MATERS

There I am. On the earth for six years only and unfortunately already into KISS, or their ‘look’ at least; watching my jerry-rigged KISS kite ripple in the warm Gulf winds; more kites and more gulls and the odd bits of trash kept aloft in the spa temp jet stream come perilously close and those that are able to eye Gene and Paul and Peter and Ace do so contemptuously. With the kite’s twine firmly in one hand, and ½ a Wonder-Bread, Duke’s mayonnaise and roadside-produce-stand big red ripe tomato sandwich---whose ripeness is now slipping inevitably down the slope of my sunburned forearm, and consequently Solarcaine’d forearm---in the other, I wade out to a relative, Scott, who is the coolest high school senior on the planet.

Scott is seventeen. He wears cut-offs and a Slade concert jersey and drains Old Milwaukee tallboys. And he’s baiting a massive rod-‘n’-reel w/ nearly thawed out previously frozen shrimp and casting and reeling and deftly catching salt-water fish practically one after the other. It’s all too much. But when corpulent older relative, Sally, comes bounding past the beach home’s rickety deck affixed w/ beach towels wet warming dry, she’s screaming something unintelligible. Her ‘swim-cap’ festooned w/ whirligig plastic things is, well, whirligig, and her rainbow sherbert hued one-piece tries tremendously to control or stifle her undulating physiology to no avail. Scott brings a huge fish up out of the surf. Something he calls a ‘blood’ fish, which sounds incredibly interesting to me. (Mortal fluid is infinitely cool.) Aforementioned corpulent relative’s shrieking then infects three be-camped huddles of similarly attired relatives. They begin boo-hooing, and screaming---literally screaming---and going completely and utterly apoplectic: Elvis is Dead---Big ‘D’ Dead; hence the first connection between Big ‘D’ Death and Foodstuffs.

I hear that Elvis was into fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant chose Vidalia onion and mayonnaise; Reagan, of course, had his jellybeans; Lennon loved Corn Flakes; Proust those cookie things. And in each respective case, there’s a foodstuff wrapped around a loss: Tomato sandwich for Elvis; The Great Dragon’s Chop Suey for Bear Bryant; chicken tacos for Reagan; Eggo waffles for Lennon. I can remember either enjoying them whilst bad news proper was in the half-baked progress of delivery, immediately prior to its delivery, or in the posterior realm of said news delivery. And, predictably, ingestion of any of these---save for The Great Dragon’s Chop Suey (it’s gone, baby)---gets the age-old recollection machine sputtering, and not without the chunky cumuli of inky smoke that the Lawnboy is notoriously notorious for.

So anyway---recollection aside---I love tomatoes. I love them fried; I love them stewed; I love them nude (w/ a pinch of sel gris); I love them in a slow-cooked Salsa Marinara; I love them stuffed w/ bulgur and braised lamb and currants; I love them in a classic Insalata con Pomodori e Mozzarella; I love them in a Gazpacho made incendiary w/ a deseeded habanero; I love them in salsas and in ketchups; and, in the prime of their season, I love them in Sugo di Pomodori Fresco---an uncooked tomato sauce that is like the sun’s soft ray made manifest on your dinner plate. And then there’s this creepy implication: Does Elvis have anything to do w/ my love for the spheroidal succulent? Better yet, do Elvis, Bryant, Reagan, Lennon and Proust all have conditioned gustatory affections? Why do they love what they love? And do I eat ‘maters just to ‘member?

Remembrance remembered is a process as powerful as it is particular. No matter what is brought up and out of the process, it’s nothing like seeing and breathing, touching and clutching said moment. So here’s a tautology for you; memories are just that: memories. They’re imperfect reproductions of a production past; and whether you store them or not, they don’t keep their crunch; they don’t save their sweetness; their complexity and nose doesn’t increase over the calendar year. Forget about the cellar, the Mason Jars and water baths and post-Summer bottling & canning.

So I do... And when a few days pass I find myself fighting boredom with local transgressor, Copper Green. I try to Singapore Sling’t out of ‘im, but, the cocktails are predictably light on grenadine & lime & pineapple juice and just about evr’thing else but Gin. I ask: ‘Are we eating to maintain our past? Do these memories condition our foodie predilection?’ He sighs. ‘I think it’s more that our foodie predilection conditions our memory,’ saying something else (unprintable) about Vedic scripture and the ‘possible’ whereabouts of Berke Breathed before he falls out of his chair---backwards. Elvis has most certainly left the building.

[Unearthed on the hard drive; originally run in the Cabbagetown Newsletter circa '04]