Choosing one’s poison
Warning: tl;dr
Olivia has left me for the first time this trip. Her aunt lives nearby, and they’ve made plans to catch up over coffee or something.
“Hi, yi-yi!” I hear Olivia chirp brightly into the phone last night. Her aunt doesn’t own a cell phone, so they set a date, time and place well in advance and confirm the details multiple times… Just in case.
Right, the top of the elevator in this building whose name I don’t catch, at 10 a.m. sharp tomorrow morning. Yes, she will be fine. Yes, 10 a.m. I smile to myself over the urgency on the other end, implied through Olivia’s soothing, ever-higher-pitched responses. (For some reason, Olivia keeps talking more brightly with each new assurance, and this amuses me inordinately.)
There is no way they will not find each other, nor is Olivia, a fellow seasoned traveler, going to get lost in her former hometown. But just in case.
We wake up early to come to the farmers’ market at Ferry Plaza. It’s brisk and gray this morning, but not unpleasantly so. We pass a small bookstore on our way to the market - the object of yesterday’s pursuits. (We have both finished the books we brought on the plane - [I only befriend readers] - so we’ve been anxious to replace them for the flight home.)
Olivia makes a beeline for the third “Hunger Games” book while I browse titles, trying to recall any recently-recommended titles compared against the personality type of the reviewer, judging compatibility of taste to my own.
I pick up Water for Elephants, read the description and a few pages at random, then move on to a horror mystery that’s been adapted into a movie by Guillermo del Toro. He consistently freaks me out with gems like “the Orphanage” and “Pan’s Labyrinth”, so I figure the novel might at least keep me awake on the flight… And possibly beyond. I put it back down.
Time is approaching for Olivia’s top-of-the-elevator-date-at-10-sharp, so I leave with her, intending to stop back in later. It takes us multiple minutes to figure out, slowly, that beyond the handcrafted animal hoods, behind the bright displays of orchids and poppies and garlic scapes, even beyond the prix fixe breakfast brunch buffet, the real farmers’ market awaits.
As 10 a.m. approaches, we bemoan our late discovery with mouths shamelessly full of myriad samples: soft goat cheese, tart bleu cheese and creamy cheddars. A girl offers me a strawberry. A fruit eugenicist, I surreptitiously examine it for bruises or mold before popping the whole berry in my mouth in a single bite. It’s perfect, so Olivia and I instantly whip out cash for three baskets. (when it comes to food we like, neither of us exhibits moderation in either expenditure or consumption)
We wander about for a few more minutes, wasting time ogling fresh greens we have no means of cooking. We briefly discuss ditching the boyfriends for a year and moving to San Francisco just to hit up the farmers’ markets every week. Reality strikes, so we instead compromise by half-heartedly planning a visit to the Dallas version sometime soon.
We part ways, and I make my way back through the building, telling myself I’m in pursuit of clam chowder but actually making my way slowly back to Book Passage. All of my literary indulgences of choice are still standing smartly on their shelves. Bereft of Amazon’s guarantee of great prices, free shipping, customer reviews and no tax, I can only judge everything by covers.
I find myself drawn to the teal-colored books, but they all lean heavily toward the “girly” genre. Romance, self-exploratory feel-good fiction (preferably in a legendary western European country with yummy men and even yummier food), cheerful travel guides that will not benefit me to read because I am not going there.
One book takes an abrupt aberration from the stereotype by telling an autobiographical story of growing up under Castro’s regime. I am impressed by the writing, but bashfully admit to myself that I’m not cultured enough to read mind-opening pieces on vacation.
I take a moment to think about what I do actually want. I realize I want to find a story that will draw me in, that will awaken my yearning for something bigger than my own petty horizons, maybe something that will inspire me to return to writing and self-exploration (albeit not in Italy with a shirtless brown Adonis by my naked side).
The moment of thought leads me to step back outside into the chilly harbor air, sit on a wooden bench for 45 minutes painstakingly using my thumbs to tap out a long blog post on my phone about absolutely nothing, and resume my quest for clam chowder once again with the satisfaction of vacation time well-wasted in pretending to be a profound writer
Hey, just in case I am…
