Gummies and Orange Soda

April 5, 2020: Chicago, IL

Confined to my one-bedroom apartment for now twenty-one days, I’ve been doing what I imagine a lot other folks are doing: reading and working out more. And after I work out, I almost always eat some gummies. (Thanks to Dr. Jim Stoppani, upon whose advocacy of post-workout “high-glycemic, fast-digesting carbs” I conveniently stumbled when I first started working out in earnest back in 2014.) Well, straight to the action.

Trader Joe’s Gummy Tummies

This store-brand confection is like a yuppy Gusher. They have a weird, soft middle. Unlike the sudden burst of juice that squirts from a Gusher once your teeth penetrate the waxy shell, the centers of these penguin replicas sort of melt as you chew and you get a subtle delivery of the liquid congeals with the gummy. The feeling is almost like squeezing the air out of a bubble wrap cell that squishes instead of popping, but in this case the sensation is not really disappointing – it’s pleasant.

They have a delightful flavor – detectable and delectable, but mild enough to contrast the notability of a melting center. Apple juice heavily influences the taste across a three flavors, with lime being the most distinguishable across the group.

Stymied from exploring exotic (as exotic as Ireland can be) books and gummies, I’ll be pleased to obtain more of these little treats on infrequent mad dashes from self-isolation out to the grocery store and back.

Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles

This quintessential, formative tale from Tangier Beat Generation pioneer Paul Bowles condenses the Byzantine legal arrangements and culturally amorphous chaos of International Zone Morocco into the morose, directionless daily drifting of young American Nelson Dyar. In Dyar, Bowles creates a fascinating anti-hero, not clearly motivated in any significant quantity by straightforward desires for money, love, or even adventure. For a man who flees post-war New York stability for a near unknown new life, pursues ill-fated romances with a married aristocrat and impoverished sex worker, and steals a vast sum of money, the lack of clear cause-and-effect desires lends his intentions a dull mysteriousness.

This book came of the shelf with its owner yearning for some adventure, even fictional and vicarious. It was purchased way back in 2016 at La Librairie des Colonnes, a famed Tangier bookstore that once supposedly hosted Bowles himself and now offers a concise, well-considered English language section that includes works from the great ex-pats who once called the city home. The shop’s one downside, for me, is a noticeable shortage of native Moroccan authors translated into English, and you could say that it mirrors Bowles’ major shortcoming in the text. Despite the at times incomprehensible nuance with which Bowles twists Dyar’s character, the author’s depictions of Moroccans border on caricature: conniving, or savage, or simple, always smoking kif or planning to pull a fast one. Perhaps Bowles’ point is that an arrogant American like Dyar ascribes such traits foreigners, even those treating him graciously as a guest, but as the story is told only partially from Dyar’s perspective, the problem seems to be more on the part of the author than the character.

With troubling elements given due consideration, it’s a good read, suggesting that at least some who wander are indeed lost. The insightful but relatively monotonous first two thirds or so give way to an escalating terror in the final part that leaves you questioning what it’s all about. If you want to get an understanding of Tangier in what some think of as its glory days, or like a good story without a good moral, Let it Come Down is worth a read.