There's no Nobel for candy, hard or soft, which is too bad. It could bring peace, by pieces. That prize is an elite exercise, yet, as a teen science nerd, I shivered when introduced to one and then another Nobel winner, gracious, patient elders with remarkable Erlenmeyer memories. Lucky in Manhattan to have a Japanese market nearby, and because I'm enticed by anything in a post-Pop package, I fell for Nobel's Super Cola, three ounces for $3, a dozen or so globes of hot surprise. I told myself that I sprung for my candyphile boyfriend, but … [Read more...]
Beans in My Closet
Many of us in 2020 understand that we must retreat from strangers, sometimes even from our very closest, and do for ourselves. The threat of death by a new plague makes any comparison unusual, although comparing different threats of death in past decades and centuries puts some of the present danger in existential limbo. Small comfort. But I've been told that context is important. When I hear "context is important," I usually screw my face into a please, no. So I did some lookback and realized I had rarely written about beans, now a … [Read more...]
Juice, Tomato
Of course, I had to grow, pluck my own and juice them. I even bit one on the vine like an animal -- I am an animal -- and sucked and chewed, thinking of another writer who acted on the same impulse before I was born, though with a different lure. Perhaps MFK Fisher transmitted that to me, a gastronomic Tesla. As I get older, and maybe as others do, I tend toward something I will call "jeweling" my past, surrounding habitual memories with Wordsworth halos. This happens more often now, under pressure to consider the present a permanent past. … [Read more...]