eating as entertainment

Steak, Martinis, Jami's mom, Gaby, and sister, Jennifer, and our niece Grace: all make for a wonderful evening of eating. Note Grace's special panache with pasta.
I attempted recreating a martini I'd had here in Durham: 1/3 Hendrix gin, 2/3 Chopin vodka. Jami reminded me at the last minute that the special thing about that martini was the cucumber soaked in brine; to me, the big olives don't lose any of the excitement of this martini.
The steak: a veal porterhouse - raised on a farm in western SC. I think that I would eat it again.
Meals bring us together - that is why the central sacrament of the Church is a meal, a bringing together and lifting up; and why all through scripture, the eschatological kingdom is a feast.
Something more than consuming food goes on in a meal.
Just like a painting is more than a representation or an expression.
Just like our bodies, which can be analyzed physically, have souls, the essence of which escapes observation.
Human life cannot be reduced to its mechanics - or when it's attempted a comic effect is produced.
Eating is more than the consumption of proteins for breakdown into amino acids.
And so it is.

Life on the high seas

First off, we had a wonderful week. We spent time together and with Jami's mother, Gaby, her sister, Jennifer, and our niece, Grace. We ate a lot of food, possibly going over our weight watchers total allowance of points - for the week, but still within our allowance for the month. Just one day in the sun and my belly was horribly burned. I mostly wore a shirt the whole rest of the week. But the beach is a wonderful place, perhaps the only place, in America where you can wear just shorts and be socially acceptable. I felt like a kid again, barefoot, coursing over the dunes and into the waves, whistling the Sailor's Hornpipe (the Popeye theme) with variations in minor and modal keys and in odd syncopations of rhythm, keeping my eye eye out for the Kraken. Especially the notorious Kraken Jack, who'd entered in a kraken time, and might be mistaken for a kraken the pavement. A few tumbles in the surf, the mild surf of Kiawah, and I was Kraken up. Breakers, rollers, tumblers, crashing, sliding, sucking, swelling, slapping, lapping, pulling, pushing, left me in waters wracked, laced with foam, green and sparkling, jagged and eddying, but cool under the hot sun.
Of the ten beers I brought, I consumed all but two. The best beer was a kolsch. But I enjoyed an assortment of IPAs and ales.
Among the books I brought I really enjoyed reading Rabelais. I read him standing in the surf and sitting under an umbrella. The five books of Gargantua and Pantagruel are satirical classics without parallel. I wrote earlier in the year about reading Bakhtin's Rabelais and his World, about Bakhtin's take on carnival and laughter and the grotesque: how these practices heal and subvert. Out in the surf, I read Rabelais in pure enjoyment: his lists, the fantastic adventures, the humor (scatological and sexual), all amid the roar and race of the foaming breakers.
I wound up bringing 42 books to the beach and managed to touch on 20 of them in some fashion.
I drew some but was unable to do any water colors. I spent some time trying to get my remaining .35 mm faber-castell TG1-S technical pen to work: the nib and the central needle and weight were misaligned and ink wasn't flowing through the nib. Months before I'd dropped the pen on my studio floor. I finally broke the pen, the needle becoming dislocated from the weight. I have to order these pens from Germany now, and two should be on their way to me. One day, I will have to change pen brands or go over to a different kind of pen. I don't know what that day will be like. Sad and expectant at once.
Again I read Barth, this time CD IV.2. After being burned the first day, I determined to expose only one square inch of my body to sunlight at a time (as witnessed above).
The best part was being at the beach with the most beautiful woman in the world, smiling and laughing.

not a vacation photo

Louise demonstrates how to surf the web. Someday this pose will be replicated at our house in Durham. As I write this Louise is sprawled across the couch next to me and Thelma is lounging on the arm of the couch, under the lamp, facing the wall. They do this every night. Is there nothing they don't know about relaxation? What can we learn from them?

Tidying up

Tomorrow morning I believe we'll hit the road. Right now, we're a bit under the weather and involved with settling some things here. But soon enough the road will beckon us and we'll wend our way eastward to Charleston. In some ways we prefer just resting here at home, spending time with the cats, reading and writing. I bought a suitcase with little skate wheels yesterday, and now I do not fear how heavy my bag is. I think lugging my bags from Gatewick to the train station and then lugging them through MARTA when we rearrived back and to the house from East Lake station told me that my wheeless bag was no fun: also Jami seemed untaxed as she rolled her bag behind her. I thought to myself: I've got to get one of those. And now I do. The temptation of the rolly bag is to go ahead and bring more books. I'm up to 30 now. Knowing what I wrote just last night, I've must cull this collection in two. How does a person only take 15 books. Do I go without Barth? perish! Do I leave some poetry behind? Of Kierkegaard, Zizek, Jones Theological Grammar - what do I put back on the shelf? And the Hebrews commentaries? Don't I need them for writing my sermon? Or the Luke commentary, just in case I change my mind and go with the Luke passage about Jesus sending Fire. And I've been looking forward to reading Whedbee's Comic vision of the Bible - which is due back at the CTS library the day I get back. Plus I was going to bring some fiction: Amis's London Fields, Pynchon's V, O'Brien's The Poor Mouth. Plus I'm bringing some water color paper, paints and brushes. And I am thinking maybe I'll stash some DVDs for that giant TV set at the beach house. And then I've got these clothes to wear.
Right now my nose is running awfully. It's gotten worse as the morning has progressed. Nothing to do but shut my eyes.

Still making our way out of Decatur and onto the Beach

Last year I brought 32 books to the beach, vital things like Pound's Cantos, my Greek New Testament, Finnegan's Wake, and Portnoy's Complaint. Jami took great delight in counting them and proclaiming to her friends in the beach house, "my fiance' has brought 32 books to the beach." And I can only wonder, what's wrong with the world where a simple man such as myself can't drag along 32 books to browse through during a seven day sojourn at the beach? This year I said things would be different: I would only bring five or so, less than ten, no more than 20, but not 32 books. Not that I'm ashamed of bringing such a number of books to the beach: books like David Markson's Reader's Block and This is not a Novel: books of a fine avant guard sensibility. Books are fuel for the intellectual furnace. A lot of steam power is needed at the beach because the furnace is forging ahead, full steam, against the ocean, the ocean as symbol of unconscious desire and archetypal burbling. That is: the ocean is not just a body of water influenced by tides and having variable salinity; the ocean is a repository of longing and weltschmerz and schadenfreude, and heroics and courage: the Aran Isles, men and the sea, Old Spice, Moby Dick and the devious cruising Rachel. I can't just face the ocean alone, flailing at its waves like Cuchulain: it's the siren's song (name that tune), terror incogneato, terra firma and terra recota (the cheese of a new world). 32 books may not be enough.

most beautiful woman

In a couple of days I'm traveling across country to the beach with the most beautiful woman. Every day we're together is a sweet day. I ask my self , "How did I get here?"In a couple of days we'll erupt in ululations of "thalassa!thalassa!" and scrape sand windblown waving come crashing brinkward and tide our time baked books under slant shade.