[contextly_auto_sidebar] We have so many ways nowadays to discover how boeuf en daube is pronounced without having to tap a French shoulder, human or beef. Raise your hands, readers, if you know what novel lists this dish as an ingredient. I read that book, probably unwillingly, more than 50,000 meals ago -- I counted -- and fastened on the scene at the end of the first part that gathers characters to look at and smell their spotlit dinner without any obvious hunger or lust of appetite. That was in the early '70s, when … [Read more...]
Archives for 2017
Bug, Trapped
[contextly_auto_sidebar] A hapless grasshopper found itself in the news not too long ago because it was trapped, a permanent visitor to a one-painting museum called Olive Trees. You may have wondered, as I did, why notice of this common, elegant insect surfaced. But Vincent van Gogh, a painter many people know, drags any report concerning him, no matter how paltry, into the light. "What could this be"? Paintings conservator Mary Schafer may have said this aloud to herself -- it's a lonely job -- when she saw that a crust of French … [Read more...]
A Shroom With a View
"Sex" in a headline could once skew a reader's attention, but I risk vanilla using it here. Grade-schoolers of all nations do porn homework online. That coy teen you meet at your niece's bat mitzvah has fastened on techniques you once only imagined. "Once only imagined" is a familiar phrase, no? What happens to imagination when we walk past the bloody slash on the ground and the other eyes walking with me call to stop. A short time before, my companion and lover said quietly but in amazement, "Look at that big fella!" as an elegant plum … [Read more...]
Fireflies Are Out …
They bring me back to my stoop days, decades ago, when I smudged their bellies on my forehead as makeup, also called war paint. Will they make the same impression decades from now, on those I love beyond measure, in flooded or scorched backyards I'll never see? You can tell the temperature by the firefly rate of thorax blinking, which can be hypnotic, like the gleam of this cucumber seed in fluorescent kitchen light. Those seeds, covered in slime, scoot like baby roaches onto counter or floor when you run a spoon down the center of your … [Read more...]