WASSAP SUMMER. (Or, “Amer, Americano”?)

~

thinking to myself, “it’s a beautiful friday afternoon, i got shit to do, might as well have me up a vermouth cassis,” i absent-mindedly set to making what turned out to not be a vermouth cassis at all, but rather a campari-based legitimate contender for Casual Drink of the Goddamn Summer: 1oz campari + 1 oz dry vermouth + soda water.

this may already be a thing, and it’s damn close to an Americano (it is literally just a dry Americano), but i think the substitution of dry for sweet vermouth gives it a lightness deserving of recognition. i garnished it with twists of lemon, lime, and orange, mostly for looks, but i think this could also do well with a nice herb garnish. mint springs to mind as a worthy experiment, but i’m thinking something a little subtler and more peculiar, like mizuna* might put it right over the top.

and speaking of bitterness, brightness, and summer, tomorrow is the Soirée Cask at Cheval Blanc (3pm-close), where they’ll be featuring cask offerings from a plethora of QC brasseries. a full list is available on the Cheval Blanc website (go to gouter and scroll down), but i’m particularly curious about the oak-fermented Ti-Rol Double and Houblon Libre Black IPAs from Micro du Lac St-Jean, and Dunham’s American Pale Ale. please don’t come, i want to get a table.

 

 

* it is possible that i don’t know what mizuna is. last night i ate something and was like “ah, that herb on the top was really interesting,” and my friend said “oh, the mizuna?” and so i was like “so that’s what mizuna tastes like.” but now i’ve looked it up and it is described as bitter and peppery; while bitter, what i had was as minty and almost citrus as it was peppery, so who knows.

Haltingly Into The Night.

~

after months of roommates, friends, and acquaintances threatening to just up and eat the goddamn things some night when i was out of town, i finally decided this afternoon to open the comically* oversized 1/2-pound Reese cups that i received for Christmas, only to find, lo and behold, they’ve gone kind of stale.

at least, i -think- they’ve gone stale. it’s hard to tell. i am basing this assessment on the crumbly, nigh-chalkiness of the peanut butter, which i remember from a youth of eating expired halloween mini-cups as being an indication of a Reese product somewhat past due. at the same time, it is altogether possible that this is -not- a matter of staleness; perhaps this denser consistency is an unfortunate by-product of the product itself, a structural precondition for the success of such a scaling up, like how you have to start building insects differently if you want to grow them to car-destroying proportions, gravity being what it is.

maybe you need to alter the consistency of the filling if there is to be any hope of the chocolate frame retaining its shape? i suppose i can’t know, now. and there is something appropriate about that, or so it would seem to my failure-loving aesthetic sense. appropriate in that way that waiting for the right moment to do something (with full idiomatic approval: Good Things Come To Those Who Wait, Fools Rush In, Patience Is A Virtue, and so on), so often results in the squandering or spoilage of that which one has so long anticipated.

of course, there is a difference between putting off doing what one desperately wants to do, and waiting for precisely the right moment to do something that one does not yet feel prepared to approach.** and the difference is not merely a coward’s comfort. in this case my attitude toward the Reese 1/2 lb cup changed over time. initially i was waiting for the right occasion to bust them out as a post-dinner party snack, but then it occurred to me that having written so (inexplicably) much about Reese products in the past, i owed it to myself and to my craft to approach this hideous abomination with a measure of respect.

which meant that i had to eat at least one of them in its entirety, by myself. not a task to be taken lightly.

because these things are huge, you know? one could pull a muscle.

anyway, perhaps this sense of the importance of the task inevitably sealed my fate. the Big Big Cups were thus endowed, enshrouded, with a glamour, daunting and monstrous. when would i be ready? -could- i be ready? how hungry would i have to be? who would survive, and what would be left of them? i wouldn’t say i was really afraid of the prospect, that would be dramatizing things too much; in fact i was looking very much forward to it, i foresaw myself suffused, sickened, but animated and inebriated by the poetry of excess. i would write something, perhaps the best something, about the Biggest Cup, before crapulence swung around to destroy me.

and so at home i bode my time, held well my own. one can’t rush such things. or couldn’t, but perhaps should have; for now, most of the way through the Biggest Cup i am hardly inspired to go on, and do not know whether it is in the cup or myself i should be disappointed. was it ever the giant i took it to be, or just this dusty, crumbling windmill?

as bummed as i am, i can’t help feeling underneath it all a sense of satisfaction at being robbed, perhaps by my own machinations, of the confrontation over which i had so fantasized, robbed not only of the prospect of triumph, but of even the capacity to understand what it is i have before me. i have in effect robbed myself of the sense of the event by too thickly encumbering it with significance.

the first impression that i had upon opening it was the familiar and not altogether pleasant scent of a chocolate Easter rabbit. i don’t know whether that is simply the smell produced by too much chocolate in one confined space (does that even make sense), or whether it is something to do with chocolate left to languish. even in the midst of my confusion i marvel at the heft of the thing, the thickness of the chocolate around the beveled edge, which defies the sense that the cup could possibly be in proportion to its predecessor; again a structural necessity that belies the impossibility of simply scaling up. reluctantly i am forced to admit that no growth serum or biggification ray was employed in the production of the Biggest Cup – a marvel of engineering it must be, impressive, if not livable.

funny that i seem all too ready to embrace the soul-depressing general lesson of “don’t look too forward to things, for you shall inevitably spoil it for yourself before you are even afforded the opportunity to be let down,” whereas if the (specific) lesson is “don’t think so hard about candy,” i don’t want to learn it.

 

 

* not “ha-ha” funny so much as “that’s not even funny” funny.

** “others conquered love but i ran. i sat in my room and drew up a plan”?

London, Giddy, Bitter London.

(i’ve been kind of all over the place for the past couple of months, and while i entertained notions of keeping abreast of posting on the road as events/experiences warranted, it really wasn’t practical. as a result, expect over the next month or so to be treated to fits and starts of travel reportage, according to no particular order or geographical logic.)

~

so, all enthusiasm post-central-European-blandness-blowout aside, it turns out i’m not such a great fan of English beers. at least not English beers in England, for i love IPAs and stouts, and were it not for the week i just spent in London, i might have continued to think that i just straight up Like English Beers. as my friend James pointed out, however, i am in fact a New World sucka (he may not have said it quite that way) – i greatly prefer the hop-forwardness, bitterness and citrus of American craft brewers to the more understated room-temperature soapishness (mean in the best possible way) of traditional British ales, and while i had some decent stouts, i remain convinced that the St Ambroise Oatmeal stout is pretty much unparalleled on tap.

probably the two best beers i tried while in London were at Mason & Taylor, a hip but quite acceptable bar just west of the East End, that carries a decent variety of local and semi-local brews on tap, as well as making forays into weird shit like “single hopped gin cocktails,” which i tried to order TWICE and was denied because they were out of whatever the hell it is that is required to produce such a thing (some sort of hops liqueur?). along with the Brew Dog Challenger (part of their short run IPA IS DEAD hop series), which was well-balanced and interestingly biscuity, but otherwise insufficiently engaging (“unabashedly crisp,” it was not), i had Thornbridge’s “American/British” Jaipur IPA, that was super refreshing and hoppy, with a middly bitterness and nice citrus notes, and the Williams Brothers’ Caesar Augustus lager/American IPA hybrid, which i guess means i was a Canadian drinking a Scottish interpretation of a cross between a British version of a German beer and an American reinterpretation of a British beer, and for all that it was pretty nice. also super light and refreshing, but with enough bitterness to remind you that you are in fact drinking a beer.

i think all in all what i find unenticing about British ales is they tend to really lack in the crispness area, so the bitterness sits a little heavy on the palate. of course the obvious alternative would have been to drink more lagers, like a good bloke, but as already stated, after almost a full month of Central European and Scandinavian lagerage and pilsenery, punctuated only by the occasional Belgian beer (which it turns out i am too much of a woman/barbarian to appreciate), i was hankering for something with a little more spleen to it. Amer, America, inverted, it pretty much was.

the Magic Rock Dark Arts stout that i had was also pretty nice, with a subtle smokiness that i hadn’t encountered in a stout in some time, and enough bitterness to remind one that stouts are weird-ass concoctions in the first place, although i wouldn’t say it’s as luxurious and fruity and mouth-coating as they like to think.

no punchline, sorry.

Osloooooooooo

the other night at a metal bar in Oslo, a 6’9 Norwegian guy in a matching Green Bay Packers hat, jacket, and jersey bought me a pint of beer and a shot of fernet. he spoke english with a South Carolinan twang that he learned on an army base in Germany (as close, apparently, as he’d ever been to America), was totally terrifying, and took the issue of Brett Favre -very- seriously.

there was also a giant Bathory mural on the wall and the bar carried a wide selection of Brew Dog beers. weird. the Punk IPA was only pretty decent, but after a week of pilsener/lager/pilsener/pilsener/lager/dunkel/lager/lager, the taste of hops alone was like a light from above. looking forward to England, not gonna lie.

Still Waiting for my Comeuppance…

apparently Food and Trembling has been nominated for a Taste Canada “Culinary Narrative” award. so…..go tell them how awesome i am, somehow, maybe?

Embittered I: Fernet vs. Fernet. Or, Branca Vs. the Czech Pretender.

~

while i’ve been on Euro-Tour one of my Big Goals has been to drink as many different kinds of weird European bitters as possible, which has proven to be no small feat since many countries (such as Germany) have a wealth of such drinks, although outside of Italy they tend more toward the sweet than the truly bitter, however herbal and aromatic otherwise, and as i am the only person in the van with such an interest at heart, it is neither practical nor financially feasible to purchase every weird looking bottle with a plant on it that i come across (luckily some countries have little airplane-size bottles in corner stores. more on these later.).

i’m trying though, believe you me.

one exciting thing that i acquired this past winter (besides a fetching, if child-sized sheepskin vest, that i’ve been giving a serious wearing on this trip) was a bottle of Czech Fernet, which inspired me to do a little bit of research about Fernets Branca and otherwise, because i realized i didn’t know much about them. for those of you who don’t know (and have not read the piece i wrote for the National Post, which this one substantially overlaps), Fernet Branca is an intense aromatic Italian bitter, the taste of which has been variously likened to “black licorice-flavoured listerine,” “a cross between medicine, crushed plants and bitter mud,” and “poison, with aspirin crushed up in it.” it is, as you can imagine, an acquired taste, but like many acquired tastes, has its impassioned devotees. widely consumed in Italy, and wildly popular (with coke) in Argentina, it has since its invention in 1845 gone from a dubious local cure-all to a of generic type of bitter. although Fernet Branca, of the Fratelli Branca distillery, is the original, fernets of various constitution and national pedigree have proliferated over the years. each approximating, and i gather tuning to their own preferences, the closely guarded recipe of the standard bearer – all bitter, all herby, all all up in it.

i had heard that even Fernet Branca (which is usually what people mean when they just say “fernet,” as it’s the most commonly available, and exclusively so in Québec) varies somewhat according to destination market, and i’ve spent time meditating over glasses thereof in Canada, Italy, and the United States, but short of a direct comparison, i can’t say i could tell any difference that couldn’t otherwise be attributed to variations in barometric pressure, ambiance, or quality of hangover.

what follows are tasting notes i made this winter, having both Fernet Branca and its Czech counterpart (which claims, suspiciously, to be “established 1847) at hand:

by way of initial comparison, the Fernet Branca is 39% to Czech Fernet’s 38%, and is considerably darker. they both leave the signature oily sheen on the glass, although i would say that the Branca is a little more viscous. on the nose they’re distinguishable, but it’s slight, and i’m hard pressed to say what sets them apart. the Branca has a deeper, rounder aroma, and the Czech has almost a woody scent, and assails the nostrils less when drawn in deeply.

on the palate they are inarguably of the same cloth, although the Czech has what i might say is something of a cinnamon or clove  taste, with less of the chilling, menthol or coniferous qualities of the Branca. neither does the Czech go so far back and linger in one’s throat, although it may be more bitter. it’s subtle, but there are more warming, winter spice notes in the Czech, faintly reminiscent of Becherovka, another signature Czech bitter. these notes are more understated than in Becherovka, but it’s interesting to think that it may be tending toward the familiar, Becherovka being the older of the two (although it’s hard to say how much the particular taste has changed over time), or a flavour profile that already resonates with the Czech palate. all in all, i think i prefer the Fernet Branca. it’s got a better mouthfeel, and that distinct coldness that contrasts so nicely with the ensuing warmth of the alcohol. and fundamentally, it just tastes a little crazier. the comparison reminds me how much of the character of Fernet Branca lies in the interplay between bitterness and and its weird mintiness that is not quite mint, suggesting perhaps some more distantly related cousin in mint’s family arbor. i could see the Czech being a little more flexible for cocktails, but consequently less distinct as well.

now to get my hands on some Riga Black Balsam, or finagle myself a free trip to NYC to check out Amor y Amarga in the East Village. i’m not keen on truck with no 18$ cocktail purveyors, but a reportedly unparalleled selection of bitters (at a tolerable 4$ / shot) and a housemade vermouth are not something i can pass on. clearly i need some dissipated and cirrhotic hedonist patron who will fund me to live vicariously through my gustatory exploits. or to join, say, a His Dark Materials-themed black metal band and tour central Europe and Scandinavia. which i am doing, and apparently forgot to mention explicitly. i am doing it right now.

In the Film Adaptation, Liza Minelli Will Play These Chips.

~

i felt some hesitation before i left bringing a book that would so strongly evoke America as does Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918). it seemed almost perverse, but i justified it in part on the rationale that it was an America in all its newness – not only seen through the eyes, but made by the hands of, Swedish, Norwegian and Bohemian pioneers,¹ and all of these are countries that we are visiting on tour. i could claim that it would give me some better, or some stranger, reference point, to be traveling through the Old Countries that haunt or are longed for by all of the characters in the book, but that is not an argument of much force.

America looms so large in the book, the characters and the landscape are deeply intertwined. i become romantic and wistful, and wish in that untrustworthy nostalgic way that it was there that we were touring, but of the course the “there” is not one that exists any longer, or that can be recovered:

 

If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made . . . I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside of man’s jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheepfold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.

…

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.

* * *

seemingly more appropriate, i also brought along Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye To Berlin (1939), which i read over the course of our couple of days off in Berlin. it is quite good, but it in its own way sort of reaffirms and reproduces the strangeness of reading an American novel in Europe. Goodbye To Berlin is so much a historical snapshot, Berlin now is all Turkish food and punk rock. where must one go, what must one do, to connect with that world that it represents? it is as alien and lost to me as is Cather’s America while in Europe, and as would be Cather’s America be to me were i -in- America now. what is the right novel to capture the spirit when all is myth and nostalgia, layer upon layer?

of course, Coming Through Slaughter i didn’t wait until i was in Louisiana to read, but did wait until the heavy, humid pall of August settled upon Montréal, and that i do not in the slightest regret.

* * *

they also have these Flips things here, which are basically peanut-butter flavoured cheesies (no cheese, i mean), and are awesome. they are sort of like the essence of PB+crackers, elevated out of mediocrity. through deep-frying, of course. deep-frying and corn, i should think. why don’t we have these? i want.

 

 

 

 

¹ i say “newness” and “made by the hands of” in full cognizance of the dangers of tacitly endorsing the mythological “discovery” and “founding” of America by Europeans, and use the terms advisedly. i’m talking about an America that is mythic, a myth that did not exist prior to colonization, and continues to inform our engagements with the land and the nation.

“Where Were You When I Needed You?”

~

the deadline for another Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery has come and gone without me getting my act together to apply to it, although this year is something of a special case because i was actively looking forward to the thing for some time. when i initially heard that 2012 was going to be themed “Wrapped & Stuffed,” i fairly shat myself out of excitement, but when the time rolled around to actually sort out a project for it, i found i couldn’t pull it together. all of my interests in the Wrapped & Stuffed were either too personal (wanting to stuff ‘em in my person) or too meta, lacking an specific object by which my inclinations toward irresponsible theorizing could be anchored (it did not help that the deadline roughly corresponded to that of my thesis, which i perhaps shamefully gave priority). i cast about vainly for the Thing, the Crux, but nothing presented itself.

leave it to the caprices of fate, of course, to provide me with the perfect object a mere two months too late, in the form of the afore-mentioned “pickerel taco” from Bannock. it’s really, sadly, almost too perfect: it is effectively a wrapped food (to the extent that a taco is itself “wrapped,” which difference – that between wrapped and, say, enfolded) that by its complication and constitution calls up other stuffed (the steamed bun) and wrapped (the fish roll, arguably, and sushi, by still subtler implication) foods, and in this chaotic referentiality offers ample opportunity for tripping headlong into the slog of debates around cultural appropriation, hybridity, and gastronomic drift (which debates i like to think of, at their rarest and best, as an attempt to dance about a swamp).

admittedly, i still haven’t thought quite enough about it to get my rhetorical ducks in a row, but it’s certainly ripe for dabbling, and like many things it gets more interesting as one gets beyond the quite reasonable initial reaction of indignation. certainly, as is implied by my previous post on the PT (“pickerel taco”), and the not unrelated PBPB (“pulled beef po’ boy,” also in Toronto), my first inclination is to be like “Shut up, Bannock”; but a recent conversation with my friend Kristin reminded me that the repugnance/seduction (seductive repugnance?) of what might merely be crass commercialism or poor taste is also bound up with our responses to the monstrous and hybrid. i might describe my first response to the PT as a sort of conceptual disgust, that had nothing to do with physiological taste (in fact, i was from the get-go seduced by the taste prospect), and more to do with the  ”good/poor taste,” and a moralizing of conceptual/cultural purity. but is that not always, or always the conservative response to hybridity? the offence against a certain order that makes the hybrid monstrous, as opposed to merely mixed?

and it is this disgust that eclipses thinking about “when a food ceases to be one thing and becomes another,” which is very much part of what is at stake in the reaction. or alternately, how such a hybrid comes to be?

in response to Kristin’s similarly perplexed, outraged question: “Why call it a taco? What are they trying to prove?” i came up with two possible answers:

the less charitable first option is that Bannock is simply cashing in on the massive popularity of tacos right now. everybody does tacos, or some “re-imagining” of the taco; it is a word with very good culinary capital right now (and i think politically involves similar issues to that of the po’ boy, without being quite as conceptually challenging from the get-go), whether or not what comes out on the plate bears much resemblance to a taco in the traditional sense. further, while “fusion” has become a worse word than “pig-fucked” at the  conversation, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and South-Asian “inspirations” abound, with Korean tacos in particular blowing up (is kimchi poised to be the new chipotle/roasted red pepper/sundried tomato? time will tell.). by bringing in the steamed bun the PT adds a little “Asian flair” to the mix; still further, i would argue, by evoking the by now pan-Asian appeal of sushi with the fish-roe tartar sauce.

the second option is that it actually started out as a taco of some sort. let’s say Bannock wanted to do a taco because they’re versatile, popular and cheap, and with the Canadian-Dream-of-Multiculturalism-Comfort-Food as their mandate, tacos certainly figure into the culinary landscape. somewhere along the line the fish taco (which is delicious) is dovetailed with the fish roll, that obscure Eastern Ontario specialty, and someone has the flash of insight that the spongey top-loading hot dog bun (aka the “New England Style,” that is so familiar to steamé and toasté-eating residents of Québec) recalls the pillowy whiteness of the steamed bun, and an inspired substitution is made.

now i would argue that this is a crucial substitution, the steamed-bun-for-the-tortilla. it is the timber by which the paradox of Theseus is broken; the difference that makes the difference. i in part draw force for this argument by an appeal to the internal logic of the taco’s context: in Mexico all one has to do is fry the tortilla and it becomes a whole other thing, the taco becomes a tostada. if method of cooking alone is enough to render something no longer a taco,¹ then so radical a substitution as a steamed bun should be still more de/reidentifying.  it is wholly speculation, but i do believe that the fish roll plays a stronger role in the genesis of the PT than even the taco. the choice of fish suggested this to me (pickerel and perch being traditional fish roll fillings, as far as i can tell), along with the tartar that upon tasting confirmed my suspicions, being evocative of the puzzling sweetness of the topping that one receives (somewhere between donair sauce and custard) when one is fool enough to order their fish roll “with sauce.” in this way the steamed bun substitution for the hot dog bun makes sense to me. there is an associative link that is frustratingly, distressingly absent when one tries to call it a taco. it is as if, assuming my imaginary reconstruction of the PT‘s origin is not far off the mark,² the taco provided the inspiration, the original template for the dish, but then was replaced piece by piece, displaced by the fish roll, until it returned a different ship. a triple substitution, a hybrid wherein only the whisper of the taco remains, to haunt and unsettle what might otherwise be a more harmonious mingling of references.³

if this is the case, though, Bannock may perhaps be forgiven for wanting to hang on to the taco’s recognizability, for although Ontarion, the fish roll is hyperlocal, perhaps to the point of obscurity, which doesn’t make for the best marketing. and so it is the fish roll that is resigned/consigned to the shadows, the reference that only some will get (assuming i’m not just imagining it).

and ultimately? the “pickerel taco” was pretty good. the steamed bun made for a delicious base/wrapper, and i wonder that this repurposing hasn’t been tried more often. they are smaller than the photo suggests, just lil’ guys, and if they were 2-3$ street food finds i’d be singing all sorts of praise, but for the 14ish$ that an order of two with some apple-iceberg salad comes to, you end up feeling like you’ve paid for the novelty more than anything.

and i certainly ain’t paying 14$ for no two tacos. i mean, shit.

¹ render it not a taco in this very particular sense. i realize that the hard-shell taco complicates this, and that i am by default prioritizing a particular version of the Mexican taco over its later Tex-Mex permutations, points of reference in their own right.

² if i had been seriously pursuing this, it might have been nice to speak with the chef(s) behind Bannock, but so it goes.

³ although, good simple-minded leftist that i am, perhaps i am simply more comfortable with the idea of an “Asian-inspired” reworking of a Canadian dish than the appropriation/revising/corruption of an “authentic” dish from another culinary tradition. it gets back to the question, which i have so far been avoiding, of not only “when does a food cease to be one thing and become another?” but “who says?”

Make A Scene In My Stead.

 

i have just been informed that Food & Trembling is up for some manner of Expozine Award this year. the winners will be announced at their Gala Event to be held next week at Divan Orange. shame i can’t be there. if anyone could show up and start flipping tables and crying foul if/when i don’t win, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

the book is also available now as an ebook, although i don’t understand the modern world, so i can’t tell you much more about it than that. but it is out there for the having.

Zuma’s Revenge, or, Triumph of the Euphemism (Failure of the Analogy?).

~

i have said before, perhaps too often and too glibly, that i live my life in avoidance of the stomach ache (however little i modify my behaviour to the achievement of this end, aside from excluding from my diet expired meat and psychedelic mushrooms). it is too fearsome, it suffuses and poisons the being, wrenches the soul a little from its seat (or wrenches the seat and so jars the soul a little) and makes an enemy of the whole world. one can enjoy nothing when one has a stomach ache.

but i have of late had much occasion to think on and about dyspepsia, as gastrointestinal distress-unto-terror has proven to be a nigh-constant companion in Mexico (it loves me, walks beside me, to chide me, perhaps to guide me?): from an uneasy bloat, perpetual and inconsistent with one’s recent intake, to the weakness, tremor and indisposition of diarrhea*, to a general exhaustion and hyper-vigilance for anything that might seek to liberate itself from the rosy confines of the gut under pretense of gas. i wonder at the word itself. dyspepsia it turns out is no common stomach ache, but the medicalization of indigestion, if you will. derangement of the bowels, pain upon palpation, that sort of thing. it also has the dubious honour of being for me a word around which has collected thickly the coagula of memory, more viscous for it being the memory of embarrassment. by this i do not mean an embarrassing memory of dyspepsia itself (for who among us has not eaten a kilogram of dried apricots at some time or another?), but of the very word, dyspepsia, specifically.

i cannot recall the grade (sixth?), but i remember the desk at which it was written (the back bedroom of our Edward St. house, whose closet emptied into the passageway leading to the attic, which passageway featured somewhat unexpectedly a set of monkey bars, upon which i and whatever young friend spent many hours monkeying around, lounging and scheming, aloft): a story for school about an invasion of small crab-like aliens. seeking a word to convey, what? fear? horror? trepidation? i alighted with the aid of a thesaurus upon dyspepsia, which i took at face value as an appropriate synonym, but was later called out by my teacher for failing to realize actually meant indigestion. i don’t recall the context of the embarrassment. was it a private humiliation? one performed in the margin notes and felt in the cleft between reader and text (i, the reader of the margin notes, not they, the reader of the text. although, maybe so? could they have been embarrassed for my sake?)? i can’t imagine it was a public shaming; i should remember such an event. but i remember it as the first taste of shame of that sort: the stark not-knowing-of-a-word, finding myself exposed by either my own over-reaching or the misapprehension by others of the extent of my knowledge (the second time, many years later, a university professor who called on me quite unexpectedly to apprise the rest of the class of the meaning of bathetic [we were reading David French's Leaving Home], of which i had no idea, but you’d best believe have since made a point of remembering, for all the -never- that i am called upon to demonstrate it). it is a peculiar embarrassment, in which one manages to disappoint both others and oneself.

there’s a the funny biographical recursion to this: the child known for his precocious vocabulary, shown up by its inadequacy, mortified by its and his failure, by the cipher of “dyspepsia.” years later the man, known for his food fixation, makes a maxim of his desire to avoid at all costs the upset stomach. the man who never knows quite how to answer the question “Where does your interest in words come from?”

perhaps, after all, i am just trying to avoid dyspepsia?

* diarrhea is also pretty interesting. perhaps because, like vomiting, it is one of those (hopefully) rare experiences of a total lack of control over the body, an alienation from the flesh at the moment of its greatest excess. one really does feel invaded in a way, or impregnated, become host to a stomach that has turned against the rest of the organism, although i suppose in many (bacterial, parasitic) cases it is more a matter of the digestive tract taking extreme measures to expel some other unwelcome presence. “A disorder consisting of too frequent evacuation of too fluid feces, sometimes attended with griping pains.” (would you imagine that the entries for gripe and griping occupy 2 full pages? it is all grasping, gripping, clutching tenaciously, that which can be held in a hand, then “The ‘clutch’ or ‘pinch’ of something painful. Spasms of pain, pangs of grief or affliction . . . An intermittent spasmodic pain in the lower bowls.” or a vulture. or a griffin.)