Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones
Join us as we celebrate food, the dinner table, and quite likely empires, cannibals and magic fish bones!
I take the long way to the Cirkus Arena. Walking from Slussen across Slussenområdet with its bridges rising over locks between Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea, and further towards the Stockholm Cathedral, Riddarholm Church and Baroque orange and yellow facades greeting me as I descend into Gamla Stan, stepping cobblestone to cobblestone in black patent leather shoes, past ornate … Continue reading Night Of A Red Right Hand / First Postcard.
Tonight I’m going to attend a conversation with Nick Cave at the Cirkus Arena in Stockholm. Well, me and hundreds of others. Läktare höger, row 6, seat 636. Sixth row in the balcony to the right for a conversation. What will we talk about? Muddy-river preachers singing doom, while a woman in blue stockings walks … Continue reading A Conversation With Nick Cave In Stockholm. Raise Your Red Right Hand!
Blooming. They’re out. A glorious walk through the King’s Garden in Stockholm to view the Cherry Blossoms. From a a fifteenth century royal kitchen garden to an open space for military drilling in the nineteenth century to pavilions with cafés in the twenty-first century, the Kungsträdgården features Cherry Blossom trees blooming and signaling the beginning … Continue reading Cherry Blossoms At Kungsträdgården With Tulips, Blueberry Tarts, Cognac And Coffee And The Art Of Fugue.
After a meal, a walk helps aid digestion, at least, that’s what I’ve been told repeatingly, and as Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin writes, ‘Man lives not on what he eats, but on what he digests,’ says an old proverb. We must therefore digest to live: rich and poor, king and shepherd are equal in the face of … Continue reading A Walk After Goulash With Brillat-Savarin, Blackpink, Walt Whitman And Tomas Tranströmer.
The seeming definition of a ghost, someone there and not there–reflection in a shop window shading in a blurred face and dark suit through which paintings and photographs may be seen or not paintings and not photographs because it’s not that easy to say, and other blurred faces and clothes passing by and passing into … Continue reading Ghosts On A Walk And Premonitions Of April From W.S. Merwin.
Think of a community of the living and the dead, mingling together in water, jostling back and forth with each other; bones and flesh, blood and fin, and all sorts of vegetal matter bubbling and foaming, slowly turning into a dense red bog. In the beginning however, ah, in the beginning, there’s the fishmonger Melanders … Continue reading Cooking The Bog. Day One.
Out and about on a day of shopping for my first gumbo in Sweden, which affords a moment to celebrate living in such a cosmopolitan, community-friendly city as Stockholm. For instance, I’ve found public transportation in the Greater Stockholm area affordable, clean, efficient, quick and yes, multicultural. I pay two hundred and fifty dollars for … Continue reading An American Cooks Gumbo In Nacka, Reveling In Migration And Public Transportation, While Surrounded By Cuisines And Travelers Of All Kinds And Sorts.
Around 12:30 pm on Monday, October 22 I walk out of the Stockholm Arlanda airport and into the arms of Gabriela and Demian and my new life in Sweden. Fifty-five years living in the States, the last thirty years in Houston, and now I have “Permanent Resident Status” to live with wife and son a … Continue reading Arriving In Sweden.
Midsummer in the Stockholm Archipelago and I’ve finally become accustomed to falling asleep in daylight. Important to blanket windows, shut eyes tightly, and dream about water and land washing, breaking each other. It’s about four in the morning when I wake to light and silhouette, and what can I do, emerging colors call me out … Continue reading Broth Of A Forest Floor: Walking On Storön.
We’re set floating in this light on midsummer day’s eve. The Baltic’s still, now that its been channeled around one island after another, though the surface slightly bends like a plate of glass heated and slowly turning in and out of itself. Think of a mirror dulled with age reflecting a dusted blue sky ringed … Continue reading Storön–Vignettes From The Big Island.
