Opaque-Dining In The Dark

Light. It is something that so many of us take completely for granted. I had a really fascinating experience this evening, so I will tell you the story in the present tense and as though I do not know how it ends. Please keep in mind that time is all relative because we had no way to see watches from the time we went in (about 7) until the time we came out (about 9:35).

We walk past what looks like it should be the only restaurant right there to a door that should be part of Indigo. When we walk in the door, we are greeted by an affable man who leads us down a short flight of stairs to a couple of clear glass tables where we can sit and wait for our server/guide. While we wait, the amiable young man comes to brief us, saying that our server, Senya, is legally blind and will be the one taking care of us the whole evening. The cordial young man, in the meantime having bounced up and down the stairs at least seven times, brings us menus printed in black ink on translucent paper. The menus describe the arrangements for ordering and paying and give us our options for the prix fixe three-course dinner. Having had a sumptuous meal of dim sum for lunch, I opt for the vegetarian options all the way-baby spinach salad with goat cheese, penne with eggplant, peppers and a tomato-tarragon sauce and the bittersweet chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream and minted strawberries for dessert. A very tall man appears at the door leading to the dining room, introducing himself as Senya, our guide. We rise from our low seats and go to him, telling our names in turn and putting our left hand on the left shoulder of the person in front of us. He leads us through the door telling us that it is a bit of a maze. I close my eyes, knowing that I will transition more easily if I am not straining against the deepening darkness. after turning around a couple corners and holding a curtain out of our faces, we are brought to our table and told to follow the edge to our seats. Mom and I end up on the booth together and so I slide all the way in, connecting with a bit of wall before stopping. Once we are all situated in the pitch dark, Senya tells us that he will serve us and collect our finished dishes from the corners then leaves us to go get water and bread. He returns with water shortly, handing it to Mom who carefully hands it to me. He puts the bread in the middle of the table while Dad situates the butter dish just to the inside of the bread basket and Senya tells us that it is okay to "get our hands dirty" now with the butter (which we must find by touch and therefore are bound to put our fingers in it) and bread. He has also brought pieces of cucumber topped with smoked salmon and wasabi aoli for us. Once I finish that, I begin to 'look' around me, explore my surroundings. I determine that I am in a corner between a wall that drops off to a foot-and-a-half-high wall with a round pillar sprouting about two-and-a-half feet in front of me and the very high back of our booth. I also find that there is a set table about two-and-a-half feet to my right. Senya soon brings out a plate of fresh vegetables with dips for us and we decide to try to guess what everything is. We determine precisely what all three vegetables and one of the dips are with ease but the other two dips prove a bit more challenging. We end up getting one of them half right but remain mystified by the other. Senya soon brings out our salads and passes them around, telling us which is which. He leaves and we begin, carefully, to eat. The first bite of salad is like a cheesy, vinegary explosion carried on spinach for me, so I offer to share the goodness with Mom, who accepts and we carefully arrange a trade, me putting the food on the fork while she reaches for and finds my hand. I tell her how I am handing her the fork and we successfully make the trade. She then arranges some tuna and pineapple on a fried wonton for me and places it gently in my palm. We listen to the other conversations around us, not very many it seems, and talk a bit about whether the black seems solid black or whether it is punctuated by lines and spots or perceived (but imagined) light/colours. Awhile later, Senya returns with a sense of humour and our entrees. We learn more about him in about two minutes than I have learned about some teachers in a year including that he is six-foot-five. We all eat our entrees slowly, talking as we go (Dad's steak was VERY tender). We share each item, reaching across the table or open space for a hand or an arm to which we can hand a loaded fork. While we are eating that, Dad realises that he can best describe his wine in terms or music and that the one he is currently drinking has a lot of bass. Senya brings people to fill the table to my right and we are very humoured by their findings and exclamations as they acustom themselves to eating in the dark knowing that we said many of the same things earlier. When we get our desserts, we are already stuffed but still manage to thoroughly enjoy the warm (to the point that the centres were liquid) chocolate cake. The next time Senya returns to check on us, Dad comments on how nice the undertone harmonics in his voice are and we find out that Senya is a singer. :-D When we are ready to leave, we stand up and line up again to follow Senya out of the dining room (this time, I keep my eyes open). My return to the light is an odd experience. Because of the way Opaque is set up, it is not the painful sort of light that opening my eyes is in the mornings sometimes, but is strange nonetheless. I go from being comfortable with being able to see nothing outside my head to being quite disoriented by the fact that there is light hitting my eyes in all colours from all sides. On the drive back to the hotel, I notice every little light around me and appreciate the variety of types, shapes and colours of lights in this city.

p.s. my apologies if this was boring or did not make sense, it is late but i did not want to wait until the memories were dulled by time to write it tomorrow.

Questions: A Belated Passover Post

Have you ever noticed that the some of the most generous, kind and caring people are the ones who do not really have anything to share? That the best person to ask to get something done is a busy person? What if we all pitched in a little bit more, evened out the money and food and responsibility for getting things done, would it work at all or would it backfire? What if, rather than always trying to be better than ourselves or our peers, we were just content with who and how and where we were?

What if we lived in a world like that in Zanna Don't! (I'll let you look that up on your own time) aside from the fact that it would be a reproductive nightmare, what would it be like? Could it possibly be a better place? What if magic as it is portrayed in Zanna Don't!, Harry Potter, Tamora Pierce books and so on, what if that were real, how would our society be different? And if that were being kept hidden as in HP, how long could the Statute of Secrecy actually hold and work? Aren't humans a little too curious, rude and inquisitive for it to fully work (though I suppose as a species as a whole, we are stupid enough to ignore what is right in front of our faces if we want it not to be)? How, if there is magic, could it be as J.K. Rowling says and unlimited? How could it not be something that must be worked with inside limits? What if the universe as we know it is, rather than being its own entity, what if it is really part of something larger, some colossal being which is growing and therefore making the "universe" expand (I put universe in quotes because if we are part of something else or if there are other "universes" then the term is a misnomer)? What if, to this colossal being, large beyond our pathetic human imagination, we are the equivalent of what we call an electron? What are electrons, anyway? What if we are part of a cell in this colossal being and we are coming to the end of our life as a cell and therefor must self destruct as we are seeming to? What if every kid who wanted a chance to make a living in the arts got the chance? Without being teased? What if everybody just stopped bashing and making fun of everybody else negatively? What if everybody who was gay could just live their own life without fear of being attacked verbally or physically or locked away? What if we were to be told, suddenly, that we must all be the same? Have the same haircut, wear the same clothes, look the same, speak not only the same language, but the same dialect with exactly the same inflections, have only one kind of relationship with only one person and have exactly the same number of kids who look the same as everybody else and everybody else's kids? What if we were to have only government appointed jobs in government sanctioned industries making government approved products?What if the freedoms we have built for ourselves here in America were taken away from us and we lived under absolute monarchy or communism or some other such thing? What if those freedoms were extended to everybody in the country? in the world? How could it be a bad thing if everybody were able to get a job and go to school and marry the person they loved?