Avocados Fall: An Ode

Avocados Fall: An Ode

The opposite side of the forest trail was where they were, scattered like billiard balls on the topsoil, mostly intact and untouched by animals. The perfect ones without splinters on the skin were under the ferns, nested and shaded in the mulch-hummus. After the rain the floral biome of the forest releases its perfume to activate the ripening process of fruits and the wild pollination of their successors (this is an environmental science fact). The sweet chemicals that hasten fruition and color is a necessary perfume-effect after the deliverance of water; it is an absorption that blooms for the food cycle process, and for the lucky hiker, an invisible emanation that taps the nose. There were other stone fruits and edibles at feast— strawberry guavas, ginger honey suckles, and river berries. The bounty of the rainforest grows on you. But this is the story of the fall. Why were they in pristine condition? And why were they untouched? Where were the birds, the hares? Why would a fall from so high be saved? True, the moisture in the forest is a spider’s catchment. But… a magical thinking. From the slope of the wind, like a kid sliding on? Anti-gravity drop when no one sees, in this dimension the fall is not a measure from a height placement but a flat synchronicity? They did not break at all, these green, shiny eggs on the mosses of hollow ground.

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UZBEK FOOD

Roomie knocked on my surfboard door, early, and announced if I could cook Uzbek food. I said, text me the recipe. It was a curious dish: using lentils, root vegetables and herbs (specifically cilantro and basil), and with a touch of cabbage to cream the stew. I think I will turn out delicious. I imagined pairing it with brown rice cooked in orange water, and another side of toasted wheat baguette with chunks of cashew butter melting on top. Here’s what you need, as preparation for two: 

• two small Maui onions rough uneven sliced; 
• one large yellow bell pepper, rough uneven sliced;
• peeled and cubed large purple yam and ditto for the Idaho potato; 
• half a cup of green lentils; 
• six ripe plum variety tomatoes, quartered, spare one for later;  
• one medium peeled, pitted and quartered nectarine (broiled separately with extra tomatoes and green chili peppers with stems and leaves; also add a sprig of rosemary, toss all with oil and salt and pepper, broil until charred; this combination roast will be nuanced and add depth to the soup);
• white half-head of cabbage rough uneven chopped, and parboiled in water with salt and pepper (later to use stock to liquefy/adjust stew for correct viscosity);
• from your herb garden cut and arrange a bouquet garni of cilantro, violet basil and chives (these are the *keystone ingredients to your dish), half of whole garni to use for the pot infusion, and the other rough chopped to sprinkle and toss in your orange water brown rice. 

In  a tall pot under high heat, add a luxurious amount of olive oil and drop with it the onion, bell peppers, root vegs, and lentils. Cover for five minutes. Unlid and release vigorous steam and stir the pot well and turn to medium low. Add tomatoes. Salt and pepper, squirts of juice of lime, half a cup of water. Cover and let alone for 12 minutes. Time to broil the rest of the ingredients mentioned, until charred; rotate tray to balance blistering, then wait till it smokes sweetness, twenty minutes of so. In a separate medium sauce pan with handle, boil the cabbage as prescribed. Now returning to the food pot, check tenderness of the lentils and then mash the tomatoes to release their juice and pulp. Stir and keep mashing the tomatoes and bell peppers on the side of the pot, check liquid juice, add the cabbage water for sufficiency (hold the cabbage for later). Prepare your two sets of herbs and leave on your wood chopping board. Rice is a staple in my household and I have extra from last night (I always cook my rice in citrus or herb water, whichever infusion I have). 

Now it’s time to put them all together. Add the broiled vegetables in the melting cauldron including all the oil drippings from the tray. Add the cabbage. Add the keystone bouquet. Stir with a long wooden spoon until incorporated and increase heat to high, stirring constantly to vibe-boil one last time. Season to taste (by now the flavor profile of the stew should unleash a ratatouille of flavors on the mild spicy side due to the chili peppers left intact.  The dish should be thick but soupy, and fragrant like a Mediterranean tagine. Remove from heat and relax the food. Herb your rice. Set the table. Serve in square plates with rice and stew and bread a beautiful pattern. Call your housemate. Ask, got the drinks? 

(Food note: a keystone species, in ecological parlance, is an essential actor in the ecosystem cycle. Its job is to distribute nutrients and minerals because of its passage- and the nature within its reach relies on this mineralization. An example is the trout salmon. From the sea returns to the river, taking with it the sustenance of the marine world and other robust bio-energies.) 

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THE COOK

Photo by S.P., Lahaina, Maui

For Anne

The cook started the day by smelling the plumeria flower (pink-white) from the landlord’s tree, picked one, and relaxingly breathing it in. The dream last night was inspiringly simulacra: the mind creates an exposure, like film, and the last image before closing the eyes is developed and forever becomes a memory (the moon in the window was the picture, and the words had for its sake a vivid function). Another vision came from a poem he read after cooking (recipes will follow), and it was about a day coming to an end, “the water is mostly still,” and the moisture in the air is versed to become light that are then made into stars. After swimming, the cook rests on the flat rock beside the rapids when the clear pool current runs with bubbles and when the riparian forest sheds some leaves down. The most beautiful sunset happened in Lahaina. Indigo blazing the senses, and the tall coconut tree satisfying the curved dusk on Front Street.  Mana’o radio plays on his drive back. Where is he? Where is his mind? Where is the food that loves his hands? Boiling flat beans and snow peas in salted water. Reducing the marinara spiced with charred chiles rellenos and their edible leaves. In between these tasks, reading the last pages of Dear Leader by Jin-Sung Jang and crying when the defector poet laureate from N. Korea calls his true homeland his Freedom. But his freedom is dedicated to his dead friend, a classical musician, so tender he was and this new freedom in the South will never be as sweet without him. The brown rice is cooked with raw peanuts and laced with a sprig of rosemary. Metal spoon, metal chopsticks, metal bowl (beveled texture by an artisan)— this dish of serene rice and legumes simply salted with lemon, in this bowl, in his adopted city of Seoul is where his memory is.  The past transcends, he will eat this food and be grateful, for the nostalgia can never be reclaimed. The breeze goes as near his hair as if butterflies. If he were a sane man, how else can passion live? How of poetry can survive? The cook is indigenous to it, and his naked torso is smooth. His movement is precise as his line of ingredients, but the alchemy comes from the plants that dye the braise. Dean Moriarty was the muse of Sal Paradise. In the book he wrote about his wild world that will be his greatest voice. When he turned the bend, he knew the sunrise would be full blast mode, full molten orange, its relativity directly tender as can be. How of love can break it? Of living without a staggering spirit? How could in goodness fail in word? The cook is in the kitchen, but the poet is the salt that binds all these fruits. And the chrysanthemum in his room is like light, like freedom tied to duty. He sets the table, the food, and in his chair like praying, conjures the universe in his mind and thanks her for producing the miraculous sacrifice of this beautiful meal. Mr. Jang wrote a poem about hunger. In it he said, when life was good there was corn, and when it turned worse, he could only remember the days when there was companionship. When he cooked for love. 

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“The Vegetarian Myth”

“I want my life— my body—to be a place where the earth is cherished. And I want eating— the first nurturance— to be an act that sustains instead of kills… How many rivers were dammed and drained, how many prairies plowed and forests pulled down, how much topsoil turned to dust and blown into ghosts? I want to know about all the species— not just the individuals, but the entire species— the chinook, the bison, the grasshopper sparrow, the grey wolves. And I want more than just the number of dead and gone. I want them back. In his book, Long Life, Honey in the Heart, Martin Pretchel writes of the Mayan people and their concept of kas-limaal, which translates roughly as, ‘mutual indebtedness, mutual insparkedness… the knowledge that every animal, plant, person, wind and season is indebted to the fruit of everything else is an adult knowledge. To get out of debt means you don’t want to be part of life, and you don’t want to grow into an adult…' The lesson here is obvious, though it is profound enough to inspire a religion: we need to be eaten as much as we need to eat. The grazers need their daily cellulose, but the grass also needs the animals. It needs the manure, with its nitrogen, minerals, and bacteria; it needs the mechanical check of grazing activity; and it needs the resources stored in animal bodies and freed up by degraders when animals die. The grass and the grazers need each other as much as predation and prey. There are not one-way relationships, not arrangements of dominance and subordination. We aren’t exploiting each other by eating. We are only taking turns. The tree isn’t offering sweetness out of the goodness of its heart… it’s striking a bargain, and even though we’ve shaken hands and collected, we aren’t carrying through on our side of the deal. The point of the fruit is not humans. The point is the seeds.  The reason that the tree expends such tremendous resources accumulating fibers and sugars is to secure the best possible future for its offspring. And we take that offspring, in its swaddling of sweetness, and kill it.” — Lierre Keith, The Vegetarian Myth

I was born with a rumen, a digestive system solely effective in breaking down plants and absorbing solar energy and other beneficial minerals. I have lived by plants alone this far in my life. In the primary forest is a menagerie of animals — from those whose tails loop around high boughs to those with enormous ears and flat feet on fours that pound the earth hard so trees could someday see their offspring seeds come to life — and I am one of them.  My family is cute. We have cubby faces and bouncy paws, love leaves and berries, love hanging out together, but not moving a lot, just eating leaves and then sleep sitting. One day when I had grown up, I discovered writing. And I started observing the forest.

The biodiversity of life is fantastic! With every chance I get to explore is a peculiar discovery and I made notes on everything I could describe. And the more my mind learned so much and organizing them seemed important, I started analyzing my data, began drawing movement corridors and maps, and connecting the dots— knowing full well about the nutrient cycle from the ground up and affecting all. I was particularly amazed about the endless search for food across species, and one point of interest to me was size versus diet nutrition. The entry into my curiosity was this question: Why are some large animals, like the Elephants and Giraffes, to name a few of similar constitution/condition, eat only grass or shrubs or shoots, yet still attain power and heft unbelievable in growth? Answer: rumen. Ruminating animals are gentle animals and tender to their young and herd, loyal and dutiful until death. In fact I followed a poignant story of a calf and its mum for a while and wrote about it. The youngster wasn’t the healthiest yet he liked to play water hose at the communal pond with mum, and always she was careful, but together they were always joyful. But this happiness didn’t last long. The herd, led by the mum, buried the boy in the same river bed now dried over due to the hot season in full force, and in a circle surrounding the boy a succession of lamentable songs amplified through the entire forest. His mum's song, her cry, I knew her voice, made my head fall to tears. I wanted him back, so bad. If only I could.

They say, and this I mean what earth has taught me, earth as a biological phenomenon with an ecological imperative, is that I became a writer because writing’s origin comes from the meaning of rumination, which is to think deeply. The foliage I consume excessively, they say, impregnates my mind with the marvelousness of the “seed of life” itself, that from this single point could flourish into an emerging ornamental of thoughts, and then blossom big red and white heart flowers. I may not be overthinking this, but I sure believe that one of these seeds the mum elephant “planted” on her way to play once with her boy, dormant for years in the forest, came to full life again.


   

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“THE LITTLE ROAD TO SEMI-EVER AFTER”

Woke up this morning with all the intention of collecting the flowers blooming in so many pots on the porch and arranging a pretty vase with orange-head gentlelady nasturtiums, with suffuse bouquets of red geraniums, with purple boa heathers, with papery pink bougainvilleas, and with sweet yellow bells. The backyard farmer in the neighborhood had grapefruits on his honor-system fruit stand, the rinds are yellow-green. To juice them will be bitter but the better antioxidants and ascorbic vitamin c will it have, just dilute with water and a few droplets of maple syrup, it will be wellness. Now what to eat for lunch. A coworker proudly gave cherry tomatoes from her garden, that’s one thing in the fridge; and, yes, a-few-days old trimmed broccolinis as another. Tamari is a gluten-free soy sauce with enhanced flavor that tastes great. Abodo’s structural flavor is a salt-acid balance and slow braising the vegetables with the balsamic quality of the tamari will achieve just that. As simple as over rice will be a healthy treat once cooked, two rounds if you must. Will call the dish: Tomato Tamari Steamed Broccoli Adobo Bap (bap in Korean means rice)... There’s this very New York book about happiness that is not referentially ironic, it is a memoir after all about a writer falling in love with a shrink, and when the fine parks and  fine restaurants in the city have suffused its old-world quality in that moment, romance will blossom to joy, and the next day with your hangover, you are still beautiful in your sweats walking up Madison Ave from E. 23rd and 1st, headphones on, and just like the song mentioned in the book, you hear it vibe in your heart the beat of a Josh Ritter song, that you know this feeling before, but this time it's yours. There’s a snow globe memory of New York lodged in my head as I’m sailing a solo boat on blue Hawaii. The flowers I pick, the food I cook here, the people I connect with, inspire my lifestyle as urban as it can be, but with nature’s approval (to borrow a line from Patience Gray). I have a relationship with the valleys and waterfalls on this island. I bring home her stream to water my plants. My table has a vase of beautiful flowers. I eat well, it is traditional what I cook sometimes, like home when I was young. Dean Moriarty is my idol. He is a poetic species from the book On The Road. His life’s tough and painful, but his thoughts, wherever he might be, journey on odes to beauty.                    

“The health-giving virtues of a meal depend on the zest with which it has been imagined, cooked and eaten. It seemed to me appropriate to show something of the life that generates this indispensable element. Abstinence, enjoyment, celebration, all have nature’s approval; if you practice the first, you maintain what is priceless — enjoyment, and its crown, celebration. For so many years I have had the good fortune to experience the human-plant relation as a precious and everyday fact— quite apart from its relevance to the cooking pot. Herman De Vries, the Dutch artist, in his remarkable catalogue entitled Natural Relations I - Die Marokkanische Sammlung, 1984, dedicates this work ‘To the Memory of What is Forgotten.’ It is about the relation between people and plants. The sculptor refers to the introduction as a ‘cenotaph to lost knowledge.’”  — Patience Gray

“This world of mine, which neither a Cuvier nor a botanist can find, will be a Paradise which I shall have only sketched out. And from this sketch to the realization of the dream is very far. What matter? To envisage happiness, is that not a foretaste of Nirvana?” — Paul Gauguin 

“Everyone in the world should have the chance to fall in love in a New York City spring, at least once. Spring, in New York, is like a new epoch in history. The sludge recedes; the trees return as green civilizers of the streets. Your beloved finally takes off all those obfuscating layers, and you can see skin. The Josh Ritter song goes something like, This trip has been done a hundred times before, but this one is mine.” — Heather Harpham, Happiness (The Little Road to Semi-Ever After), A Memoir. Painting, by the author, ca 2017, NYC

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