Outside it's the past
Why is it that in the warm months I tune heavily into current events of the world? Could it be working in the kitchen and cutting seemingly endless amounts of panchetta and stuffing infinite amounts of apricots with goat and cream cheese? The radio on, my mind off, the news of the day announced and repeated in the morning, afternoon and on the way home in the evening and each day molded by certain developments in the middle east, or in the house or on the senate floor, things said in a press room or yelled on the streets. I am trimming huge slabs of meat and hearing about Palestinian refugee camps near Tripoli under fire by the Lebanese army, whom the United States government supports. Sprinkle fresh black pepper, kosher salt and thyme, cover the meat in oil and garlic. The Bush administration wants to delete any G8 references to the gravity of the crisis of global warming. Cut about two hundred potatoes into equal sizes so they cook evenly. A former KGB agent accused of poisoning Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210. A mother who gave birth to sextuplets, who were either born dying or dead, asked whether she wants to hold her babies for the first and last time. Iran accuses Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari of spying and has held her in prison now for two weeks with no clear response as to what exactly the charges against her are. Take the pulp of the roasted eggplant, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, blend until puree. Count five hundred individual shrimp to make sure if we have enough.
I was given a two hour break during which one of those hours I had to run to the airport to make some reservations. When I got home I fell asleep rereading A Farewell to Arms and when I awoke I realized I had been having an intense dream where I was in some kind of space craft barreling through time. Then back to work, over the grade to a winery in Carmel. One thing I would like to write about extensively if I ever got around to it is the dichotomy of restaurant and kitchen. Not that this was a restaurant I worked in this evening, but rather a makeshift one where they store all the wine barrels. The evening builds to that moment when the guests arrive. You can't see them but you can hear them. The clinking of the plates and glasses which hours ago we all set so precisely. There is always that care making sure the three glasses (water, white wine and red, in that order) are consistenly staggered from the top of the knife. But it is all soon forgotten in the bustle of readying the salads. Romaine lettuce with a creamy parmesan salad dressing, topped with water cress, asiago cheese and panchetta. Everyone was calling the panchetta bacon bits and that's what it was, but I spent so much time cutting it into small pieces earlier today, and oh, if it really was bacon bits, I said, I would have had two hours of my day back. The salad we just toss into bus tubs and mix by hand. Put that on the plate as quickly and nicely as possible and from then on it's just non stop running around, chaos, things being yelled here and there, excuse me I need to get through, near collisions by the door, watch that plate it's hot, we have three more vegetarians than expected, one person just doesn't want cheese and one person doesn't have enough, we don't have any more vegetarian dishes, steak, potatoes, vegetables and no more than three prawns per plate, keep the rhythm going, move the plates so I can use the next one, can someone help garnish this dish, two more tables left and then you have dessert. Chocolate cake covered in a caramel-banana sauce and one strawberry on each plate. People are no doubt eating their food slowly and enjoying their conversation, as much wine as they want, this is a winery, and things feel just so ordered when they see the plate in front of them, what nice presentation, I imagine they say, and if they only knew the kind of chaos that birthed that plate and from whence it came and what goes on behind the draped screen. The coffee and desert goes out and someone yells at me to take a break and eat. And for my dinner, I eat facing a wall, standing up, alone, plate on the stainless steel table where I had cut bananas earlier, mayonnaise spilled all around me, dirty silverware and used plastic covers and pots and pans and a stove that is pouring steam in my direction, people moving around in my peripheries waiting for their own break to eat, but we do get as many prawns as we want.
I was asked to go fetch the golf cart and I walked through the vineyards under a sliver moon which still lit my path. I wondered how long it had been since I had walked in the night and not been in a city. And how clear the sky looked and how I hadn't seen it like that for some time. Why don't I walk at night more often? Is it fear of something, some thing, some one, doesn't night kind of hold an inevitable raping, knifing or mugging? So sure that he went out one night to go get the golf cart and he never came back. And, yes, where did I go?
I was given a two hour break during which one of those hours I had to run to the airport to make some reservations. When I got home I fell asleep rereading A Farewell to Arms and when I awoke I realized I had been having an intense dream where I was in some kind of space craft barreling through time. Then back to work, over the grade to a winery in Carmel. One thing I would like to write about extensively if I ever got around to it is the dichotomy of restaurant and kitchen. Not that this was a restaurant I worked in this evening, but rather a makeshift one where they store all the wine barrels. The evening builds to that moment when the guests arrive. You can't see them but you can hear them. The clinking of the plates and glasses which hours ago we all set so precisely. There is always that care making sure the three glasses (water, white wine and red, in that order) are consistenly staggered from the top of the knife. But it is all soon forgotten in the bustle of readying the salads. Romaine lettuce with a creamy parmesan salad dressing, topped with water cress, asiago cheese and panchetta. Everyone was calling the panchetta bacon bits and that's what it was, but I spent so much time cutting it into small pieces earlier today, and oh, if it really was bacon bits, I said, I would have had two hours of my day back. The salad we just toss into bus tubs and mix by hand. Put that on the plate as quickly and nicely as possible and from then on it's just non stop running around, chaos, things being yelled here and there, excuse me I need to get through, near collisions by the door, watch that plate it's hot, we have three more vegetarians than expected, one person just doesn't want cheese and one person doesn't have enough, we don't have any more vegetarian dishes, steak, potatoes, vegetables and no more than three prawns per plate, keep the rhythm going, move the plates so I can use the next one, can someone help garnish this dish, two more tables left and then you have dessert. Chocolate cake covered in a caramel-banana sauce and one strawberry on each plate. People are no doubt eating their food slowly and enjoying their conversation, as much wine as they want, this is a winery, and things feel just so ordered when they see the plate in front of them, what nice presentation, I imagine they say, and if they only knew the kind of chaos that birthed that plate and from whence it came and what goes on behind the draped screen. The coffee and desert goes out and someone yells at me to take a break and eat. And for my dinner, I eat facing a wall, standing up, alone, plate on the stainless steel table where I had cut bananas earlier, mayonnaise spilled all around me, dirty silverware and used plastic covers and pots and pans and a stove that is pouring steam in my direction, people moving around in my peripheries waiting for their own break to eat, but we do get as many prawns as we want.
I was asked to go fetch the golf cart and I walked through the vineyards under a sliver moon which still lit my path. I wondered how long it had been since I had walked in the night and not been in a city. And how clear the sky looked and how I hadn't seen it like that for some time. Why don't I walk at night more often? Is it fear of something, some thing, some one, doesn't night kind of hold an inevitable raping, knifing or mugging? So sure that he went out one night to go get the golf cart and he never came back. And, yes, where did I go?