Letter Never Sent

All this heavy life stuff is happening and I want to write about it, but it just doesn’t feel right. You want to write things down so you remember how you feel and how things are, but it feels like voyeurism. Like life is too real to turn it into a story.

But, I do want to remember because I forget. What really matters. The truth of things.

Random stuff:

1. I ran into my best friend from 5th grade, Sheldon. He is a technician in the ICU. I hadn’t seen him since 1995. He recognized my brother before he recognized me. Maybe because I had a beard, but maybe because I just don’t look the same. He has an iPhone. He remembered a lot of things I had forgotten, like the time our dachshund, Ginger, bit my brother in the nuts. It’s funny how other people remember things you don’t, even though you were there, too.

2. The surgeon who fixed my dad’s face with titanium bands is a Merryman. She has to be related. I have never run into a Merryman before who was not related. She has the pale, heavy-lidded Merryman eyes.

3. In the hospital lobby, there was an issue of National Geographic from 1970 with Hutterites on the cover. That magazine was 38 years old and it was just sitting there like some joke about waiting rooms. Where did it come from?

4. I found a good restaurant near the hospital, Blanco Cafe. Lupe, the nurse that beeps people in during visiting hours, turned us on to it. I had to revise my tex-mex list to put it in the top 3, just after Mi Tierra. Breakfast all day. Sweet tea. Cheap and awesome. My favorite meal: beef enchiladas with a glass of Red Flash (I prefer Big Red with my tex-mex, but it’ll do in a pinch.) In the last three weeks, I’ve probably eaten there 6-7 times. The tortillas are fresh. You can tell because they are just slightly crisp and papery and you can feel the flour dusted on them. Bakery tortillas are moist from being packed into plastic bags after they come steaming off the griddle. It’s just not the same.

Since I’ve been back in San Antonio for about three weeks, I’ve gotten to know the surrounding restaurants very well. Too well. In between visiting hours, I normally walk across the street to Chik-fil-A, so I don’t have to pay twice for parking. As far as fast food goes, Chik-fil-A is top of the heap. You can actually tell what kind of animal the sandwich came from. They also do things a little differently:

1. The employees at Chik-fil-A always say “My pleasure” when I say, “Thank you”. Even if it is part of some cynical marketing ploy, I like it.
2. There are fresh flowers on each table. The other day they were yellow daisy-like flowers. Today they were purple daisy-like flowers.
3. Little Texas Pete hot sauce packets! I am all for condiment selection. Hot sauce is essential. (Don’t miss the Texas Pete Wikipedia article wherein someone gets a little free with the truth: “In late 2003, Chick-Fil-A opted to carry Texas Pete sauce (packet-form) in its restaurants nationwide. Same-store sales catapulted over 45% in 2004. Many analysts close to the firm heralded the decision to carry the sauce, largely attributing the company’s success to the sauce itself. In several third party surveys, Chick-Fil-A customers have exclaimed, “Texas Pete doesn’t go on the chicken sandwich, the chicken sandwich goes on the Texas Pete,” and “Best thing since the chicken sandwich.”)
4. They play Christian music as background music. I don’t really have a problem with this except it’s generally bland and I don’t know any of the songs. That’s okay. Background music is not supposed to be good.
5. Real lemonade. Tart and sweet. ‘Nuff said.
6. At the entrance to the playscape, they provide the kids with little alcohol towelettes so they can clean their grubby hands.

From the NY Times: Blind to Change, Even as It Stares Us in the Face:

Visual attentiveness is born of limited resources. “The basic problem is that far more information lands on your eyes than you can possibly analyze and still end up with a reasonable sized brain,” Dr. Wolfe said. Hence, the brain has evolved mechanisms for combating data overload, allowing large rivers of data to pass along optical and cortical corridors almost entirely unassimilated, and peeling off selected data for a close, careful view. In deciding what to focus on, the brain essentially shines a spotlight from place to place, a rapid, sweeping search that takes in maybe 30 or 40 objects per second, the survey accompanied by a multitude of body movements of which we are barely aware: the darting of the eyes, the constant tiny twists of the torso and neck. We scan and sweep and perfunctorily police, until something sticks out and brings our bouncing cones to a halt.