The Urban Sherpa - a blog by Christopher DeWan

(seeking truth through verbiage...)

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Sleeper, Awake rating=3

February 2, 2012
File under: Cogito Ergo, Mythic Proportions, Pithyisms

Last night, I dreamt that I laid in bed, disappointed that I wasn't asleep, dreaming.

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Greek Tragicomedy rating=2

January 30, 2012
File under: Mythic Proportions, Pithyisms, Star Fucker

Aeschylus was offered the screenwriting job because producers misread Agamemnon as Armageddon, and his fear of their inevitable discovery kept him from doing his best work during the rewrite of the Transformers sequel.

 
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Midlife Crisis rating=2

January 27, 2012
File under: Pithyisms, Raison d'être
“Midlife crisis for a writer is when he's tempted to give up his style for a younger, faster, prettier style, because the one with whom he's built a lifelong relationship now makes him feel tired, unaccomplished, and old.
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The Kitchen rating=3

January 26, 2012
File under: Housekeeping, Love Stinks

The Kitchen

My apartment is like other apartments: it has a bed; a table; a sofa; shelves for books; a few houseplants; one door in and out, seldom used; and a kitchen.

The kitchen is an odd limb, jutting out from the rest of the studio at an angle, not at all roomy and not quite cramped. It's a size to which I've grown accustomed, packed exactingly: this stack of pots fit here, this stack of plates here, this shelf for oils, this shelf for spices.

The kitchen rivals the bed as the most used part of the apartment, and most loved; and if, as they say, scent is the best conveyor of memory, then the kitchen is where the most memories are made.

People walking through the door turn immediately toward the kitchen. "Mmmm, what are you cooking?"

There's something on the stove right now, a cast iron pot with years of accumulated seasoning soaked into its skin that infuses every new food it touches. The pot gurgles and burbles with curry powder and coconut milk, so the neighbors get envious and confused: "What country am I in?"

Cooking for other people is better than cooking for yourself. When I eat something I've cooked, there are no surprises, only the possibility of disappointment. But when I pass a bowl to someone else, I get to watch their face flicker with delight as they turn the corner from one flavor to the next.

The joy of sharing food is at least equal to the joy of eating it.

My kitchen, like most of my apartment, doesn't have room for a second person: there's no way to make space for them and also move around in the ways to which I've grown accustomed: chopping this, blanching that, tossing in a dash of spice, flurry with garnish. So I ladle out my soup into small containers and put it in the freezer, where it will lose some high points of flavor but will sustain me, in a slightly better than the merest possible way, for weeks to come.

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The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventure rating=4

January 21, 2012
File under: Mythic Proportions

14 February

I've finally done it! After years of wanting to escape the bounds of civilization, I've sold my house and everything in it, traded the bourgeois trappings of luxury for a small cutter sailboat and a dream—and now I'm ready to leave this old, cluttered, tedious life behind for one of adventure.

I've never forgotten those uncharted archipelagos where we anchored during my Navy days; I have every confidence I'll be able to find them within a few hours of departing port in Princeville.

Goodbye, old world! Welcome, unknown!

26 February

The winds blustery and the waves unpredictable, but how good it feels to be tested against the unmerciful ocean, one man versus the brute force of Nature! Waves easily three times the height of my boat's mast, tossing us aloft and every which way, the sting of salt water in my eyes, reminding me I'm alive—so alive! I have little interest in coming into port. But anchor I must, to purchase the supplies and rations that are to last me throughout the entire rest of my days. Three days in this tropic port and then I disappear from civilization forever.

1 March

In the hour before dawn and under cover of darkness, I hoisted my sail and slipped back onto the open ocean. Everything was still and calm and quiet, and the moon beckoned me on.

True to my memory, I found the islands! I found them, right where I'd left them, all those years ago: a small and secreted paradise. For now I've anchored in a lagoon: I'll spend the next few days scouting the terrain, because what are a few days compared to the rest of time I intend to spend here, in beautiful serene isolation, with the peace and quiet of my own pulse and the murmur of the tides?

3 March

It's all better than I imagined: a clean, airy cave just a hundred yards from the beach, with a spring of fresh drinking water; a cove bountiful with fish; and the whole island blessed in a range of edible vegetation—berries and nuts and coconut galore, and bamboo of all sizes, which will allow me to fashion a vast array of useful objects.

How many men, stranded on such a deserted island, would dream of ways to escape from it? But here, now—this is my dream: to be stranded on this island, like Adam's son, and never to leave.

I'm so convinced of the rightness of it that I've committed a decisive act which many would call rash, but which for me is simply a ritual affirmation of my course of action: I've lit up my cutter in a glorious bonfire, putting into action the old idiom: I've burned my boat. There is no going back.

4 March

Today I lived purely, like the savages of old: I've caught fish with my own hands, hung them out to smoke over a fire, swum naked in the warm ocean, and even begun carving an old log into a sort of decorative totem pole, where I intend to sculpt frightening visages, such which would scare off any passersby, except the possibility of passersby is so ridiculous, here, in Paradise.

5 March

Fate is improbably cruel, for earlier today washed ashore a wounded vessel out of Honolulu, a fishing boat with a great gaping hole in its hull, and its crew of survivors is now cluttering up my perfectly serene island. The ship was named The Minnow, and seems to have been piloted by two bungling clowns: a fat man whom the others call, simply, Skipper, and his man-child first mate Gilligan.

For now I have no choice to but maintain my presence in secret, and hope they quickly find some small competence to fetch themselves off of my island.

8 March

How can it be that these insufferable buffoons are still here, tripping over one another? If they'd landed anywhere else in the universe, they'd surely have perished by now, eaten by whatever indigenous predator, or perhaps poisoned themselves on local flora, or simply lit themselves on fire in sheer incompetence, then drowned while trying to put out the flames. But, here on my island paradise, they seem able to blunder without consequence, and they're no closer to rescuing themselves than the day they arrived.

Tonight, I will dress as a cannibal, sneak into camp, to repair their radio and make a survey of the damage to their boat. These seven hapless castaways must go, even if I have to mend their boat myself.

9 March

Woe is me: their vessel, The Minnow, is damaged beyond repair; and these hapless stock characters are to be my mates here in Eden, till my hand or Fate's conceives of another alternative. One can only hope that their incessant scheming will arrive them at a happy escape, and soon.

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