Archives for November 2016

Met up with an old college friend and we got back to our old ways as soon as we sat down. It’s nice to know what even though we failed at keeping in touch with each other, we didn’t fall out of touch.

She had left the city for a few years so this was her first time at Delachaise, and my fiftieth. The first thing we talk about it, and I’m sure this is true for most people, is our dating life. And the conversation stayed in that lane for most of the night. Talking about boys is like McDonald’s—it never gets stale. It reminded me of an excerpt from Eat, Pray, Love:

And then I remember a story my friend Deborah the psychologist told me once. Back in the 1980s, she was asked by the city of Philadelphia if she could volunteer to offer psychological counseling to a group of Cambodian refugees — boat people — who had recently arrived in the city. Deborah is an exceptional psychologist, but she was terribly daunted by this task.

These Cambodians had suffered the worst of what humans can inflict on each other — genocide, rape, torture, starvation, the murder of their relatives before their eyes, then long years in refugee camps and dangerous boat trips to the West where people died and corpses were fed to sharks — what could Deborah offer these people in terms of help? How could she possibly relate to their suffering?

“But don’t you know,” Deborah reported to me, “what all these people wanted to talk about, once they could see a counselor?”

It was all: I met this guy when I was living in the refugee camp, and we fell in love. I thought he really loved me, but then we were separated on different boats, and he took up with my cousin. Now he’s married to her, but he says he really loves me, and he keeps calling me, and I know I should tell him to go away, but I still love him and I can’t stop thinking about him. And I don’t know what to do . . .

This is what we are like. Collectively, as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, “There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? and Who’s in charge?” Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief and suffering.

Vibe: romantic, cozy, cute
Specialty: known for wine but has a wide selection of liquor and the hard-to-find Xingu beer
Happy Hour: Mon.-Fri. 4-7 p.m.
Food Favorites: fries, salmon cakes
Address: 3442 Saint Charles Ave.