Kitchen Talk

I remember the ends of wooden spoons always burnt black because they were ever in contact with bottoms of hot pots full with gravy/sauce or big cast iron fry pans browning pork sausage or braciola. My grandmother, the angel of Baltimore, silently presses fresh pasta dough for ravioli. She seemed to always have a fennel seed to chew between teeth that sat beside her on a bedside table while she slept.

Dad taught me to love seafood. I had my fist steamer in Bayonne. He won a stake in a restaurant by winning hands of poker with the owner. When he took us there he said we could have anything we wanted and suggested the lobster tails. After dinner he would just sign the bill. I had one of my first jobs working that kitchen as a busboy and dish washer. I was 12.

My uncle Paul taught me how to de-seed a watermelon. One mouthful at a time. He boiled the sweet and the hot links before roasting them over a charcoal fire. My aunt Gin made crab cake from scratch and ruined, for me, ordering them out anywhere the rest of my life.

My mother made the best meat balls. She didn’t mess around. Her hands were wide and she rolled them big so one or two was more than enough. On Mondays we would have sandwiches of sliced meatballs on wonder bread or kaiser rolls from the bakery if any were leftover from Sunday. Today onions and peppers from my garden sweat in a big skillet she gave me because I was the only one left who could still lift it. As smoke rises from my gas grill outside,I send after it prayers for my mother and my grandmother and everybody up there. I hope they smell the goodness they cultivated with culinary precision by hand and by love.

Still Waters

Stillness. Meditation. Still. Realization: Nothing is ever truly still. In stillness, i realize movement. On a molecular level, atoms vibrate. i breathe. Focus on the breath. Lots of love in…lots of love out…

On a macro level…the Earth rotates and wobbles, the planets revolve around the sun…the sun…moves through space and time… Still. As rain falls, i contemplate the stream. In rushing water i see metaphor…how we are all part of the stream rushing over obstacles. Some of us are the water moving quickly, driven by gravity’s urgency to reach our goal and final destination. Some of us are the obstacles, rocks embedded in the stream, sitting, vibrating on an entirely different frequency. As water rushes around, over, under through the obstacles, so minute portions of stone wears away. The surface erodes to eventually expose a core…its foundations are undermined causing slow, imperceptible movement toward a goal… the water of the stream, divides for a moment going up and over, around, beneath, and then… rejoins , nosily, joyfully, on the other side ready to face the next obstacle. And then…the stream itself reaches its goal…stillness. Never actually still. Still moving, slower now. A lake or pond, or even…the majestic, roiling ocean where…yet a different type of stillness allows sunshine to lift water up into the sky…where gently ferocious wind currents move it around the world, until gathered once more into rain or snow, divined by lightning, heralded by thunder…delivered back once more to flow over obstacles, over stones, soil, streets and parking lots, roofs and driveways, sidewalks and fields, woods, mountains…hearts, minds…

We are, as water…divided ever at overcoming our obstacles…yet reunited always on the other side where what was once, for an instant, separated…becomes one…

August...and Everything After

At midlife...there is often rebirth. This happened for me in the mid 1990s'. I began to fully embrace elements of myself previously submerged. A big part of my new awareness was helped along by the music of that time. The so called "Grunge" era for me was epitomized by groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Tracey Chapman, Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Third Eye Blind and... my favorite...Counting Crows with their break through album "August and Everything After" all of which provided for me the sound track to my movie. The film noir of my life.

Back then I had no clue where I was going, I only knew I did not care for where I had been. The ensuing changes have landed me here, now, with you. Thanks for taking the time to read about my journey. One thing I continue to embrace is the unknown. What is going to happen next? This suspense is what keeps me going.

Sometimes I doubt the ground. It’s as if I feel gravity will somehow abandon me at unawares and I will suddenly find myself floating…directionless. Now... I am a being... completely unfettered by the laws of physics. How free my thought is. How boundless. Perhaps doubt is not such a bad thing after all.