General
Excerpt from “Sweet Tooth”:
one
4 ripe avocados, pitted and peeled
6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 cups low-fat, plain yogurt
4 large fresh basil leaves, slivered
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
4 large fresh basil leaves, for garnish
4 radishes, finely chopped, for garnish
Pinch of salt
They served a cold soup first, and it seemed like a perfect choice for such a warm evening in early June. The soup had almost been an afterthought, for the rice required so much attention that the soup, and most of the meal, became insignificant. Everyone had tasted the rice, a wild breed, and the general consensus was that it was not yet cooked, so more water was added and it was cooked some more, and then more water and more cooking. Wild rice is the most difficult to cook; the grain never reaches the texture one would expect. Eventually, hunger caused the guests to call the rice cooked and sit at the table, at first without the cold soup.
August’s grandmother used to tell her that on particularly hot days one should drink hot tea to cool down. That if one drinks cold liquids, the body thinks it is cold and acclimatizes itself accordingly. So it follows that although the cold soup was refreshing in the heat of an early summer evening, it may have only increased the fervour of those who consumed it. And who would have thought, passion and cold soup.
In the Diamond, at the end of a long green vinyl aisle between booths of chrome, Naugahyde, and Formica, are two large swinging wooden doors, each with a round hatch of face-sized window. Those kitchen doors can be kicked with such a slap they’re heard all the way up to the soda fountain. On the other side of the doors, hardly audible to the customers, echoes a jargon of curses, jokes, and cryptic orders. Stack a hots! Half a dozen fry! Hot beef san! Fingers and tongues all over the place jibe and swear You mucka high!—Thloong you! And outside, running through and around the town, the creeks flow down to the lake with, maybe, a spring thaw. And the prairie sun over the mountains to the east, over my family’s shoulders. The journal journey tilts tight-fisted through the gutter of the book, avoiding a place to start—or end. Maps don’t have beginnings, just edges. Some frayed and hazy margin of possibility, absence, gap. Shouts in the kitchen. Fish an! Side a fries! Over easy! On brown! I pick up an order and turn, back through the doors, whap! My foot registers more than its own imprint, starts to read the stain of memory.
Thus: a kind of heterocellular recovery reverberates through the busy body, from the foot against that kitchen door on up the leg into the torso and hands, eyes thinking straight ahead, looking through doors and languages, skin recalling its own reconnaissance, cooked into the steamy food, replayed in the folds of elsewhere, always far away, tunneling through the centre of the earth, mouth saying can’t forget, mouth saying what I want to know can feed me, what I don’t can bleed me.
