Much of the movie was filmed in a house that reminded me of houses in my childhood—ground-floor spaces that looked out on tropical shrubs and trees, the ambient sound of rain, of bullfrogs after the rain, of the gecko's nighttime calls, of buzzing flies in the afternoon and early morning bird calls. Long, narrows corridors led to living spaces graced by tall, big, unscreened windows, tall palms in Chinese pots, and, of course, a piano. The movie was set in Saigon in the 1950s and 1960s, roughly the same period I lived in the Philippines. How far do we travel from our origins only to realize at the end, after the indirection and fumbling, we've recreated the past. Not the past as it was but as it has grown to become, an idealized landscape, a statement of our life's themes.
Some Americans are bicoastal; I am bi-continental. I have feet in Asia and in the West. It's not always been an easy stance. I didn't discover my fondness for the cultures of Southeast Asia until after I had immersed myself in American and European culture. Sprung from a middle-class family (yes, that small percentage of mostly city-dwellers in a largely agrarian society), my world as a child nonetheless felt cramped and limiting. I didn't fit. Life on the farm would have felt even more cramped despite the vast skies and vast spaces. My inner life was dissonant with the life I lived, with the life I saw everyone else live. What flickered on the screen of my mind didn't resemble what they spoke about. Their dreams didn't encompass what inchoate dreams I had. I lived in two streams: the outer where I was fake, acting as others expected me to, and the inner for which then I had no words.
The irony is that now, after living perhaps the major and dominant part of my life, that limiting, limited world of the 1950s and 1960s has expanded into a world of smells, images, and sounds that accompanies me as I drive the concrete streets of America like counterpoint to a melody. Except that now the lost, old world feels more vital and more seductive; it lies like an overlay on what I see today. I still travel in two worlds, a little less clumsily perhaps, juggling the two. Straddling has become second nature.
I had my former neighbor, Linda, and her family over for lunch yesterday. I acquired a Brinkmann charcoal grill two years ago and used it only once. After refraining from eating beef for years I suddenly had a yen for a simple hamburger. In the past I would mix all kinds of other ingredients into the beef. I'd added breadcrumbs, beaten egg, pickle relish, chopped onions, minced garlic, bits of sausage, a hard-boiled egg, even capers and artichoke bits. This time I wanted the beef to star. Ground sirloin makes the best hamburger. It has the right amount of fat and fat is essential to a quickly seared, rare beef patty of a hamburger. I only seasoned the ground beef with freshly ground black pepper but while broiling it sprayed olive oil and drizzled worcestershire sauce on the surface. I also broiled thick Vidalia onion slices and chunks of zucchini, both again sprayed lightly with olive oil. Bobby Flay recommended topping the hamburger with onion and ripe tomato slices, a piece of Romaine lettuce and a horse-radish-mustard dressing.
But I'm diverging from yesterday's most redolent imagery. The sun was shining but the air remained cool through the afternoon. I turned off the air-conditioner, opened the windows, and indoors and outdoors flowed together, just like they used to in my childhood. This is also why I love to walk around the neighborhood for hours. In the car, the passing scene feels like a TV show. Walking, I feel connected to the air outside, to trees and human structures, to bird and squirrel sounds, the breeze, the bite of sunshine, the sweetness of being alive. Straddling is not a problem when you can walk.
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