American Fez

Granular Realism

A Soviet themed cafeteria has opened near my house. At least, I assume it's a Soviet theme since the countertops look like Constructivist experiments, the baristas all resemble inmates of the most wretched gulag and it takes about five years for them to make your drink.

I ordered a demitasse of burnt hickory topped with potato vodka foam, apparently; although I'm pretty sure I'd asked for a regular black coffee. My mistake, I'm sure. Comrade consumers should not question authority, as I discovered to my chagrin while trying to complain.

Hereditary Dust

In Georgetown last week, at a loose end, I surprisingly found myself paying ten dollars for guided tour of a Federalist mansion named Tudor Place, once occupied by descendents of Martha Washington and consequently furnished with a few odds and ends loosely associated with her famous husband.

For the almost interminable duration of the tour, a snakelike shuffle of tourist feet along a braided rope winding its way through several preposterously staged rooms, these relatives of George and Martha, previously complete strangers to me, were transformed into distinguised celebrities whose every household decisions was of great historical import; their choice of Meissen china over Wedgewood being the domestic equivalent of growing wheat instead of tobacco.

Here is George Washington's camp stool, the tour is told, for some reason unfolded in the already overstuffed parlour. Through these French windows they watched the burning of the Capitol in 1814 (if anyone cares about the exact location of these non-entities during such as crisis). And on this very bedside table is a framed photograph of one of their favorite manumitted slaves, still laboring in his dotage by the looks of things.

The mansion's gardens, on the other hand, are very fine. 

Schadenfreude

I recently ran into an acquaintance of long standing whom I had not seen for many years. He had not aged well, but then he had never really grown-up well, either: looking, at least for the three decades he has been familiar to me, not unlike a child's line drawing of an ogre rather than a human of traditional physiognomy; a misshapen monster scrawled onto crinkly paper with blunt pencil then colored in with green and brown crayons, a few stray flakes of worn eraser representing his hair. I am no oil painting, as they say, but I resemble a freshly cleaned portrait of an eighteenth-century dandy by Gainsborough compared to my old friend.

I asked him how he was doing; receiving a indeterminately negative response in the form of a mumbled growl followed by a short sniff. Shrugging, I replied that, yeah, comme ci comme ca, I was also merely muddling through; things could certainly be better. It seemed the polite thing to say, despite being pretty sure in my own mind that I wasn't doing quite as badly as he obviously was. In fact, after encountering the poor wretch I was actually feeling pretty good, elated, even; and to be perfectly frank, I haven't felt this good in years.