Category: Hunger

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The Metaphysics of Food: Kitchen Scenes With Spinoza, Brillat-Savarin And Def Leppard.

A four-mile walk from Nacka to Kungsträdgården, brings me face to face with Joachim Beuckelaer’s Kitchen Scene With Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1565) in the Nationalmuseum. Words are exchanged between us and a conversation about the metaphysics of food ensues. Examining the fundamental nature of reality, the relationship between mind and … Continue reading The Metaphysics of Food: Kitchen Scenes With Spinoza, Brillat-Savarin And Def Leppard.

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Remembering Harvey / Chapter Two / Pulled Pork And Gin.

Storm coming.  Storms having come.  We made the decision not to leave the house, not to pull out on the highway in my 2003 Chevrolet Cavalier loaded with ourselves and the cats.  I strapped myself to the iron fence like Ahab lashed to the great whale.  Catastrophe in the air.  What would the night bring?  … Continue reading Remembering Harvey / Chapter Two / Pulled Pork And Gin.

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Roasted Spring Lamb And Veg With Several Calls To The Suicide Prevention Hotline.

Five hours roasting at 150 Celsius or about 300 Fahrenheit and Maillard Reactions abound as lamb bone, flesh and skin browns, fat melts and a wondrous dark, umami aroma fills the kitchen and house.  Carbohydrate molecules and amino acids change and change in dry heat as colors and taste merge.  Fat molecules with the aid … Continue reading Roasted Spring Lamb And Veg With Several Calls To The Suicide Prevention Hotline.

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Spring Lamb With Roasted Vegetables, Agnus Dei, William Blake, the Tenebrae Choir, Broadway And Seventeen Years Of Therapy.

Spring lamb.  First born and first kill.  Three to five months old and now on our table, well one of its legs.  An offering for new growth and warmer days.  Flesh and sign of a flayed god and his ascendance into blue skies.  Once upon a time a celebration at the end of fasting. The … Continue reading Spring Lamb With Roasted Vegetables, Agnus Dei, William Blake, the Tenebrae Choir, Broadway And Seventeen Years Of Therapy.

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C.P. Cavafy In Translation With A French Press Steeping One Hundred Percent Arabica Coffee Beans From South And Central America, And East Africa.

A well-balanced, smooth taste of sweet earth, wild berries and chocolate from Löfbergs EKO Dark Roast begins the morning with an aging paperback copy of Constantine P. Cavafy’s Collected Poems translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. A moment to consider longing. Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before growing old,  sadly shut … Continue reading C.P. Cavafy In Translation With A French Press Steeping One Hundred Percent Arabica Coffee Beans From South And Central America, And East Africa.

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“White Castles” As My Son And I Watch “Rick And Morty,” While Space And Time Bubbles And Wobbles Away

Always there waiting when I arrive, though not always visited, not always directly acknowledged and approached like an itinerant believer noticing the grail, but in the end deferring.  Talked of often, gestured toward, but sometimes the car continues, the night passes.  But not tonight.  No, as I raise a glass of Michigan whiskey raised with … Continue reading “White Castles” As My Son And I Watch “Rick And Morty,” While Space And Time Bubbles And Wobbles Away

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Frank’s On The Avenue And Travis Restaurant: East Side Dining Comforts For The Weary Traveler.

Right off the train, through the streets of Windsor, under the Detroit River, past customs and down Jefferson Avenue and up to Harper Avenue, Lou and Deb speed me to Frank’s on the Avenue for what I crave most when I visit Michigan–coneys and chili.  “Two Coneys and Fries.”  It’s afternoon.  I think.  Time has … Continue reading Frank’s On The Avenue And Travis Restaurant: East Side Dining Comforts For The Weary Traveler.

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Drinking Mezcal With Pedro Páramo.

Pedro Páramo and I walk into Gallo Pelón in downtown Raleigh.  He insists that to read his pages I need to drink in earth and water of Oaxaca, and I need to do it now before I let my eyes fall on his first page, his first words.  We tell the hostess we’re serious about drinking mezcal, … Continue reading Drinking Mezcal With Pedro Páramo.

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Cooking Beckett: A Stew For Mr. Knott.

I’m rereading Samuel Becket’s novel Watt, while also listening to Dermot Crowley voice the Singing Master’s words on Audiobook.  In the opening pages, we do not meet Watt directly but through Mr. Hackett and Mr. and Mrs. Nixon who sit at a bus stop and observe someone or something disembark from a tram, variously described … Continue reading Cooking Beckett: A Stew For Mr. Knott.

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Banquet World: “These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends.”

In the HBO series Westworld, androids also known as “hosts” struggle to achieve the most fundamentally unique experience of the human species, consciousness and all its attendant wakefulness and awareness, or so we’d like to think about ourselves, but hosts like Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay become alert to themselves and the world around them, distinctly … Continue reading Banquet World: “These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends.”