OLIVES AND EDIBLE PETALS

 "It was wonderful two years ago: all I had to do was to close my eyes and my head would start buzzing like a bee-hive. I could recapture the taste of kouskouss, the smell  of olive oil which fills the streets of Burgos at noon, the scent of fennel floating through the Tetuan streets, the piping of Greek shepherds; I was touched."   (Jean-Paul Sartre)

Inadvertently in my readings I would come across food literature like the aforementioned quote, and often I find it in novels not about food - somewhat appropriate, if fortuitous, to start a blog. Here’s a secret (“recipe”): writers already have a working framework they hang on to in their heads and tenaciously will shop for details, as I’m a book cook, so there I go. My “starter” is lifted from a diary of free association from an existentialist bard - a bit heavy, yes, but his “bread” is optional. (I was actually thinking of bruschetta in the title but opted not; it’s a figurative decision - some savories you allow to bloom late in the taste.) I wilted a whole head of butter lettuce with the olives and petals, and in the braising added sunflower seeds and alfalfa sprouts. I was craving warm salad for a change, and thought it would be great with toasted pumpernickel German flat bread, then splashing plum vinegar and red pepper flakes over my plate as finishing touch.

"Edible wild greens are available everywhere seasonally for the picking but great care must be used. If you are in earnest about pursuing this economical, healthful hobby, consult an authoritative text or better still a local enthusiast. 

"Here is a charming quick-trick decoration. Just before serving, select some delicately colored, open-petaled flowers, like hollyhocks. Remove the stamen. Cut off all but 3/4 inch of the stem. Arrange the flower on the cake. Place a small candle in the center of each one."     -  (excerpts in the) Joy of Cooking

Sunday isn't only food-writing day it is also a synthesis of sorts becoming of me a hands-on cook who appreciates food's utility for health as essentially for my long, humble practice in the poetic arts. I don't really have much going on in the island, but I know for sure that my proprietress will have a bag of vegetables (and fruits if I'm lucky) waiting for me on the staircase every Sunday, and that's an assignment to fulfill in the kitchen because already love was in them in the giving and I will get busy for love in return. The beauty of her generosity also comes in a paper note attached to the bag telling me about cute stuffs. Gary, the mountain apples came from a yard up the hills! By the way, you've got mail, too (with a smiley emoticon). It's hard not to be grateful in life when relationships are forged like a handmade pendant wrought intricate and delicate and when you open it there's a heartwarming picture of a mother and son-like friendship. The caring is so deep - and food becomes communion.           

Coring those apples and peeling the skin in stripes to keep the tannins in the taste and slicing up identically the cucumbers seeded, and making a quick pickled salad for a side to a stewed eggplant-carrots-baba ghanoush is an assembly production on my line (compartmentally I have a running filtered water sink to wash and prep the vegetables, and on the wood chopping board counter space my produce taking turns on the knife, and finally to the hot pot where it'll all come together as dish du jour). Even if so for a few years now, I'm happy to be alone, I'm alright and healthy, the future is going to be O.K., because I know someone downstairs I share, we share, our food and home, I have a beautiful place to write and abundant provisionally is where we live like in an orchard. Sartre has written about the human condition from the lens of philosophy, however they are idealized in common thread of events one belongs to under the skin. He writes about he in the tactile and in the approximate sense of a standard life day-to-day he enspirits. The French brought artichoke plants and culinary flowers for cultivation in the highlands of Da Lat, Vietnam, and they taught the locals to use these flowers in soups and stews, and in garnishing condiments/amuse bouche. They make food look pretty and tasting another level of satisfaction. My mind reads and travels when I write, and land on my plate. As simple as that, I finish cooking and earnestly eat what I've begotten from all this living.      

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WHEELED WITH THE STARS

 

Postre is dessert in Spanish-Argentinian. Posterity are descendants in the nomenclature intended to pass on to thee. My late mother used to say that prosperity comes in round shape and I should never forget to put them on the dining table in anticipation of a jubilee. Golden coins of milk chocolate were, to the delight of a child, my favorite symbols of receiving those shiny treasures. The nesting pigeon outside the window at work, when I go for a break on the fifth floor to have a look, have two of those egg-symbols underneath her feather-belly and I feel she's feeling grand. Recently I had a layover in L.A.X. for seven hours coming back from a business trip, an old friend lives nearby and came to fetch me bearing gifts of homemade fudge filled with walnuts and cherries, they were so specially wrapped in Korean thimble canisters repurposed to render her creativity, of course to my delight, and presented them on a matrix styrofoam board with red holes like a game of buga-shadara. 

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world, a line from Rilke I have since embodied after finding my voice in poetry, the earth a clock, on the other hand a compass on my heart. In the town of Makawao upcountry is a Japanese-run bakery selling hot cross buns today, and I love those rolls with hot black tea because of the raisins and liqueur candied orange peels in them. There's a dish I would like to make in my head to celebrate posterity, a Mom's recipe (a prosperity food) given to us children to give luck and good fortune in the years ahead when she might be no longer be around for us, it's a dish of meat balls and angel hair noodles and green squash soup, it was so comforting to eat it was delivering her love in winsome ways, in my mind now it is also bequeathing a promise. I have much to be grateful for in life, especially with a few true friends in my circle I have been celebrating with, be it tiny achievements or big, professionally and personally (even artistically), with them around me the world is warm and kind in the deep sense of belonging or giving, and of never to feel alone. It means the world to me to be treated with love as I would in default mode my nature to love begetting it growing up steeped in food of love. I thank them for their courage, evermore. Love to me is nothing short of courage. 

I wheeled with the stars, and my heart broke lose on the wind (Pable Neruda).     

   

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A NIGHT OUT

     

     In Lahaina the art galleries on Front St. are impressive curations on set and the for-tourists food hold their own, one can juxtapose the two activities together and come out with a good time on a Friday night with a friend. There was an original Dali for 4.2 mil., a waxed depiction of the death of Christ on the cross; there was a San Diego-based bronze sculptor populating an elephant with caricatures and trinkets of Hindu gods and symbols, albeit kitschy but the detailed craftsmanship was an amazing feast for the eyes, it’s like seeing a 24-carat mammalian golden universe in frozen fireworks. A sidewalk professional artist was painting the exoskeleton of an angel fish in fire orange and neon indigo while a curious young girl with her parents watching was transfixed and the artist said to her, Go with your guts when you paint. Kimo’s next door is a seafood and steak massive restaurant, two floors with ocean view, my pal and I had a decent salad to share with carrot bread, and a blue Hawaiian kombucha on the rocks .00001 proof, while dissecting the merits of Peter Lik’s photography. One particular piece by the Australian-born artist stayed with me: the Maui rainbow tree renewing its vivid stripes after the rain, a towering 8-ft tall framed-vision of spectral notes soaked in forest dew highlights, with a fifty-two hundred dollars price tag. It was impossible to have captured the big wave in that cross-sectional curl, I asked the curator, logistically it was a life or death decisive moment on the camera, but there it was like a dancing fountain in the most dangerous waver run up condition out at sea, was the artist out of his mind? The cherry pie cobbler was delivered to our table toasted around the edges and clumps and smelling great. Butter, flour and miscellaneous compote make for the perfect burning of the crust in the ramekin as the jelly is oozing, and because of this concentrated fire April on the island begins to spring, the torch on the balustrade was a song to Molokai. We looked good that night, prepared for a little glamour barring none. Gallery-hopping presented its surprises at the eyes of the beholder critically in love with a work— and the discussions that follow revealed the art even more. I found my companion in the showroom speaking with apparently the artist-in-residence and overhearing their conversation about "process" I thought diminished the value of art in its pregnant form if you have to explain it. And true enough the artist didn’t allow encumbrances to creativity having to articulate it a priori. He said, You just go for it. (Sounds familiar.) No one can explain the origin of beauty, its source cannot be embodied, I argued, history judges art because of its timelessness. It could be that to debate art is part of the glamour of a night out when art’s effects compositionally overwhelm us. And that’s what it's supposed to do: to turn you in its direction you haven’t seen before. It is only beginning to tell, but look long. It’s a rare evening to celebrate in this island gigantic concepts ensuing gigantic geniuses that made their works possible — Matisse, Durer, Picasso, Dali and emerging local talents following their footsteps — and realizing the nature of passion as cumulative in our understanding their accomplishments that are larger than life itself. And our food and wine capping the night never tasted so much better.    
 

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INNER HARBOR

Hidden, as a violet wedged, Humbly amid the moss, it breathes, Still with love that leaves, Along the gentle white curve to its edge a flow, in wind forcing travel, To be lost where the curve bids it go. Often my dream has played, My soul, Has fashioned it a reservoir, It is the enthralling olive, the seductive flute, The burnt almond of heaven…

— Arthur Rimbaud

Just this morning because I came so far, I arrived in Baltimore, Maryland. The Lyft driver, originally from Ukraine, a pleasant elder man, dropped me off at the heart of Inner Harbor and bid me a good time, and to enjoy local food, and he liked the fact I was looking for a small, independent bookstore. I am only here for six hours to walk around the Chesapeake quay, until my true destination tonight. A street conversation. Miss Shirley’s is legendary, Southern food, breakfast of stoneground grits and fried green tomatoes, there down the promenade to your right. And I went. Not bad. Cajun seasoned and hometown gravy between the decadence. The friendly waitress wrote down on a piece of paper: Mt. Vernon district and the Walters Art Museum on Charles St. The weather on the east coast is nice, sixties, sunny, brisk. In town on the cobbled streets a couple of times I stepped on red gummy bears that flattened like a coin in the traction underside of my golf shoes. I must’ve only slept a couple of hours on the plane, and my jet lag coming from Hawaii standard time hasn’t sunk in, but I know I’ll be tired soon taking this short excursion outside the business I came here to do, and I need a whole night’s rest for that work. In the marbled courtyard of Walters one statue (of an assembly of classical sculptures) was a bronze Mercury, the Greek god of human speed, wearing a helmet but missing the wings on his heels. The gallery was lit by the sky, and preternaturally he rose out. I fell asleep in the gallery bench and conked out for a good fifteen minutes, maybe longer, hugging my backpack, who knows who were looking, but no one bothered this weary traveler not even the blazer-clad security. I woke up cold and dreamy-eyed, and heard people about, yes I am continentally away from home and my comfort is spare as a bird in flight, a tourist in another universe of consciousness. Writing can be a harbor of safety for now, but tomorrow I will find my footing in class. I will wear an aloha shirt so everyone knows where I’m from, and what I really do in, and came to do for paradise. 

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