03.30.08
Posted in Igneous Range at 8:10 pm by Dan Jensen
Soon after the Mission came to California, Judge Adroushan went up to San Rafael to train with a new guide dog. He returned with a 17 month-old golden retriever named Kale, a wholesome name that the gastronomist found suiting. Though Kale would be a servant to the Mission, the Mission did not distinguish between blood relations and other parishioners, so it was that in his adolescence Kale gained full Missionary status, which meant that to the Mission children he was like a brother with a few incidental chores to perform. He always loved to play catch, or go exploring, and he would not complain if a child abruptly snuggled up to him during one of his many naps.
Kale was a peace-loving parishioner. He avoided cats, escaping their conniving company with his nose and tail down as if they were apt to do him harm, or worse, emit a loud noise. He did not like loud noises. Thunderstorms would compel him to run off into some dark corner of the house and release his bowels. Fireworks would do the same. He even seemed startled by the sound of his own voice. He could seldom be teased to the point of letting a single bark out, whereupon Kale would freeze and look right and left for the source of the sound, as though he were wondering if there was a dog in the vicinity.
All that said, Kale was not a jittery fellow. He would never bite, or even snap his jaws. If he needed your attention, he’d lay his snout on your knee, or if the situation was more urgent, he could ever-so-gently grasp your arm with his jaw. He was—in the absence of gunfire, fireworks, or thunder—wholly reliable, though you wouldn’t want to leave the back gate open, because he would slip out as predictably as air from an untied balloon, and proceed to wander every bit as randomly as molecules once liberated. He would inevitably be discovered surrounded by admirers. He was a charmer.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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Posted in Dixie, The Mission at 7:17 pm by Dan Jensen
As soon as the Adroushans arrived in the Frogmore, the Judge leased some office space in nearby Beaufort, where he planned to start a new legal practice. Mrs. Adroushan spearheaded their arrival with a strong dose of Armenian hospitality. The second day after they arrived, the family went shopping at a grocery store on Lady’s Island and then one in Beaufort, and set out to make their first batch of Frogmore stew, and then invited their new neighbors to share in the task of devouring the newcomers’ concoction. The Adroushans apologized repeatedly for their feeble attempt at the dish, but their apologies were repeatedly rebuffed with appreciation.
The Judge’s career prospects were not what they had previously been in California, but Beaufort was not an entirely forbidding environment for an out-of-town lawyer. The town enjoyed a touch of the coastal cosmopolitanism so notably lacking through much of the deep South. Mr. and Mrs. Adroushan strove to break the ice by first dedicating the office to hospitality, inviting various business leaders in for light meals and light conversation. The blindfold was certainly a strike against him, but suspicions were dispatched quickly with some well-placed humor and a scrapbook of their life in California, featuring newspaper clippings covering his career.
The Adroushans hadn’t been in Frogmore for more than a couple weeks when they were referred to the local physician, a practitioner of chiropractic, Gullah magic, applied kinesiology, herbology, and charisma. When the village doc heard of the passion the Judge engendered for Frogmore stew, he pulled the judge aside and advised that the stew was most efficacious when the soul was fully prepared and conditioned to receive the dish. From that point, the Doc and the Judge spent hours together, often in Beaufort at the office. Before long, the Judge was inviting his guests to partake in the varied therapies prescribed by the Doc.
Rather than a dispenser of justice, the Judge began to see himself as a spiritual healer, but he retained his judicial title. “Health,” he’d remark, “is just a form of justice.” He would use applied kinesiology—alias “muscle testing”—to test specific foods against a particular person. He would use magnetic therapy to balance the body’s digestive energy fields. He would use chiropractic to remove physiological impediments to digestion. He would use nutritional supplements, but not to fill physiological needs, for his concern as a gastronomist was primarily with the spirit. Physiological health was secondary. It could only come, the judge preached, from spiritual health, and was really only a component of spiritual health. With this mission, he was, like any good faith healer, able to draw in both the spiritually and physically ill, so he could be described as a restaurateur, a doctor and a priest. His embraced his new mission with a passion that ensured eventual success, but the young enterprise didn’t quite pay the bills in Beaufort, so the Mission had to migrate to greener pastures.
A century before, Laura Towne and Ellen Murray dedicated their adult lives serving the islanders—a combined 85 years. The judge couldn’t hold on quite that long, and returned to California within a year, but the Mission would continue, and it would return to South Carolina several years later. He would vacillate over the years between the dynamic, vibrant spirit of California cuisine and the well-established spiritual benefits of soul food. As he bounced between coasts, his experience and horizons expanded, and the word “mission” grew more and more synonymous with words like “family” and “home”.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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Posted in The Mission at 3:44 pm by Dan Jensen
After fire, the dog was the first companion to man. Unlike fire, though, man did more than tame the dog; he invented the dog. Recent formal experiments have demonstrated that dogs can read human gestures in a way that their cousins—wolves—simply cannot. How is it that dogs seem to understand us so well? It seems likely that this talent is simply the result of thousands of years of behavior modification through breeding, and that dogs are not as perceptive or compassionate as they sometimes seem.
On the other hand, who is to say that some perceptiveness has not been engineered into dogs with all this behavioral programming? If a species can be engineered to respond to human gestures, is it not being engineered to perceive human gestures at the same time? And what a creature can perceive, it can also feel. We, for instance, may be slaves to our behavior, but even if that is true, we are passionately engaged in that behavior. Are dogs so different from us that we imagine that they cannot feel what they perceive?
This is not to suggest that this perceptiveness is due to a human-like intelligence, or that we can ever understand or appreciate the feelings of another species, but we ought not suppose that no feelings are there.
The dog might be seen as a genetically-engineered mirror, tuned to reflect feelings that we are generally oblivious to. In this sense, we may have much to learn from the dog.
Can one imagine a more impressive technology?
Still, it’s difficult to think of a dog as utterly unconscious. It seems that there must be more to a creature that seems so capable of reading our minds.
In some cultures, the dog is elevated to a nearly human status. Traditional Zoroastrians appears to recognize the dog as a human species, and give the dog a unique place in their burial rituals.
Remarkably, not all peoples share in this ancient partnership. Take for example the western neighbors of the Persians—the Arabs. I remember hearing from my Arabic language teacher that one of the worst insults in Arabic is kalb, which means dog. I suppose that wasn’t much of a surprise, but I was surprised to find that most Muslims regard the dog as ritually unclean, even a demonic creature. Occasionally one will hear a story of a Muslim cab driver who refuses to permit dogs—even seeing-eye dogs—into his car.
I sometimes wonder what it must be like to be a Persian Muslim. It seems in so many respects to be a contradictory existence. Does a Persian Muslim love dogs, wine, and song, or does he detest these things?
Say what you will about martyrdom, compensation, idolatry, and predestination in Islam. Muhammad really slipped when he failed to endorse the bond between man and dog. Muslims may suppose that this is due to the alien nature of the dog, but I suspect the opposite. There is a threatening aspect to the familiarity between man and dog, just as with the familiarity between men.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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03.18.08
Posted in seeker, The Sink at 8:09 pm by Dan Jensen
Mehrzad was raised in a religious household. His family was Iranian and Muslim, though his parents were not Shi’a or even Sunni. They didn’t mind being the only Muslims in Sinktown, as they were not suited to the specific practices of most Muslims, a fact that would inevitably produce friction in a Muslim community.
Mehrzad played violin. As a boy, he did this as a matter of obedience to his parents and as a religious obligation, for music was the only form of prayer practiced in the Kariyani household.
Mehrzad’s parents were radical Islamists, but not the kind of inflammatory stereotype that the appellation Islamist is likely to conjure up. The Kariyani sect is fundamentalist with a single fundamental: monotheism. For him, “one God” meant that no one man or ideal can represent God. Even Muhammad, for him, could only have been a man of his time and place, and the Qur’an was no more than a book of its time and place. Still, both Muhammad and the Qur’an meant a great deal to Dr. Kariyani as a Muslim, even though he would call other Muslims “idolators” for making the Prophet and the Qur’an “partners with God”. Though for most Muslims an absolute, unwavering belief in the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet is the foundation of their faith, Dr. Kariyani would often assert that “belief is just a pretty name for idolatry“.
So it was that the Kariyani boys, as good Muslims, would perform their prayers five times daily. Each boy would pick up his instrument, face their Qiblah, and reverently perform his scales or a song. For most Muslims, facing the Qiblah means turning toward the Ka’aba, a pre-Islamic stone idol in Mecca. The Kariyanis did not do this, for obvious reasons. Instead, they faced the sun, which meant that they would face a different direction each time. In the morning, they would face the East. In the evening, they would face the West. At noon, they would turn opposite the shadows on the ground outdoors. When praying during moonlit nights, they would face the moon. “We face the light,” Mr. and Mrs. Kariyani would often say. They did this as Iranian Muslims, knowing that their ancestors turned toward fires and other light sources during prayer. The Iranians had prayed five times daily long before Muhammad, and their prayers were songs.
“Words are inadequate for prayer,” the elder Kariyanis would occasionally insist, though Mrs. Kariyani would still chant the orthodox Islamic prayers of her childhood. She would defend her action by pointing out that she did not speak Arabic or understand the words. She insisted that it was the chanting and the sound of the words that aroused the spirit; not the meaning of the words.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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03.02.08
Posted in The Mission at 2:30 pm by Dan Jensen
When Armen was just learning to walk, his father Judge Adroushan had his epiphany.
The Judge might not have seemed ripe for change, as he had developed quite a career in law as a judge in his hometown of Fresno. He was not only the only Armenian judge on the County Superior Court, but he was also the only blind member of the court as well. Many thought that he made a bit too much of the circumstance, going so far as to wear a white blindfold, not only at court, but reportedly at all times. It certainly made for good stage, particularly in the justice system, but he played down the drama with statements like “some men wear sunglasses; some wear eye patches. I’m more comfortable with this.”
He would occasionally say that he resolved many years ago to wear his blindness with the dignity of choice rather than the shame of circumstance. He was not a victim of anything. A judge determines as much from the tone of a person’s voice as the look on their face, but as to the latter: he had his spies. A well-trained blind ear can pick up nuances that the most perceptive dramatist might miss.
“The job of a judge is to listen,” he would say, and he’d occasionally add, “the human race is not set apart by its powers of vision.”
The attorneys were not oblivious to his perceptiveness, and generally felt themselves at an unfair disadvantage. To many, dealing with a blind man was something like dealing with a faceless man. Though those that had some experience with the judge felt they had a leg up on the competition, none of them felt that they could ever sustain any sense of control of the momentum of a trial.
It happened one sultry evening at a new Cajun restaurant in Fresno. The special that night was Frogmore stew, a spicy concoction of leftovers along the lines of paella, goulash, and pizza, featuring shrimp, crab, potatoes, sausage, and corn cobs. The dish struck the judge somewhere deep down, and it would later become obvious that he would never be the same. The Adroushan family began eating at the new restaurant regularly—as often as the judge could manage without embarrassment. One night he could no longer resist asking the waiter about the history of the dish. He sensed a soul in the dish that he felt compelled to get to know intimately. A dish is, to some extent, an extension of a people. The judge had a sense that this was particularly true for Frogmore stew, and there was something about the soul of this dish that spoke to him.
“No frogs?,” inquired the Judge.
“Frogs, sir?”
“In the stew.”
“Oh, no sir.”
Mrs. Adroushan let out a sigh.
“Then why the name?”, continued the judge.
The waiter could not provide an immediate answer, but after consulting with the chef, he returned to the Adroushan table to explain that the dish originated with a fishing village by the same name in South Carolina.
The town is no longer on the map—not, by that name anyway, for the demands of the tourist trade eventually forced the village to be renamed to Saint Helena, after the Island on which it is situated.
Judge Adroushan quickly developed a sense of remote commonality with the people of Frogmore from that stew. It was as if they were kindred spirits; as though he had lived a previous life there. The town gave his life a new sense of direction; a kind of mission. This was quite in the spirit of the village itself, as it had a missionary history. It was the place where Laura Matilda Towne and Ellen Murray moved to serve the population of freed slaves and establish the Penn School in 1862.
By the time the Adroushans arrived in Frogmore, over a century after Penn School was founded, not much had changed. Frogmore remained to all appearances a largely autonomous colony of freed slaves. Some things had changed. There were of course the modern conveniences like plumbing, though such modern conveniences were largely dysfunctional. The boxer Joe Frazier, himself a native of nearby Beaufort, was reported to have called Frogmore the slum of the South.
It may be rightly said that Frogmore was also the Geneva of the South in 1966. It was in Frogmore, at Penn Center, that Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young, Jessie Jackson, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference met every year. Locals, including the judge and his family, were invited to attend the November 1966 conference, during which much debate took place regarding the pros and cons of nonviolent activism. It was at this conference that King expanded his vision from civil rights to human rights. Frogmore was at once nowhere and the place to be, but that was neither here not there to the Judge.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
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