Wakey wakey

You know you're in Newfoundland when, while in the process of rummaging through a fridge in search of breakfast items, you come across a cooked turkey neck.

"A cooked turkey neck?" Yes. I can see how some would raise a sardonic eyebrow or purse their lips in distaste. You see, where I come from, we cook and eat turkey fairly often. It's kind of a staple. This could be due to the fact that a large turkey feeds many hungry people, which is great when a normal Sunday dinner with the family is comprised of no less than 15 participants. It could also be argued that the turkey serves as a convenient vehicle for all the tasty stuff that goes along with it - pease pudding, greens (turnip, mustard, dandelion and various other permutations), salt beef, boiled vegetables (potatoes, cabbage, carrots, turnip, parsnip, etc.) Or, it could be just because turkey is frigging delicious, full stop.

I won't go into a lengthy dissertation of how one actually eats a turkey neck - it's an ugly, ungainly process. There are vertebrae. There's also a spinal cord in there, which will vary in length/thickness/revoltingness according to the size of the bird from whence it came. You basically just haul the cooked neck out of the roasting pan (the neck always cooks faster than the rest of the turkey), scoop a ladlefull of dressing out of the exposed arse of the bird, throw the two into a bowl and eat it in one of two ways: standing over the stove like some sort of starving convict a la "Great Expectations", or, sitting down at the table in a darkened, fragrant kitchen and sharing the pickings with somone you love who also loves the neck. It has been my experience that neck folks are usually excellent people. My mother and her sister are neck people, as was my late grandmother O'Neill. Lovely ladies to a one.

Why do we love the neck so much? I have a couple of theories. One stems from the fact that we are not a wasteful folk. We share an inherent frugality that stems from a heritage built on large families from outport communities who lived off what the sea and land provided on a seasonal basis. Not much went to waste back in the day - there were no supermarkets in these tiny, isolated outports. Refrigeration was a bit on the sketchy side as well. So, if you turned up your nose at a nice bit of meat from whatever animal was on the menu, odds are you'd go hungry. Eating the neck just made sense.

A far less noble/romantic hypothesis can be attributed to man's basic survival instincts. The human race has been housebound for quite some time now, but if you strip away the iPods and trendy shoes, we're basically just a bunch of animals milling around waiting for the meat. What does a lion do when faced with the plump carcass of a freshly-killed ruminant? The lion feeds. It doesn't push aside what isn't boneless or skinless or grain-fed for its enjoyment. No, the lion gorges on the ambrosial organ meats, the rich, dark viscera. Bones are crunched and salty marrow is slurped and savoured. Tender stalks of necks are mouthed and mascerated by bigger animals with bigger teeth. That is, I think, a big part of what the turkey neck means to me. It's primal. The turkey neck is my right as the animal at the top of the food chain.

Animal though I am, I cannot overlook the social aspect of the neck. I mentioned previously that my mother is a neck person, as was her mother. The neck constitutes "a moment" amongst women in my family, shared amidst the ordered pandemonium of clanging pots and rising steam of dinner preparation. I was raised in warm houses filled with the laughter of grandparents and parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, untold cousins and their significant others. We grew up around the communal table. We laughed and sang, told stories and danced to music scraped from fiddles and squeezed from accordians. It was a never-ending cycle of food preparation and consumption as a family unit.

I learned so much from being with my mother and my grandmother in the kitchen at our various houses. I learned more than how to prepare the food that we would share - I learned about life, about being a woman. I learned what it would mean to be a matriarch presiding with love, pride and and aching sort of joy over a boisterous, brilliant family. The joy that I took from sharing tender, salty bits of meat with these women in a kitchen filled with the smell of their love of family is indescribable. I still have that with my mother. It is precious and beautiful and delicious.

Home

There are too many good things about being home with my parents in St. John's (NF) to list in one post, so I'll just go with the top ten:

• The air smells and tastes better here
• It's cold, but not Ottawa cold
• Flannel sheets
• Fishcakes for breakfast (yummers!)
• The smell of my grandfather's Brylcreem
• My brother and sister, who are both crazy like me
• The ocean
• The streets, lanes and terraces of Old St. John's
• Normal drivers who stop to let you cross
• My parents. The best people in the world.

My next few posts will no doubt be flavoured heavily by all of the above. Be ready.

a.m.

Warm, tangled limbs. Hair tousled over eyes closed.
Lashes luscious smudges on pale cheeks. Peony
lips parted in chai-scented dreams.

Mmmmmm.
What time is it, baby?

Our long lines run parallel in repose.
Mouths find hollows of throats, necks as hands skim
skin in quivering glissandi. Breath is liquid
in the shell delicacy of an ear.

Just ten more minutes,
baby.

Dinner for two

I am having dinner tonight with a man who makes me positively weak in the knees.

He makes me laugh. Uproariously. It's not everyone who can make me laugh like that.

It also bears mentioning that he is highly intelligent, extremely articulate and more worldly than most.

This is a dangerously heady combination.

Hmmm.

I believe in people

My friend/colleague/fellow blogger colouringitpurple recently posted about an experience we shared late last week ("Why don't people care just a little more?") at a local fast-food joint. The incident and fallout have been on my mind since then.

There are cold people out there. There are people who pretend not to notice as they walk past an outstretched hand. There are people who turn up their iPods or pull out a cel phone when they see a homeless person on the next block. There are people who don't hold doors or give up their bus seats for for the elderly or infirm. There are people who don't step out of line to help someone who really needs it, no matter how easy it would be to do so. It is wrong and it is sad. However, for me to sit here and pontificate and pretend that I've never been one of them would be hypocritical in the extreme. I could do more. A lot more. Everyone out there who is as well-educated, well-paid, well-housed, well-fed and able-bodied as I could do more for those among us who require assistance. It's not always about spare change. It's a steadying hand under the elbow of an elderly or disabled person on an icy sidewalk. It's a coffee or a sandwich for someone who says they are hungry. It's helping someone get a drink of water when they are thirsty. Sometimes, it is simply a smile.

I stood in line and watched my friend's face tighten and go red with shame, anger and sadness. I watched her step out of line to try and help someone who needed it. I sat across from her after and watched her cry over the injustice to which we had just borne witness. I asked her to tell me what she was feeling and I listened, meekly dunking fries one at a time. She told me that it makes her sad to see people being overlooked. She told me that it breaks her heart to see a person who obviously needs help from someone - anyone - being judged or looked down upon rather than being lifted up. She told me that she has been that person, the one who needed help but was helpless to ask. I felt humbled.

My friend is a scholar and an activist and an artist. She is fighting for social justice both at home and abroad. She is a woman with a disability - although I don't think I've met anyone more 'able' than she. I sat in that restaurant and looked at myself through her and saw a need for change.

Thank you, my friend, for making me believe in the good in people...and for taking some of the chill out of this city of ours.

Out the wazoo

Some people probably think it's lame to post music lyrics and quotes and stuff, but I don't. There are times when others have just said it better. Case in point: the Stars lyrics I just posted. Delicious in a sweet/salty way. Like kissing someone who is crying.

When there's nothing left to burn...

God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said 'yes I think we've met before'
In that instant it started to pour,
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across pont champlain
And all of the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name...

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in
Now you're outside me
You see all the beauty
Repent all your sin

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard
I 'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love...

Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to say

I'm not sorry there's nothing to say...

(Stars, 'Your Ex-Lover is Dead')