Follows The Sun

It is winter, and the thing is we’re all acrimonious.
There was a cop car in front of my house today.
My landlady was arguing with the landlord next door
about who put what snow where.

It builds up and closes us around.
The city carves out channels for itself between steep white cliffs
and every street corner has its own filthy mountain
slowly icing over in the cycle of freeze-thaw-freeze
and you start to feel a little claustrophobic
and wake choking from the dream of snow, clogging your mouth and sliding,
frigid
down into your lungs.

Can you drown in snow?
Or maybe in the sordid greyish slush waters that are every sunny January day’s unwelcome gifts?

The first snow of every winter retains its magic,
and then once or twice again, when the flakes are so fat and you can just forget about tomorrow’s errands and your car
and your total lack of waterproof footwear,
and just turn your face up and watch it come.

It is best to do this right under a street lamp.

It is best of all to do this with somebody who will laugh with you, or
when inclined to solitude,

do it all alone, and be assured of your beauty, standing there.
If I had a camera with me
walking home, and I saw you from down the block, standing there
with your mouth open and your eyes closed, enjoying
everything,
I would take your picture.

You, there, in the falling snow.

You are so beautiful.

Forget about the acrimony. The days are getting longer.
Think about the snow as a gift,
if you moved back and forth to Australia at the wrong times of the year, you might go 20 months without seeing any snow at all!

You would miss it.

You will miss it. In August. When it is too hot to breath and you can’t fuck because
you would stick to your lover.
You lie gasping on the couch and look at them naked
and nothing has ever been so unappealing.

You’ll miss the snow then, and the wonder of the cool flakes
falling onto your cheeks and into your waiting mouth.

You’ll miss being able to touch people.

The snow is as much a blessing as a curse.
Forget the acrimony.

Winter is at most another two, two and a half months.
May will be here soon enough, and then the heat.

Meditate on variation, live in the moment,
get your shovel.

It is snow season. Let it be.

I am not by and large a fan of roasted red peppers (also known as pimientos). They’re a little on the sweet side for a vegetable, it seems to me, and they’re slimy – that’s the real problem. Generally one encounters them either stuffed into a green olive or laid out in large, incisor-defying slices in your Italian sandwich. I have often found myself wondering about the most polite way of removing the two inches of roasted red pepper hanging from my between my teeth while I attempt to chew a bite of my lunch.

I know that I’m not alone in my red-pepper misgivings, but I am here to say: There is hope! The textural problems can be done away with completely and the red pepper transformed into a savory, elegant sauce, if only one has the tools for the job.

The tool in question is something to do your chopping and grinding; this is one sauce where a knife just won’t suffice. If you’ve got a food processor, this is it’s moment. If you’ve got a blender, it will serve. In fact, you can even pull this off with an immersion blender (every soup-cook’s best friend), if that’s all you’ve got. For that, however, a little extra knife work will be needed.

Romesco Sauce

Equipment:

• Food processor, blender or immersion blender-and-deep-bowl
• Sharp knife
• Measuring cups and spoons
• Grater (if you’re grating the cheese by hand)

Ingredients:

• Big pinch (3/4 t) kosher salt
• Small pinch (1/4 t) freshly ground black pepper (a few good grinds)
• 1/2 cup roasted almonds, chopped (non-roasted are fine, too, but not salted)
• 1 fat clove garlic, peeled
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan (or Pecorino, or what-have-you)
• 12 oz jar of roasted red peppers, drained
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 t sherry vinegar (red wine if you don’t have it)

Combine everything in the bowl of your food processor and pulse or process until chunky-smooth. Chunky smooth is not an oxymoron; it is the correct description of this sauce. I have kept the grated cheese to the side and served the sauce to happy vegan dinner guests.

I first had it served over grilled skirt steak with Yukon gold potatoes and watercress salad. Right now I like it best served over whole wheat pasta tossed with baby spinach while the pasta is still very hot, so that the spinach has a chance to wilt just a little bit from the heat. I am sure that you can think of lots of other uses for it, and you should, because it is very healthy. Red peppers are full of Vitamins A and C, and there’s protein and healthy fats from the nuts and cheeses. The sauce is savory and satisfying, and ready in about as long as it took you to read this about it.

Go forth, and eat roasted red peppers. They are delicious.

Winter sunshine has no right to be so similar
From one coast to another

Winter sunshine should not have the same thin,
sort of
misty sort of
quality to it, in the here and the there

It’s ridiculous
Almost as ridiculous as losing track of your limbs
Pedal, pedal, sticks and fingers
Timbre and rhythm and conversation
Where words have no part

Almost as ridiculous
As missing people you don’t even actually know
As the tricks the brain plays on the body
the body plays on the brain
Almost as ridiculous as the rustlings in the mornings
When you can’t really tell when the night ended
And the morning began

And precisely as ridiculous as the notion that the human voice
is really just another instrument
to be played like all the rest
What’s the point of trying to say things in words?

What’s the point?

It’s ridiculous.

Like hedgehogs.

Like cameras.

Like coming home to count up all the things
that make the place you just walked into
the place that you call home.