Notes on white on rice

Over a billion served or twin humps, double arches and no flat feet that Ruth Asawa weaves endlessly. Besides, her milk cartons empty out pure unnutritious white rice.

So are tubers more starchy? she asks.

His bloated little stomach vomits out watermelon in reply.

Notes on the spring that skips by

The champagne backdrop shimmers a translucent grayness from which subtle washes build up imaginary mountains on either side. Huge accordioned screens separate the people from the stage before them as the lights, the thundering skies, flicker. A tin bird weaves the navigated course blindfolded. It is a one-dimensional trick but the audience claps anyway. Their village just elongated off the frame horizontally into a perpetual mist.

But where does the hermit sit? Beside, behind or in front of the metallic branches? Each a disfigured limb snakes throughout harmlessly in the foreground yet the old bearded man is oblivious, focused instead on his carton of thinly sliced chow fun. From a long distance, his tiny figure becomes one continuous noodle.

Pink blossoms bloom, its petals blown off from a gust of hot wind. On the ground, its pinkness fades immediately to a waxy white, swirling around like watery fibrous pulp until it becomes sheets of reborn paper.

Contained within an oddly flat bottle, nothing changes at all because time stands expectantly still.

"And away we go..."

"Blue skies... nothing but blue skies makes my brown eyes blue!"

So it goes somewhat uninterrupted, almost consecutive like Pete Rose chasing Joe DiMaggio. Except Dom and the other forgotten Marx brother thins the water weaker than hemoglobin. Abroad six weeks is after all more than the doctor ordered even if the boy fell sick enough to require Benadryl. Funny how an ear infection sedated the resultant nausea of turbulent air. But given the high winds off the Pacific maxing out at hurricane speeds, the slow descent lasting over an hour longer than was broadcast proved that luck be a lady tonight and every night.

So sticking with the fellows you came in with to the tropical peninsula some call a vacation paradise south of the border just before the yuletide cheer and what happens is pure pandemonium. Norman Rockwell no habla espanol where turkey and gimlets still remain the colonial tradition. Talk about Providence but divine intervention of the decidedly human kind interceded as an exchange rate twenty dollar cab ride to fetch provisions. Stockpiling for the next Armageddon because of unpreparedness does cost an arm and a steak bone or two. The desert can be very dry indeed because home away from home requires survivor ingenuity rather than know-how. But one glance at the vista with a temperate temperature warming your eyes first then skin next melted any residual thaw. Eighty degrees Fahrenheit tends to do exactly that. Archaeologically speaking though, the new eighth wonder of eating the local delicacy of what tasted like chicken pizza only salivated the glands for more all-you-can-eat buffet. Such sustenance was essential to combat the constant arm fatigue from the comedic musical chairs routine dislocating the ultra light weight stroller. If anything the experience functioned as a test run for the larger and longer travail because the smaller increments only whetted suspicions of whether distance or duration would claim ultimate victory.