Category: Scotland

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A Drinking Man Arrives On Islay, Has A Pour Of Lagavulin, Watches Sea and Stone, Looks At A Thistle And Listens To Robert Fripp’s “Abandonment To Divine Providence.”

Water, grass, thistle and stones.  Rocks.  Arriving on Islay means close quarters with quartzite, limestone, slate and shale with many cresting intrusions called sills of metamorphic rock abundant through the southeastern part the island known as Kildalton.  As Andrew Jefford writes (and I’ll return to his wonderful prose often from Peat Smoke And Spirit) . … Continue reading A Drinking Man Arrives On Islay, Has A Pour Of Lagavulin, Watches Sea and Stone, Looks At A Thistle And Listens To Robert Fripp’s “Abandonment To Divine Providence.”

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More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

Last I left Love, I considered Nick Cave’s dark turnings of the lover’s call, playing off of Dante’s first sonnet of beatific and cannibalistic vision.  Yet, Dante a few sonnets on in Vita Nuova, also broods on the havoc Love causes, so one might say with Marc Antony in Shake the Spear’s Julius Caesar, “Cry … Continue reading More Terror and Terroir Of Love As We Still Ascend, As We Must Ascend With Dante Alighieri, PJ Harvey, Diotima And Her Ladder, The Supremes, Jacques Lacan, Edgar Allan Poe, Nick Cave, Jaufre Rudel and R.E.M. With A Pour Of Caol Ila And A Slice Of Smoked Eel.

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Goodbye To Two Thousand And Eighteen With Three Single Malt Scotch Bottles From The Southern Coast Of Islay As The Sky Burns Over Nacka And I Listen To Vic Chesnutt And Elf Power.

The sunset burns the sky.  Such mysteries occur all the time.  I might think the world’s on fire, a revealing and ending through flames silhouetting branches, trunks and needles; but no, sadly apocalypse will have to wait for another year.  Still, world-altering changes have taken place, at least for the family.  I moved with Gabriela … Continue reading Goodbye To Two Thousand And Eighteen With Three Single Malt Scotch Bottles From The Southern Coast Of Islay As The Sky Burns Over Nacka And I Listen To Vic Chesnutt And Elf Power.

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Drinking Houston

Drinking Houston means great beer, spirits and wine procured at Premium Draught   and Spec’s.  And the great Islay pour I first experienced at Warren’s Inn in Old Market Square downtown, remains the great dram I pour in my library.  Ah, Laphroaig!  Especially the Cask Strength. Drinking Houston with books has been a mainstay for me … Continue reading Drinking Houston

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Heraclitus On Smoke; Hervé Smoking.

Take a study of natural forces, add a healthy pour of figurative language and delicious fragments from the natural philosophers from the eighth and seventh centuries BCE throughout the Aegean, especially in the Greek letters of Heraclitus. Consider, Fragment 7: εἰ πάντα τὰπάντα καπνὸς γένοιτο, ῥῖνες ἂν διαγνοῖεν. Transliterated into our alphabet, and we read: … Continue reading Heraclitus On Smoke; Hervé Smoking.

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Sausages And Cooking Murder.

Louis Vincent Palliere renders in bright colors the infamous Slaughter of the Suitors” by Odysseus and Telemachus, note those gorgeous capes tripping hues between orange and red. I love cooking sausages.  All sorts of sausage.  Beef, chicken, lamb and pig; andouille, bloedwurst, boudin, bratwurst, chorizo, hot dogs, kielbasa, knackwurst, linguiça, longaniza, merguez, morcilla, saucisson, soppressata,  … Continue reading Sausages And Cooking Murder.

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The Anatomical Theater Of Anthony Bourdain

A pulling back of skin and forceps on flesh reveal an inner world of the human body in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.  Anatomy lessons entertained curious spectators throughout Europe from the sixteenth into the nineteenth century.  Such spectacles danced the edge of the sacred and profane as worlds under the skin … Continue reading The Anatomical Theater Of Anthony Bourdain

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Prolegomena To Any Future Single Malt Scotch Whisky.

Oh this tasting and thinking self!  We experience it and swear we’re at the heart of who we are, and yet, and yet. But though we may call this thinking self (the soul) substance, as being the ultimate subject of thinking which cannot be further represented as the predicate of another thing, it remains quite … Continue reading Prolegomena To Any Future Single Malt Scotch Whisky.

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Blood In The Kitchen.

My morning thoughts do not immediately turn to blood, but then I read an article by Katie Macleod which offers a wonderful observation of blood sausage and what we will eat when we’re young and what we will not in Blood for Breakfast is Wasted on the Young.  And then, all my thoughts turn bloody. … Continue reading Blood In The Kitchen.

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Taste Creates The World: Several Drams Of Whisky / Part 2.

That’s Demian above running up a hill in Linlithgow, Scotland outside the burned out remains of the Royal Palace.  It’s nearing dusk, which in June at this latitude means night won’t completely fall until after 10pm.  The image speaks to how a camera, in this case an iPhone, is limited in how it processes light, … Continue reading Taste Creates The World: Several Drams Of Whisky / Part 2.