Hard Core Not'ing

A chingao bro! Seriously, the sum total of discourse in this country is porn and politics? What’s the real difference there? Let’s talk something else.

Been travelling throughout the South of these here United States (and a Left-coast trip), and I can confirm that the closer to the equator you get the more likely you are to find unselfconscious food.  Local 463 Urban Kitchen in Jackson, Ms…scallops; Adelaide’s in NOLA…Oysters, Crawfish (unusually small last time out, this is the tail-end (heh) of the season and they should be big and not thick –shelled yet); Andrea’s in NOLA…rabbit (Great old-fashioned Italian place, Caprese so everything wasn’t slathered in tomato sauce…but the rabbit (coniglio, I just like saying that - word to the hasenpfeffer) dish was from Ischia near Naples). 

All memorable, but not gonna bore you with the details; ‘foodie’ blather has become as noisome as spewed political ignorance and revisionist history. And for the record: No, everyone does not have portable/supportable/wry taste (no matter where you’re from), a good education (no matter how much school you paid for), or a good sense of humor (no matter what makes you laugh personally), but we all think we do apparently. Clear indications to the contrary don’t stop any of us getting a digital bullhorn out and look-at-me'ing till I want to make it stop. Shame…but so, no wonder porn is suddenly a revolutionary topic when opinions are handed out from jaundiced Internet news outlets and apparent knowledge magically seems to be from the mind after a quick Google search with no citation. 

 

Epic Roast House in San Fran, right under the Bay Bridge close to the Embarcadero…among other things, roasted beef bones (for the marrow, think meat jelly), a whole fish for me, yum. I was there with some Louisiana natives, and they spotted beignets on the menu…uh oh cher! The waitress was warned they would be grading if we tried them, shortly thereafter the head chef (Jan Birnbaum) comes out…

he’s some from NO himself, there to defend his authenticity and talk about homecoming plans for Jazzfest the next week. They get to talking, and in short order I heard the names of all the serious places to eat in the Crescent City, small Garden District bistros and cafes doing everything right without a lot of fanfare.  Though the accents got thicker as they got homey with each other, I hung in there and made some mental notes. He finally needed to get back into the kitchen, but a slew of deserts came to the table gratis; the beignets got an A, though they were a little fussier than usual (powdered sugar application apparently has gradations)...2nd best apple pie I've ever had. We were in a limo for the evening, so post-feast we wandered through town then around the long three-bridge circuit…warm night, good company and good food, worth a little extra story.

 

So I now stretch myself from Louisville to the Gulf, from the Mississippi to the Appalachians, with excursions to Mass, Silicon Valley, and Vegas pretty predictably on the agenda. Busy, but oh so much to see and do collateral to the wage-earning. Team-building and consensus creating, paid to cut through bullshit to solutions with as little wasted effort as possible. It’s not what I love but it appears to be what I’m good at...at least I think so till my mgmt silo tells me otherwise.  I too have noticed that most of my worth-writing anecdotes are sponsored by my paycheck-facing activities, so I ain’t complianin’. I like my own team, my matrix’d team, helps when you get to build your own.

Bham next week, Vegas the next. Steeltown-South has a good memory or two; a rolling family trip down to NO to pump some money into post-Katrina NO wound us up there… warm, rainy and foggy late afternoon, so I ad-hoc’d us into a nearly empty luxury golf resort for the night. Massive wade-in pool to ourselves, decent room service, and at twilight a bagpiper (female) stood outside our window on a small hill close by in full regalia and played the kind of atmospheric music you can’t pay for. It drifted in the open window all mist-wrapped, moody and perfect… it had to be for us, no one else was there.

Hoping to make some more of those, three is mystically perfect, better than two plus two plus one.

Burnt Imagery...or Blinding Clarity

Wistful the other day, material victories not really making a difference to my get-up-and-go. I like the money for what it buys me, don't get me wrong, and I get some feeling of accomplishment when I crush my assignments; winning friends and influencing people. But it felt like this, sans drame...another silly-putty thought stretched out a bit, transport for rising and falling rhyme waves. It's almost certainly not what you think. ;-)

Idle in the green-laden world, fragrant

Withered limbs speak runes of lightning

Slowly slipping away, my tattered ego spent in its charge of touch

I don’t think I’ll miss it much

No consumer true for freer self

In odd container on non-odd shelf

Watching sleep-dreaming buyers sleep-walking past

Sleep-starving for bargains (supplies won't last!)

While my lines grow old still change renews

Settled self in dilated-lens hues

Seems wooden, artificial, a play-acting thing

False-noted and empty, a puppet on strings

Still, no tragic end in sight, nor dramatic pause

Just same-simple constant effect and cause

Foreseen fork, backtracking bend

My inevitable return after gyre and wend

Home when I bargain struck and mantle hung

On worldly peg my power slung

Comporting, pretending like those that I thought

To mingle with, well-reviewed pleasures sought

Sought and found in some measure, I cannot deny

Simple animal feeling’s very hard to decry

To dislike or distrust when deeply immersed

Permanent change that cant be reversed

So forward then, yes, the course is well-ran

But no, this half-winded self is not who I am

More or less you might say depending on who

You think you are, do you really know You?

I have my doubts, and the good grace

To mirror-look into that empty face

And reflected see what I’ve become

To know I’ve traded all for some

Corrections now? burning, will-breaking the glamour

Shatter  the mask, with flash-bright hammer

Disguise-dropping may be consequence-rife

But better the lightning than a middling life

A Lifetime's Sometime

When not building and tearing down mental scaffolding (que? to reach the high places of course) my mind often speaks in couplet rhythm, literally and metaphorically. Not parallel processing like cognitive athletes seem to enjoy, but an implied continuation of a thought to its complementary...um...complement, it's logical-yet-nonlinear 'thump'. Thoughts falling from bough to floor in a Wyrd/Way cycle of in/sort/out. When unnaturally silent (unproductive thought, creativity blunted and distressed) that cycle is missing an impetus, the carriage return from an other (don't get too anthropomorphic there...or do, your choice though) to complete the thoughts with; something that surprises, confirms, and rounds in a paragraphical shape that's aesthetic and provocative to me. Hell, I guess that's what we're all missing at one time or another; a muse neither fickle nor flighty, rooted and complete. Chasing the sub-second past though, s'not the nature of that nature to be that way; childish (and increasingly foolish as you age, that ain't neoteny, that's plain ol' crazy) to keep reaching back for what just went by - even the earth trembles and changes.

Where was I going...? Oh, shaking my entendre-free creative tree to drop the dead leaves, let entropy eat its fill on the decay buffet, but...

...little harmless nuts sometimes fall too. S'good, they really need to get out of my branches (and stay there), get consumed alone in the world's critical/elemental/irreducible mastication; crunch and chew, outcomes bitter or sweet...but irrelevant. I need some clear space for new seed and fruit. Here's what I mean:

 War in the Canopy, swift and vicious

Other's eggs irresistibly delicious

Small resists large, darting and wheeling

Protecting the nest, who knows what they're feeling

It's no wonder that lore masters and sages

Learned the lessons of warcraft down through the ages

Watching natural struggles of death and life

All animate creatures are experts in strife

You don't need to see armies marching and planes in the sky

To understand selfless willingness to die

(Though hollow-bones missiles? Odd construction

To practice a doctrine of mutual destruction)

Strike fast! strike first! and from high ground!

Rules of engagement when crows are around

Offense! push forward! press them to rout!

Dissuade them with violence! Introduce them to doubt!

Emphatic instructions from the cellular level

Enough strategy and tactic to disrupt and dishevel

The most well-laid, thoughtful (or bird-brained) plan

"Looked good on paper, we don't understand"

Lessons of ages in arcs and collisions

Tiny minds hardwired to make savage decisions

Fighting bullies and thieves at perilous cost

A resolve and commitment most humans have lost

Unless pressed to extremity by malice or greed

Then at that uttermost limit of need

The small of us through will can the larger defeat

Make victory too costly, force a retreat

As we know from Southeast Asia or Middle East(s)

In jungles and deserts even the least

Powerful flock can war with the great

Winning while losing...do Mocking Birds hate?

Found myself unable to not say it, even though I'm not a loving creator. A dot and dit with partial wit that owned the systolic process while popping up. Surely at the beginning of my cope with this topic, a lifetime's sometime to figure it out.