Wednesday, February 01, 2012

A New Leaf and an Old Cloud

I’m starting a new notebook, at (near) the start of a new year - and maybe it can bring a little fresh mojo to my craft.  Some new juju.  What I need, i guess, is a solid jolt of positive moju.* And maybe this is how it starts. 

My last notebook served me well for many months, which is to say, I never lost it and everything I wrote in it stayed where I put it. But maybe that’s just the classic profile of an enabler.  It let me ramble as randomly as I wished, with long (for blog posts) pieces of fiction and poems that represented a month or more of active writing and editing.  My last post was one of those, a labor of love that kept me busy over scores of bus rides and dozens of nights sitting up with the boys while they fell asleep.  Maybe it would have been helpful for me had my notebook asked me to account for myself a little better.  I’m not sure in retrospect if that work necessarily represented the wisest possible use of my resources.

Well, that’s spilled ink that won’t fit back into the pen.  All I can do is close out a well-used, fully-filled notebook, and open up this new one in the hope that I learned something the last time around.  I like the new book, but that’s usually the case.  I’m curious to see if, in using it, my writing changes.  Or if I do. 

It seems a good opportunity to step back and refocus my vision - away from crazy tales of sybaritic excess undertaken by mysterious Europeans I’ll never meet, in favor of over-analytical recapitulations of exceptional little moments from my own experience.  Anyway, I’ll give it a try.  If I hate it I can always go back to distended literary bloviation.  That’s the sort of thing I tend to do, you know. 

So here’s a nugget from the halcyon days of my youth.  It was a time in my life when I would consider myself pre-disillusioned - still energetic and hopeful and able to work with total commitment for a future I couldn’t even pretend to imagine.  I lived in a sprawling megalopolis that fed the world a steady diet of glam and drek (or, as I like to call it, “gleck"), yet I somehow retained an idealistic naivete that today I find hard to credit even though I lived it my own damn self.

My feckless enthusiasm for life had me often checking the skies.  Whether searching for familiar constellations that fought their way through the local light pollution at night, or checking the depth and color of smog layers, or exploring whether the cloudlessness above was more or less cloudless than it had been the day before, my eyes regularly roamed the heavens.  So it stands to reason that I saw the big cool cloud.  What surprised me was that every one else seemed to see it too. What continues to surprise me to this day is that it still seems to be floating around with me. 

The afternoon had been warm and the sky had been, per usual, a cornflower blue bowl overturned upon the simmering pottage of the city.  I’m not sure why I was outside to notice it - it might have been that my mom called me out to see.  She’s something of a skygazer too.  But whatever called me out, I was fortunate enough to be standing in my driveway late one day when a magnificent lenticular cruised overhead. 

Lenticulars are clouds, bearing the same relationship to other clouds that Lamborghinis bear to other cars.  They are sleek and smooth, shaped by winds that pour over mountaintops into forms of exceptional aesthetic appeal.  They bulge, striated, like a bicep clenched in the sky; they cut through the azure like an ocean liner made of dreams.  As of the date of this particular story, I’d never seen one before, but I’ve seen several since - and this one was by far the granddaddy kingpin majordomo of them all. 

It was massive and elaborate, riffled with deep grooves and heavy with sculpted protuberances.  It was, without a doubt, the coolest cloud I had ever seen.  I stood and watched it, openmouthed, as zephyrs pushed it south, gently reshaping it, offering me a slowly-shifting vision of its indescribable fabulousness.  The sun was dipping lower in the smoggy sky, lending the cloud sublime hues of ocher and tangerine set off by rich purple shadows.  Eventually I realized it had moved on and passed me by, slipping inexorably toward the Hollywood Hills where updrafts and errant eddies inevitably degraded it. Come wash-up-for-supper time, some twenty minutes later, it was still a big impressive cloud, but not the cloud it once had been.  With a shrug at its impermanence, I retreated indoors. 

But perhaps that shrug was not entirely called-for.  The local evening news did a short feature on the cloud that night, and the next day lots of my otherwise-oblivious classmates were talking about it.  The cloud was like a celebrity, or (since we were in L.A., where celebrities were somewhat run-of-the-mill) a visiting dignitary or member of royalty. A few weeks later, Los Angeles Magazine ran a photo spread about the cloud, with the same level of breathless fascination that it typically reserved for up-and-coming starlets or fancy hotels, memorializing it with gorgeous semi-permanence. 

I say “semi-” because I have been looking for copies of those photos on-line, and I can’t find them.  I guess 1970s-era local magazine meteorological “permanence” only goes so far.  But in my mind’s eye, I can still see that cloud - maybe not with perfect clarity anymore, but I can see it nonetheless.  It continues to inspire me to look skyward, to watch for that which will disappear before my eyes, if not even more quickly than that.  There are things of beauty in the world and some are short-lived.  I owe it to myself to be on watch for them. 

And that looks to me like a pretty good way to break in my new notebook.  Let’s see how it goes from here. 

*Moju: I didn’t even know it at the time, but this is exactly what I need. 

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Indigestion

I’m having a writer’s moment.  It’s like that song by King Crimson, where I’ve carried this around with me for days and days - first, actually, for months as an inchoate writers prompt, then more months as a rough outline with a few pages of notes, and then as an ever-growing and them somewhat-shrinking work of garbledigook that has monopolized my writing time for a few weeks.  I have no idea anymore if I should be horribly embarrassed even to post this, but I have to get it out of my head and my notebook so I can move on to something else.  Anything else, really.  If working on this poem taught me anything, it might have to do with having too much of some good things. 

And for the record, this is based on a true story but it didn’t work for me that the real-life dude was a racecar driver so I changed him to a messenger.  Let’s see how long before the lawsuit hits. 

Indigestion

This world can surely ladle blandly
so I believed it owed me something
Dust my tongue with fiery cayenne
gird my grace with hearty flatbreads
quench my lungs in rich aromas
simmered long cast-iron hours
One small morsel of perfection
opens up a world of meaning
that could never be discerned
in all the porridge ever boiled
This was my philosophy
through it life acquired meaning

By my wits and wheels I wandered
trailing stale paper wakes
repeating like a bad chorizo
till my bag and soul were empty
I dieted on fresh cracked blacktop
but my soul was starved and thirsting
not for chow to clog my maw
but for flavors, scents, sensations
egg yolk, kale, lemon, saffron
sweetbreads, sausage, sole and capon
panfried, sous vide, nitro-frozen
extracts, foams, infusions, glazes
cork and plaster, wood and china
trays with fifteen kinds of salt
that was where my truth resided
all the rest was mere existence
and even then, just barely that
and I but touching it by tangent
till one day I brought a message
that would change my life forever

The address didn’t ring a bell
but as I breached the service entrance
something clicked.  This wasn’t just
Another dreary business office –
I had crossed the threshold of
Paul Bocuse’s Giardet
Three stars from the tire dealer
My every pore drank in the dreamscape:
there, the kitchen; there, the house
where sounds and smells and tastes and sights
sublime beyond imagination
filled the air six nights a week
I stood there in my sweaty knickers
grasping for a hint of what
this place could truly be and do
and had the manager sign off
that he’d received his sheaf of stuff
I turned around and walked back out
although it ripped me up inside
But as I hunkered on my scooter
I resolved that I’d return
and this time I would do it right –
sailing through the patron’s portal
not to leave till I had sated
all of my unnumbered senses

Even this determination
soon shrank to inadequacy:
I could tell already that
my dream would leave me unfulfilled
I’d be dissatisfied again
before I even reached the street -
Exiting, my every step
would leave me hungrier for more
That exit had to be an entrance
Perhaps you’d call it an addiction
I viewed it as appetite
and mine was well and truly whetted

Spartan years ensued.  I worked
long hours, slept but short ones
All I did was bide my time
impatiently, audaciously
When at last I’d earned my nut
Le Guide Michelin decreed
three-and-sixty three-starred restaurants
spangling three continents
I would dine at each of them
one night apiece for three-score days
and three for luck
Too long had I put off my pleasure
to permit one night to pass
except in gratifying my
desire for the world’s best meal
I mapped my route and bought my tickets
made my many reservations
salivating at the mouth
of my omnivorous rebirth.

Late in May I hit the road
and that’s when things began to blur
I took on western Europe first
Pretty quickly it got tricky
A couple courses into supper
I’d forget where I had started
Who’d served me that bacon salad
Had I had that soup tonight
or was I mixing up my meals
They’d set a proud dessert before me
I could barely look at it
I woke each morning overhung
still digesting last night’s marvels
This was tougher than I’d figured
even so, some tables shone
The Hof Van Cleeve, Dal Pescatore,
Enoteca Pinchatorri
Those were meals I remembered
even as the others stuffed me
indiscriminate as headcheese
I began to lose my traction
tongue exhausted, gut chaotic
I’d bit off too much to chew

Forty suppers still before me
Next to go on my agenda
Was a place that, even in
comparison to all the others
stood alone, a pinnacle
atop the rocky Cala Montjoi
a labratory of a kitchen
Adria’s alchemic realm
His gels and spheres were works of art
Emulsified, inverted, decon
-structed, multifarious
foods unknown to normal mortals
magic was their bill of fare
I was now vouchsafed a place
among the angels to partake
of their ambrosia

When I roused myself that morning
Something didn’t feel right
My belly roiled, overwhelmed
By nineteen superhuman meals
Eaten one upon the other
But of more significance
I felt a rankling reluctance
All my years of eager waiting
Ill prepared me for this effort
Facing supper at El Bulli
I just was not up to it
but I had a reservation
So I’d force myself to eat
I entered bravely, took my place
at yet another gleaming table
in the back a corps infernal
bent to wreak their art upon me

For a while I surrendered
reveling in new sensations
pushing me beyond my limits
Soon enough I’d had a crawful
only seven courses in
another twenty-five to go
every one a stupefaction
beggaring imaginations
not to mention appetites
of gastronauts far more intrepid
hungrier and readier
than I to handle what was coming
Each new plate they set before me
threw a gauntlet to which I
responded with decreasing valor
A feast I’d dreamed about for years
had turned before me into an
endurance test, an act
of gustatory self-abuse
each mastication abnegating
all that I had held most dear
The richer, madder, more creative
were the dishes I confronted
the bitterer grew my despair
My supper juggernautted me
it crushed me like a kalamata
Till at last the serving staff
relieved me of the final plate
abandoning me to my questions
What had I done; What happens now

And then a voice fought through my stupor
someone at a nearby table
recognized me on my quest
A journalist, she wanted to
catch up with me when I had finished
my three-star world dining tour
Could she contact me and see
how I had managed to endure
another six more weeks of feasting?
As she spoke my heart collapsed
against the bloating of my gorge
I realized I couldn’t do it
one more meal like this would kill me
part of me was dead already
I had eaten my aesthetics
and they gave me indigestion
I was engorged with emptiness
Yet this woman sat there smiling
asking Could she call me later

With some lame excuse I bolted
spat my dreams into a napkin
ran away from my undoing
ignominious and shamed
found the door and disappeared
The night air hit me like a tonic
lightly salted, rich with vastness
superseding appetite
My journey was at its conclusion
never went back for my bags
just took a taxi to the airport
caught the first plane to Geneva
crept into my darkened bedroom
prayed that I could sleep it off

They sent out tracker dogs in case
my corpse had fallen off the seacliff
Handy though that would have been
I found existence hard to shake
An animal despite myself
borborygmus woke me up
to face a future where my meals
hold no promise, work no wonder
When I sit now at a table
food is all I see before me

Monday, January 16, 2012

Like a Panda: When Photos are All I Have to Give

oh internet… sometimes it gets so hard to be close with you.  I want so badly to be the kind of content-producer you can trust, the kind you know will have something thoughtful and revelatory for you whenever you want it, so long as that’s not much more often than once a week.... and then I find so many things that stand between us.  Sometimes they’re interesting things, and I become distracted… sometimes they’re difficult things, and I’m either buried in my attention to them, or fleeing from all realities - even your crackling cybernetic embrace.  Sometimes I’m just booked solid with simple things, or even nice ones, like visits to friends or trips to the beach or the gardens or the inlaws, or maybe even that watchucallit parenting gig I still seem to have going on, and I don’t get around to much of anything, including this.  Sometimes I sleep, and sometimes I don’t, but there’s always something to keep me busy.

Does it sound like an excuse?  I suppose it is one.  A lame one, but that’s sort of my M.O. these days, so let’s get used to it.

And it’s just getting worse, too: I’m in default mode here.  If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, and Shaanxi is the last refuge of the Quinling Panda (as I am reliably informed that it is), then cute photos of one’s kids is the last refuge of the blogger.  I’m going to try and round it out with some artsy, if not fartsy, stuff too, but here’s the skinny: I’m actually writing a poem.  I realize that this will somewhat detract from the surprise when I actually post the damn thing, but maybe that much excitement would be too much for you and would fry your delicate synapses or whatever the hell it is you have.  Nodes?  Do you have nodes?  Maybe my suddenly posting a butt-long poem would have fried them.  Do nodes fry?  Can I get fried nodes?  Maybe with an imperial roll?  Am I asking too much?  Are you still listening?  Is this thing on? 

Okay, so I’m like six pages into writing a poem that will challenge even the most ardent of you to wade through it to the end.  But I will not be able to stop till I’m done, and it’s been tough to clear the time I need to do decent work on it, what with the workplace angst and the homelife intensity and the crowded bus rides where I keep on having to give up my seat to elderly ladies with shopping bags full of caltrops and limberger.  I should be able to wrap it up soon, I’m down to the climactic bit and then just a bit of denouement for giggles and I’ll post it, I promise, so you can ignore something with real literary merit.  But in the meantime, I don’t like leaving things here so.... postless. 

So I’m going back to photos, and as it happens, over the past few months there have been some decent photo ops as far as I’m concerned.  But consider the source of this information: a tired, over-extended dad.  You know what’s coming.  Photos of kids.  I’m not proud of myself, but I’m proud of them, and goddamn it you’re going to get their smiling punims jammed down your craw today.  Because my poem isn’t ready.  O the humanity.  Or whatever. 

I’m drawing, mostly, from three photoriffic recent events: a trip to Cornerstone Gardens, a trip to visit inlaws about half an hour outside of Seattle, and a party held this past weekend for my son J’s fourth birthday.  And while I was manipulating those photos with the cuteness intensification tool and the charminator filter that get so much use with my home edition of PhotoShop for Parents, I did stumble across a couple of other random shots that also didn’t suck out loud so I’m throwing them in as well on the theory of why the hell not.  But in the spirit of “blogging without frontiers,” which I believe I just made up (Google proves me wrong, there were fully six results for that search term, so I’m going to go with “blogging without front ears” and that one is MINE, suckers), I’m not going to post these according to where they were taken, but rather, according to which of my children (J, Z, both, neither) are featured.  After that it’ll be a crap shoot, and I sternly recommend you bring your own crap because mine is spoken for.  To wit:

J:

First, you get to see him as I do: rapidly diminishing to an identity at the horizon - in this case, on a path near the Cascade Mountains:

Okay, sometimes he’s somewhat more… visible.  For example, his birthday party was at a gymnastics studio, and here he is learning to yank chains:

And finally (for the J-only shots), here he is with his accountant, going over his annual report:

Let’s move on to Z:

On vacation in WA, learning to hit the sweet spot:

At J’s birthday, having just bounced into a pit full of cubic blueness:

And, further at the birthday party, letting us know that a tramampoline is in our future and not just our current crappy little one either:

You can see, a pre-pre-diabetic like myself has a lot to worry about from each of these supermuffins.  But then, they gang up on me and get even cuter together:

Yes, it’s exhausting.  Thank goodness I sometimes can fix my gaze on some quiet place where their blazing megawatt smiles and wrenching huggability are not immediately apparent.  So, by means of a palate cleanser for the internet (and hell yeah it needs one, the internet never even flosses), I offer you: 

A photo I’ve wanted to take for a long time - I call it, “Straws,” but you are free to call it “Straws” as well if you’re having an uncreative day:

Here’s a few from Washington State, where we visited both an air-and-space museum ...

...  and a railroad rolling stock museum.

Let it no longer be said that I have a uniformly 1-track mind, and lets move on - turning our attention, frayed and abused though it may be, to further visions of Cornerstone Gardens, which we totally love.  They’ve updated since our last visit - got rid of the blue-ball tree and the surreal minigolf course, but some of the new stuff is great, much of the old stuff remains awesome, and their housewares shop remains one of the coolest places I’ve ever taken photos:

(This last one deserves a word of explanation: these are, purportedly, Kewpie Doll molds.  I have a long and valued relationship with Kewpie, and you’re going to have to ask me about it if you want more information than that - but this is by far the second-creepiest Kewpie vision I’ve ever seen.  Number One goes way too far and you can be grateful it’s too late and I’m too sleepy to dig up a link.  These grotesque slag-spattered shells are weird enough, I’d say.)

Finally, a quick phone-photo from Baker Beach, the nearest beach to my front door, at sunset a week ago.  It’s a nice beach, and a nice way to sign off.  I’ll have a goddamn poem or something for you soon.  Or, if not, something else.  Keep’em crossed and we’ll see what shows up here, eh?