Archive | City Matters
I wake at five, when the world is still sleepy and quiet, before the day has knit its brow. I sit by the open window while the air is still cool, and I watch the sky wake, sweet as a toddler. I admire my coffee and my permakitten, both steaming at my side, and smile at the mango beneath my fingernails: a little more sweetness snuck into this morning. For the rest of the day, I will complete onerous errands and overdue assignments; it will be very hot and very humid; the news surely will be very bad. I am wondering, I am really wondering, if there will be another moment as pretty in this long, troubled July.Revolution Ceviche
All I want to eat in this weather is ceviche, ceviche, ceviche. I don’t trust myself to make it–raw fish requires an expert touch, I fear–but I wolf it everywhere I find it, especially at the swoony jungle rooftop garden of the Llama Inn. I’d eat ceviche for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I could possibly manage three meals in this heat. Maybe a fish taco for variation every once in a while, but, really, bring on the ceviche. We can solve the country’s problems with ceviche, I think, because I’ll devour even the most unappetizing fish if it’s been marinated with many habaneros. So let’s do white supremacist ceviche, NRA fanatic ceviche, transphobic troll ceviche. Fuck it. Let’s do Trump ceviche.
The Church of Crab Risotto
As I write this, it is 2:23 pm, the world is exploding, I am completely stuck on all my writing projects, my sunflowers are sagging, and it is too hot to do anything outside happily. But my house is beautifully cool—I sprang for a second AC when I got an extra gig last month—and my refrigerator is brimming with good ideas: produce from the local greenmarkets, red and white wine, seafood from Chelsea Market, butter from an Upstate friend, supplies from the old-school Italian grocery down the street. So I am cooking a crab risotto, the decline of western civilization be damned. Continue Reading →