Walking the Fine Line

Not very long ago, I was “chosen” by a stray cat. He’s young, still feral to a great extent, and black–almost identical to my own pet except for white markings my cat has had since he was a kitten (he has a million names but we just call him Bubba now) . This winter’s been an exceptionally hard one for the vineyard and for the animals around who live in it, and this new black cat (who’s been christened “Other Bubba” by my husband) has had to overcome an unimaginable amount of real fear to approach me for food and some kind of shelter. I couldn’t shoo him away, and I knew there’d be trouble when my own cat caught on to the existence of this new and younger “twin”. I grit my teeth, set out a dish of food, I bought him a warm little cat shelter, and placed it behind a makeshift lean-to created by the back end of an overturned adirondack chair I’d put away for the winter on the verandah.

Bubba

I didn’t think he’d find his way into the shelter, but he emerges from it on sunny days to greet me when I leave the house. And yes, I’ve put a dish of dry cat food out just beside it, so he will always have enough food. It’s the kind that comes in paper bags, like charcoal or potatoes. The labels are nondescript, just lettering on a solid colour background. I hate feeding this cat this kind of food but his appearances are erratic and I don’t want him to starve or be cold–and he isn’t coming into my home. So dry cat food it has to be. When I know he’s around I’ll feed him real food–leftover meat or the same kind of thing Bubba gets regularly.

I have to be discreet about that, though. It has to take place when Bubba’s not immediately present to see it.

When the whole thing started I made myself ready for the change in the universe it would cause. Right now they’re co-existing peacefully. I’ve even let them see each other and be around each other, with my own cat taking the upper hand over Other Bubba. At first we stayed out with them both, to make sure nothing violent would take place: I’ve seen my cat around others and if he’s threatened in any way he’ll attack, but he will also suffer for asserting himself in that he will make himself physically sick. In the past, that’s meant everything from targeted vomiting sessions which have destroyed a few beloved possessions, to life threatening illnesses that come complete with surgeries, days of recuperation boarding, and weeks of truly unpleasant post-op care. On top of everything, Bubba has been known to abuse his vet during these ordeals, biting him impressively each time he’d palpate during an exam. The vet would then energetically stifle a curse then take himself off to the lab’s fridge to find the appropriate vaccine so he could inoculate himself before the puncture wound swelled and reddened too far. My opinion about vaccines includes a firm, science-based belief of their utterly catastrophic effects on the body–human or otherwise. I concluded a long time ago that it will be much healthier for any vet if Bubba and I stay out of their exam rooms forever more.

My cat’s 18 years old now, and I was there the second he was born (and then abandoned by his mother) so we’ve been together a long time. Over the course of those 18 years, however, he’s encountered a lot of the problems that can come from eating all the grain and second-rate meat products put in commercial foods so now he gets ground turkey, which he seems to prefer over any other kind of ground meat. I give him scraps from the table, and cod liver oil, and things like yogurt sprinkled with taurine and follow all the other recommendations given to people who’ve had to restore their pets’ health using real foods. He’s done well–medically he was supposed to die over 10 years ago, but he’s still here this morning to complain wildly about the food he’s not going to be allowed to eat. I’m mentioning this only because of the amount of attention he needs, he’s a constant concern if I’m home and he makes me understand he was here first, even if all he requires are steady meals and a warm place to sleep.

Strays don’t just “turn up”, though, they choose their caretakers carefully. They don’t often act alone when they tell you you”ll be responsible for them from that point on. I’m not 100% sure about how it’s happened, but I am sure in knowing that Bubba’s own intentions have brought this other kitten home to me.

What do I think?

Of course I have an opinion on the matter of the dreaded “Political Crisis” in Canada and the matter of the Coalition in the House.

And my opinion is: the vast majority of Canadians who talked themselves past the known futility of the election process in this country did not vote for Harper. Despite what Harper wants to say about Stephan Dion’s weakness as a leader, despite what he says about the Quebeçois and their insistence on having the nerve to be heard in Parliament, and despite Harper’s fondness for whinging about Separatists and Socialists destroying the country (after trying desperately to form a coalition with the very same “separatists” himself, unsuccessfully, not six months ago–who says Harper has no sense of humour?), 65% of Canadian voters did not want a Harper government of any kind, regardless of the leader of the opposition in question.

Because our voting system isn’t actually representational, we’re stuck with a Harper minority government (truly, no one voted for his party outside of his own riding). More accurately, we’re stuck with a Harper government shored up by Mike Harris’ former Goon Squad. Let’s everyone in Ontario remind the rest of the country how much good Harris did for our economy here, shall we? From the fact that we’re still counting up the death toll, literally, from the closed hospitals and gutted public health system that failed when SARS hit the city, to the thousands dead from poisoned water when Harris privatized the water quality monitors, and to the Harris-orchestrated assassination of Dudley George when he protested the theft of his peoples’ land, contrary to a signed treaty.

A Coalition aligned against Harper’s minority government is not only not a “crisis”, it’s actually the government most Canadians elected to power. If this is the way we have to go about getting what we want in this country now (until we get to work on fixing the enormous problem we’ve got with actually representing what voters want in their ridings) then so be it. I’m all for it.
On top of that, this is what is supposed to happen in a minority government. Forming coalitions is the opposition’s job, especially if there is no confidence in the government’s agenda.

And there is no confidence.

Not What I Expected But Welcome

Something exciting has actually started to take place here, it seems the entire country is terrified of ending up with the current PM as a leader of a majority government (even in a minority position he managed to do a lot of damage, in just two years–no one wants to see him act out full bully tendencies without stops) so one of the latest trends is for groups to create an actual political party out of their membership and “campaign”…but their platform is “Anyone But The Conservatives”. There are two of them at the moment (I’m thinking specifically of the Sinclair Stevens’ Progressive Canadians Party, as well as the Animal Rights party, who’d like to see more attention paid to Green Issues but really want to tell the world how Harper betrayed them on a promise in the past). More seem to pop up and enter the election every day. They’re just out there to be heard, since media will only report what other candidates are campaigning on, not opinions on issues, or the way the campaigns are being received or debated. The “first past the post” voting system we have in Canada is outdated and it makes us all vulnerable to a majority Conservative government even if the vast majority of Canadians vote for anyone else, so the second largest message in the Canadian election at the moment is “vote strategically” to eliminate the possibility that the Conservatives will win in any particular riding. If you’re curious about the extent of this message in Canada, just google up Anyone But Harper, there are numerous websites with maps and postal-code tools to help anyone in need of figuring out who’s most likely to win against the Con in their riding, sites put up by individuals and groups who just want to make a majority Conservative government an impossibility. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone run in an election solely to tell others not to vote for the incumbent–in each case, this is what these parties are all saying. Not a single one among them is actually running a candidate or raising money to accomplish that, and that’s telling in itself. This is the first time I’ve ever seen that particular drawback (you cannot run for office without a lot of money behind you) being used to an advantage.

Another interesting thing is people in the arts who’ve had their funding cut drastically in the past two years have also just decided to speak up in the media they create, cross country–so for the first time I can recall, well known film makers, actors and actresses, musicians, painters, people who write and produce literature, plays, and television have all decided to use the media by organizing public speaking engagements along the campaign trail, and by buying advertisement spots as well–to make the whole issue of restored Arts funding very, very big. Suddenly it’s on the agenda, nation wide (when Harper simply wanted to ignore it and continue cutting funding). And since they’re all involved in media, these artists have an access that can match the one held by the candidates. They’re really undoing a lot of the “spin” put on the issue by the Conservatives–that the arts are frivolous and not important, for example, that artists aren’t entitled to “hand outs” and we need the money for more important things (such as sending lots of young Canadian kids from the economically depressed provinces over to Afghanistan so that American soldiers can keep blowing them up). One television and theatre performer, Rick Mercer, has a satirical television show (the Mercer Report) on which he often challenges political leaders on their positions and tactics–I’m quite sure Harper hates him–however, in his “ad” Mercer simply says (I’m paraphrasing, but it’s close) “You may hate my show, but the bottom line is all about jobs. I employ more builders and technicians and electricians every week than everyone in parliament has employed or will employ in their entire lives”. It’s easy for people to forget that so many people in the trades alone are dependent on the arts for work, aside from writers and actors and directors and producers. And that pitch seems to be putting the importance of arts funding in terms everyday people can “get”; a clear and simple retort to Harper’s costly ads, and his contempt for things like the arts, child care, health care, and women’s shelters funding as a kind of ‘extra welfare’ given to the undeserving.

I’m fascinated by the way the actual media is reporting events in these elections, as opposed to the way the new media (bloggers and online news sources which are more interactive and immediate) are reporting events. And there does seem to be a “struggle” in the conventional media to break away from a very restrictive means of operating, of “reporting” (with a script) what is happening cross country. Some of the most revealing footage of President Bush over the last 8 years has only been seen on a late night talk show–the most satirical and subversive daily media source in the United States over that time. David Letterman’s daily 5 and 10 second shorts of Bush flubbing speeches or reacting to a pertinent question in his characteristically incapable way has been the real news update for so many….and that kind of behaviour–the actual president in action–is never shown on mainstream news. Letterman has been so successful at indirectly creating and furthering debate and knowledge that other satirical comedians have since joined him to do the same thing–John Stewart and Stephen Colbert being two of the best known on American television. By now, everyone must have heard about David Letterman’s coup last week regarding the scheduled guest appearance of John McCain–McCain canceled on the show at the very last minute saying he had to go to Washington to deal with the economic crisis, which left Letterman both insulted and determined to show up McCain on that statement (McCain has no history of any involvement on economics during his time in the administration. so there’s no way the excuse could be taken seriously). McCain actually turned Letterman down to do an interview with a news broadcaster, in a studio not far away from his own. So during the show, Letterman ran a live feed into the other studio where Katie Couric was interviewing McCain–and the entire live audience and extended television audience witnessed McCain being caught out in a big lie, first hand. Letterman roared, “The road to the white house goes right through me, Senator McCain!”, a statement funny enough to be ridiculous, and (as Letterman well knows) ridiculous enough to be absolutely true. McCain will have to work extremely hard to undo the damage done there.

And to undo the damage Sarah Palin’s done in the same arena–failing egregiously under Couric’s obvious questions. Tina Fey’s uncanny resemblance to the Alaskan Republican, coupled with her easy comedic grace, result in the best documentation of the Karl Rove-selected candidate’s fall. Both McCain and Palin are really out of their element in the media, but that’s where seasoned and talented artists are willing and able to show them in their true light, to an audience more than ready to hear the truth from somewhere.

Perhaps that’s why arts funding is being so completely shut down, everywhere: the artists are the only ones talking about what’s really taking place, politically. I suppose that will never change, but it’s awfully nice to see how all the money and effort placed on controlling how we understand what’s going on is being countered simply with observation and thought and debate, on the ground level and now on an equally widespread level of media. Gives me some hope.

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Gli Abbruzzese

When I think of the foods my mother used to make, it occurs to me that almost no one takes that amount of time to prepare anything anymore. It was a long time before I realized that foods most people think of as “Italian” were foods my mother rarely made–hers was a cuisine that involved a great deal of preparation that started outside of the kitchen, a discriminating taste for the very best ingredients, no matter how rare. I took a lot of this for granted when I was a child, it often made me impatient when she would scour the city’s live markets, or forests in parkgrounds, looking for exactly the right herb, or mushroom, or animal or vegetable for a dish my mother had decided she would make. I wondered how it was my mother seemed fixated on these ingredients, when everyone else’s mothers around me seemed far less concerned, and never seemed to make the same foods as she did, even if they too were Italian women from Italy. To me she seemed like a witch: particularly in an age where everyone’s children were fixated on “astronaut” foods, stuff that was packed up and created in labs and sent off to the moon with the spacemen. She’d buy us the peanut butter in tubes and the Tang so we’d leave her alone when she gathered malva blossoms on the neighbour’s lawn to make tea only she would end up drinking. But she’d shake her head at us. Rightly so.

My mother’s village was quite small. There were a limited number of families there, and she grew up on a property in the hills outside of Teramo, a place settled by what I’m told were seven families, formerly named after their seven homes–Le Sette Case. Seven is a big number in Abbruzzi, I’ve learned: there are entire feasts prepared on the first of May based entirely on that number’s prominence in the mythos of these people. Up to 30 courses can be served on that day’s celebration meal, and every course’s primary ingredients are also arranged in terms of sevens. So I don’t know how much of my mother’s retelling is the truth, or a simple example of local mythology, passed down even to her from its ancient source. What I remember of her land is that it’s surrounded by mountains, green fields, rows of corn leading up into the sky and vineyards throughout the lands closest to the house. It was a large stone farmhouse, like nothing I’ve seen here. An elevated main floor built above what used to be the stables and barns, presumably for heat. What I remember of the place was its massive elements: a tall staircase leading up to the main great doors; polished stone floors throughout the first floor, and marble on what we’d call a veranda here, exposed to the elements (and therefore very surprising); a focolare, that thing we might call its hearth, so large it could be entered standing, surrounded by stone. It was oven, fireplace, central heat, the preferred seat, the focus of the household (and the origin of the very word itself). It was never left to go out; it was never left alone.

My mother had her own house on the property too: a little stucco farm house with a couple of rooms and some land. She’d bought it from her uncle when he decided to stay in the States. It was her intention to go back to that house at some point, it was never her intention to marry my father and live in a city like Toronto. From her family home’s entrance, you could see the Gran Sasso and the Miale mountains, the lights of the city below us, and the family’s own contributions to the little town they built: a small church, a school house, a very large retail store (what they called the “Sale e Tabacchi”, “salt and tobacco”; a place where they sold food, wine, supplies of all kinds, dry goods, milled grain and other produce they’d grown, and animal feed), and their relatives’ houses. Remote and seemingly isolated, as cold as hell at night and as hot as hell during the day.

My mother had a knowledge about plants that made her seem almost magical–the doctor, lovely as he was, was never called on at our house unless my mother couldn’t get the plant she needed to get us out of our illness. We were careful not to tell the doctor anything about my mother’s doings, but on the occasions she offered her information, he listened very carefully in a way you never see MDs do now, they seem so intimately defensive, even around chamomile tea. She was uncompromising about what she gave for our pains and we often seemed powerless to do anything about it unless our strength returned. By then we’d be feeling better and we’d let her off the hook, anyway: no big thing. It wasn’t until I ran into the character of the friar in Romeo and Juliet that I recognized what she’d actually been doing in nurturing and gathering the odd herb, the strange root, the full bloom at the precise hour. It wasn’t until I’d invested the time in the lure of this kind of medicine myself that I “got” my mother’s fixation, and understood why she was like no one else I knew. For the longest time I didn’t even realize where my own interest came from, even though it seemed limited to an interest in scent and its sources. But even there, it was my mother’s fixation before it was mine. One of my earliest memories with her is a streetcar trip to the Simpson’s department store for an engraved gold atomizer of Miss Balmain; another is her “finishing touch” of Le Galion’s Sortilège whenever she got “dressed”. I still remember her favourite perfumes and their presence in our home, I now know my own choices lead directly back to those mixtures, though the specific bottles and labels will never be sold here again. I wear their “offspring”; the same themes, reinterpreted.

I remember the day when I learned the meaning of her name: Palmarosa. Not its literal meaning, that was always obvious. It has a significance and a significative form that is unique to my mother, unique to us. I’ve always thought of it as a strange name, it still is, I’ve only met one or two other women with it and all of them seem to be related to me. It’s always been very pretty, in my opinion, but for some strange reason I missed (again!) it’s connection with the plant world. It is a grass, a palm, after all: one used in the creation of perfume because of its proximity to the scent of rose oil. It grows in South America, Argentina and Peru. My grandfather travelled there as a young man and very possibly came across the plant while he was there, as it doesn’t grow in Italy where he lived as a child, and returned to live as an adult. I’d never seen the plant mentioned before, and my interest with plants and medicine was there, but untapped. I’d found a bottle of the oil in Michigan, at a vendor’s stall in a market, and asked if a sample vial was available…then asked where it came from, what it was used for, how it was gathered, what it looked like…as if the curiosity flooded from me all of sudden. South America resonated with me and I remembered my grandfather; images of my mother in the garden, in the forests, in the markets all flashed back to me. I lost my grandparents early, one of them even before I was born: all I remembered about her father was his extreme height, his very gentle voice, and his brilliant blue eyes, his elegant face. I could imagine him sailing across the ocean, and wandering through the jungles as a young man. It was part of the story of him I’d been told–the part that was so much less my mother’s experience of him than her own myth about him, something less terrifying about him than the man he actually was to her, and to the rest of her siblings. Suddenly it was as if all those experiences linked us together, across time and space and even life and death. I remember the hair at the back of my neck standing, the gooseflesh. So out of nowhere, out of the ordinary, out of the extraordinary.

I knew where the wild thyme grew, where bolete mushrooms could be found (not the false ones, though, that grow under spruce trees–leave those ones there), when to pick dandelion leaves for salad (and where) and why basil has to be grown near tomatoes. Carnation petals have a thin end–pull them out of the cluster and that part of the carnation tastes sweet and peppery. Lilac flowers taste of honey; violets and pansies as well. Nettles and black malva and chamomile are everywhere around us–though the leaves of sunny chrome yellow coltsfoot blooms, everywhere around us too, contain enough cyanide to kill. Tiny artichokes small enough to fit into your fist are a staple in my mother’s cuisine, as are crêpes, made by the hundreds and combined or wrapped or filled in thousands of dishes; chestnuts as well, for the flour, paste, and roasted nutmeat they yield; peppers with an intensity to rival the hottest Indian cuisine. Before I was five she’d made me notice the difference between the saffron that came from Spain, and the saffron that came from Aquila, not that far away from where my mother was born. It was slight, but it was there in colour and fragrance, in the intensity of the finished flavour. She had a fixation for Bertolini essences, glass bottles with little metal covered stoppers, sold in tiny boxes bearing the turn-of-the-century typography and the depiction of an aquiline-nosed crone. She made liquers with these: Millefiori, Vermouth, Rhum, Caffe Sport, Triple Sec, Amaretto, Banane, and the essence that defied description, Alkermes. As deep blue-red as garnets and beets, it stained everything magenta and tasted of red currants, rose, pomegranates, heat, and spun sugar. Actually, nothing really tastes like it; nothing has its perfume. It’s unmistakable, and it went in every one of our birthday cakes, soaked through the Pan di Spagna until every golden inch was as pink as rubellite tourmaline. Colour, texture, aroma, and the ability to chemically alter your state: my mother’s birthday cakes took longer than a day to make, a labour of several steps, an assembly of various flavourings and extracts and techniques. Clouds of egg whites, their “reds” (my mother’s word for yolks) beaten to the ribbon stage; a baking powder drenched with the essence of vanilla; lemons juiced, peeled, zested. Then, as filling, a thick, cooked cream, flavoured with the tart lemon peel, its quantity halved, and that half flavoured again with cocoa as black as coffee. There was nothing juvenile about these sweets–each thin slice we were allowed on our special day was its own allure of layered sensations, until finally it wasn’t just the alcohol content that made our heads spin. It was as if she wanted us to use every part of our ability to sense as we grew older, not just the dessert but everything else; like her intention for us was that we be perceptive enough to know where we came from, know who made us. Know what was involved in the effort. And since there was a lot of effort involved, she seemed determined that we begin to figure this out early.

It didn’t register quite so easily, of course. What we loved about her traditions, our traditions, we often gave up in the name of being like the other children around us. It made it easier for us to be the “translators” we were, the facilitators between her and the outside, foreign world–because we had to fit into both in order for us all to thrive. My mother was frustrated with us, but patient. We would recognize it one day, we would be made to understand her point, she’d worked hard enough, she knew.

It was decades later, in a remote trattoria in Reggio Emilia, that I was offered a dessert that instantly brought me back to my third birthday, the first time I realized what she’d made especially for me, the memory of the flavour of the brilliant liqueur flooding back so quickly I could barely name it. I knew it right away as my mother’s birthday cake. When I asked the waiter for the name of what I was given, he answered, “Zuppa Inglese“–what translates literally into “English soup”–an Italian metaphor that teases the English for their supposed and lingering affection for cakes in general (Victorians and their “tea time”), and their savvy predilection for making use of dry cake in trifles. The Alkermes, the waiter told me, was really the most English thing about the dessert, since it could only be obtained, for the longest time, from the English herbalists who’d retained all the secrets of its creation.

Thoughts That Just Won’t Let Go

Evidently, I have the seduction style of a Prized Object.

Driving down the escarpment on Grimsby’s Mountain road last night, I saw shadowy figures just ahead in the distance, in the road in front of me. They turned out to be a row of skateboarders, wearing wind/motorcycle gear, lined up to skate all the way down the hill’s winding road.

It was just about to become the end of dusk. The lights of the town below, along the lake shore, and across the lake, from Toronto, glittered as the last shade of inkstained blue left the sky during their descent.

At first they annoyed me. Just for a split second. But then I slowed the car and followed carefully, and watched the one in front of me: he appeared to be floating down the hill, poised in the middle of the lane in the roadway, his arms out to the side, like birds hold out their wings. Like the raptors who live around this mountain all year now, circling their way up and down the thermals that spiral over the trees. He never took his feet off the board, never veered from dead centre in the lane. The road was free of ice, free of potholes, smooth and black and steep. When he got to the end of Mountain road, he passed a group of other skaters, all dressed as he was, all cheering him on. He maneuvered his way around a car turning right, then slipped back into the middle of the road again, finally stopping his descent on Highway 8, turning to face me with a look of pure exhilaration on his face, waving to thank me for keeping my distance, giving him his space; running back up to his friends. Watching him, I imagined he felt like he was soaring, just like the eagles and hawks. He was looking at the same sparkling light, the same growing darkness, but he was also feeling the wind against his body, the effect of every one of his movements on his speed, and his control. You could tell he was ecstatic. In his eyes you could see such joy.

Tilda Swinton

A long, cool woman in a black dress.

(A strangely designed black dress, and an unfortunate, lopsided pose.  And yet, still magnificent)

My husband has a woman friend in the city. A confidant. He tells me she confides in him, she’s a divorced woman with a child and a lover who lives in another city, who has a child and family of his own. She gives my husband many little gifts: appointments for manicures and facials at the men’s spa, outings to interesting restaurants together, an hour or so with a Shiatsu masseuse who tries to iron out the snags, physically (but also brings up all the old emotional stuff). He had a massage last Saturday, and told me about the experience the next day.

He said the masseuse said, “How’s your grief?” as he started his consultation, not even giving him a chance to settle in yet.

All his aches and pains reveal him: sadness held deep, halting the lungs; sadness never expressed, made succinct, in the skin; frustration and denial, as heavy to bear as an anvil, hard against a back it makes weak.

(We can’t help but reveal ourselves clearly. No matter what effort we think we make to the contrary).

Molecular Gastronomy, Toronto Style

My friend Geoff is turning 40 next week.

(It only looks like I’m obsessing about age, but I’m not, I’m just thinking about the occasion).

When Geoff and I were students, I made Geoff an involuntary friend. The details are convoluted and odyssean, but it’s the truth. I was in a moment of crisis I don’t think I’d ever encountered before, busy constructing a plan of rebuttal and attack but really kind of clueless about what I’d have to negotiate, and Geoff was a sudden, familiar face. He happened to be around at just that moment, the first I recognized when I scanned the great room in the Steadman Lecture Halls. He seemed poised, serene, and relaxed behind a paper cup of Tim Horton’s, smoking a cigarette by his books and surrounded, as usual, by a group of really beautiful girls. Maybe he was waiting for a lecture to begin. I don’t know if that’s the case, all these years later, because in my state of complete dumbfoundedness I never thought to ask. I just remember reaching my hand out to him and pulling him along with me, as if he’d just been waiting for me to extract him from his group. Good thing I didn’t ask, now that I think back: I have a feeling we’d have passed the rest of our education in separate spheres of study and influence. Then I’d never have acquired the many gifts which came from Geoff, directly.

Here are some:

1. A tape made while Geoff was away, working in the mountains of Lake Louise at a teahouse so high in the Rockies trips to the nearest town happened only once a week. They involved lugging all of the restaurant’s garbage down to the town’s landfill, since vehicles could never make the climb. The tape included the Two Nice Girls’ “Spent My Last $10 on Birth Control and Beer” (an anthem like no other); Dick Siegel’s “Jesus, John, and Elvis” (still relevant, Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton); and Louden Wainright’s “Don’t Leave Your Records in the Sun”, my introduction to Blue Grass music. He named the collection “Songs Like (my) Driving”, as he’d spend every trip in my car with his eyes fixed on a point under the dash whenever we went anywhere, as if they were held open with fear and those tiny braces on Malcolm McDowell’s eyelids in Clockwork Orange. “Any time you change lanes,” he’d say, “you’re asking for trouble”.

2. Divine, John Waters, and the magical, incantatory force of Cha Cha Heels they created.

(I bet Geoff and Nicky were the first to put John Waters on a syllabus in an institution of higher learning).

3. When Geoff came back from living in Prague for over a year, he showed up on our doorstep in Parkdale. Our landlord couple, who lived on the bottom floor, were not getting along well with us because I’d recently insisted on having the rooms painted and they were resisting. Geoff was early, many hours early. When we finally got home, Geoff’s luggage was outside their front door, which slid open as we came in. Geoff stood in our landlord couple’s entrance holding a glass of wine, surrounded by our suddenly besotted and very friendly landlord couple, who absolutely loved meeting Geoff and concluded that we couldn’t be so bad if we had such a friend. The landlords were amazing after that, talking with us for hours and inviting us out for coffee and dessert. When the house was successfully sold and we all packed on moving day, they ended up giving us a goodbye card stuffed with $50 dollar bills plus the interest on our rent deposit, and they cried as they wished us well. They were really great! And we’d never have known if it weren’t for Geoff.

4. Food. Geoff was always a fantastic cook, able to take almost nothing and transform it into something great. His mom tells me he’s been cooking since he was 7, when he took his first cooking class.

So it’s no surprise then that we’ll be having a birthday meal for him at Colborne Lane, an eclectic modern restaurant in the St. Lawrence Market district in Toronto, where the cuisine is influenced by Ferran Adria’s molecular gastronomy. The Chef’s done his time at El Bulli with Adria, but he’s clearly going for a kind of asian fusion molecular menu, something much more personally relevant. So it should be interesting (though I have to say, supplying these people with the chemical ingredients they use was always a little frightening, back when I was “doing my own time” at a compounding pharmacy in the city–you’d always wonder what the hell they were using some of these lab compounds for when they made those “foams”, “jellies”, “freeze-dried powders’”, and exactly how what they were doing differed from General Mills, or Monsanto). Hidden among the usual menu items (salmon, tuna, duck, chicken) in their alien incarnations, I notice this offering:

Beef tenderloin + slow & soft poached

egg + chorizo+fondant potato + smoked salt +

steak sauce jelly + Yukon gold potato puree

And realized that that’s the part that’s all Toronto: the Meat and Potatoes, adorned mostly with adjectives and few chemical reactions. Toronto’s a fantastic city for food and restaurants, and it’s big enough to keep a place like Colborne going for years, even though it’s got competition in the cuisine on the western end of the city; but you know it couldn’t be much of a repeat draw without conceding to that enduring protestant desire for steak and mashed taters.

(I’ll be sure to avoid that selection on the menu).

I haven’t a clue what wines you’d pair with such super-accentuated flavours, in their unexpected textural transformations, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

Fichi farcite con noce e cioccolato

The baking is done. Well, except for some cookies I really should whip up. And I will, as soon as I get a free moment.

I’ve been wondering how it is I’ve spent so long avoiding every possible means to get out of where I am. Oh, sure, I could have sought out ways to learn how to write, years ago, so that I could be published somewhere (anywhere) until I had some body of work to show for my efforts. I’m wondering how it is that I kept hearing the critical voices in my head, when I have other voices–encouraging ones!–coming from all angles around me as well. I wish I’d found a way to ask someone to help me to do this, instead of let myself be convinced that I’d never be able…that what I could do was irrelevant in some way, worth nothing to anyone. It’s not. I’ve been led to see how wrong that is. And I feel so angry about everything that’s brought me to this stagnant and deadly place. But mostly I feel so angry that I never believed I could do something to escape it.

Until now.

I hate resolutions. They are doomed, by nature. But the New Year is coming and this is the time to turn this around and re-imagine myself as whatever it is that lost girl wanted to become. Why is it I’ve never been to places I’ve made myself stop wanting to see? What have I put into place to paralyze me?

I feel like I’m on the verge of pulling that whole construct down. It’s such a happy possibility to contemplate over sliced finocchio as the year ends.

In anticipation, and in celebration, of all the revolutions to come, here’s my recipe for stuffed figs for Christmas:

You’ll need:

1 package of dried figs (I like to use the ones from Cosenza–since they’re from the place where this Christmas sweet originates).

1 package of fresh walnut halves or pecan halves (your choice. If you use pecan, roast them slightly first).

100 grams high cocoa content chocolate (I’m going to use one with lots of cocoa, lots of cinnamon and cardamom, and lots of chili pepper).

(chocolate chips are optional)

1. Flatten and then slice open the dried figs, cutting from the base of each fig to the fig’s “stem”. Don’t cut through that, but open the cut figs up like butterflies.

2. Place a nut half on one side of the sliced fig, and, if you like, put some chocolate chips into the dried fruit as well. Other ideas for stuffings include using real chocolate nibs that you’ve chopped up.

3. Fold the fig together again, so that the nutmeats are sandwiched inside the fig’s halves. Arrange them in one layer on a plate or tray lined with parchment paper; cover the layer with more parchment, then use a weight on top of the paper to “press” the figs flat for an hour or so.

4. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. According to your preference, hand dip each fig in the chocolate to coat it thoroughly or in part; if you prefer that the chocolate just serves as a bitter counterpoint to the sweetness of the dried fruit, drizzle the melted chocolate over the figs until they’re coated to your preference. Place them on parchment and allow the chocolate to set.

You can vary the kind of chocolate you use: black and white chocolate swirled together looks pretty; or you can use a spiced dark chocolate (such as the one with cinnamon and chili pepper) to add extra nuances of flavour to the dried fruit and nut mixture.

A little prosecco, a late harvest wine or an icewine made from Cabernet Franc would make a perfect cold weather ending to a long, long year.

The Annual Scream in High Park, revisited

The Scream wasn’t quite the event I’d remembered. I walked down to the subway and the bank in the 100 degree heat, and I made the mistake of getting on the transit lines right at the beginning of rush hour. By the time I’d reached the air conditioned sanctum of the mall, my comfortable walking shoes had already begun to nibble away at the tender folds above my heels. I ducked into the first pharmacy I could find, right around the corner from the subway exit on Quebec street to find nice fabric bandages which fit perfectly over the threatened spots. I felt much better equipped for the park after that.

I love High Park. I was actually born just across the street from the park, in what was then the St. Joseph’s hospital, just next to the park’s bottomless Grenadier pond. It’s full of ravines and deep forests, oak trees that flame in the fall and paths that snake through the grounds to house bagpipers, the occasional actor working on a soliloquy, and treasures like rare wildflowers in the early spring. I loved the spooky legend of the Grenadiers when I was a child, I loved the shivers the story of those lost battalions, men whose bodies were never found in the glacial pond, would send up and down my spine. Especially when I found myself in the park in the middle of the night, surrounded by the still darkness and the dark whistling breezes as they sailed through the oaks around me.

On this trip, though, walking through the park at that sun baked time felt like walking through an overlit furnace room while being encased in plastic. I just kept feeling warmer and warmer, and the saturated air intensified the effect for me. I arrived a bit too early for the festival, and the stage area was closed off–but it was only when I got there that I remembered attendance always requires a chair or blanket and some form of pillow, plus some icy drinks and an umbrella. I wished I’d remembered! I would have been overjoyed if it started to rain (and there was a bit of a threat of this happening, and I remember it always seems to, each year) but it just never did.

The last time I went was actually 10 years ago, when I had just returned home from living on the East Coast for a while. That show felt comforting in a way nothing else could–it felt reassuring to attend something that would never take place where I’d been living, involving something that would never be valued much there. It was part of “coming home”, or at least I gathered some hope for that possibility just by attending. I even caught a glimpse of a writing instructor I knew there, perched against her bicycle in the darkening ampitheatre. A few years after seeing her there, I heard she died of something she’d been terribly afraid of: cancer.

The show was only half-filled with audience on this night, and most of the people who were there were somehow involved in publishing the readers being featured. That’s not necessarily a criticism, because there is an industry set up around literary talent (and I’m reassured, believe me, that evidence of its existence can still be found). But there were so many publishers and authors and editors present and giggling about poking each other on Facebook that I felt like a tidy minority of one. I hate “social network” sites. A lot. All they seem to accomplish is to limit conversation in social groups to Facebook alone. “Poke, poke, poke…!” they continued. I kicked myself again for not having remembered to bring wine, and some glasses. Surely that would have put a stop to all the social network blather, and just get people to talk to each other. Talk to me, more importantly.

I was alone, and, in their midst, a little bit “in the way”. I moved around to find a seat because the space was completely open to me, but the outdoorsy set up of the ampitheatre was a real physical test. I was trying my best to perch on about 3 inches of concrete terracing, and failing miserably. Finally I moved to a spot under a tree branch, which wasn’t so much curb as stone. Slightly more comfy. It was right in the middle of the social hubbub around the publishers. Oh well. “Facebook facebook facebook”, they blathered; and then, “Ouzunian interviewed me and it was humiliating” plus other gossipy conclusions only the literate (or, rather, “the Toronto Literati”) would give a damn about. I just wanted the readings to start–I was looking forward to the writers just reading their work in their summer clothes, surrounded by people who just want to sit in the heat and be stirred.

A Letter I’ll Never Send

When I wandered around your old home base, a place I’d seen for the first time in my life, I made a note of the number of things which reminded me of you.

The street names that were your name.
Pilots. Airplanes. Propellers.
Rocks soaring out of the earth floor, as red as sunset rays.
Doctors everywhere I looked.
Flowers on old trees opening after the cold.

I met a man on the monorail at the airport who told me to look out for the artwork in the least likely places: 5280 tiny whirling blades in the tunnel, fluttering as we passed by, working hard in half-obscurity. Mountains that hold palaces, places no one knows about except the locals.

Height. Altitude. Pressure. Gold.

I wanted to tell you as much as I could, so much. The more I felt your presence around me, the more I realized that all I was really seeing around me were bold signs of your absence.
At that moment I knew: you weren’t ever going to be back.