Amuse Bouches

I had a few ideas this morning and was overconfident they would stay in my mind. So I was tardy getting to a writing instrument, playing with pen and notebook, playing with technical things on he laptop and let the idea fizzle away. que dommage. I am a little clumsy today, or more clumsy then usual, because of a great bottle of rose we had last night at the most spectacular of hotels. Found after a circuitous and lengthy journey from our place — lengthy because while it is close there is no direct road, only an interesting snakes nest combination of roads, the last of which was just plain amusing in a driving up to meet the drug dealers/gun smugglers kind of way.At two of the turns there where stone markers with the name of the hotel. The first one had been knocked over, as if some rambunctious and in a hurry cab driver had barreled into it, or perhaps some playful boys had merely pushed it over, or some overly aggressive ram, because the sign actually did not look the worse for it’s fall.

I am hardly capable of describing the hotel. Built new but built on an old style, there were many dramatic touches and details. The sun, the clouds and the moon all seem to frame the building in a conspiratorial way. We had drinks by the pool, where each lounge chair was backed by a stout and beautiful palm, not a date palm, and the far end of the pool had a veritable palm shrine erected. The late day and setting sun gave way to a gentle glow produced by well placed spots on each palm and the shrine began to radiate in a way demanding of worship. With the wine were two plates of amuse bouches, done in a nouvelle style and a little casual for great praise but entirely satisfying and complimentary to the wine.

The staff was surprised to see us because again there was confusion about the arrangements. We seem to be pushing the wrong buttons all the time. We have become quite a confusing burden to the staff. The niceties of service always involve a complex set of behaviors, a fixed but not always explicit set of requests and responses. We seem o have our channels crossed, and are perhaps communicating our desires and wishes to the wrong people at the wrong time. Certainly, my few communications with Denis seem to have a question lingering over them, as if it was a little mystery why I would request tea through him. It leads me to believe there were channels I needed to use below the level I have been using. AS this was never said to us, I am a little peeved. Did we not meet their initial expectations and thus deflated the cushion of protection, the delicacy of care they wanted to deliver. Certainly the next day phone call, which we did not answer, may have been a stumbling block. Who belongs to us and when they belong and why do they keep coming? They have duties to perform and perhaps this is a place to hide for some of them.

Bonnie tells me some of the cats sleep on the cushioned chairs in one of the outside areas. This is not a surprise, as if I were a cat, this is pretty much exactly where I would choose to sleep. We have seen a perfection in the arrangement of cat and property as it exists right now. The responsible thing to do now, the gesture that would be of service to both the cats and the people, would be to fix the little dears in a few months, so that the cat population in this immediate vicinity does not grow. There is the right balance between appearance, resources and duties right now but like many balances, it is fragile and must be served in the right way to be maintained. We regret having to lave before we can make this right. We have no seemed to be able to communicate the exact concerns we have in this matter and am not hopeful of finding an agent amongst the people here who can follow through or even understand our wishes in the matter of the cats.

I am hopeful of actually beginning to write again in a regular and productive manner. I wish I had more confidence and a clear idea of how to distribute and get paid for the writings I am begin to do. I need to create the Adventurous Appetite Website, so I can have at the very least a practice area for travel and food writing. The places I have visited and the way we have visited them (city/country), the history of rice, the history of savories, the vicissitudes of service, the exchange of agriculture and agricultural resources for tourism and places to stay, or the more piquant and very edifying exchange of a hill fort for a luxury hotel, all make for a wealth of material to write about. One or another of the CMS packages I am playing with could be pressed into service to allow for the regular publishing of new material and the archiving of older and serialized material. Come on you can make this happen and it is a worthy application of the talents you posses.

As a somewhat numerous but also sad side note, we have the staff so terrorized, they are trying to sneak in and out of the place without our seeing them. But we can almost always see them. We know the clues, we can read the signs, and the place has such open and magnificent sight lines, it’s very hard for them to find cover. Plus the cathedral ceiling of the central living space tends to amplify the smallest of sounds. So if we don;t see ’em we can hear ’em coming a mile way. It’s so sad and very funny