Any cook will tell you, when you brown meat and rest it on the plate, blood will accumulate there and you always use that blood, or whatever juice comes out, when you put it in the pot.
I sat in the hot tub thinking, when was it I started tweaking like this? Has it been all my life? Is the brain like a piece of fruit that ripens over time, destined only to draw flies? Seeing old friends was sad when they looked older, and I realized so must I—we are all in a race that no one wants to win, this march of life, this procession.
I halved the dried prunes and soaked them in a cup of brandy longer than I needed, but figured it couldn’t hurt. The French pork stew with prunes and cream, Dijon mustard, served over buttered noodles, the fat pappardelle egg pasta that costs $7 a package but you only get eight ounces, so I had to buy two.
Trying to relax in the hot tub but distracted by all that needed to be picked out of the water. The satisfying look of a newly stacked woodpile. Week-old vegetable oatmeal soup for lunch, cold, the breakdown in proteins that makes it stringy but still good. The ever-battered and beaten up kitchen, how the cupboards get sticky from the oil and catch hair like flypaper, how it adheres like a skin. And dare I look at the fins at the base of the refrigerator where the fan blows, the hair down there like an old man’s mustache.
How things would get put in the fridge with no rhyme or reason if it weren’t for me, the sheriff of condiments, applying logic to the leftovers, grouping them. How regularly I have to cull through the duplicates in sauces and dressings—how sometimes a large container of yogurt gets put there with hardly a spoonful remaining…or a bottle of wine, with just a finger or two.
The sickly condition of the dish washer, the strange grime that amasses there like coffee grounds, or potting soil. And where does it come from? The brown stains that flare up from stagnant water on the dish rack, how hard it is to remove. And the sad insides of our stove…of the microwave…cooking is a dirty business, and so is living together: we are all like pack animals in our lairs, shifting like pigs in the straw, in our stalls.
Having to listen to Lily and her friends watch a slasher film on the laptop while I’m trimming the pork. The screaming and cutting sounds as I handle the meat. Watching my legs underwater in the hot tub and how bloated they look, thinking about getting old. Refilling the tub with the hose but forgetting it was on, dozing in the hammock…waking to the sound of Charlotte crying from the house, “It’s overflowing!”—and me, running through the grass to turn it off. Dodging poop, barefoot.
Having Lily read my Tarot Friday night and starting with the Five of Swords (never good), a distant loss she says, weighing on my consciousness. Ending with the Six of Pentacles, a good card, and me as a sharer of wisdom, just a satchel’s worth…
Advice for would-be poets: if athletes train by going to the gym, your training comes from brooding by the lake, from looking inside…from finding yourself in the spaces between the clouds and the layers beneath the surface…it’s what’s in you, the blood, that gives it the flavor.
Fascinating to encounter another’s latent thoughts and recognize the patterns …
At our place there is hair in everything. We have a Labrador, and she generates “Chihuahuas” that accumulate along the baseboards, in front of the fridge, anywhere a shoe is left, … well, you know.
My other recognition is regarding poet’s “training” (I like to think of this as practice, self-sought) – absolutely essential to go inward – helps to take along observations of surroundings and toss them to and fro within the interior. My best love poem (2011) focuses on the kitchen sink.
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Hi Jazz, that’s a fantastic comment and insight, thanks for sharing. Hair. I sit on the sofa in our den and if the light is right I wish it weren’t, if you follow…love poem and kitchen sink, I can see that. Beauty in the banal, thank god for that…we have enough banal don’t we?!
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Loved the juxtaposition of cutting up the meat and the slasher film. And then a slow pan to the Five of Swords (never good).
Do you know Roger McGough? Terrific British poet, quirky and potent. He wrote one called
“There was a Knock on the Door. It was the Meat”
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I’m glad you liked that with the film and the pork, it was surreal: glad I could share it, for what it’s worth. I’m happy you read this on your spring Monday morning! I had fun writing it and now, we are the web of Sunday night and post-pranial sups, possibly a brandy in my future. Life is good. The Spotify is running a Harold Budd theme. I could probably die now without a regret.
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With or without prunes? (The brandy not the death)
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God, good prunes are not to be overlooked. Dank, stick to your fingers shit.
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And I will look up Roger McGough, thanks for that!
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I searched using the poem title and found it easily (on a WordPress blog!)
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Sweet! Thank you. It’s the meat.
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This one has all the hallmarks of your voice yet feels especially relaxed. Like it’s not straining, just kind of spilling out effortlessly in a way that is still somehow packaged and balanced very nicely. I like this groovy feel. But the girls and I saw the Animal Grossology exhibit at the museum today, and they could just not tear themselves away, so I’ve definitely had my fill of hair and blood and stickiness now, thank you.
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Thank you that’s awesome. Lily (who now goes by “Lee”) opened an egg that was bloody and spoiled a batch of brownie mix, this week. I wanted to show her the video to “Under the Milky Way,” by The Church: remember that? A scene cracking an egg into a pan and it’s an eye. Deeply distressing.
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I remember the song well, the video not so much, but the egg does ring a bell. Every time I crack an egg, I’m just a little fearful that there will be a dead chick inside. Just got through a little 80s retro fest while walking the dog, including The Fixx, Simple Minds, and Duran Duran. Good times.
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That’s a nice scene you conjure from the 80s. What’s funny, that video had that scene and then they edited it! I always wondered why, like if it was deemed too psychically-scarring…and such a subjective thing, there.
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Red Skies at Night? Or which one, by The Fixx?
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Various tracks from Reach the Beach, first album I ever bought, and not listened to since I was a teenager. An underrated, forgotten little bit of a gem. Definitely a time capsule.
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I think my first album was Gene Loves Jezebel. We kind of suck. Or we’re awesome, hard to tell.
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It’s such a fine line between sucks and awesome.
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Art vs “craft”
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Always a pleasure to keep reading ya. This one provoked my random hello. Be careful with the tarot. Thats some freaky stuff. I did a bunch of readings years ago, them cards were talking too loud though gave me the creeps. I do have the “shining” though so that added to it, but prolly anyone drawn to them has got a bit of that, so be warned!
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Ha, so nice to see you and respect the tarot advice. We were just farting around. The imagination is something different though, innit? Peace out Austin, happy Sunday night to your tribe.
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It definitely is. That whole “collective consciousness”, or is it “un-…” can get ya. I learned how to do like a celtic cross type reading, where one of the cards is selected for the individual’s highest ideal, and everytime time I did it the card spoke directly to that person. Pretty freaky really. Should have kept at it, but the ingrained Catholic guilt
and fear scared me off. Anyway, peace to you and yours as well.
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I can forgive you, the engrained Catholic guilt: you can get that off with Pine soap.
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And appreciate the phrase The shining.
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was gonna write it “shinin” but didn’t know if it would come across 😁 (should have assumed it would, we marinate in the same morphic waters I believe)
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I get you. We are all good here.
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Beautiful! Perhaps your best.
Want to get that DNA testing.
I love you. Mom 💕💕☘️☘️💕💕
Sent from my iPad
>
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Ooh, love this – despite/because of the grossness. All that fat and hair – so true. I fight a constant battle against my house smelling like an Indian restaurant because of my husbands love of cooking curry. Whole place smells like turmeric!
Love those parallels between the horror movie and the pork prep too – all that ‘long pig’ being dissected onscreen while you’re performing your own culinary autopsy in the kitchen.
Feels like hunkering down time again, doesn’t it? I know you love the autumn and all these shortened days. Happy hunkering with that wood pile 🙂
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Ha ha, hello Lynn and happy hunkering down season to you in that cozy Indian restaurant of yours! Imagine all the pots are yellow too, there at your place! Thanks for the nice note and for reading, happy you enjoyed the grossness. Why not?! Enjoy the week, lucky you, you’ve already got through Monday! It’s staring me in the face. Bill
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Well, other half has trashed one saucepan by constantly frying bhajis in it – sticky, as you describe so well! Hunkering certainly feels just round the corner … 🙂
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“Living together,” a constant reminder of the need to let go.
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🙂
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I like the grit of this. Makes me feel at home.
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Inspired a bit by your tale of that old sofa.
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yes, the hair and the grease -there is no fighting them back, like the dust than continues to settle
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I’m so sorry about Glenn, Beth! I tried to write a comment a couple times on my phone but it didn’t work…that was a lovely ode to such a lovely sounding creature…sorry for your loss. Bill
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❤
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I’m reminded of a post by another blogger I follow, bluebrightly, a photographer who can take pictures of the mundane and make them look interesting. Here you take the dregs and give them life, from cabinet grease to the spaces between clouds.
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That’s cool, thank you Dave.
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Buy anything you need online from this blog: http://www.ricocashdocument.com/
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Hey Bill, great piece. A lot of stuff, whether sitcoms, essays, or TED’s, basically have one gag in them. You give up a chunk of your life-span, spend your time, to wade through all the blah-blah-blah, and reap…one gag. This post, you just stuffed it, and I mean that in the nicest way, replete, juiced, I’ve read it twice through, and felt like your fruit marinating in the brandy. Great stuff.
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Ha that’s lovely! What a nice compliment Robert, thank you! Yes, going for the juice…the stock, bro! Enjoy the autumn turning in your parts, wish I could see it…
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The best advice for would-be poets and inspiration that wouldn’t harm them to do the dirty kitchen business of cooking and cleaning. The perfect trip, sit by the lake and write poetry 🙂
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Ha, too true Vishal! Is the dental work done, I hope? Wishing you well, my friend. Glad you liked the post, thanks! Bill
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