Everything is going along fairly well except for my health and behavior. I am struggling with a half dozen fatal diseases but it is clear to me that my suffering doesn’t equal that of half the world’s population. It is popularly supposed that we do battle with our diseases but nothing is more inept than the military metaphor when dealing with the improbable complexity of the body. I’m arm-wrestling my brain tumor today? Give me a break, fools! Incidentally I am not concerned with the violence done to my modest retirement fund by low-rent chiselers. Only recently I lost interest in money when I truly perceived the limits of what it can buy. In contrast a renowned medical specialist recently said to me over a glass of pomegranate juice (seriously) that only the human body makes him believe in God. I asked, “What about the ninety billion galaxies?” and he replied, “That’s peanuts.”
In truth we are migrants who were never told where we came from and have no idea of our country of destination. The eternal question is that though a hundred thousand people came to Dostoevsky’s funeral did he know it? It is altogether natural that we invented a future life because our minds are insufficient to imagine not being. Death is omnipresent and it comes as no surprise to soldiers, cops, rural people, and those in the medical profession. Recently Julian Barnes was strikingly original in writing about the fullness of his fear of death. Lucky for him he collects wine, which is a far greater palliative for fear than religion. I could not imagine going off on a crusade to the Holy Land if I had a good cellar back at the castle.
Back in the mid-1940s when the world was trying to recover from World War II and we were living in a peasant village in northern Michigan, we were forced to go to Daily Vacation Bible School after a full nine months trapped like fishing worms in a can by our education. In a democracy we are forbidden the word peasant, but that’s what most of us are and I don’t mind it a bit. I wasn’t Vlad the Conqueror in a previous life, but the peasant boy who got his head cut off for stealing a drink of water.
Anyway, Daily Vacation Bible School was the first major injustice of my life, when I wanted to be at our little cabin on a remote lake built by my father and uncles. I can still burn with anger sixty-five years later over this matter. One June morning the florid blimp of a preacher tried to teach us that our bodies were holy temples and should be treated accordingly. I was seated next to a boy who had a purple face because his heart was bad. His nickname was Purple Face. On the other side of me was a pretty girl who would show you her bare butt for a penny, my first exposure to pure capitalism and the mystery of the negative space that signifies a butt crack.
As Emily Dickinson said, “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” Which of us miserable tykes in the fetor of the church basement classroom could comprehend the biblical lesson that a body is a holy temple? On the way home I conversed with a number of yard dogs about the matter while picking flowers to ingratiate myself to my savage mother who was vexed that I had broken a dozen eggs under my sister’s bed, an inexplicable act. It was obvious that if the body is a temple the mouth is the front door and the emergency exit or back door is the butt hole. The preacher was a real big temple with a bulbous paunch below his belt who disapproved of alcohol, dancing, sex, and movies. My dimwit friend Bob had been caught playing with his weenie in the choir loft, and the preacher told him he would go to hell if he played with his weenie. Bob wept piteously. I wondered what part of the temple is the weenie?
This theological quandary has followed me for sixty years even into the precincts of my Zen studies. Are the bodies of our fellow mammals holy temples and what of the famous question “Does a dog have Buddha nature?” Our lives are permeated with a haunting atmosphere of lingering dread. This phrase was used to describe a movie I decided not to watch for obvious reasons. As an elderly peasant from notably unsuccessful farm families on both sides of my parentage, I’m giving up nearly everything, especially my vain interest in abstractions. Along with Ungaretti I ask, “Have I fragmented heart and mind to fall in the service of words?” (Ho fatto a pezzi cuore e mente per cadere in serviti di parole?) The answer in the American language is “Yup.” Is religion an abstraction? Our bodies aren’t. Of course it’s the doctrine that is abstract and the practice far less so. The practice of religion reflects like a vastly distorted fun house mirror our mammalian nature. We discovered fire so it is altogether natural that we burned a virgin witch at the stake under the instructions of the priesthood and under the assumption that God likes roasted food.
It is time to leave the eagle aeries of theology for the door, the mouth of the holy temple. Many years ago on a dark night near the Toronto waterfront I was leaning against a brown Taurus when Linda Spalding asked me to do a food column for Brick, a fateful night indeed. Looking back I have realized that I’ve been on a diet for forty years and if I had even lost half a pound a year I’d be fine, which I didn’t. Last week Mario Batali was at my home and it is easy to see how my willpower fails. Here is the menu:
Monday ~ America
Carnevino rib-eye steaks
Potatoes with sweet garlic and truffles
Salad with Gorgonzola
Grilled onions
Tuesday ~ Spain
Boquerones
Kumamoto oysters
Manchego and morcilla and berberechos
Nantucket bay scallops
Fideuà with rock shrimp, octopus, and Dungeness crab
Torta de la serena and tetilla with arrope
Wednesday ~ Modena
Lardo bruschetta
Robiola ravioli with duck ragù
Veal chops modenese
Cipolline with vincotto
I should add that on Wednesday we had a light lunch of grilled wild quail and doves, a wild mushroom ragù, and the leftover truffled potato salad, the flavor of which had intensified with a night’s rest. The wines were appropriate:
1996 Casters del Siurana, Miserere, Priorat
1994 Remírez de Ganuza, Gran Reserva Rioja
1997 Remírez de Ganuza, Reserva Rioja
A case of Vedejo
Bastianich Vespa Bianco
Bastianich Tocai Friulano
La Mozza I Perazzi Morellino di Scansano
La Mozza “Aragone” Maremma Toscana
It will be immediately obvious that these three days were a religious experience as the holy food marched into the open mouths of the temples. The massive bowlful of truffles were a sacrament grated by my grandson Johnny, who averred that he would do this job rarely in his life. I have a huge grill and we used mesquite, oak, and manzanita for fuel for the prime beef and veal chops, and a huge paella pan to make the fideuà. There is something particularly toothsome about baby octopus, which I have eaten in quantity in Zihuatanejo in Mexico. Of course a fideuà is similar to a paella but you use pasta moistened with a reduced Dungeness crab stock. The back of the grill is appropriately painted with a portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
There. These meals required the courage of early Christian martyrs, something I wished to be as a boy preacher. There was an untoward, near-death moment when I fell asleep at the table with a full mouth. Luckily this was noticed and I was shaken awake. We can’t forget what happened to Mama Cass, Jimi Hendrix, and John Bonham.
The day everyone left, my peasant roots activated and I cooked myself a hot dog and a hamburger without shame, but then the next day Chris Bianco who had assisted Mario sent over from Phoenix, where he makes the best pizza on earth, a whole prosciutto and ten pounds each of imported mortadella (from Modena) and provolone. This was to allow my holiness to taper off slowly. At his sandwich shop Chris cooks whole pigs and lambs, which ensures freshness and flavor.
The creepy liberal English major in me might ask, Why are we cooking expensive meals during a global financial collapse engineered by the satanic money community that should be summarily executed? Well, religion isn’t cheap, which is easy to see when strolling through the Vatican or visiting Mecca. And we all felt in a celebratory mood over the election of Obama after eight years when you had to be a proctologist to appreciate Washington.
Politics is a toilet bowl in whose reflection we hope to learn how to treat each other well and not kill each other in a thousand ways. I am reminded again of Baron Wessenberg saying in 1814 at the Congress of Vienna, “Nothing in the world is more haughty than a man of moderate capacity when once raised to power.” Bush has flown off to the hellhole of Texas but we need to be reminded that he didn’t severely bruise his country and world on his own. He had a legion of helpers in his sole interest of further enriching the members of his own class. This is still going on in the trillion dollars for business and nothing for uninsured poor children.
Wrens are helping me organize a new life for myself after a long period of writing too much fiction, four novellas in ten months to be exact. Life is mythology. Work is reality. Recently however, wrens have piqued my interest partly because of our similar builds, squat with ample tummies, and thus I am embarked on a voyage of discovery into the somewhat limited kingdom of wrens. We both suffer though I admit I suffer from hunger and thirst infrequently. Mario left behind fourteen magnums of red but I have the courage to make my way through to the bottom of each bottle. I learned courage in my teens when despite my unkempt hair, blind milky eye, and twisted leg I rose to the top as a young night janitor. I was fourteen, had my work papers, and made fifty cents an hour. This caused certain lacunae in my education as I slept through much of high school. Back to wrens. My religion led me to them as I recently dreamed that God was a great brown bird and no one can disprove this.
Living as remotely as I do in Montana and on the Mexican border I only rarely take a peek into the peevish dumpster of literary activity, but I have noted recently that the “acknowledgments” sections of literary books are growing longer and longer. I am innocent, having offered only minimalist versions like “Thanks, Bob, for the loan.” Feeling left out I offer this:
To my best friend Odin who forgave the ravens who sat and shat upon his shoulders. To all the girls I left behind because they were too far ahead of me. To my agent Myrna who navigated the pus-slick streets of Gotham in her fuchsia air shoes on my behalf, and allowed me to stay in mega-tropical Missouri with my children Frances, Francis, and Francine, and our beloved Yangtze cat Goober Pie. And to the rehab folks at Hazelden in Minnesota, and the vegan community of Café Girardeau who made my morning mirepoix of okra, Jerusalem artichoke, kohlrabi, and parsnips, not to speak of the magic of kelp. Yes, literature is the brutal but vital offal that fuels us on our void-bound journey. And to the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, drumming group the Night Kittens, who raised me from a recent narcosis. Big girls. Big drums. Those lassies in rabbit pelts got rhythm. And to the young Indianapolis couple I’ll call Mimsy and Whimsy who showed me several sexual routes and side roads far from the banal Interstate. Not incidentally, the book you have in hand wrote itself.