“Of all creatures that can feel and think,
we women are the worst-treated things alive”
A cool wet morning, and well-welcomed as such. I had saved the remains of yesterday's lunch, dumped the leftover pelmeni into the center of the khachapuri ring, and fashioned a sort of Frankenpuri breakfast. Offensively salty and greasy. An obscene meal of dough-scrap, and well-welcomed as such! I ate it with my fingers like a starving Argonaut.
The recipe is available for a price. I figured I'd tell the restaurant what I had done after first stopping by the bodega to return the leftover needle and thread. I had no use for twelve needles and 79/80th of a spool, so I decided to bring it back so she could resell them to someone else. We also wanted to stop by and get some walking snacks for our planned assault on the city.
The shower in this place was the best we'd had on the trip, I am compelled to note! Gone are the days of doorless, too-cold, too-hot, and peeping actress photos. Here was paradise! But it was time to get out and get our Batumi on. The schedule called for: Medea statue, seaside, Ali and Nino statue, and free time after lunch. My primary goal was to find a really great magnet.
Got the needle and thread ready, escaped the maximum-security courtyard, and we were back in the street. The sky was a steely grey but promised to clear.
I hadn't shared my grossfast with Sara, so she stopped by a bakery while I popped into the bodega to return the thread. I walked in and placed it on the counter, and the confusion of the clerk was memorable. I had the wrong place. It was, from her perspective as if a seagull had walked in and let a spatula fall out of its beak. Just some random senseless act by an insensate animal. I sheepishly collected the items and hurried out.
Found the original place and returned the items. It was the same lady as yesterday. When I produced the items she'd sold me, she looked at me like I was going to complain, but I pointed to my pizza patch, and I was like, "Finished! I do! I not use more. I done. Thank!"
She took the stuff back, and I left. Sara was still inside loading up on nuts and pretzels, and she said when I walked out, the lady and her friend cracked up laughing, holding one another and slapping their legs.
I think this whole situation is as funny as they did.
We headed Medea-ward passing some unusual casino castles on the way. We'd heard Batumi referred to as Las Vegas by the Sea, but this was the first signs we'd seen of it. Charming old mansions designed to separate you from your money and your senses. But very pretty.
Nearby, I was tracking a little street kitty to photograph her, and she jumped up on my thigh. She was very sweet and I put my camera away and was able to pet her frail little body a little. I stood up slowly, so she could use my leg as a platform to jump down from, but she dug in. I soon saw why. Three street dogs were circling.
These guys were medium-sized mutts, not too rough-seeming but certainly activated by the cat. Street dogs that have enough strength to beg are good with people, and though they were definitely focused on the cat there was no sense they were going to attack me to get her.
It was more like bully kids waiting for an oblivious adult to stop talking to their target, nodding their heads and punching their palms in the background.
I set the cat down next to a car, so she could get under it, and intended to wave the dogs away, but the minute the cat was off me, they swarmed the car.
Cats are fast and smart, though, so she led them a merry chase. They weren't very organized as a team, so though our hearts were pounding in fear, we saw the clever baby escape and leave the dogs sniffing around a car she was no longer under.
Quite an adventure. I was genuinely terrified we would see animal violence and that I would have been responsible in some way for the death of that kitten. But, she got away. As ever, I keep with me that quote from Watership Down:
"All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."
The dramatic pause between "they will kill you" and "but first they must catch you," has the most powerfully universal beauty in all recorded literature.
We moved on like black rabbits and found nearby a statue of Neptune with porny mermaids writhing around it, clutching their breasts and spreading their thighs. It may as well have been a fountain of jizz. We looked in vain for the "Donated by the estate of Larry Flynt" plaque but found it not.
Closer to the shore, we fell in love with some colorful public housing.
Dodged the traffic at a busy roundabout, and I got a cute picture of a cyclist smoking a cigarette while he taxied two old ladies in matching pink ponchos. I loved the progression of color and the whole cute scene of them motoring along the red bike path.
We made our way to a charming boardwalk tastefully lined with souvenir kiosks (not too many!) and ice cream carts (not enough!) and a rocky little path to the dark, dark, sea. It was chilly, but men and women wore their bathing suits and splashed around or basked on flat stones.
It felt like a Caucasian Coney Island.
There was a cute pair of enormous bronze Turkish slippers you could put your feet in for photo-ops and... there there were: Ali and Nino! They held one another nearby, slotted together like beans and cornbread, like corned beef and cabbage, like liver and onions. They weren't moving, and we thought they were supposed to. Maybe it was a once-a-day thing? No sign. We decided to look it up later.
I poked around on the magnet side of the world. The boardwalk was buzzing by now, and we were running around soaking it in and trying to capture some of it. A tugboat was moving slowly in the blue, and I waited patiently for it to come into frame. I wanted to snap it between a post and a weird painted cement structure. The moment it passed the post, a random dude walked into the shot and fucked it up.
I cussed out loud about it just as Sara was walking up, and it justifiably bothered her. Nice day, kind people walking around enjoying themselves, and here was some creep filling the air with frightful oaths and betraying the presence of a kind of internal privilege-based rage. It's something I need to get a hold on, this random vocalization of minor disappointments. There's a line of three people at the coffee shop, fuck! Some asshole got in my shot, injustice!
It's something my father does. At convenience stores or whatever. Walking in with him as a kid, if someone looked funny to him, he'd say stuff out loud like, "Looks like this guy's face was on fire and his mom put it out with a rake." It was mortifying.
It comes out when I feel like I've been "cheated."
We shared a tense kind of lunch and agreed to spend the next couple of hours doing our own thing.
I used mine to feed stray cats. I had taken half of my lunch with me for just this purpose. In my search, I fed a few in pretty bad shape. Skin problems, blind. Beyond the scraps, all I could do was bear witness to their suffering. There wasn't enough leftover bbq in the world to help even a segment of them.
A man with swastikas tattooed on his shoulders struggled to hang an enormous plush bee on a hook at the shooting gallery.
Fairy statues and row upon row of retired old men playing backgammon and card games fountainside. A gorgeous blue path led to yet another beach where you could rent umbrellas and rafts. A postcard town. There was an interesting ferry that buzzes between Sochi and Batumi, but it's only for people with Russian or Georgian passports. I thought that was fascinating.
Back home I did some reading but no more sewing. Sara came home, and we were ok. We made plans for dinner. She had researched a place called The Old Ship, which seemed like an hilarious and perfect place for a final, cheesy dinner in a funny old fish-town.
We napped, and when we awoke, it was time to go back out. Our google search for "When do Ali and Nino move?" was met with zero results. There was the suggestion that they are always moving and that asking that question was the same as "How many games are in the Super Bowl?" A blog from a few years ago said 7pm, so we made that time our target.
We broke out of Alcatraz and made our way boardwalkward as the sun set on a cool evening. No ponchos necessary. We walked along the beach noticing the street lights were topped with little Argo-shaped designs. Cute. A stubby little stadium housed beach volleyball, and we watched some women play. A father and son sat on motorbikes and watched as well, frozen in appreciation, a tableau vivant from a heteronormative passion play.
We got gelato. I ordered the fig flavor and the gelista made a face like, "maybe not the fig tonight," so I pivoted to the pistachio. It was nutty and good. We were happy and activated watching the city transform into a salt-aired twilight, families from all over the world maxing out their vacations. Men threw glowing propellers in the air, and we watched them drift down to be thrown again.
A man in an enormous bear costume held children aloft in his tremendous paws, easily ten feet tall was this costume. A drunken couple took turns letting it embrace them. A Ferris wheel blinked. Ali and Nino, when we reached them, were motionless.
Out of order. For a moment, we thought they may have been slowly moving, maybe... but it was St. Nino's Fire, an illusion summoned by hope. They was just busted. To make up for it, we stood apart from one another at either end of the fence surrounding them and approached one another slowly. When we reached one another, we pressed our bodies together like them.
We were like Ali and Nino, apart this morning from our fight but together now. Like liver and onions. They may have been out of order, but not us!
I bought a magnet of the statues standing in a suitcase.
Next to the Old Ship was a restaurant called The New Ship. For whatever whimsical reason, we changed tack and went to the new one. Open-air seating with a waitstaff dressed like someone drawing Popeye from memory. An old lounge singer belted out Georgian ballads on a too-loud PA system. He made angry faces when I applauded. "I am not singing for YOU!"
We ate a selection of high-sodium cheeses and shared a plate of grilled pork and a Caesar salad while he sang. Across the park at the Old Ship, a rival singer turned up his volume, and it was ON. The two of them fought for the crown of Unintelligible Shout-Singing supremacy. They were like the Anti-matter Ali and Nino.
The Old Ship/New Ship lounge-singer battle has to become a subplot in something someday soon.
We walked home in the beachlight dark. The moon made a ghost-road on the sea, but we took the path we knew. One day we'll be tempted by the other.
In the morning, we would fly Medea's golden dragon back to Tbilisi.
I, too, tend to curse out loud when someone interferes with my picture taking. Wish I could do something about it, but not really trying too hard.
ReplyDelete"I am not singing for YOU!" - My new motto.