cheese soap opera running of the bulls

There are many crossroads here. Rubbing shoulders with strangers, striking up a conversation, making an offhand joke, grasping at some instant shared moment is as human as it gets. Many jokes fall, dead on arrival. Many gestures are confused, too abstract to translate well. The intention may be generous and the result - a big step back. There is always an opportunity to connect, or to fail trying.

As there are so many festivals here - wine, music, cheese, beer, honey, whiskey, more wine, more music, there are weeks and months when the choices are dizzying. But when you are all there for one reason, to taste and savor, to sing along, to sip, the road to some common chuckle is wide and clear. If you pay to enter, it tends to weed out the grabbers who are there for something free, not something good. But the makers are paying to be there, to rent that rickety stall, and give their wares away for free to anyone and everyone, in the flat hot sun of a parking lot on any given day. It is a lopsided transaction, a party, sometimes glorious, sometimes sadder than sad. The gamble hovers over every weekend, paying off or falling short.

I dragged N and V to a free admission cheese festival of all things on Sunday. We took the funicular, a wobbly train that is pulled by a hefty wire up the steepest hill, as the city sprawls outside windows that need a good washing. We climb and climb, passing a monastery carved into the rocks, past steep walls, and sweating tourists. On top, there is an old amusement park, a fancy restaurant with murals and a balcony that looks out at every neighborhood below, a Ferris wheel, a rollercoaster, all peeling paint, as if a circus was in town and left a few things behind some 40 years ago.

The festival is half the size than it should be, with hordes of people poking toothpicks anywhere and everywhere at sweaty blocks of cheese that are dropped on cutting boards. Drunk people at wine festivals have better behavior than sober people faced with the promise of free cheese. There is a rubbing shoulders with locals, and there is being shoved around by locals, stampeding from table to table, jabbing wildly, interrupting, talking over, not understanding, speaking the wrong language, confused and hovering like battle ships, a perfect experiment is human nature that fails miserably. We are not ready for this free cheese, as a species.

We wait for our openings, talking and tasting, asking questions. The mood is just short of manic. I spy a log of goat cheese aged in ash, a rare find here and ask for a taste. We already know the seller, she has the good stuff. By the time I have tasted it, a man hovering next me buys it before I even know it, and trots off. He never tasted it, was just sucking on an iced coffee, taking up space, not even asking anything. I imagined there must be another one under the table I can pay for, but no, there is not. N jokes that I am a taster for this brazen fellow, and he trusts me so much that he immediately buys what I like. It is a salty joke, and I do not laugh so much as smile at the situation. Should we all have such problems. It is more strange than tragic, in this little cheese soap opera running of the bulls I have dragged them to.

We walk off, and V wants to ride the bumper cars. Her plan is to drive N around, the way N drives her to school every morning, to flip the scales, wheeling with finesse and swearing at everyone in the road. The line of children is long. There is a plank of wood painted with centimeter marks and great red line that says “if you are shorter than this line, you cannot ride”. But of course, we are in Georgia and most of the kids are way under the line.

When you stand for a good fifteen minutes surrounded by strangers, it is hard to ignore the faces, hard to resist imagining their life, their home, their family. There are boys all in black, wearing fake Gucci loafers and fake Armani shirts, coal black polyester in the fierce afternoon sun, hands shoved in pockets, trying to look cool. There are freckle-faced kids, bad haircut kids speaking so many different languages. They were not here for the cheese festival, this is their Sunday vacation, their splurge of money spent on cold coca cola and bumper cars, until there is nothing left.

A father cuts through the line with an older boy in a bright orange shirt. Everyone steps aside, and a metal gate swings open, leading him directly to a pale blue bumper car. A worker wraps a special bracelet around his wrist, and straps him in. He face hangs a bit sideways, his mouth slack. They do not pay, and the bell is already ringing. He drives in lazy circles on the outside of the rink, not bumping into anyone, hands pale and limp, and you really want to imagine he smiles just a little bit, but no he does not. Soon enough the bell rings again, as the line of kids lurches forwards and the boy is led carefully from the floor to his father, and they disappear into the trees.

When V is behind the wheel, she laughs wildly. N is squeezed in next to her, her body stiff, preparing for the mayhem. A breeze whips up, and knocks my hat off and they are already driving in messy loops, V’s eyes wide, turning the wheel left and right and round and round. Between the two of them, the car does some of the things it should. I remember being at some county fair as a boy and riding the bumper cars, with my brother in one of the others, and how we rammed into each other over and over, laughing like jackals, and then ganged up on everyone else, squeezing them between us.

We take the funicular back down, sunburned and deflated, taking the slowest walk home. Later, I will make a salad of fennel and grapefruit, softened with wild honey and mint. The cheese will be unwrapped and sliced. Good wine will be uncorked. We will fall asleep early, with the windows flung open.