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incomprehensible by design
Monday, April 24 2017
This morning, Gretchen and I met up with Susan and Nancy at the Brewster Street house to see how the renovations are coming along. There were two subcontractors at work and things were coming along (though perhaps not as quickly as Gretchen would prefer). The cabinets and sink are installed in the kitchen, and the front porch is looking sharp. The backyard was cleaned up and reseeded several weeks ago, but it was still useful to go back there and pick up old bottles, bits of broken glass, and other detritus mixed into the top layer of soil. It was already the start of my workday, but nobody would need me until 1:00pm. Gretchen headed off to Lowes or Home Depot for cabinet knobs or ceiling lamps while Susan, Nancy, and I drove over to Peace Nation (I was craving another black bean burger). But it turned out that that place is closed on Mondays. Where else to go? Susan suggested Outdated, but that place can be slow. So ultimately we decided on Chipotle. It's not great for atmosphere, but the food is fast and good. It was a nice day, and we could eat our burritos out in front, with a view of generic manmade clutter of 9W's retail corridor. This was the first time I'd ever seen Susan eat a Chipotle burrito, and it was something to behold. She cut a dorsal incision and proceeded to eat it with a fork as though it were a salad. As we ate our burritos, one of our conversations concerned the upcoming bar mitzvah for my young nephew, which I would soon be attending. (I'd also attended his bris.) I'd never been to a bar mitzvah before, so I didn't know what to expect. Susan, who is Jewish, assured me that it would be one of the most boring three hours of my life, like a really long Passover without food. "It can't be any worse than seeing Waiting for Godot performed by a small theatre group in Rhinebeck!" I declared hopefully. Susan wasn't so sure.
Back home during my remote workday, I went to the mailbox an retrieved the mail, which these days is comprised of an inordinate number of bills. (It's a good thing we have a number of steady income streams.) One bill proved to be especially unwelcomed: it was from Maverick Family Healthy and was for $120 for my recent physical. According to my insurance, I wasn't supposed to be charged anything for preventative health. But promises made in insurance forms are easily evaded by small writing in other documents and the subtle use of jargon. Gretchen is not one to just accept such things, so she called Maverick to complain. (I don't know why she didn't call the insurer; so much about health care in my homeland seems incomprehensible, perhaps because it was engineered to be that way.) She was given the usual run-around, in this case regarding the distinction between getting preventative medicine from an existing doctor and starting a new relationship with a doctor. According to the Byzantine rules of American health care, the former is free and the latter is not. At some point in all of this, I heard Gretchen arguing and became incensed, attempting to grab the phone from Gretchen to say, "We're not paying; you can sue us!" Gretchen fended me off, snarling, "She's the receptionist!" But by the end of the call, though, Gretchen was willing to take a hit to our credit rating by not paying the bill.
This evening Gretchen made some sort of baby-corn-cum-tofu curry with rice, which we ate in the usual way (in front of the television). Later Eva and Sandor came over and the four of us drove across the Hudson fjord to Rhinebeck to see a no-narration documentary entitled Kedi at Upstate Films. Kedi took us into the world of Istanbul's cat population, which, as it turns out, cannot really be considered domesticated. We're shown the lives of a number of individuals, most of which live free and are responsible for the production of other cats. The very first cat is orange with white splotches. After eating various things, someone offers her a big chunk of something that looks like a samosa. She carries that off down the street in her mouth, meowing to be let through a gate. And then she goes inside and we learn that she's a mother with half-grown kittens who now need more than just cat milk. In addition to the cats, we meet the cat-obsessed people going to heroic ends to feed mother kittens and whole alleyways full of cats. It's an ocean of cats, a permanent insoluble Malthusian crisis. Even as a cat lover, it was hard to see the point of doing anything for semi-wild cats in a world where they are allowed to reproduce freely. But, as Gretchen pointed out, the whole movie was about freedom. The cats in Istanbul have their own cat civilization among the humans. To truly be a cat in Istanbul, one must be free to come and go at will. Personally, I have fond memories of all the cats from the time Gretchen and I visited Istanbul back in 2005. I'd especially liked the Clarence-style cat who hung out on the menu at that one restaurant.
Back at the house, we couldn't find Charles anywhere initially, but after some looking he materialized in the darkness under the bush in front of the house (I'd first encouraged him to venture out the front door yesterday). He might've been out there the whole time we'd been in Rhinebeck watching that movie about his Istanbul relatives. Originally the plan had been for Eva and Sandor to meet Charles today, but it looks like that will have to wait for some future day.
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