To Dust

Free Pancakes

Today is Veteran’s Day.   The day we honor those of us who served this country in the Armed Forces.

What should be a solemn day of reflection and, quite honestly, regret, has instead become a pseudo patriotic holiday replete with all sorts of marketing tactics…deeply discounted goods and services, red-white-and-blue logos, waving flag GIFs on the background of websites and free offers.  Offers for free cups of over-priced, over-brewed coffee.  Shitty pancakes loaded with empty carbs.  Waffle fries.

So instead of saying “thank you, we’re sorry your legs got blown off,” or “we appreciate your service and we’ll try better to comfort you and rid you of your recurring nightmares,” we’ve allowed our society to say “come on down for a deep discount on a wide screen TV” and “come buy a green light bulb, screw it in to show your solidarity with these injured countrymen” knowing quite well one cannot buy just a solitary light bulb at Wal*Mart.

No, how about we honor those of us who left home, endured countless hours of boredom and bureaucracy, made our Moms and wives cry, got shot at, got poisoned, went crazy, lost a limb or lost our very lives with a promise not to ask these same things of the next generation.  How ’bout we do that instead?

That would be the best Veteran’s Day offer yet.

Jim

It’s been bothering me since yesterday morning.

Cold, rainy, fog and a persistent breeze, we’d been socked in like this for 10, maybe 12, days.  No break.  No sunshine.  Just flooded basements and leaf mold.

I made my way to Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market like I do most Monday mornings.   This time I battled depression and ever-fogging windows.  The 15-year old Volkswagen couldn’t keep up with the enormity of the Gulf’s moisture.

My last stop at the huge market is always the fresh fish area.  Clean, spacious, well-stocked, it’s quite extraordinary.   They’ll filet any kind of fish for free and the prices are obscenely cheap.  I bought 21-25 Alabama Gulf shrimp (previously frozen) and checked out the lesser parts….roe, smelts, squid tubes and legs…sad oysters suffocating under ice.   I turned to leave when the splash caught my eye.

On Mondays, the live fish tanks are normally empty, deplenished from the weekend and ready for the week’s cleaning.  But yesterday, there was a flicker of water and light and I was drawn to it.

Catfish.  A complete 4′ by 10 ‘ by 1′ tank of teeming catfish.

Except.  Except for the yellow and black head, bobbing between the flanks of the stupid fish.   He floated up and down, inhaling and submerging.  He looked my way.

I stood, marveling at the turtle, somehow mistaken for a catfish.

My mind raced.  Where did he come from?  Why was he there?  Was he for sale?  I had just read about Turtle Stew, but he was far too small for that. And besides, he was a solitary terrapin among several hundred of Dixie’s cheapest protein source.  Had he somehow sought out the delicious algae of Auburn or Southern Miss’ commercial catfish ponds? Was he parched and accidentally (perhaps fatally) seeking a drink at the time of harvest?  Was I imagining this shellback?  Should I tell someone?  Should I buy him?

He bobbed up and down. We exchanged glances.  I peered closer, making sure I was, in fact, seeing a turtle in the catfish tank.  I couldn’t see his shell, only his yellow and black head, his beak, and his furtive gasping of the air.

He submerged one last time.  Didn’t come back up.  Uh…disturbed (is that the right word?) I went to pay and leave.  I have no idea what happened to him.  Why he was there.  What would happen to him.

I’ve not stopped thinking about him.  About Jim, the errant turtle.

Right Below The Surface

This will be an exercise for me.  For catharsis and clarity.

For, um, er, exercise.  The flexing of the writing muscle.

Looking back over these pages, I realize there are dreams and actions and starts and stops.  There were amazing adventures and the pushing of self.  I regret none of it.

I’m only here, writing.  It’s the one constant, the one thing that’s always been in me.

I need it.  I know that.

Heard it All Before

oh lord, here we go again.

The One Thing

Many of my fondest food memories come from our family vacations.

My parents did not have a lot of extra money; budgets were followed and the Depression-era knowledge that each of my parents inherited from their parents’ scrimping and saving  figured large in my life.   Dad  fixed the cars, built the bookcases, landscaped the yard.  Mom balanced the checkbook, shopped the sales, put up the garden’s bounty.   But, despite whatever was going on financially, my parents always found a way for the four of us to take a week’s vacation.   And mostly, we went to the beach.

When we lived in DC, we went to  Scientists’ Cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay or to Virginia Beach at mouth of the Atlantic.  How, I don’t know…Dad was on a post-grad grant and Mother was a teacher’s aide.   When we moved to Tennessee, in the early Knoxville years when there was a bit more money, we went to Pawley’s Island, SC, paying a whopping $500 for a week’s stay at an early 1900’s beach-front rambler without air-conditioning.   Later, when they sought out something “less commercial” than Pawley’s (….as if ), we rented a privately owned, 2-room beach shack on a barrier island state park south of Charleston.

The common thread between all these places is that we ate well.   In hindsight, we ate very well.

There was a ritual to these oceanside vacations.  We’d depart as early as possible on a Saturday morning in July or August, drive the 4 to 6 hours in one of my Dad’s  Saab’s, stop at the local grocery store for the entire week’s worth of groceries, pick up the keys to wherever we were staying from whomever held them (real estate agent, neighbor, park ranger…), then descend upon our house, unload the car, claim our beds, set up house and get to preparing the first evening’s meal.

While Mom and Dad cooked and stowed, my sister and I would invariably explore the neighborhood, the woods, the beach, the marsh….whatever the immediate premises promised, we’d make quick survey of it.

Usually, that first meal was steak, baked potatoes and salad.   In our family, this meal is a “grounding” meal, one served on Sundays, at graduations and confirmations, on  arrival at some new vacation spot, at the arrival of a long-departed, much-loved relative and, mostly, just when all was right with the world.

The first “official” morning on the beach, the “rules” were  laid out:   We’d get up when we wanted to.   Breakfast was up to each of us.  Dad might surprise us at some point during the week with eggs and bacon and english muffins and fresh fruit.  Lunch was to be had after a nice morning on the beach. Liz had clean-up duties these nights:  I those.  And, with great importance, my parents would post the tidal schedule for the week, pointing out the optimum times to pursue dinner.

In the Brown family, lunch is a always smorgasbord:  cold cuts, american cheese in plastic sleeves, iceberg lettuce, cottage cheese, sliced tomatoes, leftover roasted chicken, green bean salad with onions, potato chips, dill pickles, beer with an ice cube….whatever.  After lunch, Mom and Dad  “napped” for an hour or so and we, as children, were encouraged and expected to go as far and as wide from the cabin as possible.    Ahem….

Crabbing was a sport in which none of us, meaning my Mother, Sister and I, had any interest.  But at Dad’s insistance and, through our reluctant experiential learning year-after-year, we all came to embrace it as an elemental event in the Brown Family Vacation.

The key, Dad explained each year, was to position ourselves at the outflow of a marsh exactly an hour before low tide.  This way, the brackish water would be draining from behind the barrier island into the ocean, and, with it, would come the hapless blue crabs, stupidly chasing their next scrap of food from the tidal creek floor.

So, armed with our chicken necks from the Red and White, the leaded hooks to which they were affixed and the 6 to 12-foot long runs of kite string tied to each, we’d cast our meaty lines into the quickly moving marsh water, waiting for dinner.   And we’d stand there.  In the blistering South Carolina Low Country sun.   The tiny mud crabs would emerge from their holes and  wave their single claws at us.  We’d wait.   And wait.   And talk.  And joke.  And explore.  And unwind, children and adults, unknowingly watching one of the primal forces of nature bring to us our next, glorious meal.

And then, invariably, one would amble along:  the embarassed blue crab, alternately eyeing the raw chicken neck, then us up through the water, then whatever flotsam was floating by.   But always, always, watching that chicken neck.    And, always, it went for the bird.  And with that, even an 8-year old can scoop his crab net into the water and grab the doomed bottom feeder.

Tom Brown was never more proud than when we’d load the car up with a styrofoam cooler full of live, constantly clicking, almost-hissing, crabs.  We’d drive a couple of miles past our beach cabin, off our tiny island, all of us happy, listening to Simon and Garfunkel.   On the next island, the “Gay Fish Company” sign was Dad’s signal to wheel the Saab down the sand path to a dock on a back stretch of the  marsh.  Liz and I would stay in the car while Mom and Dad picked up a couple of pounds of shrimp, right off the boat.

Once home, Dad quickly set to cooking the couple or  three-dozen crabs we’d caught.  A huge soup pot was put into action, two or three beers poured into its depths.   Once roiling, the sticky, sweet smell of boiling hops signalled it was time to send the crabs to their death.   One-by-by one, Dad placed them into the steamy barley with pathetic tongs, long past their prime.   The crabs would claw at the pot with a terrible, violent, horrible clamor in which I secretly took pleasure.

Then, suddenly, silence.

A few minutes later, the bright red crabs were pulled out of the steaming beer, placed back in the cooler, topped with ice from the Gay Fish Co. and set aside on the porch.   Mom then got to work on salad and set another pot to boil for the shrimp.   Outdoor showers were taken after last minute dips in the ocean.   When the shrimp was done and chilled on top of the crabs, freshly shucked corn was dropped into the hot water.   Gin and tonics were poured.   Music played.  Liz emerged from the shower, blond hair glistening gloriously as only an un-appreciative 15-year old’s can.  The evening breeze shifted and cooled the shack.

At the tiny porch table covered in newsprint, the bounty of our day was laid before us:   Dozens of beer-steamed blue crabs, a huge bowl of boiled, iced, South Carolina white shrimp,  drawn butter, homemade cocktail sauce, corn on the cob from a farmer’s garden a couple of islands over, a simple green salad with cucumbers and radishes and house dressing from Knoxville’s L’Orangery Restaurant.  Gin.  White wine.   Orange Juice Cocktails with marischino cherries.  Dinner rolls and soft butter.

From the beach came the constant crash of the Atlantic’s surf and the ever-increasing sound of  cicadas.  If we were lucky, the deer would quietly populate the two or three dune lines between us and the surf.

And if the universe was approving, which it invariably was, our evening walk on the beach would reveal a female sea turtle, or two, desperately laying her eggs, carrying on the traditions of eons.

I Don’t Have a Cent Where I Pay My Rent

I’m almost to the end of 3 weeks of training at the restaurant.   I think I pretty much know where everything “lives,” what the systems are, where the men’s room is, the personalities of my co-workers, what’s generally expected of me and how the ebb and flow of the night goes.   I have a great handle on the food (it’s what I’m most interested in) and the wine is coming….

But y’all, wine is hard!   Italian wine, even harder.  And a 150-bottle list, damn near intimidating.

Well, tonight we tasted dessert wines (one of the perks of training — sitting down after the shift and eating and drinking little sips of 8 or 12 bottles.  Rough duty…..).  And for the first time I felt completely comfortable with my opinions and observations on nose, taste and potential pairings.   My favorite, the Sauterne.    Wow, just wow!  Who knew mildew could be our friend?

And so I go, onward towards my food and wine test Friday.   I have two days off and I’m gonna study my ass off.  Not gonna stress about it.  Be organized.  Well-paced. And rational.

I’m happy.  The choices of two years ago were good.   Let’s see where this takes us, shall we?

Welcome

So, tired of sending resumes into the job black hole, aka internet, I decide a few weeks back to drop one off – in person – at my favorite neighborhood restaurant.   Encouraged by two friends who work there, I reluctantly went in and spoke to the General Manager.   Reluctant because this is one of Atlanta’s best restaurants, one at which I was a regular customer, one to which I took clients, and friends, and family.  One in which I was reluctant to work due to my own pride.  Pride of having an associate or friend see me wait tables (oh the shame, the horror!  more on my own moronic behavior later….).

Tonight, my first night of training, at one point I was setting a table and as I was arranging the napkins, forks, knives and bread plates, I muttered “I am so damn happy right about now.”  Happy to be working.  But more than that, happy to be picking up on dreams that I had let fall to the ground.

Onward.

My Vision is Clear

I’ve not been able to say that much in the last 7 or 8 months.

But something’s changed in the last couple of months.   7 or 8 weeks.   This slow advent of Spring has, as it always does, renewed something in me.  Reawakened something elemental.  Something definitely missing.   I’ve been looking for it, been expecting it. But like the proverbial pot of water, the watched-for clue never appears.

But it did today.  A day of making decisions and putting myself out there.  Of sitting and waiting.  Of being looked at and evaluated.  Of having people listen to your story.  Of telling your story.  A day of reminding myself why I chose to change my life almost exactly two years ago.

It wasn’t until I explained my day to Matthew that it became apparent what these last six months have done to me.  To my rather myopic self view, it’s been a whole lot of killing time.  A whole lot of nothing.  Of sending resumes out into the vast ether that is the internet.  Of networking with caring friends, who, at the same time, don’t understand me, my goals and what I’m all about (my bad).  Or who are too busy with their very own lives and growth and issues and insecurity, change, etc to tend to mine.   It’s been a a lot of self-doubt and questions.  Of boredom and disengagement.   The last 6 months have consisted of licking my wounds and trying to back down into to the hole from which I made a conscious decision to escape.

That ain’t gonna work.

So as I stood there explaining to Matt what I had done today, a lot about myself suddenly made sense.  And it made sense relative to the decisions I’ve made that even I’ve not quite understood.   A + some number = C.

I think that “some number” is in sight.   Not in the shimmering calm waters of the Cape but right here, under my very nose.  Right here.  At home.  So things didn’t work out in Provincetown?  So what?  Why can’t they work here?  Why can’t you swallow your fucking pride and concern and ego right here in the open instead of a thousand miles away?   You’ve made the break.  You’ve found a way to make it work.   But my friend, you’re dangerously close to indefinitely extending this malaise and quickly ruining what gave you these opportunities in the first place.     What the hell are you doing, Brown??  It’s not all that different.   More opportunities.  Better network.  Not as scenic….so what.

Enough.

Let’s move on, shall we?

Hero Worship

It’s difficult to come back to your former home, questionably successful in your venture, your quest.   It’s hard to face some stone cold realities:  financial, familial, emotional…It’s hard to shift gears again.  It’s hard to rejigger your dreams.  It’s hard to tell friends you’re leaving or that, “hey, I’m back.”  And it’s hard to look back and see the influences and the Sirens you thought were your friends, so true, honest, real and sincere.

Make no mistake, the choices I made were mine and mine alone.  I have no regrets.

What’s interesting, is that there were friends to encourage me along.  Friends who had reached the same place in their respective careers.  Friends that I loved and still do.  Friends who were smart, talented, motivated and love P-town as much or more than I.   Friends that weren’t necessarily going my way, but were jumping the proverbial ship just the same.   And then one fine Spring, we all kind of lept together.

And, as in most sea tales, there were Sirens in my story.  Those that called from afar, “come up and join us!”   “All is well!”  “It’s magical, look how well we’ve done.”  Those that listened to your dreams and encouraged them, albeit with no real backing or care.  They called from the cold comfort of the rocky shore while I sailed a rough sea.

I heard the Sirens, measured their input against my misery, watched friends take the leap, looked at my immediate situation, checked the bank account and then did it myself.

Oh, the Sirens and their call.

I can only speak for myself and my journey.   I can only say what I’ve seen, what I’ve done and what I’ve experienced.   And this tale of sirens is not all bad.   No, there were loving arms to welcome me ashore, loving arms to feed and nourish me, to introduce me and socialize me.  To recap a day, a certain success and a joy over a drink or two.   To comisserate and comfort and celebrate and advise.   To wave from the porch each quiet morning on the way to work.

But something happened.  Something transpired to which I was not a party.   I was grouped – by association and gender and history – with other conflicts.   Cut off in a non-spoken way from two friendships.  Well, from one friendship with two people, in hindsight.   It hurt.  It still does.   But I can only be mature about it.  I can’t behave the way the Sirens do.  It’s sad.  More than anything, though, it amuses me in darkest way possible.

Their childishness and the short-sightedness are comical.  The pain and thinly-veiled deceptions are not.   Dishonesty certainly is not funny.  Deliberate derailing of dreams cannot be short-sighted.  Those of us that crashed on the rocks will pull ourselves up and rebuild.  We’ll be stronger, we’ll go on.  It’s what we do.

But, as I’ve said countless times, Karma on the Cape is swift and sure.   Watch your heads, Sirens.