MY CREATIVE NON-FICTION: “el pastor & a musical interlude...”

January 8, 2018

A number of months ago, on September 7, 2017, at about 8:20pm in the evening I was eating dinner at a restaurant called Little Ass Burrito Bar on the the east beach of Marine Drive in White Rock, British Columbia, Canada. I know the date and time because of the music that was playing. It wasn’t in English but I remember how it’s melody and rhythms flowed over me like the gentle running water of some forgotten but still meandering creek. The vocals and rhythmsvwere clearly Spanish or Mexican in origin but that’s about all I knew. Thankfully the Shazam application let me know exactly who it was I was listening to. And today that same application let me know when I first heard it.

In fact, I can still remember pulling my iPhone from my pocket, typing in my passcode to unlock it and opening the Shazam application. I worried for a moment when it took longer to load than usual, but eventually I had it listening as I held my phone up in the air like I was holding a lighter up in the air to a slow song at a concert. And after the app listened for what seemed like eternity, after it spent mere seconds calculating and breaking the sounds of the song I was listening to down into ones and zeros that it sent out over the air to find its match out on some Shazam server somewhere, it sent back to my screen the information I was looking for: the music I was listening to was by a group called Chambao. The song, Verde Mar.

Armed with this information I bought their album, Esencial Chambao on iTunes and as I ate my Burrito al Pastor (pineapple and pork tacos), I continued listening to their sound that had drowned out most of the other sounds in the mildly busy restaurant from entering my mind.

But after hearing them for the first time that night, I didn’t interact with them again. Not until tonight.

And for whatever reason, laying here in bed at just after 10pm, I decided to open iTunes and press play again while Wikipedia told me this about them: Chambao is a flamenco-electronic band originally from Málaga, Spain, known for a Flamenco Chill soun2d that fuses flamenco sounds and palos with electronic music. The name of the band is taken from an improvised form of beach tent that is constructed as a means of sheltering from the wind and sun.

And I’m enjoying the music. I’m enjoying the memory of that night at the Burrito Bar. I can remember parking my car across the street. I can remember the dying heat of the day. I can remember how I jaywalked across the street. I can remember reading the specials on the sign in front of the establishment. I can remember entering the small restaurant. I can remember reading the menu but instead ordering the special described on the sign outside. I can remember the one other couple who was there when I went in but gone before I left. I remember the other couple come in and order takeout while I ate. And I can remember the cinnamon churro I had for desert.

Now it’s well after 11:30pm as I pick up my phone again to type some more into this random blog posting, almost an hour and a half since I started listening to this album. And to be honest I’m surprised it’s still going as I started listening to it tonight a good 12 or 13 songs in on the Verde Mar but it’s still going strong. In scrolling through the track listing I see that this essential album would fit on two CDs if it was a traditional & tangible thing that I could pick up, hold, take a disc from and pop into a CD player to listen to not even ten years ago. More specifically I notice that Esencial Chambao has 31 songs in its track listing and iTunes also tells me the album is just over two hours long.

As I lay hear I find myself feeling lost, in a good way. Lost in that I have no idea what the music is about as I don’t speak Spanish. But I like it. I can infer a lot about what the music might be about just from the vocals, the rhythms and tempos. Some slower songs bring to mind thoughts of Garcia Lorca’s Poem of the Deep Song and the deep seeded waves of emotion inherent in those oral movements; while other more upbeat songs make me want to dance, and I find my right foot tapping along to the beats.

In the near future I could see myself seeing if I can find translations for the songs lyrics that are floating through my room right now. But not today, I’m a bit too tired for that. No, today I just want to enjoy this music. I want to get to know it, like a lover I’ve met in a bar in some foreign land. A lover with whom I share an undeniable attraction even though we don’t speak much of each other’s language. A lover who I’ll spend time with tonight, and return to again from time to time to recapture the moments and the memories. But for now I’ll sleep.

Typing on my iPhone

April 20, 2015

So here I am writing on my iPhone while waiting for my Mom who is seeing her diabetic specialist at Fraser River Endocronology. I'm trying out the SquareSpace Blog publishing application for the first time as I look up from I phone from time to time to observe my surroundings. The waiting room is central with offices surrounding it. The waiting area is also warm, lit by sunlight coming in through a large skylight.

A mother holds her small child by his two hands, and she lets him lead her on a small walk around the waiting room. Another older man, dressed in black, sits silently staring off into space. Another older woman sits looking at her mobile device (not an iPhone), while an older oriental man reads a woman's magazine that he found in a pile of waiting room magazines. The mother and child is called and they disappear into the office.

I feel a whoosh of fresh air as a motorized wheelchair whizzes by, it's engine whiring smoothly as an older woman approaches the diabetic specialists' receptionist. The receptionist knows the lady and I hear them talk briefly about using the chair in inclement weather, "I'd never take this down that hill in the winter," I hear her say before she whizzes away from the desk to the middle of the waiting room where she stops. She's wearing a green mask - one of those medical masks that Asians seem fond of wearing whenever there's a flu scare. One of those masks hospital ERs or walkin clinics make you wear if you have a cough or cold. She takes out a paperback novel, it's black, titled "Prayer for the Dead." Her hand covers the authors name. She too is dressed in black and has bruising on her arm, no doubt from the diabetic insulin needles she likely uses. My mom has similar bruises on her arms and stomach.

"Leo?" The man in black rises and disappears into the office. A younger woman follows him in and approaches the receptionist for her two o'clock and permission to borrow the washroom key. Minutes later she returns the key and sits, bathed in sunlight as she rubs disinfectant on her hands. She then goes into her purse, opens a small jar of lip balm and with a single finger applies some to her lips. Having finished that her iPhone comes out, and she's browsing it now as my Mom comes out and books her next appointment with the receptionist. It's time to go.

Now I'm downstairs.

We're now waiting outside the BC Biomedical as the diabetic specialist wants Mom to get her blood work done. She's fighting back tears, saying she had a go round with the specialist who was upset because somehow she was out of the loop over the insulin pump my Mom just acquired. At first she accused Mum of getting it in the States - as many do that - but my Mum would never do that. Then she said she wanted to try Mum on a new drug. But in the end even I clearly remember the specialist giving Mum a number of brochures on pumps last fall. I remember because I sat down and read them with Mum, and I remember looking information up online. I remember getting a call from the hospital from an expert on the pumps who talked my Mum through making appointments with the pump salespeople. The expert only calls when they are sent a letter from the specialist. So even I don't know how the specialist could have forgotten. Maybe she wanted to sign off on it before a decision on which pump was going to be used was made. Who knows. I told my Mum not to worry about it. Thankfully the pump is returnable during its first three months of ownership.

The area I am now has a row of chairs facing an outside area, pictured above. The biomedical office is to the left. To my right is a wall advertising an ultrasound office. The advertisements are kind of disturbing.

A man shouts at the ladies in the biomedical - he's upset he had to wait when he thought he could quickly dropped off a sample. "I've never had to wait before! I'm illegally parked and in probably getting towed!" He storms out, taking his keys from his pocket, his urine visible in the plastic container in the plastic bag he holds as he walks away. My Mom's done now. So it's time to go.

Top 10 Greatest Books of All Time About Guys Named Steve...

March 28, 2015

From the Home Office in Wahoo, Nebraska, it's the Top Ten List from July 21, 1998...

10. War and Peace and Steve
9. The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Steves
8. The Grapes of Steve
7. The Steves of Wrath
6. Steve, Grapes, Steve, Wrath, Steve, Steve
5. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Steve is from Cleveland
4. Where's Waldo? Is he With Steve?
3. Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown, Volume VIII: Mysterious Guys Named Steve
2. The Joy of Sex with Steve
1. The Bible (King Steve Edition)