Sunday, March 28, 2021

The Spring of our Content

Spring is a season of growth, transformation, and change.  New buds on trees, a winter's thaw, new opportunities, and this spring more so than any other. 

Life is moving too quickly for me right now and I don't know how to slow it down. It was just New Year's Day yesteray, and we were in Ella's mountain mists excitedly talking about the promises of the new year. Now, that new year is delivering, and it is a lot to digest, to take down all at once, like a spoonful of bad tasting medicine. 

A few days ago, we learned all students would be allowed back on campus starting next week, three weeks earlier than anticipated.  This is, of course, cause for celebration for many. Trepidation for others. Elise and I are somewhere in the middle. 

We've spent most of the last year at the mercy of fickle government proclamations. Curfews imposed and lifted with little to no warning or explanation.  A government announcement one day that a travel restriction would definitely not be imposed almost assuredly presaged the imposition of a travel restriction. 

Red lines, thresholds, and tripwires trigger decisions.  But none of these exist in the decision to bring the kids back to school, making the move -- though mostly welcome -- questionable.  What's different now? Sri Lanka's vaccination program is slowly getting off the ground, but other than that nothing. Nothing has changed. Except we are less patient. 

We've spent the last year practicing resilience, adapting to pandemic life. Others just wanted things to go back to normal. Maybe they pined for their old life. I never felt like that. Now, I feel those who never adapted to pandemic life are better positioned to return to post-pandemic life than those of us who may have kept living through the pandemic. Now, we have to re-learn the old way of doing things. That's okay. We can do that, too. 

I drive Peter to school most mornings.  I remember well a time my own dad drove me to school. It was a long time ago now but still a vivid memory. Maybe because he didn't do it that often (and we rode in his Porsche; just thinking about it, I can still smell the leather in the bucket seats). Will Peter have the same memory riding to school with me that I have of riding to school with my dad?

Elise asks me if I talk to him. I do, asking him what classes he has that day or, if on the drive back from school, how his day was, what he played in PE. In the morning, we listen to the Sean and Ray show on TNL, two Sri Lankan DJs with decidedly American accents.  Often, Peter talks 'at' me, rather than 'to me, about Godzilla, dragons, Gundam, or kaiju. I only partially understand anything he says. 

Likely soon, I'll be driving all three of them to school, at least for a little while.  We remind ourselves to take it one day at a time. Sometimes, even that is too fast.

"If time were only part of the equation
Then you could draw the boundaries of our cage
You wouldn't pile another stone upon me
And I'd be happy just to watch you age

"But everything is in its own dominion
And waiting in the shallows as I do
Appeases me as water slowly trickles out
Which isn't nearly fast enough for you"

-- Tom Marshall and Ernest Anastasio (Phish)

Saturday, March 27, 2021

A Requiem for Boulder

I was living in Boulder in 1999 when the shootings at Columbine took place. I remember watching the events unfold on the small television set behind the bar at the restaurant I worked at. It was lunch shift, as I recall, which makes sense being the middle of the school day. The TV set was rarely on. We only turned it on in the evening, and even then, usually only for sporting events (the Rockies were new to the MLB, and this period also marked John Elway and the Broncos peak). But that day we had cause to turn it on. CNN. Even the, red banners on the bottom and top of the screen. Breaking News l. Now, seemingly, a ubiquitous feature. With the clanking of silverware and dishes from the dining room and enchiladas rushing out of the kitchen. 

That was 22 years ago, and it's hard to believe so little has been done to address the scourge of gun violence in the country. The fact many see it as an intrinsic part of the American fabric, perhaps in homage to the gunslinging pioneers who tamed the West and now linked inexorably to individual freedom continues to baffle me. A gun is a tool and has utility applied to the commensurate problem set. I would argue assault or massacre is not the problem set a civilian needs a tool for. Skeet shooting? Yes. Deer hunting? Of course. It is more nuanced than that, but that is all I have time and space for here.

I lived in Boulder from 1997 to 2001. I loved living there, and it still has a very special place in my heart. I used to think leaving Boulder was one of my only true regrets in life, but I got over that a long time ago. Most likely, it wouldn't retain the same specialness if I'd stayed longer. It would have become diluted over time. And, assuredly, I wouldn't have met Elise or be where I am today had I stayed. 

At the time, it was still the eccentric,  progressive hamlet tucked up against the Flatirons when the rest of the state was endless miles of amber waves of grain populated by deep, deep red cattle ranchers. Meteorologists, psychics, philosophers, rock climbers, computer scientists, vagabonds, chefs and bakers, triathletes, crystalogists, folk singers, drum circles, spiritual healers, poets, and distance runners are called it home. They may still. 

I visited in 2009 when I was desperately searching for a new job and found the town changed. There was a lot of money there then. Houses were bigger. Traffic was worse. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed if I left. Hopefully,  the soul of the city was still there, tucked away somewhere.  

It's easy to let these outbursts of violence become routine, to let them blend into the muted background of our lives. But, every once in awhile, one volley of gunfire hits particularly close. This was one. Sadly, there may be another. 

The first job I had in Boulder was at a sandwich shop. That lasted a week. The place was a dump, and I immediately clashed with the manager on the best way to clean the sandwich press. I spent the next six months working at Rocky Mountain Joe's Cafe on the iconic Pearl Street Mall. I wasn't a morning person then, and the early starts were brutal. But I did learn how to work an espresso machine, if nothing else. 

That was when I joined the staff of a new restaurant opening next to the movie theater, Blue Plate Kitchen. I was already of fan of the company's two other concepts, Zolo (where I would go to work after Blue Plate closed) and Jax Fish House, an oyster bar at the front door of the Rockies. They were trying a new concept which is now commonplace. Instead of a sit-down restaurant, you order at a counter and your food is brought to you after your seated. It was a little before its time, and we never could figure out how to manage the rushes that came before and after movies started and let out. 

And at some point, I went to business school at the University of Colorado.  Most of this period I was listless, working hard, but not entirely sure towards what. I wasn't writing much. I hiked by myself. It's kind of funny to think about now that hiking mountains was a thing before there was social media to document it. Hiking for the sake of it and not to share. If anything, I played guitar there more than at any other time in my life, hours in the basement of our townhouse until the beds of my fingers were sore from the steel strings. It's also where I started really running. I would just run up the trails from Chautauqua into the Green Mountains without ever worrying about how long I was gone or what time I had to he home or if anyone was waiting for me. Its sounds peaceful and it was. Lonely, too. 

I've always wanted to take Elise there. I'd still like to some day. I think she would like it. 

Saturday, March 20, 2021

The Needful

There is an expression in Sri Lanka called "doing the needful." The "needful" is anything required to complete a specific task or request.

For example, if I ask my staff to complete the TPS report by Wednesday,  they will reply, "Sure, Paul. I'll do the needful."

What I've come to learn is doing the needful rarely involves also doing the thoughtful. Doing the needful also often creates more work because the needful was so hastily and shoddily done in the first place. Doing the needful to replace an air conditioning unit could mean flooding the bedroom when the condensate line isn't attached. The air conditioner is working, but at what cost?

Much of Sri Lanka's response to the pandemic has been to do the needful.  People wear masks in public, but they wear them under their chin or fail to cover their nose. At some point during the pandemic, I guess people thought the virus was spread on the soles of your shoes? Many establishments now still have a bleach-soaked rubber mat at the entrance your supposed to walk over to disinfect the bottoms of your feet. Security guards at grocery stores and banks take your temperature with an electric wand, waving it over the back of your hand so quickly and so haphazardly there is no possible way it could have registered your temperature accurately. 

Social distancing was never going to be a thing in a South Asian society, where the only way to get anything done is to crowd yourself to the front of the line. The tendency to non-socially distance is so deeply engraved in the culture's collective subconscious, I occasionally find myself the one of only two people walking on the sidewalk or road and the other person is making a bee line straight towards me, only to do a fly by mere inches from me despite my subtle efforts to maintain two meters distance. 

Many stores and businesses have a QR code posted on the front door. I think the idea is you scan the QR code into your phone and if someone who also scanned the code contracts the virus you will be traced as a possible contact of that person. This is a great idea in theory, but only really would work in a place that was actively testing for the virus or contact tracing. 

In Sri Lanka's defense, their number of health professionals is limited. Once vaccines arrived, these professionals were pulled from testing and contact tracing to administering vaccinations,  a much more important endeavor. The government lauds a downward trend in cases resulting from discontinuing PCR testing. 

There's a lot to be frustrated by, especially when Elise and I spend so much energy trying to do more than the needful, trying to answer questions we don't know the answers to, trying to navigate this pandemic as best we can on a developing island nation half a world from home. 

Peter went back to school this week when schools opened back up to 5th, 11th, and 12th graders. The decision to send him back to school was only rhe latest in a long string of excruciatingly difficult decisions with no clear right or wrong answer. We decided to send him back based on the fact the school would still be relatively empty but weren't yet comfortable putting him on the school bus which refuses to open its windows besides every health organization in the world advising that is one of the easiest ways to reduce the risk of infection. Open a window. That decision -- again, we have no way of knowing if it is the right one -- has either Elise or I in the car two hours a day driving Peter to school in rush hour traffic twice a day. I would never complain about doing it knowing thats a decision Elise and I made to keep him healthy and safe. It's just the latest chapter in the evolving story of how we are managing through the pandemic.

Schools are supposed to fully reopen after spring break. One remnant of the 25-year civil war in Sri Lanka is the fact almost every student is driven to school individually.  School buss were frequently targeted by terrorists. Now, those with the means, stull drive their kids to school, creating a traffic nightmare during drop off in the morning and pick up in the afternoon. Though I'm deign to speak too pejoratively of this now as I've joined the throng, hesitant to put my own son on a bus, choosing to out one more car on the road to keep him safe, not knowing where the true risk lies. 

Sri Lankans are starting to receive the vaccine. Elise and I have yet to be vaccinated but we hope to be soon. There does seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Some days, despite all the death and suffering wrought by the pandemic, I feel guilty for perhaps not wanting some aspects of it to end. The end of the pandemic will mean I have to go back to the office, put on a suit, commute, shave. I will no longer be able to work from the dining room table,  Elise in the next room, painting at her easel, the kids upstairs,  Clementine asking me how to spell 'marine biology', "Is that one word or two?" Helping her with fractions. 

Doing the needful.