the fall fun fest

This afternoon was the fall fun fest down at the church. It’s an annual fund raiser with a variety of activities including a homemade hot salsa taste test competition.
Two weeks ago, Liz and I went to mass together and she persuaded me to enter the salsa competition.
I had no idea what I was in for.
of course, Anita was sleeping. I won’t say she hates God, although I know her very well, and that’s what I think. (and I have my reasons. …), but never mind that.
I will say she hates The Church, and I can’t say I blame her. Some of the time, I do too. Come on, you don’t have to think about it too much, and some times its more obvious than others, but an institution that has lasted as long as the Catholic Church has, has got to be based on something more than just good feelings. And you know there’s tons of material around that. I refer you to my audio blogs of around 060923.
But never mind any of that. What happened today has nothing to do with all that noise, its about reality, and love, and what it means to love someone, and what kind of emotional desert some people are really coming from.
So what happened was, that one way or another I got enrolled in having my salsa judged at basically the “church picnic.” And you know I have a recurring dream about heaven being kind of like a church picnic, complete with the jealous aunties competing about who has the best fried chicken recipe, and isn’t that just the way people are? Why should you expect them to change, just because they died and went to heaven? And who do you think deserves to get to heaven if not the church going folk of the world, and don’t they just always show up at the annual fund raiser? And well, so here I am, and don’t you know the competition is fierce.
Now the deep south might like their deep fried whatever, but here in the southwest, we kind of like our tex-mex, and there’s some good stuff that falls under that umbrella. Basically, we’re talking about Spanish and Native American cuisine filtered through an American strainer with a good dose of baby boomer. Am I making any sense?
But never mind any of that, either.
What happened was that when it came down to it, well, here’s the deal.
It turned there was room for only twelve spots in one of two categories: hottest and best tasting. So if you wanted to get in the running, you had to show up at 3 o’clock, and folks would try out the different salsas and vote on their favorites.
Now, you know how it works, there is some intrinsic value to the vote, but it doesn’t hurt to pack the ballot box with your friends voting just because they know you.
As it turns out, I don’t have any friends. Not even my wife showed up to vote. I had to go on down there myself, and make the entry at 3pm, and hang around swapping recipes until 4, when the voting started. And I do have to mention that was kind of fun. Here were a bunch of people who had something in common, anyway, all rather proud of their salsas, and with good reason. And we got to discussing things, and I think I even made a couple of friends, what with your old “Uncle Charlie” and his roasted hatch pepper salsa, Diego with his authentic avocado and habanero salsa, and the eventual winner Susanna (her entry named “Susanna’s Secret” turned out to be the winner, a salty ranch dressing, with sour cream and jalapenos, was really good!). Susanna turned out to be entry t-1, I was t-2. So there we were.
But you know what pretty much every other entry had, except for me? It was at least one other individual who voted for them, not necessarily because their salsa was better than anyone else’s, but just because they stuck with you. And they cared about the stuff you do, they cared enough at least just to show up. You know what I mean?
And so I made my entry, and figured out that the tasting wouldn’t start for another hour, so what would I do? The UT football game was on, and it turns out I prefer the radio, for a number of reasons, one of them being that I consider myself free to move away from my tv or the stadium for that matter on saturday afternoons, and the radio announcer, Craig Way, who is totally awesome, in terms of facts and figures and knowing the background not only on his home team, but also the opponent, and believe me, if you’ve never heard him, when reporting on the Longhorns, you’ve never heard a better announcer reporting on any team, anywhere, in any sport. And its a whole ‘nother thing than listening to these non-entities who fly in for the game and barely know what city they’re in, and cover it for national TV. But that’s just another line of bullshit I don’t want to get into at the moment.
So there I was, entering my salsa, all by myself. Turns out both of my kids were at that game. Monica of course, is in the band, and its kind of required that she show up, and Liz happened to have a buddy who’s parents have season tickets and couldn’t make the game, and she invited her to go, so that’s pretty cool right there, isn’t it? And with a kid who’s out there on the field, even just before the game and at half time, and as a Texas-Ex myself, don’t you think I should be there, in spades? Part of me feels like a failure all the time, just because I’m not a millionaire. You know around here, that’s pretty much the yardstick. So I should at least have season tickets, but never mind that they’re not on sale at any price, not to mention sky box tickets, and have you ever thought about the whole idea of sky boxes at a college stadium, I mean really? But on the other hand, what are these dopes doing, planning the church fund raiser to coincide with a UT football game? They must not be from around here. But never mind any of that, either.
So there I was, entering my salsa into the contest, all by myself. Everyone else I noted had at least one companion, usually a spouse, if applicable, if you know what I mean. And there were some interesting entries. It turned out the winner of the hottest salsa category were a trio of kids who had a bunch of their friends show up to vote for them but not to mention, they also had some of the pretty damnest hot, I mean God damned hot salsa that you ever wanted to mess around with. I tried them all, and let me tell you, I had a microscopic amount of theirs, at their exuberant suggestion after we had chatted for a while, and oh, my God!
But never mind any of that.
So there I was, doing this thing, all by myself, just the way everything has gone my whole life long. Sometimes I wonder about that. Am I so antisocial that I have to constantly find myself in such situations? And after literally decades of pondering this topic, I have come to the conclusion that the answer is no. There’s a lot going on. Its like first of all, part of the wisdom of the ages, whereever you come from, whether you have surrendered to Islam, and believe in predestination, or you’re a Taoist, and seek a kind of unity with the way of the universe, or you come from the school of “just deal with it, motherfucker”, or whatever. Its not that I do or don’t do anything in particular to cause myself to wind up in situations like this over and over again, but what does make me different (or at least this is what I tell myself), is that not only do I have the self-awareness to even consider this question, which is in itself both a curse and a blessing, but I have the courage to get up out of my solitary existence, and experience life, even if that means I must do so solitary. I’ve given up waiting for a companion. I’ve gone out there and learned to dive, and to ski, and go golfing, and study martial arts, and whatever, and though most things would be better with a buddy, its better to do it alone than not do it at all, letting life pass you by while you’re waiting for one to show up. But on the other hand, there I was, feeling lonely, participating in an event at my church, among folks I obviously had something in common with, lonely in the middle of a crowd of people. That’s what I mean about the mysterious connection between character and destiny. The same things keep happening to you over and over for a reason. Because its your nature. Deal with it.
What I mean is that there’s plenty of other solitaires out there in the universe, but most of them are, you know, all by themselves. Not too many of them go to restaurants, or movies, or church socials. The social pressure is just too great. The world is like one big High School cafeteria.
And at the least we all used to have family groups we could fall back on, or so I imagine, but not so much in this mobile, post-industrial whirrld we live in. So now you might find person X goes to place Y for school or a job or whatever, and falls into social group Z or not, and if not, well then, the world just says “fuck you”. You fall through the cracks never to be seen again, and no one will even notice you’re missing, you know what I mean?
So there I was, entering my salsa, all by myself. And so I had asked Anita to come with me just to keep me company, but she had laundry to do. Well, I thought, we had a good morning anyway, even in bed, just as always, and you might think that she’d kind of just want to stick with me, but no, never mind that.
So there I was, entering my salsa all by myself, and after chatting briefly with “Uncle Charlie” and his lovely wife, and Susanna, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who were responsible for Fuego del Gringo, I decided to grab a beer, and a chicken fajita, and get a taste of the competition, and sit there and eat at the long eight foot tables, all by myself. Am I making myself clear yet?
So there I am with my two dozen blobs of salsa, and my chicken fajita and my beer, and my cell phone, so I call Anita, to tell her my story and see if she’ll come down at least for a little while, until the tasting starts, its kind of a cool energy going on here.
No, she’s busy.
That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?