OF THE COOK

 

The essential thing in a poet is that he builds us his world.    —Ezra Pound

I met a girl (a fellow traveler) on the bus from Gilroy, Ca., and she pointed on the GPS of her phone the route from the airport where we boarded together (before that borrowing a buck for bus fare) to Chinatown. Why did you want to get off there? curious. To want to eat dim sum and congee, I said. And you don't have that food where you came from? No. She wasn't particularly impressed; if only she knew this decision of mine to do first thing after landing was the stuff that stirred my soul. You're here. And just at the stop was the Golden Palace, the doors were open (it was almost 11am; opening time for Sunday dim sum service), and the timing couldn't be more perfect - the silver carts were being prepped by elderly Chinese women in aprons carrying bamboo steamers of har goa and shumai and rice congee, I was showed at my table and immediately hot tea was served, the usual condiments were at the table - hot sauce, mustard, soy sauce - the demi saucer was there of course for this trinity, I poured tea, relaxed and looked around, an aquarium of live fish (very typical), round tables and large family groups are coming, accents bespoke of the natural accounting of the dim sum varieties and a stamp of your order as pointed was left on your table to track. I think the invention of dim sum is a compelling evidence why food matters to sustenance and comfort. One high-level dim sum I've had was at this dirty (in a sense sweaty staff and unkempt room, the floors sticky) restaurant in Shanghai moons ago, and it's called the xia long bao: there's captured soup in the shu maui and what you do to release it is to bite on its side to puncture the dough cavity and then immediately slurp, drain out the juice - and then dip the morsel in vinegar soy sauce laced with pickled ginger and you're in heaven! food heaven, that is, with a Far East register. The rice porridge is an elevated experience of a traditional silky soup with a hearty punch, not to mention the umami given the garlic and scallions bouquet garni emotional temperature of the congee. A "century egg" is typically found sunken in the congee, I remember growing up and the kid in me thought the egg had a funky taste and smell to it, but I realized with education from my traditionalist family that the century egg was like aging cheese in its mold and the resulting creaminess to the palate exposed a devilish good quality to it to shake your appetite senses and open them up. I use food to write poetry when I need to make my world a little bigger, especially for my heart. I've been away from my New York City for a while now, and it's like this absence was going on so long a vacation and I never returned home. My travels overseas - which is "existentially" part of what I call "home" (I have a nomadic nature, in the sense journeys of the soul one takes to find it) - have also been deferred. Ezra Pound had translated into English a great armada of Oriental literature works at the turn of the 20th century for the Occidental audience, like Japanese haikus, and importantly, Chinese ideograms (kan-gi), and of course their poetry. Poetry gives, and this man builds.  (PS. I couldn't write my blog yesterday; I was at the "Golden Palace" and writing, out of respect to eating there, wasn't allowed. But here it is.)