Constellations, the metronome to our divine symphony,
As we harmonize melodious, as we writhe harmonious,
Crescendos reach feverish, savory dreams realized
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Island life
It's been soooooooo relaxing, most days I've spent sipping my Presidente, playing Dominican-style dominoes for hours on end and getting the gist of what my Dominican counterparts are saying (it's the speed and dropped-off words that have me deciphering sentences).
My first full day I went to Hato del Yaque, a hood high on a hill on the outskirts of Santiago de los Caballeros at night. I met Leonela, my cousin-in-law's cousin, and she took me to her cousin Lucy's place out there. She and her fam live above a 99 cents store, the doorways to the bedrooms were curtains, with a ginormous tv on the livingroom floor that doesn't function unless you turn off the light. This is no-frills DR. We walked to her cousin Indiana's place, the home was candlelit, where she offered me spaghetti and tostones. The capacity for folks, despite their means, to be generous with what they have is something that stood out to me, I am grateful for everything offered to me. We walked a bit further on, passing by makeshift compounds, the asymmetrical, the cobbled together roofs/fences/steps/walls a mosaic of ingenuity. When we reached another family member's place I saw another type of home, there were two dogs, a couple, the male had a broken leg and the female had utters hanging about her ankles, running about a dirt and gravel yard, no door to the home, with random bits of trash and cages strewn about. Later I'd see chicks running around, hear pigs squealing loudly in the background, as we played dominoes. In many ways this was similar to what I saw in Bali, I remember using a squatting toilet in a compound when I was horseback riding on the beach; that compound had ducks, chickens, roosters, pigs, dogs, etc., running around in harmonious squalor. I say squalor but, in reality, that's a comparison to what we see in the US, relatively what they have here is actually pretty nice, I would learn, compared to what you see in the country.
We were making plans for the night. Leonela needed to head back home to get dressed, I needed to go back home to also get ready. Lucy came with me to accompany me so we took a concho (a dollar cab in the states, if you're not from the hood it means a cab that multiple people take at a standard fee that follows a route, for example, near me they have dollar cabs on Sutphin Blvd and Merrick Blvd) back home. It can be a scary thing for those uninitiated. Riding in the front, most conchos don't have seat belts, they're windshields are sometimes cracked and the cars creak, screech, lurch and belt forward; my uncle's late 70's Colt Vista would feel at home here and die a slow, painful death in la Republica. After getting ready, meeting up and getting a lift to Leonela's, I saw her place in El Ejido. It goes without saying that each place is humble and you see things that remind you how industrious some folks can be. I ate again. Mangu this time. My first plate and it was a mound of mulched platanos, topped with diced red onions and fried cheese. It was pretty good but the platanos were dry and it was SO much that there was no way I could finish it, but I gave it a herculean effort while watching novelas and Rise of the Planet of the Apes dubbed in Spanish with her fam. (Mangu is good but I like my platanos fried and sweet, platano maduros as the dish is typically called.)
We started and spent a good deal of the night at a place called Lovera Bar, which was also a hookah bar that wreaked of flavored tobacco, and danced bachata, merengue and whatever else they played that night, all the while sipping more Presidentes. It was pretty chill, but I thought the place a bit stiff for my liking. After a while I felt my head light from all the smoke and just wanted to head home, so we took a concho to El Monumento (Santiago's Monument, which is in a central location) and had a bite to eat. Joselito, the boyfriend of my cousin-in-law's mom, came by to pick us up and on the way to drop off the girls someone mentioned going to another bar to grab a drink. At that point I'd gotten my second wind and the thrill of a new adventure piqued my interest. I had no clue what I was in for.
The place was called La Hookah, also a hookah bar (it's funny that they like them so much, I haven't seen a single Middle Eastern person while here), and judging by the tigres (hood youths or really any youth that has a sharp look to them) outside the joint, I knew that I needed to stay sharp. The waiters were also the bouncers/security guards, large, musclebound men who could be seen all over the place. The dance floor was no more than 80 square feet of tiles and the salacious quality of the dancing could be likened to Freaknik circa the late nineties. All of this wasn't so bad, I've been to hood places back home and abroad and not much surprises me ...until they opened up the dance floor for a "stripper dance". I'm thinking it's gonna be a kind of burlesque thing, with the woman gyrating seductively for the crowd. That would be the opening sequence. This drop dead gorgeous woman, with skin like sandalwood, with serpentine curves, with the Amazonian confidence of a queen bee amid a hive of hornets, was a mongoose among cobras. Leonela, and many of the women, egged her on, egged me on, gave me money and called the stripper's handler over to make me next in being the object of her "attentions". It would suffice to say that I had a blast, but I was also worried for the stripper, the crowd getting rowdier as her clothes came off, as she straddled boys' faces (yup, you read that right) sans thong. The circle became an oval, the oval tightened as the brutes held the raucous crowd at bay. We left soon after the dance finished, Joselito and I dropping the girls off and heading to a late-night spot, that resembled an American cafe, and discussing the night. He said that spot made him uneasy, it's a low-class joint with a reputation for "ra-ta-ta-ta-ta", and that there were better places. I didn't doubt him, and I knew that going into but I guess, at the heart of my character, I'm an adventurer. Island life has been relaxing and tumultuous but, DR, I can get used to this.
My first full day I went to Hato del Yaque, a hood high on a hill on the outskirts of Santiago de los Caballeros at night. I met Leonela, my cousin-in-law's cousin, and she took me to her cousin Lucy's place out there. She and her fam live above a 99 cents store, the doorways to the bedrooms were curtains, with a ginormous tv on the livingroom floor that doesn't function unless you turn off the light. This is no-frills DR. We walked to her cousin Indiana's place, the home was candlelit, where she offered me spaghetti and tostones. The capacity for folks, despite their means, to be generous with what they have is something that stood out to me, I am grateful for everything offered to me. We walked a bit further on, passing by makeshift compounds, the asymmetrical, the cobbled together roofs/fences/steps/walls a mosaic of ingenuity. When we reached another family member's place I saw another type of home, there were two dogs, a couple, the male had a broken leg and the female had utters hanging about her ankles, running about a dirt and gravel yard, no door to the home, with random bits of trash and cages strewn about. Later I'd see chicks running around, hear pigs squealing loudly in the background, as we played dominoes. In many ways this was similar to what I saw in Bali, I remember using a squatting toilet in a compound when I was horseback riding on the beach; that compound had ducks, chickens, roosters, pigs, dogs, etc., running around in harmonious squalor. I say squalor but, in reality, that's a comparison to what we see in the US, relatively what they have here is actually pretty nice, I would learn, compared to what you see in the country.
We were making plans for the night. Leonela needed to head back home to get dressed, I needed to go back home to also get ready. Lucy came with me to accompany me so we took a concho (a dollar cab in the states, if you're not from the hood it means a cab that multiple people take at a standard fee that follows a route, for example, near me they have dollar cabs on Sutphin Blvd and Merrick Blvd) back home. It can be a scary thing for those uninitiated. Riding in the front, most conchos don't have seat belts, they're windshields are sometimes cracked and the cars creak, screech, lurch and belt forward; my uncle's late 70's Colt Vista would feel at home here and die a slow, painful death in la Republica. After getting ready, meeting up and getting a lift to Leonela's, I saw her place in El Ejido. It goes without saying that each place is humble and you see things that remind you how industrious some folks can be. I ate again. Mangu this time. My first plate and it was a mound of mulched platanos, topped with diced red onions and fried cheese. It was pretty good but the platanos were dry and it was SO much that there was no way I could finish it, but I gave it a herculean effort while watching novelas and Rise of the Planet of the Apes dubbed in Spanish with her fam. (Mangu is good but I like my platanos fried and sweet, platano maduros as the dish is typically called.)
We started and spent a good deal of the night at a place called Lovera Bar, which was also a hookah bar that wreaked of flavored tobacco, and danced bachata, merengue and whatever else they played that night, all the while sipping more Presidentes. It was pretty chill, but I thought the place a bit stiff for my liking. After a while I felt my head light from all the smoke and just wanted to head home, so we took a concho to El Monumento (Santiago's Monument, which is in a central location) and had a bite to eat. Joselito, the boyfriend of my cousin-in-law's mom, came by to pick us up and on the way to drop off the girls someone mentioned going to another bar to grab a drink. At that point I'd gotten my second wind and the thrill of a new adventure piqued my interest. I had no clue what I was in for.
The place was called La Hookah, also a hookah bar (it's funny that they like them so much, I haven't seen a single Middle Eastern person while here), and judging by the tigres (hood youths or really any youth that has a sharp look to them) outside the joint, I knew that I needed to stay sharp. The waiters were also the bouncers/security guards, large, musclebound men who could be seen all over the place. The dance floor was no more than 80 square feet of tiles and the salacious quality of the dancing could be likened to Freaknik circa the late nineties. All of this wasn't so bad, I've been to hood places back home and abroad and not much surprises me ...until they opened up the dance floor for a "stripper dance". I'm thinking it's gonna be a kind of burlesque thing, with the woman gyrating seductively for the crowd. That would be the opening sequence. This drop dead gorgeous woman, with skin like sandalwood, with serpentine curves, with the Amazonian confidence of a queen bee amid a hive of hornets, was a mongoose among cobras. Leonela, and many of the women, egged her on, egged me on, gave me money and called the stripper's handler over to make me next in being the object of her "attentions". It would suffice to say that I had a blast, but I was also worried for the stripper, the crowd getting rowdier as her clothes came off, as she straddled boys' faces (yup, you read that right) sans thong. The circle became an oval, the oval tightened as the brutes held the raucous crowd at bay. We left soon after the dance finished, Joselito and I dropping the girls off and heading to a late-night spot, that resembled an American cafe, and discussing the night. He said that spot made him uneasy, it's a low-class joint with a reputation for "ra-ta-ta-ta-ta", and that there were better places. I didn't doubt him, and I knew that going into but I guess, at the heart of my character, I'm an adventurer. Island life has been relaxing and tumultuous but, DR, I can get used to this.
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