Read my Medium Raw challenge essay: More than Fuel

Read my Medium Raw challenge essay: More than Fuel

More than Fuel

Many times our sustenance stems from a half-assed mish-mash quickly thrown together in some sort of pot, pan, or standard kitchen-issue vessel. This rather flippant attitude towards food preparation is not only disrespectful, but more importantly, shoves our connections to the meal to the back burner (pun intended). Cooking food well demonstrates respect for the ingredients, for the consumers, and for the people preparing the meal.

Something had to die so that we may eat, and therefore, live. The flora and fauna of the world are continually sacrificed for our sake, and even though it is the natural order of things, respect for these plants and animals appears to be lacking in the final culinary equation. Perhaps we are appalled to think too precisely about where our food comes from. After all, it is easier to avoid thinking too much about food origins when the majority of our ingredients come entombed in some sort of shrink wrap. Ultimately, it isn’t the exalted meat producers that get sacrificed for our dinner plate. The salads and grains (yes, I’m talking to the vegetarians out there) were once living growing plants. By preparing the very best salads and breads, we are respecting these mighty morsels.

Interestingly, the care and attention given to the ingredients has a way of transferring itself to the person consuming the meal. Chain-O-Rama restaurant meals are not made with love, care, or much attention. The meals most Americans consume are formulaic and fraught with ennui. We deserve better than this damnit! There is a distinct reason why grandma’s cooking always tastes so wonderful – For God’s sake, she is Grandma.

Last of all, how does cooking well manifest esteem within the cook? When one goes into the kitchen and starts gathering ingredients, there is inherently a certain level of self-esteem that follows her into that room. Meticulously chopping, slicing, and sautéing require a person to have some sort of regard for the food he or she is about to prepare, not to mention some awareness so as not to lose pieces of digits. Fixing a meal to the best of one’s ability (not just major holiday feasts) calls for some self-worth. Granted, there may be fear involved, but look at it this way; many courageous cooks have had many culinary catastrophes, and have walked away relatively unscathed (oven/oil burns not withstanding).

In closing, a little dirt in the diet is a good thing, and if one has to lift a lowly inch worm from her lettuce leaf, it only means the meal is real. Cooking food well spotlights respect for our food, love for our fellow dinner companions, and a sense of self-worth that cannot be obtained in a drive-thru.

These Trees Were Illegally Cut

These Trees Were Illegally Cut


(A sign seen on I-94)



Stealing trees just sounds odd-

Imagine a gang of tree thieves

Arriving in big black Fords,

Hanging onto axes and saws

The way they would hold their wives.



They stole you.



This is the hour the ground exhales

Veils of fog,

Enveloping the remaining willows

(leftovers)

And unfurling its ragged edges to melt

The interstate into submission.



Then there’s me

And my clumsy car

Tapping out a tune with Vixen-colored fingernails

(the best damn steering wheel drummer to ever live).

So here I am again –

Me holding your hand without you knowing it –

And thinking about those grown men

(arbor whores)

Defiling themselves in the pre-dawn.



They were the ones who took you away from me.

Made you join them in their secret work.

Made you leave me in the middle of the night with

Something swirling and unborn inside of me.

Made you disappear.



Bags and suitcases rustling in the trunk

Made me

Realize –

It’s raining again –

Off and on for four days now –

Half-expect to meet Noah around the bend.



Almost opened my mouth to speak, but

Riding in my passenger seat is my

Brand new purse

(still clean)

Already heavy with burden.

The Green Robe

It took folds of forest green

terry cloth swallowing me

one limb at a time to make me

into a mouse – warm and weak

against my giant.



The shield is one shade lighter

than the forest at midnight and

one shade darker than the sky

before a storm, and as that peculiar

sky breaks apart

over our heads

with me,

unified as confetti,

looking at you the way raindrops

dripping off of lips look so delicious.



It can absorb

the droplets left over

on the small of my back

where I can never get the towel to reach.

It takes away

some little bits of sin every time and

morphs it into little pixels

like the potting soil in the living room –

ground into each fiber –

woven into the Berber like it belongs there.



Tossing it to the hamper as one

might toss a crutch after the cast comes off –

I can’t comprehend – because the day

you pulled your robe around me you

stirred the internal and it became

my emerald everything.

Rush

Danced through mazes of people to

get here – to you. A spot on the floor forgotten

by geography and curious explorers.



Some speech spilled out of our mouths

only to fall to the floor and receive

the soles of those left over for the next song.



Pleasantries really, that first dance – an exchange

of the mutual – an awkward mosaic composed in

the colors of initial blush.



How the floor pulsated through the toes up

and up

out the top of the head – a river of signals

synthesized rushing to a grand receiver in space.



And I embraced the apparent deterioration of

my muscles – now thin invisible supports for

my limbs like translucent spaghetti straps to a

twentysomething’s dress.



We stood as if only a divine cue

could crash down and smother us

in understanding – something solid to hold onto.

And the touch –

was like spatterings of sizzling fat flung up

and down the spine.



Music gave permission to continue

from the freeze frame of first fear.

So, self-control held hands with shy

and slid down my leg leaving pools

to pummel with rhythm.



A mass of dancers so close

created a swarm sound that could deafen

the most leaden ear. Music ceased to matter –

lulled backward in panting patterns lost on

me and you – two of the confused.



An elixir of musk – sweat – shampoo hovering

between nausea and euphoria – each one a

personal con artist to my nerve cells.



I’m falling –

and to stop moving would hurt too much.

Eggs n' Grits

It’s a ritual really; my many mornings spent in perfecting parboiled eggs and getting grits to assemble into a creamy congregation. I cannot recall when this breakfast practice first began; but, as I continued to crack the first attempts at parboiled eggs, I’m sure the events leading up to it were runny and slimy. Honestly, aren’t most of our comfort food creations born from some slimy times?

For a brief time, while focusing on the yolks, I came to understand this as purely protein, and not as a chicken’s child. Also, there came the realization that some people would never share this meal with me simply because they had not made this crucial division. I can respect that. However, I can’t help but feel like they may be missing out on one of the world’s best combos.

Grits get a bad image instantly due to their unfortunate name. While laughing in the face of convention, I make mine into explicitly gritty, creamy goodness. Distractions have led to stiff grits, and soupy mixtures that couldn’t pass for pig slop. Ah yes, the splendor of trial and error is a terrifyingly beautiful thing. Only experience has taught me to balance the butter and swirl the yellow yolk ribbons into such a divine dish.

Perhaps in the future I will add some snippets of bacon or maybe some crumbles of crunchiness in no particular form. I have found my comfort food, and I eat from a bowl full of potential.

Earth Warmth

Geothermal games
Excavate the OPEC oil
Or we die trying.

Desert mirrors hold
A clandestine candlelight
Our solar complex.

Uranium house
Utopia on the edge
Us, a nucleus.

Turbines turn in wind
Cut the wings off the falcon
Fearless and flightless.

Now we wonder why
Our new wind wizardry writhes
In old ideas.