28 August 2012

It is almost 1:30 in the afternoon. I have been awake for nearly 5 hours after an extensive and toast-filled celebration and bonfire last night, and am currently a bit drunk on the large bottle of homemade wine that my host father has been saving for a special occasion and which I just finished with 2 grandfather-ish figures. Apparently early afternoon qualifies as a special occasion in Georgia. My fingers smell delicious, having spent much of the morning separating bad hazelnuts from the good ones and setting a reserve pile of nuts, which counts as currency here in the country in case the winter proves to be fiscally draining in the coming cold months.

I do not believe I will ever use the expression ‘running around like a chicken with its head off’ again. I was enjoying breakfast and a cup of coffee while breaking into a new book and my host mother was out sweeping the back yard and feeding the chickens, a last meal of sunflowers and left over cannibalistic chicken parts, when she chose 2 chickens (I hope/assume at random) and decided they were to serve as lunch. I am not sure if the part that was most surreal was to watch an elegant country mother of 2 (still in heels) hack at the neck of a live chicken with a blunt ax, or to see the physical manifestation of the cliché for a person who does not know which direction he is running. To watch a chicken that was, moments earlier, cared-for livestock ram its body repeatedly into the woodpile, the shed door, my host mother’s leg, and over again, all while dragging the remnants of gizzard and neck that the cleaver failed to hack away, made me wish for a fried chicken McNugget, something I am sure is not enough real chicken to have suffered a similar fate. Once the body (aka lunch) finally came to a rest and the 4 year old girl stopped laughing, I was not sure if I should laugh, cry, vomit, or return to my book and pretend nothing happened. For all of you animal lovers who worship the work that PETA and the ASPCA do, Sara McGlaughlin did not come on in the background (ironically, Matchbox 20’s new single “She’s So Mean” did, instead. I swear Steve Jobb has managed to make iPods self aware). But now, featherless and devoid of head, two chickens sit in the dangerously suspicious hands of my host mother hung over an open flame, yellowish and rubbery to the touch, looking more like the comedic punch line to a Marx Brothers’ joke than something to be dipped in Buffalo sauce and blue cheese dressing.

More neighbors or in-laws or foreign relatives or some blend of the three have poured in, making me feel like the uncomfortably appointed king of the castle while 7 or 8 people (mainly adults) share two bedrooms and a backyard patio and I lie spread-eagle across my queen size mattress. Luckily, I have TLG’s assurance that the family already had an extra room for me, and the 100 Lari I contribute to the family income every month (roughly the equivalent of $75) is not a main or reliable source of income, but one can only shuck so many in-case-of-emergency hazelnuts before questions begin to arise.

I walk into the bathroom to wash the hazelnut off my hand, hoping that the visuals of decapitated chickens and adults in communal living wash off with the dirt, but I assume Georgian soap is hardly so strong. I catch my own reflection in the mirror, almost expecting one of those “what the hell kind of situation have you gotten yourself into” moments, but instead flash back to a conversation with
Danny and Courtney after a day of floatable coolers in the Farmington river, where we discussed the amplification of the blue-ness in our eyes after drinking. This is the first time I noticed a faint gold ring separating such exaggerated blue from the black of my pupil, and I am, admittedly, excited.

I should really stop drinking wine before lunch.