Ars Memoriae

At Stumptown Coffee, on the corner of southeast 34^th and Belmont, he’s found a stable locus for a long stretch of present moment, discovered a smooth indentation in his emotional geography that's managed to contain him quietly for ten or fifteen minutes. He’s been pulling swirled espresso patterns through his milk foam with a black plastic stir stick from the girl at the bar. No one’s been able to share this moment with him – nor will they ever – it’s been his own private thing, his own silent heart-beating, his very own breath that’s risen and fallen in solitude.

Closing his eyes, he’s logged the scene and all it contains. It's all a waypoint now, a marked spot on a cognitive map, a destination to be held in his mind along with the cast-iron color of the sky, the blur of that old Buick cruising through the red light outside, and doleful regard of the aging Blue Tick hound roped to the bus-stop bench outside the door. He opens his eyes and sees that he’s coming here again. He knows the place, knows the experience, knows how to find it exactly - the scene inside, the scene out there, every thought, every emotion, every pause.

He’s been sitting in his chair barely budging this whole time, not even tapping his feet like he’s always done. It's been longer than ten or fifteen minutes now, longer than he thought. There's been time for the clouds to come in from the heaving grey ocean, to sweep across the tops of the Coast Range hills and wash their raindrops over the window in front of the pine counter where he’s been drinking the best latté in the city, chewing the sugared end of an almond croissant and thinking about strange attractors, about patterns he’s been sensing in his dreams, about what he’s been able to feel, about what he’s tried to know, about those images that’ve been troubling him, about those that've filled him with an impossible joy. He's not been trying to make sense of things at all, nor to editing the things he's been feeling - he's been trying to see things just as they are, to remember things just as they've been, to know them just like this, like this for always...

A Great Spanish Cheese...

As I rolled up to Straw Hat’s barn just before dusk this afternoon, intending to catch up on things a bit, I pulled a special package out of the Subaru’s glove box, something I’d purchased up at Pastaworks on Hawthorne Boulevard, a gastronomic pick-me-up that I wanted to share with him. He came strolling out of the sheet metal woodshed he’d tacked on to the old hip-roofed barn, zipping up his pants – he uses his stacks of firewood as an occasional latrine – and hollering at his dogs to shut up, can of Hamm’s in his hand. I could hear Hank Williams Jr. blaring out of the open side door. As always, it was like walking onto a perfectly arranged, well thought out stage, a set just waiting for the actor to arrive.

Now, I knew that Straw’d been considering leaving his wife for the past few months - although he didn’t care to talk about it much - and could probably use a feel-good-moment. I also knew that for all his hillbilly pretense, the man was a sucker for high-grade cheese of any kind. I figured I’d cheer him up a bit by sharing my newly acquired hunk of black-rinded Spanish Montenebro with him. He was a man who appreciated anything that came out of a goat, didn’t shower much, stank to high-heaven, and my calculations told me that he could see fit to enjoy this ill-mannered lump of aged udder-juice, that it wouldn't offend his sensibilities. I tossed him the brown paper sack and told him to go to town with the contents.

Once we’d waded across the hog wallow to the converted chicken coop he’d set up his nascent bachelor pad in, he pulled the blue-and-white waxed paper wrapped bundle out of the bag, set it on his cutting board, and his entire demeanor changed. Suddenly, it was like I was back with the guy I knew before he returned from his life-altering years of taunting at the hands of Oxford's wealthy elite, like he'd turned back into the geeky giant named Vance, the kid that read Brillat-Savarin for fun in tenth grade. He cut creamy white slices from the center of the sample, spread them across the accompanying water crackers slowly and carefully. Most interesting of all was the way that he savored each bite that he took – first sniffing the soft spread cheese, then popping it into his mouth and chewing slowly with his eyes closed, finally, tilting his head back and revelling in the aftertaste. It was a total change, a complete transmogrification from hickafied asswipe to discriminating gourmand. I couldn’t help but feel a little proud of myself.

“Where’d this cheese come from,” he asked me after lingering over his first few bites. I told him what I knew about it, “I think it’s from Cataluña, and I know that it’s made from goat’s milk, rolled in ash, aged until it is sharp and kinda earthy-dirty-funky, and it costs thirty-dollars a pound up at the cheese shop I go to in Portland…” He cut me off right there, and just as quickly as he’d disappeared from the scene, my crotch-scratching, beer-guzzling, about-to-be-single jackass of a friend reappeared, blurting out his sole assessment of the deliciously wild cheese, “well it tastes like I’m licking goat-balls…” As I walked back to my car, I wondered what I was expecting him to say - given his chosen role, and the part he’s decided to play - and besides, there was a good chance he knew what he was talking about...

Hell No! - The Canned Nut Experience

The first time I ate roasted chestnuts was during a dinner, enjoyed at a rustic family owned Ferme-Auberge on the outskirts of Pommard, in the middle of an exceptionally cold French winter, twelve hours before large and heavy snowflakes fell like so many goose-feathers over the leafless vineyard rows which occupied the vast and varied terroirs sloping up to the west of the tree-lined Route d’Autun. We’d been drinking for some time – sampling the wines of Henri Jayer, and the lesser wines of his son Gilles, beginning with the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits and continuing through to Echézeaux – and were collectively quite carried away when the course containing these seasonal, traditionally lauded nuts arrived on the communal tables. At first, whether due to the very expensive and very pleasant buzz I had going, or due simply to lack of familiarity, I didn’t recognize what I was eating. It took the man seated next to me, a man I'd affectionately nicknamed St. Denis, to clarify the point by explaining “they’re marrons, you know, chestnuts roasted on an open fire, all of that, haven’t you had ‘em before?”

Of course, I hadn’t, but from that point on, they had their own spot on my list of seriously underrated delicacies. To the degree that I can, I try to take advantage of chestnuts wherever and whenever they are at hand. There have been highlights such as the Gnocchi with Poussin, Chestnuts and Butter which I enjoyed as an appetizer at Le Pigeon some weeks back. And there have been disasters – in particular, the time we’d planned an Organic Chocolate Torte with Toasted Chestnuts for a high-end banquet, a chocolate torte which arrived topped with sliced canned Chinese water chestnuts which the baker attempted to disguise by torching them beneath a propane burner. Most recently of all, there was Thanksgiving dinner, which falls nearer the latter, but still somewhere in between.

My mother set the story of the Thanksgiving chestnuts rolling down a bad alleyway by forbidding me to bring Brussels sprouts as one of my food contributions. During the busy week preceding the holiday, I didn’t give this too much thought. Really, I felt a perfunctory “whatever” about the whole thing. But as the good morning finally arrived, I realized that I’d be damned if I'd forgo enjoying my favorite tiny cabbage on my favorite holiday. The problem was that I’d not allotted enough time to shop at a grocery store which carried all the items I suspected would be needed. In particular, fresh chestnuts were looking like a long shot, and they were a vital part of my favorite recipe.

As it turned out, the local grocer only stocked water-packed cans of imported chestnuts, which are to fresh chestnuts what canned salmon is to fresh chinook – that is to say, total junk. As it was my only option, I bought a can and took it home. Though the Brussels sprouts cooked to their usual stinky al dente goodness, the poor waterlogged nuts simply lacked the granular and toothy texture, the presence of concentrated caramelizable sugars, the lingering earthy sweetness which make the fresh version so memorable. At the end of the meal, I’d enjoyed the free-range turkey, had tolerated what someone did to the mashed potatoes, and had again eaten two helpings of my grandmother’s rhubarb-apple cobbler - wondering how many more times I’d have the privilege. But all the preceding goodness was tempered when I noticed myself sifting through my plateful of steaming cruciferous ping-pong balls in an effort to pick out the insipid, flavorless, pathetic canned chestnuts. Sad the life...

Chemical Cocktails, Gueuze & A Beautiful Mistake...

She had a shock of straight black hair obscuring her right eye when I first saw her standing behind the powered-down turntable after a busted Kraków rave. From the moment she glanced in my direction and tilted up her chin, from the way she raised her hand and brushed this hair aside, I knew there was bound to be a very big problem, sensed that there was trouble coming into the midst of a calm stretch of life. Somewhere in my gut, I felt an urgency, an emotional shock which impelled me to run, to bolt off of the spotlit and nearly empty stage, to race out into the safety of the frost-bound roadway and make a preemptive escape from this leather-and-chrome clad Lilith, this sweetly curved snare whose ecstatic cinch had already begun to tighten about me. Of course, an animal – or a thirty-ish American - which feels the bite of the trap is already caught, already sentenced, already condemned, and so it was with me.

This big problem was a good friend of an old acquaintance, a former roommate of a hotheaded Ukrainian bubble-dancer named Ms. Emma Matyuschenko, whom I’d met on the rails several years before that night in a Polish warehouse. After several years of snail mail correspondence, I’d hooked back up with Emma at a Turkish café on Ghent’s Sleepstraat at the end of a quick trip to research an article on Belgium’s tradition of wild-fermented gueuze. We’d discussed getting together for several months prior to my visit and, as she lived just over an hour away by commuter train, meeting for lunch made perfect sense.

In a manner completely consistent with her hard-partying persona, she was ridiculously lit as she sat down across from me and ordered a plate of köfte from the cheap menu at the restaurant we’d agreed upon – a budget place I believe was called Gök, or something like that. The larger part of our meal conversation was dominated by wandering stories of her experimentations with what she called chemical cocktails, designer drug combinations which intended to disorient consciousness in novel ways. She’d come to know a Dutch organic chemist named Vig, an out-of-work brainiac who'd been working with mescaline derivatives, phenethylamines which impacted the brain’s neural network to create vivid and lengthy intoxications. Her peculiar behavior in Ghent was – by her own explanation – a result of a bar car martini spiked with three tabs of Xanax and thirty milligrams of a compound which Vig told her was 2C-E. Over the course of three hours, multiple courses, and countless rounds of raki, it was a challenge to keep her focused and reasonably lucid, but – as I’d never seen her sober – I was used to her emotional, physical, and psychological careenings.

Although she knew that I’d ticketed a flight back out of Brussels the next morning, she was insistent that the two of us needed to take a weekend trip to Poland to attend a rave which was being DJ’ed by someone she used to live with, an underground New Year’s Eve bash held in a grain warehouse just outside the Kraków city limits. Emma can be hard to disagree with. In fact, she can get abusive, horribly disrespectful, and even violent, when she wants something, when she is excited about something and someone tries to shoot her down. For all her self-confidence and no-nonsense character, she is prone to total meltdowns when things don’t go her way. Over the years, I’d come to know this about her, and wasn't excited by the prospect of dealing with her, of seeing her fall apart. That, combined with my not having any real plans for the holiday, added up to me agreeing to tag along.

Fast forward to the end of paragraph one, and I’m looking right at Mischka Uno’s hand as it slides along her hairline and down the smoothness of her cheek. And I’m wondering how that feels, how that would feel. That’s when I know I’m in it, stuck in a story that I didn’t see coming, sucked down deep to where I can’t see anything but her hand and her hair and her cheek and the way she’s bitten the little edge of her lower lip. At this moment, Emma stumbles in between us and makes introductions. She is talking, saying something, and Mischka is nodding, and I am nodding, and Emma keeps talking, but no one is hearing what she says through the nodding and the looking and the imagining. I hear myself say, when a quiet instant finally appears “Its nice to meet you, why don’t we go get some coffee, I know a place down by the Wisła, we can talk there.” And she nods and we walk out together into the light snowfall drifting down, following the stretched out succession of flake-studded parasols which defined the luminous range of the mercury-vapor streetlamps, saying nothing but heading to the same destination.

As it turned out, Mischka was a great kisser and attentive lover who happened to also be neurotic, jealous, manipulative, and – at any given moment - mean-spirited. I crashed at her flat for three weeks, making excuses to loved ones back home about the phenomenal wineries I was visiting in the foothills of the Tatras Mountains, about the finesseful Rieslings so reminiscent of the best that the Saar had to offer, making up lies to cover over our secret liaison. But it was doomed, as I think I always understood. Eventually, I just couldn’t take her headgames, couldn’t find the kinds of plausible excuses I'd need to justify my absence from home any longer. On the twenty-third morning of the beautiful lie, I left quietly in the deep purple of the pre-dawn hour, hitched a ride to Warsaw, had a simple breakfast of mazurek and black coffee in the waiting lounge at the Fryderyka Chopina airport, and flew back home to Kaua’i.

It is now some years since that morning, some years since I’ve seen or spoken to Mischka Uno, but she still sends me letters, still inundates my MySpace page with confessions of her enduring love, her sense of desperate abandonment, her naked yearning to be a part of my life again. Though it hurts me to do so, I generally ignore her. She is a damaged person, someone who would chip away at what I am proud to be, wear at me until I became something else entirely. I keep her secret from my wife and children, share nothing of the hours I spent wrapped up in her, lights turned low, head laid breathlessly on her breast. She is buried in the past, where she belongs, where she'll stay...

Polina & Emma Get Hitched!

I met Polina and Emma six and a half years ago while riding solo on the Baikal-Amur Mainline, a slave-labor built offshoot of the legendary Trans-Siberian Railway, a rough and often overlooked run through the wilds of Irkutsk and Buryatia. Just after the clanking diesel locomotive and its string of rusted sleeper cars crossed the north-flowing Lena river, they entered the four-berth kupé where I was bunking, looking for all the world like done-up mafia girls on their way to an afternoon of big-ticket shopping at Moscow’s newly trendy GUM arcade.

In fact they were just an eccentric and exceptionally hot lesbian couple, together and in love since they fled snow-bound Leningrad for seedy Amsterdam as rebellious adolescents in the volatile pre-perestroika 80’s. As I found out near the end of our first shared bottle of illicit Ukrainian samohon moonshine, they’d taken a three week break from their ‘show’ jobs, and were bound for a retreat with a collective ostensibly made up of elderly Tunguskan shamans and a rabble of young inner-spatial dilettantes who sought to learn the traditional use of the Fly Agaric, which their old ones called mukhomor. The incongruousness of it all was simply stunning.

While their heavy drinking and constant use of amphetamines were disturbing, their combination of stimulants and depressants led to a kind of streaming, unedited dialogue, an entertainment which knew neither sleep nor good taste. One moment, they might demonstrate their flexibility by bending over backward until the tips of their noses touched their heels, the next moment might find them lost in some untranslatable romantic dialogue, and at any time, one or the other might belch unapologetically. They were highly volatile – if endearing – young women, and they had a great deal to share, some of which was of enough lasting value to bother remembering.

Polina, the older and more extroverted, the more off of the two, was the one who explained to me her radical hypothesis which outlined – in a manner which was shockingly sensible to me even while I reclined in a completely plastered, flannel long johns attired state – the essential nature of the entire déja-vu phenomena. As she rattled on about it at an auctioneer's pace, she seemed utterly convinced of her assertion that the whole experience of déja-vu arises from our unique 'patterned' type of reincarnation. She described this, in her nearly incomprehensible, but compellingly exotic mangling of the Queen's English, as “some kinds of over-and-over lifes.” Though, I suspect she was engaged in some intellectual plagiarism when claiming the idea as her own, she insisted that a vision of the inner workings of this poorly understood paranormal 'sight' came to her after over-indulging in the Moroccan Blonde special at a Handboogstraat smoke-shop called De Dampkring.

According to Poli, we all exist eternally within a kind of closed loop, an ever-repeating cyclic life which sees each of our successive identical incarnations laid across the previous one, much like one xeroxed page lays over the carbon copy which preceded it. According to her revelatory vision, not all of these pages veil their predecessors completely, not all of our manifestations are as perfectly opaque as others, and this occasional experiential transparency serves as a déja-vu trigger. Where we normally see only the action we are engaged in, watch it unfolding in present-tense, this trigger, when pulled, allows us to see beneath the surface of our immediate life, to look back at the vague image of an identical action, or series of actions, which occurred in the past. Thus the feeling of déja-vu.

She hoped that the shamans would be able to confirm, to lend credence to what she believed. From where I stood, it really looked as though she’d developed way too much of an attachment to the entire subject. Something which Emma confirmed quietly to me the next morning, as Polina, barricaded in the lavatory, puked up half a bottle of Georgian red wine and a small amount of kasha with sour cream. Apparently, it was an obsession, and symbolic – to Emma’s mind – of Poli's increasingly imbalanced psychological state.

We parted ways at some anonymous whistle-stop east of Lake Baikal. I left to head south in search of interesting local cheeses. My new friends continued riding deep into the taiga, where – I learned after receiving a lengthy letter from the two of them – they spent a week out among the birch trees and dense bogs in the company of three traditionally costumed shamanic hucksters who stuffed them full of fungal deleriants, stole their money, their documents, and left them to make their own broke way back to Western Europe.

I haven't seen them since the summer of '04, and I hadn’t thought of them for almost as long, right up until this morning, when I received their wedding announcement from a beautiful mistake Emma introduced me to when I visited her in Belgium years ago, an ex-fling of mine, a charming - if incredibly temperamental and manipulative – young Polish DJ who goes by the name of Mischka Uno. Crazy Mischka still can’t let go and insists on staying in touch, which drives me to complete frustration. But that story is for another time - this overly long and meandering post was originally intended to simply congratulate my friends. Which I'll do now...

May your wedded life be filled with love, with romance, with great times, with sweet children (?) and with a bit more temperance than you've exhibited in the past!

Желаю счастья!

The Spirit of My Thanksgiving

Surrounded by comfort, it can be difficult to appreciate the privations of those who scratched their existence upon this land when all was wild and forbidding, when walls were thin and uninsulated, when famine and disease held deathwatch at every door. Early Sunday morning, I passed a few hours foraging for Hedgehogs – the first of the winter mushrooms – in the rain-drenched canyon of the Butte Creek, and up there, clad in yellow pvc and synthetic fleece, kept warm by dry layers and waterproof boots, with a heated car to return to whenever the cold and the damp overcame me, I reflected upon their plight, who suffered for the founding of this life.

Somehow, it felt appropriate to be in the dark of the forest, scanning the underbrush for my supper, crossing swollen streamlets on moss covered logs and hoping like heck that I wouldn’t fall in, performing a laughably superficial hommage to those in whose memory I celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. However brief and insignificant, those hours spent clambering through the bracken and muck felt like an act of communion, an aligning of my experience with the spirit of the season, and the spirit of those who imbued the season with its meaning. Stepping into the stormy reality of the late autumn landscape, I reconnected.

Driving in to work today, my concerns seemed shamefully trivial – why won’t the defroster get rid of the fog on my windshield… why don’t six-hundred dollar cars come with cupholders… will anyone call sick today? And yet, because my life’s troubles bear no comparison with the immediacy of the toil and hardship which my forebears knew, I found that I could be thankful for them, thankful for the soft quality of life which was carried to me on the shoulders of ancestors whose boots I’m not fit to polish. That is my Thanksgiving, that is the gratitude I’ll hold in my heart as I carve the roasted turkey and serve it to my wife and my children, to my parents, to my grandparents, to my aunts and uncles, to my cousins, to my good friends, and to the memory of the dead ones who brought me this sweet incarnation.

The Japanese Chocolate Coated Cookie Exposé

I’ve been mulling this potentially explosive post for some time, and while I’m not satisfied with what I have to say, I need to get it off my chest, to finally look to the blogosphere for the answers to a concern which has been gnawing at me for some time, to open up about what is out there.

Several weeks have elapsed since I first noticed Men’s Pocky at a local import store. Since that initial encounter, I’ve had an opportunity to purchase, consume, and consider the Pocky flavor which the Japanese candy industry has deemed a men’s treat. What I haven’t experienced in the intervening weeks, is some sort of epiphany about what makes one Pocky flavor suitable for men alone. What is it about this chocolate coated cookie stick which makes it so goddamned special?

At the close of my individual, subjective, personal investigation of this goody, I had managed to catalog some of the ways in which Men's Pocky seems remarkably similar to the rest of the brand's product lineup:

The actual chocolate layer does not taste appreciably different from normal chocolate. The color is not more manly, and furthermore, I have not noticed the type of increase in libido or muscle mass which one would expect if it were designed to achieve some elevation of the male essences. The cookie seems no more or less crunchy. The snack as a whole is no more powerfully flavored. The crunchy stick is not longer or girthier than its Pocky peers.

And aside from qualitative considerations, there are a number of disturbing socio-sexual questions which come to mind:

Where are the Lady’s Pocky sticks? I haven’t seen any of those on the store shelves. What about LGBT Pocky sticks? Is the entire queer community to be denied access to a Pocky of their own? Apparently, it is only men who have access to a purpose-built flavor – a fact which I find disturbing and illogical. And I wonder if the makers of Pocky are making efforts to see that the unique needs of those with sexual dysfunctions are sensitively addressed? Where can one find an Impotent Man's Pocky made with a gummy worm instead of a hard chocolate-dipped stick? The list of inconsistencies and implied discriminations go on and on...

While I continue my quest to make sense of this disturbing snack, it is safe to say that I’ll not be purchasing Men’s Pocky sticks again barring some new revelation, some leveling of the Pocky field, some moment of clarity which shows a good side to this divise treat. Perhaps I’m missing something here, but I think America needs answers from the makers of Men's Pocky.

Sidewalk Lunchtime & My Undeniable Fanciness

The Salade Lyonnaise was as breakfasty a bowl of greens as I’ve encountered while seated on a wet Portland sidewalk in mid-November on a weekend day, which is saying more than you’d think at first read. In the center of the bowl were two poached eggs which – when torn open – revealed oozing hearts of unset yolk. At nine o’clock was a small pile of bacon, well-fried but just shy of crispy, leaking salty grease down onto the mesclun mix, where it associated amicably enough with the drizzled vinaigrette. Running just inside the rim of the vessel from eleven in the morning until late in the afternoon were rounds of toasted baguette, dusted with pepper and softened by the aforementioned dressing. The entire evening was occupied by slices of unusually ripe tomato which must have been raised in some anonymous hothouse by people who care about their produce. What I had would have been one hell of a lunch in August, but was a mind-blowing - if completely uncomplicated - meal given its occurence during a lucky out-of-doors hour and change which I managed to squeeze in between one soaking rainy season downpour and the next.

Of course, in addition to the salad there were also pastries. Specifically, there were three tiny pains au chocolat and two surprising little things, each known individually as a canelet. Though it is more awkard to name two things as individuals, the proper pluralizations of foodstuffs is not a part of la langue Francaise which has really stuck in my memory. At any rate, I let them sit on the plate until the salad was consumed, which, given my skipping of breakfast, took no mean effort. In the interests of full and complete disclosure, the pains au chocolat were not mine, they were the enticements I used to convince my young companions to let us pass the noon hour in such a gustatory wonderland, as opposed to someplace along the lines of Burgerville USA. One must bribe at times, to get one’s way. And truth be told, one canelet was intended as a peace-offering for someone who was not particularly happy with my behavior. But other than those four items, the balance of the five baked goods belonged completely to me. And that walnut-brown fifth was perfect, was granted a dense caramelized crust by the beeswax rubbed copper womb it was birthed from, and contained a marvelously moist, eggy, rum and vanilla scented substance which occupied some paradisiacal mid-point between cake and very soft bread pudding, which upon the sixth re-read sounds remarkably similar to perfectly baked bread pudding, which seems odd, but nonetheless...

Maintaining the pretense of being, for that moment anyway, a very fancy man indeed, I ordered a cappuccino. I hate cappuccinos, but it seemed appropriate in the same way that a cape normally seems a bit excessive, but is de rigueur when dressing up as a superhero. Thus the foamy and warm cup of brutalized espresso. Which I drank - confidently and with a sense of self-importance bordering on gastronomic bravado - with my pinky finger pointed aloft to emphasize my aforementioned fanciness. In the end, while I drank it, I couldn’t help but think that it lacked a bit of ice.

Overall, the unexpected lunch at St. Honoré Boulangerie was completely satisfying, although it could have been improved by the addition of a steady stream of vraiment branché dark haired French lovelies with those sleek black leather knee boots I love so much, and the black Chanel sunglasses, and that look that says “I'm super-chic and I really don’t give a shit what you think of me, as long as you notice me, but don’t notice me too much or you’ll ruin my whole cultivated air of je ne sais quoi” Virtually everything was a highpoint, was thematically correct and felt like a set perfectly decorated – everything, in fact, except for the inexplicable presence of the gold-foil wrapped pat of Quality Checked brand butter which was laid disrespectfully upon two dense slices of pain artisanale that may as well have been made in the brick ovens of some undiscovered gem of a Parisian bakery just hours before. And oddly, when I think back on the meal, the first thing that occupies my mind, the immediate question which I still find myself asking is “what the hell was up with the butter?”

The First Chill

Fighting up through an alder thicket in the mist-bound downpour of a late Sunday morning, I felt the change in every bone, every knuckle. Where a week ago there was faded beauty in the rusting swirl of falling maple leaves, there remain only bare skeletal branches, slick black moulder and boot-sucking mud, decay’s suzerainty and the smell of rot. Seeking an escape from the dense entanglement, making my way along the top of a massive fallen log, feeling the cold wind go marrow deep, I shivered and wished to be home, to boil a pot of coffee and watch the rain against my bedroom window.

Hours later, standing beneath a steaming hot shower, it occurred to me that the miracle of the dead months is manifest in the coming back inside, the thankful return from the hardness of what lies beyond the door, the stripping down to bare skin, the pulling on of dry clean clothes, the crackling exuberance of a warm fire in the stove, the contrast of easy comfort with cold soaked work done absent joy. These are the simplicities which will sustain me through the early darkness, the hard frozen dawns, the lifelessness of this landscape stretching out toward the hope of a new spring. It has always seemed to me that life's opposites define each other. They are bound in eternal equilibrium, balancing fire with ice, pleasure with suffering, renewal with despair, rebirth with what seems like death. And the seasons are like this too.

In the forest today, for the first time, there was snow mixed in with the blowing rain, and the once golden chanterelles, when I could find them, were the color of soft translucent persimmon flesh, past their prime, replaced by a brief flush of sweet-toothed Hedgehogs and hollow-stemmed Yellowfoots, their fecundity pointing unmistakably to the coming end of all local bounty, to a fast approaching time when snowbanks and the deep freeze will finish the wild forage. I’ll hang up my mushroom basket soon, and put away my pocket knife, write down recipes for next year’s harvest, cook pots of dried beans with Dinosaur kale, spread my Grandma’s canned raspberry jam on my morning toast, and remember that the long winter always passes into rosebuds. Thinking back on the disorienting years in the islands, years when my life had no seasons, I’ll be thankful that I’m home again to experience the rawness of winter, be thankful for the darkness which promises to brighten the coming light.

Winter'll Come Soon Enough...

Soon enough, the cattle trails, cattails and bottomlands will sleep beneath the mud-brown inundation of a swollen Pudding River. Running down below the flood, that old ribbon highway out back of town will become nothing but a dream once more, going nowhere green and warm, leading no one on and on. Out by my front porch, I’ll sit late, at whiles, into the bone-chill of the night and listen the sound of puddles icing over, I’ll draw back inward and quiet down a bit, I’ll let the memory of autumn’s faded charm pass on completely, I’ll slow to a crawl and watch for the pipes to freeze.

Soon enough, the dogs will come in during the day, hide from the bite of the north wind in the warm clutter of the laundry room. Swinging the hickory-handled maul with sleet in my eyes, I’ll chop at the seasoned pile of maple I gathered while the weather was fine, doing the simple work just like my Daddy taught me how, back when I didn’t know a thing, back when I still felt helpless and scared, though for different reasons. Out in the wood shed, I’ll listen to the Prairie Home Companion by myself on Sunday afternoons, I’ll look for my woolen gloves and only find one, I’ll want to think alone and not wish to talk, I’ll stack split kindling and drink my coffee hot again.

Soon enough, the first white dusting will come in the midst of the night and lay across the land like a swaddling cloth. Stretching on from the backyard toward the high pastures and deeper into the wooded draws, there will be an insulated silence for as long as it lasts, and in the morning the light will be bright, and the whole town will appear outside, will wander the streets like wonderstruck children. Out along the blanketed sidewalk in front of our house, I’ll pack a soft snowball and look for you again, look for you the way you were before, back when you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, the most beautiful thing I could have imagined seeing, back when I pushed you into the cyclone fence as you laughed, back when I crushed a handful of wet snow into your face, back when I finally met your eyes.

Old Love & The Missing Time...

I used to sprawl out next to you, laying on a torn-up patchwork quilt in the warm linger of summer midnights, downslope of that big old ruddy boulder, the one out in your neighbor’s pasture, hunkered on the windward side of the black oak snag, up the hill from your parents place, their dusty white farmhouse with the stone outbuildings, the empty ones which were all filled by cobwebs. At whiles, when you were whispering to me, trying to coax attention out of me, I’d relax the focus of my eyes and let them stare up into the darkness till they found that single stillpoint around which the universe spun. You thought I was listening, just teasing you out, but I didn’t hear a word you said, although I wish I had - I was away out there, between the sack-cloth fabric of space and the wink and shimmer of those ten million silent lights, passing time and aligning myself into place, waiting for the brush of your tight black braids to call me back home.

I remember the scent of the olive-grey stairwell, the one which led straight in a creaking run to the high landing separating your’s from your sister’s room. It recalled oat-straw and used books, dried-up rose petals and your short-haired pointer's mat. Sometimes, for no plain reason, the smell of it all comes back to me, stings as I remember how you led me up those steps more than once, fewer times than I wished you’d done, pulling me along behind when I wasn’t much more than a no-account kid, when I’d nothing better to do than follow the perfectly careless shift of your narrow hips as a Codling moth would the flicker of a lamp-flame, when every beck of your finger drew a spark all through me, when there weren’t hours enough in the twilight to lay tight up against you, when we tried to keep quiet and secret, knowing that all the while your Mama was down in the kitchen, sweeping her linoleum and canning cherries.

Once a day, my commute to work draws me past the quiet abandonment of the place I knew you best. Coming over the last double-striped rise beyond Miller’s cemetery, dipping down with the fall of the highway as it straightens out below the Kobzeff’s field, and rounding into view of the empty spread, I repeat my thoughts to your memory like a mantra:

Though you don’t know it, your Daddy’s big Dutch barn, the one where you kept all the dolls you'd collected as a girl, fell into a broken pile of beams and clapboard during an October wind-storm, the worst one of the decade, which blew through just two months after they put the dirt down upon you...

Torn apart by their anguish, your parent’s marriage collapsed six months later. Your Mama had a breakdown and screwed your Uncle Jack. Your Daddy spent all his nights drinking. When they finally divorced, they were compelled by their lawyers to sell the farm…

Fourteen years on and your older sister is no longer herself – she comes to a Sunday service from time to time with her three girls, she still has beautiful transluscent skin - which almost always reveals a black-eye, a fading bruise, or a deep violet welt, evidence of another beating, the only intimacy she ever receives from meth-head Jacob’s hard calloused hands….

Look at that bald spot on the hill where the metal tower rises – what I’d give to know you there again, to strip buck-naked and crawl down into your red sleeping bag against the chill, feel the gathered energy beneath those big interstate powerlines which cut your parent’s land in half, huddle up near you and not touch like we’d do, bringing our lips almost together, feeling the sharp current jump their brief gap and arc between us, bridging the empty space which separated us for as long as we could stand it.

And once a day, the thinking ends at the same small white cross, the cross which draws into sight at the same Howell Prairie crossroads, the cross which is posted above the same drainage ditch, the same ditch where you ended at a broken windshield, the same broken windshield where we ended, fourteen years back…

Falafel Wars '07: Nicholas' vs. Ya Hala

A debate began in the car today. The majority party spoke in defense of a tiny time-tested favorite, a middle-eastern joint known as Nicholas’ Restaurant, and claimed that it was still the best little Lebanese restaurant in the great conurbation known as Portland metro area. The splinter faction claimed that another - slightly newer and larger – establishment called Ya Hala held that distinction. It was a debate which could only be settled with an early supper. As all parties had experienced the former, judgement would take place after dining at the latter.

And so, the afternoon saw the afternoon saw the case of Nicholas’ Restaurant vs. Ya Hala

First came the pitas, which were warm, moist, tender, and tore easily into pieces. They were delicious – all agreed.

The pitas were followed quickly by the traditional condiments: homous, baba ghanouj, and tabouli

Most distinctive of these was the baba ghanouj – made from roasted aubergines, garlic, tahini paste, and fresh lemon juice – its flavors were smoky, tangy, richer and more complex than is often the case.

Drizzled with vibrant green olive oil and chopped parsley – the homous was mild, extremely smooth, light in texture, definitively creamy. The splinter claimed it was supreme. My half of the majority pronounced it perfect in texture but lacking in assertiveness. The other half of the majority faction merely said – “Not as good as at Nicholas’ Restaurant.”

Concocted of bright red diced tomatoes, coarse wheat, garlic, onions, and chopped parsley swimming in a pool of extra virgin olive oil and tangy lemon juice – the tabouli was incredibly flavorful and alive in its freshness. I remember being impressed, but don’t remember if the other parties present offered their opinions.

The last of the communal dishes to arrive was the Makaly plate – deep fried aubergine, zucchini strips, and cauliflower seasoned with garlic and olive oil. It sat untouched for a moment, until the other member of the majority took a bite of aubergine. His immediate reaction was to blurt out – “This tastes like fish… you two realize there is no fish on the menu, right?” My first bite, while not overly reminiscent of cod, didn’t appeal to me, it tasted strangely sharp. In the end, even the splinter pronounced it inconsistent with what he’d had in the past. I think that at some point my cohort in the majority may have even said – “At Nicholas’ the eggplant doesn’t ever taste like seafood…”

Though the final judgements were rendered based in large part upon the items we all shared, other dishes were consumed which may have influenced the outcome:

Golden-brown fava and garbanzo bean falafel balls with earthy green centers and tahini dipping sauce. Consumed by the splinter. No comment made, though he cleaned up his plate. They looked just like they should have.

Doughy and juicy looking kibbeh with ground beef, onions, pine-nuts and a small bowl of plain yogurt. Ordered and eaten by my compatriot. His only comment – “It would’ve been better made with ground lamb.” This assessment was taken with a rather substantial grain of salt – the individual in question grew up eating lamb-burgers with ritualistic regularity.

Parchment-paper wrapped lamb shawarma pita sandwiches with sliced spiced meat, chopped tomatoes and lettuce in a tahini sauce. My selection. Deliciously tender and boldly flavorful. Full-on funky lamb flavor which was cut by citrus, sesame, and ripe tomato notes. Messy but worth it.

A little metal ibrik of Turkish coffee packed with gritty, slightly bitter, intensely bold caffeinated goodness. It packed a punch, which did not hurt Ya Hala on my scorecard.

As we handed our cash to the lovely waitress in the black cotton skirt, a bickering sort of report card was given by all members present:

- The splinter faction still feels that Ya Hala is the better choice…
- The other half of the majority still asserts that Nicholas’ Restaurant is the clear winner…
- My half of the majority feels both have delicious, fairly priced food – but gives Nicholas’ the nod
based on overall feel and ambiance…

All parties agreed – in an unspoken statement - to reassess the Nicholas’ Restaurant in the near future, just to be certain of their opinions.

The Caveman Experience

I spent the first nasty minutes of daylight picking up the broken shingles which littered my yard, checking out the empty patches on the roof, anticipating leaks with the next heavy rain. My friend Hansel was late, forced – I would soon find out – by wind-fallen timber into taking a convoluted approach to my house. I was anxious to leave, to take advantage of an uncommitted day.

We’d planned to go toward Table Rock, a knife-edge of basalt rising high above the whitewater flood of the Molalla. There was to be a rough hike across trackless country, a short climb to the top of the rock, a chance to search for barking pikas on a tumbled talus slope. In the original plan – ideally – we’d finish things up with a long soak in the quiet wooden tubs of Bagby Hot Springs. That was the virgin agenda, the pre-charted course, which gale winds and forest blow-down changed.

Plan B involved a drive into southern Washington state, an expedition to the wrinkled fringes of Mount St. Helens, an underground creep through the dark twists and tumbled ledges of Ape Cave. Hansel and I agreed that it would be good and dry in the two kilometer long lava tube; though we’d planned on saving this trip for later in the year, the time seemed right to go subterranean. When we called the Reverend to inform him of the change, he was still asleep, and cursed his girlfriend for not waking him.

Leaving Silverton at just before eight, we rolled up the interstate, settling into a wandering conversation covering everything from online college degrees, to the risks involved with letting an angry bobcat out of a live cage trap, to what exactly had to occur for a hot water heater to explode. We paused at the Reverend’s house and corralled him into the back seat of the car. On our way out of P-town, we stopped to purchase a good supply baguettes, hummus, and canned coffee.

The drive went quickly – across the bridge into our strange northern neighbor, kicking over eastward at Woodland, heading up along the Lewis River past the steel-blue waters of Lake Merwin, careening north again onto Forest Service land, skidding to a stop in the near-empty parking lot. Honestly, we were all surprised to see others at the trailhead, fools who stood sopping and shivering beneath the eaves of the vault toilet shed. I suited up in my rubber coveralls, Hansel wore a yellow metal helmet, the Reverend had on camouflage fatigues but confessed to wearing a spandex unitard beneath them – after all, spandex is his thing.

With no particular grace or consideration, we entered the mouth of the cave, turned on our spotlights and began heading in. The walls were frozen in their ancient undulations and the floor bore the rope-marks of old pahoehoe. It was quiet and warm. And it was raining hard from countless seams in the roof of the tube. Evidently, we were meant to be caught in the weather.

As the darkness of the main chamber extended up and away, we quickly turned aside, sought out crevices to plumb. We found ourselves contorting, shifting on our bellies across the coarse rock, through wet sand and cold pooled water, creeping by lantern light, moving through ever-tighter gaps until the Reverend – skinniest of our group – would finally wedge himself to a stop. At every such impasse, the usual observations were made:

“They’ll never hear our screams back here…”
“I wonder what would happen to us if there was an earthquake right now…”
“We forgot to bring an extra-large bottle of Astroglide in case one of us gets good and stuck…”
“Did someone check the batteries before we left this morning…”

To our disappointment, we never found a secret chamber, never popped out into a wide-room scrawled with undiscovered petroglyphs, never found a connection to some long hidden new set of caverns. But it was exhilarating, and fairly uncomfortable, and completely filthy. In the end we meandered for hours, exploring like children with nothing better to do.

We stopped when we felt like it, peeled open a can of kippered herring of Hansel’s which the Reverend – being vegan – wouldn’t touch, kicked back and laughed, ate egg salad on crackers, turned off our lights and hid when occasional others would pass below our stony perch. But aren’t those the sorts of things which everyone does in the down in the bowels of the earth? And as we discussed briefly, shouldn’t there be an espresso concession halfway through? I’ll move on now.

At some point the Reverend went up a crack and was gone for some time. He returned after fifteen minutes or so, backing down the steep chimney with a rhododendron branch in his hand. We’d stumbled upon a herky-jerky crawlspace which led to an open skylight, an unexpected exit to the world above. Hansel suggested there could be mushrooms up there, and we squeezed up toward the grey light of day.

It would have ended nicely here, with a pleasant forage and hike to the car, had Hansel ever emerged from the rabbit-hole. We waited and waited some more, we leaned our heads down into the opening and hollered for our friend. The Reverend went down to search, but found no sign, only darkness, only silence, only empty spaces. I pictured us on the news. We were nervous, came out of the hole, and rushed up the trail to the upper terminus.

Twenty yards down from the ladder at the end of Ape Cave, we saw a familiar round helmet rise up out of the jumbled rocks. We shone our lights upon the scowling face of good ol' Hansel. He called us assholes who’d abandoned him when his lantern went dead. We explained our repeated efforts to find him. He told us that he understood, again called us assholes who’d left him behind, and then sort of laughed with us.

It was done. Our spirit of adventure was spent. The three of us left down the trail to a warm car where one of us sat relaxed and dry, one complained that his waterproof boots had failed him completely, and one rode the entire seventy miles from the mountain to Portland in his white cotton underwear, looking for all the world like a jockey-clad caveman on his way back to civilization.

The Last of Summer's Fruit

After the delicious flush of raspberries, the perfumed goodness of fraises des bois, and the late summer boysenberry finale, I’d forgotten them completely. But they remained where I’d left them - out among the bare branches and the fallen leaves. They were the last of my sun-ripened fruit, the final backyard harvest before all was left empty. And they’re buried in the belly now, in the charnel ground of all edible bounties.

Had I not invited family to a party, had I not taken the time to walk my cousin through the backyard – identifying the various leafless grey sticks by their common names: that was the pink currant bush, that was a fig tree, that thing you almost stepped on will be a pawpaw tree, that big bunch of sticks was my saskatoon bush – I wouldn’t have remembered the humble medlars at all.

It would have been the second season they’d passed unnoticed. Last year I saw them as flowers, and again as green fruit, but lost track of them once the weather turned cold and the tomatoes had gone. Not one was eaten then, and I didn’t think of them again until the small white blossoms graced the young tree again this past spring. Following tradition, when I hacked down this year's tomato bushes with the coming of the rains and pulled up the squash vines when the last of the acorns turned orange, I assumed that my garden had given its all. Luckily, today the medlars were noticed, they were discussed, they were picked away and taken inside.

Odd and obscure from beginning to end, the Medlar (Mespilus Germanicus) tree bears an heirloom fruit the size of a large cherry, with a leather-skinned rind and a hard tart flesh which grows soft and sweet after the first frosts set in. Few know what it is, fewer still would recognize it, or know how to use it. A light freeze or two brings a bletting to the fruit, a wrinkling and bruising of the skin, and a transformation of the flesh from an inedible thing into something resembling the pear butter that my grandma used to can – soft, squishy, sweet with a sort of ‘sur-maturité’ quality to it. I found them in that condition today and tasted them at last.

My method was inelegant, uncouth, neolithic in fact. Crushing the fruit between my thumb and index finger to expose the fruit's innards, I squeezed to force the paste free, scooped it from the skin with the tip of my tongue, handed one to my cousin and got down to business. Once they were all eaten and enjoyed, the garden was finished. I wished the ground a good rest, thanked it, thanked the slumbering bushes and trees, said my goodbyes until the warm days of springtime come again. For now, all belongs to the fingers of a fading November, and to the cold grip of a winter not quite here…

Turbulence & Clear Blue Skies...

Needing to process confusing things and knotted emotions, to cleanse my thoughts and create a quiet space for clarity, I left the house early this morning and drove long into steep green spaces. Winding along the high meanders of logging roads abandoned since my dad was a boy, negotiating corners thick and overgrown with devil's club and elder, stopping now and again to lay back on the warm hood of my car and meditate on the pale mist rising from the drainage below, I felt myself drawn toward a place I couldn’t hope to be, a place I pursued - quietly and carefully - nonetheless. Pushing back along a lonely skid-trail toward a crackling stretch of low-slung powerlines, every locked yellow gate, every turn I couldn’t take became a metaphor for a forbidden experience, represented a seductive precipice I imagined myself soaring from, a well hidden place I wished to see, a blocked off direction I longed to travel, an unshared secret I yearned to explore, a perfect sweet taste which I couldn't yet savor.

Not too long ago, other backwoods gates were passed with ease, loose barbed wire fences which yielded to me without catch or prick. Just then, I was relaxed and moved as I wished. I stood on the grassy headland in the warmth of the late autumn sun, watched glistening harbor seals surface and dive, enjoyed the timeless rhythm of the crashing waves, stared up into an unbounded expanse of empty sky, a sky which reflected an unhindered quality of mind, inspired as it was by its surroundings and its company. Out there, I dreamt - forgetful of reality - to the scent of sea-spray and evergreen pitch, the sound of surf, the hush of the ocean wind across the hard-packed sand, the drum and slosh of the coldwater current pushing into the great Pacific, the wheel of gulls above the beach, the steady rumination of a porcupine at the edge of a road, and the crunch of dry pine-needles beneath my feet.

There is no accounting for the vagaries of this bittersweet life, no predicting the ebb and rush of routine and surprise which proceed beyond control, no clear choices and no clear answers; only possibilities and impossibilities, fences which yield and those which grab, gates which swing and those which block, paths we walk and those we wish we walked, roads taken and those we wished we might take, that which we have and that which we desire. Life makes highwire actors of us all, we measure each step, holding a beautiful dream in our right hand and a hard regret in the left. It is a swift play whose cast and plot appear of their own accord, a dance without set movements.

Awaking uneasily, I drove into the mountains early this morning, into the green nave of a wild cathedral, toward a trusted wellspring, my fountainhead of inspiration, searching for clarity and purpose. I found only swirling clouds and dense white fog.

Reflections @ Stonework...

While our local stone is not fine, it is plentiful, stacks well, and the colors which appear when the autumn rains wet a low wall built of it are rich, subtly iridescent, and have remarkable depth. Yet, as it comes away from the curved cuts of country barrow pits and quarries in flat jagged flakes, it reveals a coarse structure which shatters and crumbles easily, if not handled with care. I don’t like it much, for that reason. It leaves me wanting for something which is more durable, something which will last. Wants-and-wishes aside, I always gather a truck-load or two at this time of year, and spend a few hours on irregularly spaced weekends ringing my bare-branched saplings, creating simple constructions, backyard barricades and containments which I like, despite my lack of skill in masonry.

Two days ago, just after breakfast, I drove with a friend to an open pit high on a curve off an old railroad grade, six miles past the point where pavement yields to potholes and gravel, to gather stones yet again. Stepping out of the passenger door, I looked up north as I slipped on my split leather gloves. Washed in the fleeting light of early morning, the creek bottoms lay shrouded beneath a dense quilt of fog, the brilliant orange of fallen vine maple leaves littered the steep slopes like still flames, the wide sky was clear and silent but for an occasional rifle-crack in the distance. It was, truly, as spectacular a late fall day as I can remember - it was as perfect a moment as life permits me.

Turning away to hoist more chunks of shale into the bed of the pickup, my thoughts turned to the passage of time. I recalled my Grandpa Floyd, twenty-one years gone, who lays buried behind the old white chapel at Miller’s cemetery, and remembered his hands, hard-worn hands which spent years gathering stones such as these, building them into walls of his own, only to leave them to strangers, to the occupants of his abandoned farm. I thought of my three year old daughter, imagined her seated on her knees, in her flowered pajamas - the ones with feet - scribbling on the pages of her coloring book, already so big, so willful, so far removed from the day we first met. I had a vision of Francesca DeSantis, also gone down to the ground, wished she could see this place, and remembered her enthusiasm for the rock walls of San Marino, where we fell for one another those long years back.

Ruminating upon all that has passed predictably, all that has passed without warning, all that is swiftly passing, and the brevity of this life’s ephemeral joys, I recalled a quote from Pablo Neruda which Francesca enclosed to me in her last handwritten letter, a letter received just days before the running of the bulls: ‘I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul…’ to which she added words of her own ‘I won’t take this feeling for granted…’ And as I repeated the words in my mind, I heard her voice – real or imagined – tell me in that rasp, that familiar whisper: ‘Don’t take these feelings for granted…’

Chasing Green Fairies...

Months back, on my list of compelling adventures-to-be, plumbing the depths of a bottle of illicit absinthe hovered somewhere between dining at Pierre Gagnaire and drinking ayahuasca in the depths of the ever-shrinking Amazon rainforest. I wanted to get to the bottom of the rumors, the suggestions that this was an inebriant apart, and unlike the other items on the list, the price of admission to the revelries of la Fée Verte seemed plausibly reconcilable with the contents of my bank account.

Airfare to Charles de Gaulle and a menu de dégustation would’ve come to around nine-hundred thirty dollars once the exchange rate and airport taxes were factored in. Tickets to the Brazilian selva, cheap jungle accommodations, and the cost of a traditional plant dieta with a pay-to-play shaman would be even more. A bottle of top-flight Jade absinthe distilled by an American named Ted Breaux would set me back fifty-five British pounds – or around one hundred fourteen dollars and thirty-nine cents - plus the price of the hand-couriered delivery which would ensure no unexpected delays at customs.

It was a price that I gladly paid.

And I waited for my selection - Jade ‘l’Esprit d’Edouard’ – ostensibly crafted as an homage to the Belle Epoque bottlings of the famed Maison Edouard Pernod. It arrived in a plain cardboard box – no markings other than my address and the postage – a remarkably short time after I’d placed the order through an outfit called Liqueurs de France, which was a good thing. I’m notoriously impatient when I want something I don’t have. It’s one of my most serious downfalls.

Once received, it was time to investigate and enjoy. There is a ritual to preparing absinthe, and I set out to follow it without deviation. I’d searched out a traditional Pontarlier glass, a perforated metal spoon, a handful of organic sugarcubes, and a bottle of spring water which was brought down to a cool – but not cold – serving temperature. I'd laid everything out carefully on my kitchen countertop and tried to cultivate an attentive state of mind. As this was not possible – for me it is rarely possible – I pulled the short cork with my wine opener and began to pour.

The color of the liquor as it splashed out into the bottom of the clear glass was a brilliant emerald green, a color achieved by macerating the liquor blanche with a variety of potent herbs which – of course – includes Artemisia absinthium, or Grand Wormwood, as it is also known. After a full measure had been poured, I set the spoon across the mouth of the glass, and placed a sugarcube on top. Last of all, I began to tip the bottle of water, releasing – as slowly as I could manage – drop after drop.

As water seeps through the sugarcube and drips into the green spirit below, there occurs very slowly, quite imperceptibly at first, a delicate clouding of the liquid, an opalescent louche which builds in intensity from the topside down. Finally, all the emerald clarity is transmuted, turned to a milky-green opaqueness.

When this point was reached, the absinthe preparation ritual had finished, and the business of sampling, drinking, tasting, and experiencing could begin.

On the palate, the flavors were bold, sweet, hot, yet complex. There was a strong streak of anise running from beginning to end. The texture was wonderfully creamy and smooth. In the spaces between those predominating sensations, there were numerous herbal tones, resinous notes which were hard to identify. It was the easiest thing in the world to sip at – there were no hard edges, no flat notes, it flowed evenly and effortlessly, softly and seductively.

I permitted myself a brief enjoyment, indulged the tastebuds for the first glass or two, and then tried to pay attention to what occurred as the bottle slowly emptied. Sadly, yet honestly, at this point the story becomes a plain and simple thing. For all its mystique, for the alleged mad rapture it delivered to so many alcoholic artists and expat poets, for all the decades old laws and prohibitions, there was nothing much to note, nothing to explain the hype.

I became drunk, intoxicated by high-proof alcohol, shit-faced – nothing more or less – and felt nothing but a familiar warmth and a sleepy relaxation. At some point late in the evening, the investigation ended with a nod and (presumably) a snore. Absinthe, for me, was deliciously debunked.