The Tears of a Man Flow Inward

John Wise with Theo and Pacifique Irankunda

You never know what will come into your life if you don’t follow your instinct to reach out and so it was that today I found a valid moment of being thankful on Thanksgiving. My conversation started with Theo who stands in the middle in this photo. Theo entered my attention due to the word “KNOWLEDGE” emblazoned across the back of his t-shirt. He was here at this mostly empty Starbucks on a major holiday that invites people to enjoy a day of nesting with family, yet instead came here alone. After 5 minutes of dithering whether I should intrude, I did just that and asked if he was an artist. He laughed, “No, but the friend I’m meeting here any moment is; he’s a writer.”

Theo and I continued chatting as we spoke about him coming from Burundi, my time in Europe, and being thankful every day for the incredible luxury we are afforded by living in America. Then the friend he’s waiting for walks through the door and joins him ,and I’m introduced to Pacifique (pictured on the right) who also hailed from Burundi. For close to a half-hour we talked about the importance of every day being worthy of a holiday and of friendship that should mean something more than simply social media contacts.

Getting to Pacifique being a writer, I’d already learned that he would have a book coming out but the few details I knew I had been told by Theo prior to his friend’s arrival so it was time to ask Pacifique to share more about it. The book’s title is The Tears of a Man Flow Inward, and it is due to release next March. “Is it available on Amazon as a pre-order yet?” Yes, was his answer and so without learning more I grabbed my notebook and did a quick search for The Tears of a Man Flow Inward: Growing Up in the Civil War in Burundi by Pacifique Irankunda due for release on March 15, 2022. I was immediately struck by the serious tone of the part of the title Pacifique hadn’t mentioned and, without a second thought, I ordered it but was seized by the potential for it to be an emotional storytelling.

Then, just as I thought our ways were about to part, Pacifique joined me at my table asking me a few questions regarding my own path in life before he and Theo needed to head out. To say this was one of the best Thanksgiving’s ever would diminish that Caroline and I have shared thousands of Thanksgiving’s experiencing the flow of life, but this one certainly joins the ranks of the memorable.

How Many Socks? All The Socks

John Wise Sock in Phoenix Arizona

If you think sock modeling is easy, you should be in my head while I struggle with what kind of background I should use or sorting out if I should include both feet or just one foot? Maybe just show a bit of sock using a close up to best demonstrate the immaculate and regular stitches that Caroline uses for my socks so there’s not a seam or even slightly bumpy area that could cause a hotspot, which in turn would cause blisters thus diminishing the pleasure I gather from wearing handknitted foot-gloves a.k.a. socks. I can proudly say of my yarntastic wife that the days of her having to fit my socks at various stages of the knitting process seem long gone as she now goes to work meticulously comparing her progress to that of another favorite sock of mine to ensure they are precisely the same.

The sad thing about being gifted such exquisite things that get used every day is that some of them wear out, typically under the front pad of my foot where they are rendered as momentary keepsakes that I’ve grown too fond of to just toss them away. Maybe you think they can be repaired? Not a chance as my sensitive feet would feel where the patch was knitted in and a fraction of the incredible pleasure would be lost so I wear them a few more times as the nostalgia builds that a particular pair is about to be retired.

Fortunately, Caroline’s busy hands and a backlog of maybe dozens of skeins of yarn await conversion into man socks, i.e. this man’s socks. Just how many socks John? All the socks.

[John bought this yarn in Stricklaedchen in Limburg, Germany, earlier this year. You can read all about his grand day out here. – Caroline]

Food Diversity

Grocery shopping in Phoenix, Arizona

Shopping for food here in Arizona is both a luxury and a chore. In order for me to collect the essentials for Caroline and my diet, I have more than a dozen locations I visit to find my desired ingredients. At the moment, I’m fasting which should be an indicator to my lizard brain to NOT visit anywhere that serves or sells food of any kind, but it’s inevitable that towards the end of food deprivation I go a bit nuts. The photo above represents a few things from nearly half-a-dozen shops I’ve patronized in the past 24 hours.

On the left is a loaf of German coarse rye bread from Heidelberg Bakery, the yellow container of Goldsaft sugarbeet syrup is from the same place. The ginger required me to visit three Asian stores as one had ginger that was drying out, the other had this rhizome that had experienced freezing which made it slimy, and then finally at H-Mart Korean grocery, I was able to nab the 11 pounds I require for a Burmese salad ingredient I need to replenish. While at H-Mart I also picked up silky tofu we use in the Korean dish Sundubu Jigae I’ve mentioned here before. The pomegranate and cashews are from Costco. There’s a bag of Khatta Meetha and a jar of Gujarati Methia Mango Pickle, both of Indian origins that Caroline and I bought at Turmeric Indian Cash & Carry. Below the pickle is a Chinese Szechuan Pepper Pickle we purchased at Lee Lee’s Asian Grocery where the Mae Ploy Panang Curry Paste was also found. The black currant compote from Poland was also found at Lee Lee’s but typically we’ll fetch that kind of stuff from somewhere like our nearby Balkan Bakery or another Eastern European grocer. Finally, the Rhubarb soda is definitely not from America and had to be ordered through Amazon like so many other things including our favorite Italian vinegar, bulk Himalayan salt, peppercorns from the four corners of the earth, two-year aged soy sauce, and various bulk and ethnic items.

But we’re not done. Not only did I buy other stuff at all those stores while I was out shopping, part of our repertoire includes stops at Whole Foods, a Carniceria around the corner, Food City (another Mexican-centric store), Mekong (Vietnamese-centric), and Nelson’s Fish Market, along with some of the traditional American grocery stores. Other online sources include Mangalitsa Estates for their pork (just look up Mangalitsa pig to see them), a place called Walleye Direct where we buy frozen walleye and perch, two different California growers from whom we buy bulk almonds and walnuts, Honey Pacifica because only eucalyptus honey will do, and Alma Gourmet when you’ve just got to have authentic Guanciale (pork jowl) from Italy.

This list is hardly definitive but is merely an example of some of the sources we are able to utilize. It is also meant to be a reminder to myself how fortunate Caroline and I are to be willing to take advantage of the food diversity we have access to. Certainly, a fair amount of time has to be invested in learning about the ingredients we have grown fond of or have an interest in while the time to collect these foodstuffs must be taken into account, but the luxury of sampling the breadth of earth’s many cultural offerings is never lost on us. While certain items can be pricey such as the two-year-old soy sauce, vinegar, Mangalitsa, and various German foods, the secret of it all is that Asian, Indian, and Hispanic stores have incredible bargains due to the way their commodities are bought, i.e., bulk as nobody only buys a pound of rice, an ounce of turmeric, or canned beans when dry beans in a 20-pound bag are so cheap.

There’s another reason for this post and that is the sense of disappointment we encounter when shopping in the various ethnic grocery’s around the Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe area. You see, we often notice that we are but a couple of a small handful of white customers. Many of the other white customers are with spouses of various ethnicities so that’s their way in. The black people we see shopping in these shops are often Guyanese, Jamaican, or African and are well accustomed to buying whole fish, goat, various organ meats, and bulk spices that help flavor the world’s foods beyond salt and pepper. The problem is that the dominant cultures are not present which means they are stuck in their tiny patterns of eating what they know and not supporting these stores that offer us culinary luxuries from around the world that we can try in our own homes.

Friends

John Wise, Steve Alt, and Caroline Wise in Phoenix, Arizona

You might remember that a few weeks ago, we picked up Scottish friend William “Willy” Mather from the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport here in Arizona and brought him to Flagstaff to start his rafting trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon? Well, today we are back at the airport, but this time we are picking up Steve “Sarge” Alt who finished a rafting trip down the same river just a few days after Willy finished his. Sadly, schedules didn’t allow for Willy to join friends Sarge and Frank “First Light” Kozyn on their trip and so while they were probably less than 50 miles apart at any given point during the past few weeks, their paths didn’t cross. But our paths did cross and even if we only have the opportunity to visit for a few hours, it’s well worth the time spent with these guys.

Sarge was on a seven-hour stopover which allowed us to pick up sandwiches and head over to Papago Park where we could pull a shaded picnic table and sit back to hear a few stories about this most recent river trip and a bit about the Selway trip up in Idaho that we had to bail out of this summer. While a small part of me wants to lament that Caroline nor I were on any white water river trips this year, I’d have to admit that I have nothing in the world to complain about.

Serb Fest or Not

John Wise and Caroline Wise at Serb Fest 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona

I started writing this post before we left home for attending Serb Fest here in Phoenix, Arizona. While we’ve traveled both here in-country and abroad, this is our first festival in years (due to the pandemic) and hopefully not our last. We’ve discussed revisiting the Renaissance Festival this coming spring but this event just recently came to our attention when our friend Brinn told us about it.

I’m sharing this much before we even get there as I can’t even be certain we’ll attend, even after driving out to it. You see, we must get cash (a pain in the butt) then we must contend with parking, a potential other pain in the butt. Once we are on the grounds, I’ll be making a quick evaluation about how I see the attitudes of the other attendees and how many are smoking; if they are poor impressions, we’ll bounce. I’m well aware that these attitudes are not helpful in advancing the potential of our attendance, but when the real payoff is the time spent with Caroline as she reads to me on the way there and the way back home, I can’t help but have great expectations of where I’m willing to offer my time.

So, if I can overcome my anxieties, we’ll be enjoying some ćevapčići and maybe a few other Balkan favorites this afternoon. Along the way, I’ll grab a photo or two to accompany this post with content-appropriate imagery, or maybe just another photo of Caroline reading a book to me. Time to go pick her up.

Obviously, we made it onto the grounds of the Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Church and we were joined by the aforementioned Brinn, who took the photo. It’s great to attend these types of events, but at the same time, it often occurs that we feel like we are on an island as though everyone else attending can easily see we are not of Serbian heritage and thus shun us. Or maybe it’s because we don’t smoke and drink or speak Serbian, know how to dance, wear the right clothes, or have the wrong hair color? This is definitely not unique to this festival and has typically required us to make a serious effort to engage in talking with someone but that’s not always convenient when the other people attending are celebrating the day with close friends and family. As happened with our visit two years ago we managed to hang out about 90 minutes before bailing out, well at least some money was spent with the Serbian community that in part helps support their church and a way of life worth cherishing.

Scottish Farmer Ruins Our Adventure

Caroline and John Wise with William Mather in Flagstaff Arizona

On this beautiful Saturday, we were tricked into bringing this Scotsman to Flagstaff, Arizona, after he flew in via Canada from his farm in Scotland. We don’t normally offer Uber services, but this guy convinced us via email that he was a descendent of William Wallace and had recently come into his inheritance. He was inviting us to raft the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon at his expense if we’d take him up north. We took the scenic road from Phoenix via Payson which I originally thought was so we could dip into one of his bottles of whiskey while underway, but apparently, he was nervous about an encounter with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement which makes sense now that I think about it, as Europeans are not allowed in America yet due to the pandemic. When I asked about that, he said that Post Brexit he was no longer part of that filthy horde of barbarians and so was allowed to be on our shores. By that time I was just drunk enough to believe him. Pulling into Flagstaff, we stopped at a local Haggis Shop where he was going to grab a couple of haggises and a pack of oatcakes, one haggis for this evening and one while we are out rafting the Colorado. Well, this was the last we saw of this crafty Scots outlaw as he must have left through a back door. Without hotel reservations and proof that we were booked for a Grand Canyon adventure, all we could do was head back to Phoenix looking like the rubes we are.

The truth is far more mundane as Flagstaff doesn’t even have a Haggis Shop nor did we drink a bottle of whiskey while on the road. This is our friend Willy whom we met years ago on a different rafting trip and we were simply bringing him to Flagstaff for his own adventure rafting through the canyon, without haggis and without us. We did enjoy our scenic drive through the largest stand of Ponderosa pines in the world and all the conversations that entailed.