Off Kilter

A page out of the play book. I felt awful, nose dripping into my stomach and retching, so I fetched a pot and retired to my nest. Put on the kettle and made tea, heated some chicken broth. It's difficult to settle things completely but by mid-afternoon I'm onto a lime grog, thinking I might be able to eat a bowl of plain rice. Reread Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast, a wonderfully told tale, then some other food writing, that famous meal in Joyce's The Dead. Sorting foodstuffs I came across a can of crab meat past its date, so I made a very nice crab omelet with a butter sauce, toasted cornbread with marmalade. I hadn't eaten in a while and it tasted wonderful. I'd made a small crock pot of grits overnight (god bless John Thorne) and formed polenta into a tube, the basis for several meals. Anything is good on fried polenta. Mid-winter, even Kroger brand salsa is pretty good. Hormel, to their credit, still sells pickled pig's feet in odd-sized glass jars. You must be alone to eat these, there must be a stream nearby, someplace you can wash your hands and face. Mom and Dad took over running the fish-camp we frequented (when Dad could get a tour of duty in Jacksonville Florida) for a week every summer, so that the owners could go fish someplace else. Fish-camps are squalid and wonderful places, usually a shack on pilings and a crude boat-launch, a deck, with a fish-cleaning table at the end, out over the water. There were alligators and huge moccasins, otters and manatees. The shack would be crowded with supplies: fishing line, bait, Vienna sausages, crackers, and there was a counter, with a couple of stools. At one end of the counter was a gallon jar of pickled eggs, at the other end was a gallon jar of pickled pig's feet. I'd often take one of the feet out to the end of the dock and gnaw it down to bare bone. From a pound of foot I might get an ounce of meat, but the huge and ancient gar would come to eat the knuckles.


Skip Fox's new book was in the mail. He's one of the two or three finest writers I've ever known. His language is always exciting, and his frame of reference is vast. I take a deep breath and read slowly, each page three or four times. The best writing, which this book is, require close reading. My attention extended all night, the first night with it, now I just keep it within an arm's reach, and reread a few pages a day. Almost out of animal fat, so I made cracklings, which I hope to use with a pot of beans tomorrow, and caramelized a skillet of onions that I just left on the stove. Put the beans on to soak, and it's in the bag, Mix this together, cook it a few hours, make a pot of rice, and read fucking Proust again, if that's what you want to do. I like taking a bowl of this, a turned walnut burl of a bowl, that is incredibly beautiful, and eat it with a handmade spoon that twists logic. Dead and gone to heaven. What could possibly be an alternative? I don't care if the Patriots make it to the Super Bowl.


Also, I might add, he flinched, which I think is a full point.