JUST EAT!

"That is happiness, to be dissolved in something complete and great."   - Willa Cather

     When I visited my neighbor, Auntie Pattie, yesterday, who was making a bird-feather lei, she immediately pointed under the corner table and offered raw macadamia nuts on shells still dusty in the sack and said to take as much as I wanted (she even handed me a plastic bag, here, put them here). Auntie is an artisan by commission, living in a mix-use home doubling as craft shop by day, with her longtime partner Auntie Lynn as co-owner, two generous souls who've always treated like kin, I have a beautiful chime instrument hanging in my bedroom window handmade by the aunties for my birthday composed of origami paper varnished with resin for wind endurance and assembled to a bronze temple bell from S. Korea for propitious luck; as I am writing this story the bell is ringing good music on its own volition. Sometimes I wonder about my life now far removed from New York City, geographically I have turned around from chaos to serenity, from immensity to simplicity, and to draw from quiet the power of poetry absent prosthesis stimulation (to borrow an ontological term from a book I finished reading last night). By choice other than writing my only recreation here on the island is home cooking, it is an exercise for my health to be sure, but it is also I feel very much deeply a continuity of tradition honoring the influences passed on by loved ones through my informative years around food watching my folks cook and building my imagination for it ever since and ever more - so I just keep "eating." To me food is both material and immaterial, at once a source of energy and a source of beauty, I have a muse in my food. An old friend I miss dearly I am dedicating a tea I'm brewing today sunning under the beach weather outside made to flavor nicely of tarragon leaves and ginger root to pour over ice cubes later unsweetened at around 2, when the heat is on. There is a culinary nomenclature that brings vegetables to their absolute finest and tenderness, and it's lovingly called braise. Chards, collards, broccolini braise is the centerpiece visual of this blog, it is a mound of decadent greens for no holds barred eating, and party to a just-shucked avocado at its most delectable ripeness (my mission is to fully satiate myself this weekend, I need to nourish my round-the-clock metabolism I am not certain why physiologically I am always on overdrive; on the table, too, is a sweet-savory-tangy grain-oats-lima beans bowl with huckleberries, and I will be chasing them all down with sesame milk, protein filled, a new alternative plant-based beverage sold at Mana). All designed on my table are edible realities I consume before their "art" is over - notice the microgreens blurred on the background how lush they are and ready-to-cut salad on stage to my mouth. I don't have a recipe or any prescribed technique for you today, reader friends. I, instead, have only a hunger to feed both physical and existential, therefore I eat. And finally summing up, grateful for your indulgence: I am tied to a writing life like the chime in my bedroom window fed by the spirit of the breeze. And this why I came to the sea.