.  Jim, my friend, showed me how to find Polaris.  He explained why the North Star remains north, rather than moving about like the rest of the unreliable world.  The firmament stays put.  By the second night, I found this comforting.  The first night, though soaked and calmed to some extent, something kept me awake.  Marlou and I had had the briefest tense exchange on my way out of town.  She asked if there was something wrong with my van...having just witnessed the Auto Association tow truck pulling away.  I reminded her to take care of my watch.  I was already feeling curt and being badgered with unsympathetic questions about my automotive negligence...enough to keep me staring into angry space for hours. 

An insomnia, devoid of apparent substance, and indicative of something deeper.  That Marlou and I are under constant strain.  We can irritate each other by breathing.  And at times, we need to breathe separately.  Just long enough to remember that we are more than two bodily afflicted aging people facing mortality and gray fear on an hourly basis.  Thus the wash cycle.  Hot to cold.  Until, after another half day of driving home, feet swollen, lower back rejuvenated, my arms fit right into place, where they wanted to be, around Marlou.