mewithoutYou - The Fox, the Crow, and the Cookie from David Bell on Vimeo.
This past Soul Night was Rare Soul Weekender. That afternoon, Lady Leila and I went to a Northern Soul record swap. We met one of the founders of Soul Night, who gave us a deal on the 45s we were clutching. Some of our favorites: Aretha Franklin "Soulville", The Vibrations "And I Love Her" cover, Jennell Hawkins "Money", and Etta James "Lay Back Daddy".
The tiny world in front of your face is an illusion, and romance itself is an illusion!
We gasped. But it was a delayed gasp, we were a slow group.
Theresa had begun to cry. I stopped patting and hugged her, and she hugged me back. I had made everything just horrible enough to bring Theresa's sadness down to the next level, and I joined her there. It was a place of overflowing collaborative misery, and we cried together...The snaps on our jeans pressed into each other and our breasts exchanged their tired histories, tales of being over- and underutilized, floods and famines and never mind, just go. We wetted each other's blouses and pushed our crying ahead of us like a lantern, searching out new and forgotten sadnesses, ones that died politely years ago but in fact had not died, and came to life with a little water.
Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar. -Pablo PicassoOne of the simple pleasures and leisures I am most grateful for is bath time. When I was nine years old, and the family was looking for a new house, what sold my mother on the 1920's bungalow we eventually would call home was the clawfoot bathtub. And, like mother like daughter, while looking for my first "real" apartment, what sold me was the beautiful, white, deep clawfoot bathtub.
There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. -Sylvia Plath
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath, and a glass of wine. -St. Thomas Aquinas
INGREDIENTS
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 teaspoons dried parsley
- 1 eggplant, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
- salt to taste
- 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 zucchini (or squash), sliced
- 1 large onion, sliced into rings
- 2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
- 1 green bell pepper, sliced
- 2 large tomatoes, chopped
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Coat bottom and sides of a 1 1/2 quart casserole dish with 1 tablespoon olive oil.
2. Heat remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. Saute garlic until lightly browned. Mix in parsley and eggplant. Saute until eggplant is soft, about 10 minutes. Season with salt to taste.
3. Spread eggplant mixture evenly across bottom of prepared casserole dish. Sprinkle with a few tablespoons of Parmesan cheese. Spread zucchini in an even layer over top. Lightly salt and sprinkle with a little more cheese. Continue layering in this fashion, with onion, mushrooms, bell pepper, and tomatoes, covering each layer with a sprinkling of salt and cheese.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes.
How to make the getting of our life poetic! For if it is not poetic, it is not life but death we get.And thus my meal is saved. The different ingredients are harmonies, the different textures, correspondent rhythms and for a moment my ratatouille is not a soup but a SONG. Or at least, this makes me feel better about not entirely achieving the full potential of ratatouille.
I wish my neighbors were wilder.It is the earthiness, the potential for "wild", of the ratatouille that inspired me to reach for Thoreau. The vegetables came from our CSA box from Full Circle Farm, and still had the soil dusting them. I can imagine the farmers reaching for the vegetable, plucking it up or digging it out, hands calloused , the dirt gathering under fingernails. I wanted to connect to the earth with this meal, but ended up connected to the transparent, the illusive, the ephemeral: poetry. Perhaps ratatouille is some kind of muse potion, what inspired my grandmother to reach out her hands as if she were touching the lights of Paris. Or perhaps I should have written down her instructions.
Wild as if we lived on the marrow of antelopes devoured raw.
Take away their names and you leave men a wild herd distinguished only by their individual qualities.
I sometimes think my vision of the sea is the clearest thing I own. I pick it up, exile that I am,like the purple "lucky stones" I used to collect with a white ring all the way round, or the shell of a blue mussel with its rainbowy angel's fingernail interior, and in one wash of memory the colors deepen and gleam, the early world draws breath.Plath reminds me to breath. The tea has finished steeping and I move the cup nearer to me. I inhale. The berries infuse the steam, and for a moment I think, "Where is the salt sting?" But the sweetness of the tea dissolves once it hits my tongue, and the bite of black takes over.
Like a deep woman, it hid a good deal; it had many faces, many delicate, terrible veils. It spoke of miracles and distances; if it could court, it could also kill.Plath's sentiment about the power of the ocean may be the reason I chose the Black and Blue tea. The magnitude of the sea, the awesomeness, the crash of waves, lead to blossoming bruises. I wanted escape, calm, seaside with gulls and the pearlescence of shells. What I got was Plath's account of the beauty, the life-giving breath and the life-taking reach of the sea. She even spoke of treasure, in the form of abandoned tea sets, perfect for my choice of location.
I think the sea swallowed dozens of tea sets-tossed in abandon off liners, or consigned to the tide by jilted brides. I collected a shiver of china bits, with borders of larkspur and birds or braids of daisies. No two patterns ever matched.
A Whim Deserving of a Longer Entry
I decided to visit my grandmother's cousin in Paris on a whim. This, I reasoned, was better than planning a visit. First, because had I arranged a meeting, I would probably have gotten too nervous and backed out. Second, I would have brought a translator, making the whole meeting entirely too formal. But while preparing to go the Louvre that morning, something told me to grab Claudine's address out of my bag, so I did.
In between Italian, Spanish and French 16th-18th Century Paintings and Greek and Roman Antiquities, I decided to look up her address on the map of Paris I had in my bag. I discovered that her apartment was in the same arrondissement that I was staying in. Not only that, but I had walked by her apartment while exploring the area two days before. I decided it was too coincidental, too serendipitous to pass up. So I took two Metro lines to her apartment building.
I had no plan whatsoever when I got there. The apartments in Paris don't have numbers, and I had no idea which apartment was hers, much less how to even get into the building. I thought maybe I would stand outside the building and wait for someone to go in or out and I would ask them, "Connaissez-vous Claudine?" But then I didn't know what I would do with the answer I got, or even if I would understand the answer. I stood outside for a good two minutes, staring up at the balconies with their perfect potted pansies and feeling a little like my on-a-whim adventure may have been a fruitless idea.
I then noticed her last name on the callbox. Now, this is lucky. I have yet to see another apartment building with last names written on the callbox. The people inside must be important enough and receive visitors on a regular basis in order to warrant a callbox, as not to continually run up and down the stairs to open the door.
I wrote myself a little script of what I wanted to say, and stood in front of the callbox thinking, "Okay, should I press the button? Would I regret it if I didn't? Is this the right button? I shouldn't press the button. I don't know who is behind this button. I should press this button. No, I shouldn't-oh, I guess I pressed the button!"
Silence. And then, "Oui?"
"Uh, bonjourjem'appelleNicholejesuislapetitefilledeMicheline."
"Pardon?"
"Je m'appelle Nichole? Poinski? Je suis la petite-fille de Micheline? Poinski?"
"Ah, oui! Nichole! Second floor!"
The woman I met at the top of the stairs looked stunningly like my grandmother. She welcomed me into her beautiful apartment, inviting me to sit on the couch. We spoke stilted Franglish, working together to convey what the other meant. She started telling me how she met me when I was six years old, and I started to cry. She looked worried, like she had offended me, but I said, "Non, je suis désolée, je suis..." But I couldn't find the word I was looking for in either English or French. It was a combination of fulfillment, missing my family, Stendahl syndrome, happiness, and possibly caffeine withdrawal. It was then the language barrier didn't matter anymore. She said, "Emotive?" I nodded. She handed me a tissue and smiled.
We talked about the family in the States. She showed me pictures of her time in Morocco. I spoke to her daughter on the phone. She gave me a tour of her apartment. We talked about her late husband the professor. I gazed longingly at the bookshelves. She showed me her map of Paris, pre-Revolution, that took up an entire wall.
When I took my leave, she said, "Thank you so much for visiting me. Je suis très contente." I said, "Non, merci beaucoup, je suis très contente". Several merci beaucoup's, au revoir's, and cheek-to-cheek kisses were exchanged.
When I left, I was reeling. Something had told me to look her up, and it was lucky I did, because she was leaving for Bretagne the next day.
Upon reflection, the whole exchange doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but I cannot properly describe what I was feeling before and after meeting Claudine. All my life, I have been told of my grandmother's life in Paris, my distant relatives in Paris, my father's adventures in that one club with the band in Paris. But to be in Paris, this pseudo-mythical city where all of this stuff happened before I was born but that defined who I am as a person, was wild. I don't mean to border on maudlin, but it was like a dream come true. I've been dreaming of Paris, creating it in my head for years, and to experience the city for itself, with Parisians and friends who knew the city, was amazing.
C'est tout.
Peach Salad with Wild Arugula, Goat Cheese, Almonds, and Basil
(Serves 2)
1 large bunch wild arugula (or use the regular supermarket arugula), stemmed
1 perfectly (not excessively) ripe peach, cut into thin wedges
A handful of blanched whole almonds, lightly toasted
A few very thin slices of red onion
About a half a small log of fresh goat cheese
A dozen basil leaves, left whole
1 teaspoon Spanish sherry vinegar
A few drops of balsamic vinegar
Salt
Black pepper
A pinch of grated nutmeg
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oilPlace the arugula in a medium-size salad bowl. Add the peach slices, the almonds, and the red onion. Crumble on the goat cheese, and add the basil leaves.
In a small bowl, whisk together the sherry and balsamic vinegar with the olive oil, and season it with salt, black pepper, and the nutmeg. Pour it over the salad, and toss gently. Serve right away.
