New Folder

I'm well and truly done with who I was. I've been brain-dead for a week, coming off the installation, and when I awoke from the coma, I knew things were different. First off, no one looked the same, there were a lot of wavy lines, I questioned seeing as a sense. B came over for coffee mid-morning and we agreed to cook some pork rib-racks, later, for dinner. Leaves me time to split some white oak and clean-up, make the pate, three hours, however you divide time, to build the pate from nothing and clean the infernal mess. Everything cooked separately, chicken livers, chicken thighs, two kinds of mushrooms, stick and a half of butter, 2 bunches of scallions, some ginger root, garlic, half a bottle of Pinot Noir, hot sauce, herbs. Then everything mixed together and cooled, then food processed and packaged. Just finished cleaning up when B came over with the ribs, four pieces of three ribs, two lean center cuts and two fatty end cuts. Put a rack in a pan so they can drip, rub them with onion power, garlic salt, green chili powder, lots of fresh pepper, put the lean pieces on the bottom and the fat pieces on top, agree that I should attempt to stabilize the oven heat at 400 degrees. Burning modest sticks of dry wood, it is a pretty easy task, requiring some prudence with a smallish fire. B does most of the work, I sit at the island, start drinking, and take my job seriously. We sample the pate and it will be especially fine in a couple of days, if it survives a couple of days. It's such an outrageous treat, we both are fond of splitting a length of French bread and toasting it lightly, spreading a thick layer, and eating it as most people might eat peanut butter. Final tally was a little over five and a half pounds. I gave B two pounds, kept two pounds, and taking a pound and a half to the pub, where it should be good for a free lunch. B has not been much on the ridge and we had conversation and then the ribs were ready. I heated some sauce and served a bowl of the squash soup, we broke bread. The ribs were fantastic, farm raised pork, like similar chickens, carry more flavor. Of course chickens are nothing like pigs, but I mean raised in the open. Sunlight, running around, eating sundry greens and bugs, it makes a difference. These ribs were flavorful, the charred fat was great. We ate like cavemen raised in England. We had this roasted meat that required both hands and multiple napkins, and a bowl of this nice soup, that required consideration. A sort of conflicted meal, but wonderful. B and I enjoy the same sort of challenges, both adopted the same strategy: eat the meat with both hands and grunt your answers, then lean back in your chair with a bowl of soup in one hand and a soup-spoon in the other, cross your legs, and discuss modern fiction. I'd like to do a film, here I go, show me a wrack line; a slow film, about cooking and eating, like last night, the conversation was top-shelf. Get them used to the camera and turn it on. I noticed something different, this third visit of Glenn's, I'd ask him what he needed and he'd be vague but indicate direction, I no longer noticed the hardware. I'm good with particulars, they indicate exact things, that particular gummed down crest of a Pileated Woodpecker, that I would recognize, might or might not be at issue, it could be nothing, but it is duly noted. I keep an odd kind of record, a simple record of the dispossessed. I don't care about anything else. Now I don't even have to express my mantra, whatever it might have been. You can imagine. Something about you and God. His Thigh. You faded out, I hope it was good for you. I did my best. Yes: yes, yes, yes, yes, what I thought, what I thought I meant. All these prods are interesting. What you think you want to is up to you, why am I here? I don't know. You are the ultimate spring-board, my point of entry, a free-kick, what you represent to me, a tap-root.