Feast

The other night we went to Feast, one of our favorite restaurants, in fact the place we had our rehearsal dinner at - not that we rehearsed a dinner, but that we had a rehearsal for the wedding followed by a dinner: nothing about the dinner was rehearsed - the proceedings were unplanned and spontaneous - not that we'd not planned on eating there, just that the practice of sitting down and eating were all that had been planned: that is, the seating and space had been selected, but our actual presence and what we did with our presence was unknowable. Not unknowable in the sense of our not knowing what we were saying and doing, but unguessable. And still not unguessable in the sense of our acting in ways novel and arcane among each other, such that ordinary communication would be impossible. We had not rehearsed any of these things, and yet, in the course of human society, it could be remarked that our lives had been nothing but rehearsal. In that sense the rehearsal was the finished event and what was determined was by chance.
The other night we ate at Feast, a favorite restaurant of ours, the location of our wedding's rehearsal dinner, a dinner problematic in its designation but not in our participation - that is, it was our participation that was unrehearsed: unrehearsed in the sense of how we live through the conventions of life and learned behaviors - which are rehearsed over and over. Though we rehearse our behaviors ad hoc and without foresight to their symbolism and interpretations, enough spontaneity thrives in our actions and being, that we ascribe the sense of newness, the doing for the first-timeness, to our acts: in this case, eating at Feast.
Usually I eat steak, which Jami finds notable. She claims that it is a sign of my Englishness and proof of my unItalianess. Steak AnItalianate is. And so the confusion. Usually I eat steak, but tonight I ordered scallops and prosciutto in rissotto: a wonderful dish, even though it wasn't steak. It wasn't steak in the disagreeable sense of something not-being steak. The not-being-steakness of some things being more disagreeable or agreeable than others. Tonight I ate a very good not-steak.
Jami had a margarita pizza. There was no salt along the rim of the crust - which I thought might be an oversight. Once, years ago, I was served a margarita with sugar on the rim - which was disagreeable in extremis. The downfall of civilization may be dated from the day someone thought sugar on the rim of a margarita was a grand idea.
The margarita pizza and the non-steak scallops, prosciutto and rissotto were tasty and accomplished the physical necessity of invigorating us with the breakdown of protein molecules into our bloodstream, forming amino acids and such.
We ate at a table under the awning along the sidewalk facing the street. While we ate, it began to rain. It rained all the rest of the evening.
When I took the photograph above Jami was relishing her hiring at Duke Divinity. She said I made her look like one of my paintings. I love this beautiful woman.