“It just arrived one day, like she was accidentally pregnant with her own dying. It was pain’s version of the virgin birth—you never did it with death, but somehow it screwed you anyway.” CE Morgan The best literary description of what it feels like to get a cancer diagnosis, from the inimitable author of my […]
Change sings indeed as the new year has come. Houses are floating. Art installations are popping up all over town. Mardi gras is bringing out the stubborn optimism in New Orleanians this year—I am reminded daily why I choose to live here. Due to (thanks to?) the pandemic, we now have a fish guy, Dino, […]
This is a new year that feels a bit stale from the start because of the sour taste lingering from the one it follows. That is, for those still with the ability to taste. We are all struggling to find balance and peace and renewal. In what felt like a fitting mistake today, I lopped […]
It’s seldom that I have energy to cook these days. But a wedding anniversary should be celebrated, and for me, homemade pasta is just the thing to say, Today, I’m upright. Today, I’m not afraid. In the storm of things, perhaps today is the eye. And I love you. Bucatini Summer Crab Carbonara Adapted from […]
“How can a nation be great if their bread tastes like Kleenex?” Julia Child. I would have voted for Julia Child for President. Yep, even a drunk Julia sounds pretty good right now. Tweets from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She’d sneak a meat tenderizer into the G7 Summit and bang it on the […]
“Body, doorway that you are, be more than what I’ll pass through,” writes Ocean Vuong. The world feels like it is on fire, and it is. Hope seems singed. “I felt things that made death so large it was indistinguishable from air,” Ocean says. People can’t breathe from COVID, from the ugly kneecaps of racism, from […]
Enough of the baking binges, the walks with novels, the walks with dogs, the walks just to walk further than the house is long; enough of worrying each sneeze and sniffle, enough of feverish temperature checking, tomato checking, petunia checking, chicken nest checking, checking the mail, checking the phone, checking the weather for the first […]
RUN. Seems a prudent response to the times. It’s felt so good to hit the pavement, to rattle off the cobwebs in the connective tissue after taking half the year off for chemo. I used to think of exercise like a chore, and now it feels like a gift. To have the health to move. […]
Love is anterior to life/ Posterior to death, says Emily Dickinson. Love is the leading edge and the lagging trail, a shimmering thread. In the wake of our present pandemic, we see traces of love’s leftovers all over the city. Artwork chalked on sidewalks, blooming and leafing from fresh plotted garden spaces and portraits putting […]
To achieve the proper mise en place and mise en scene for Jazz Fest in place, one must have both savory and sweet, song and scenery, sun and suit. It’s not the same, but it’s what we have and it’s what this side of survival requires. I note that KP holds his annual festival savvy […]