Modern Is Now

Through a glut of "conditioned behavior," as the conservatives call it, we realize that the autumn beach offers an escape. That is to say, standing there in wind-whipped flannel, you have a chance to think not about societal pressures, seemingly hard-wired desires, but to escape to the beauty of the natural interface. I stood alone. My sandy metal bucket handle clanked against its side as its base settled down. I was taught that folding your arms is body language for "I'm not listening," but I was listening to the waves and the water on the shore.

A meaty white hand dimly lit (how appropriate) pounded down on the maple bar. The lights were out and a few haphazardly strewn trails of Christmas lights backlit a leather jacket and pair of brothers. Some smoke filtered in and out of view, some beer flushed through the camcorder lens. Hoarsely and repentant I said something neither profound nor comforting. If the constellation of red cans lent any cosmic insight, it hadn't reached my person. Distracted by anything shiny and/or voluptuous, I saw a leather-laced Spaniard disappear into the arched medieval walkway that led to the hexagonal washroom.

If our home proved unwelcoming, our guests would not realize it until they left. So gray rain fell and we opened the door to our golden passageway. I'll diagram the situation now. On the ground floor's exterior, a lifeless fragment of derivative architecture looked back with hostility - an indigenous aspect (at least). Carried away, rolled up, slammed shut, our central corridor boasted an odd combination of crap and a spartan aesthetic. We beamed with pride and paid off a new car in rent.

And this is how it went for awhile.

Just South

We walked up the hill together, not sure-footedly but dignified nonetheless (I guess). It was our time, the world had been paused and we were about to shock it to speed. As the hill in front of us receded, the gigantic Carolina colonial crested on the horizon as the back of a young man's head emerges from the bottom of a young lady's dress. Simple brown birds chirped and from the gang's view, all was symmetrical, which is a vital detail. Two of us were like me, and the other two were girls. There is odd symmetricality around odd numbers of things, you get a whole median. We stood in front of the large white house and chewed on some dehydrated fungi.

I thought about my new gadgets. She thought about her long-lost love. He dreamt of the day it would be ok. Four eyes followed a purple bug. Great lengths of rope will burn more quickly if they're all bundled together. So we entered the house and marched to the living room. Joanna saw all these little ants on the ground so she ran to the kitchen. Bill put his fingers between his belt and his trousers and wiggled them around. I walked to the window and tried to lie down on the sill but I was too long or something. Anyway the view of the Caribbean was magnificent. I saw all these exotic fruits and a man wearing a bumblebee costume trying to pollenate the flowers (but they had already been pollenated! that's like using a magnifying glass on a tray of grilled cheese sandwiches, Jessie thought.) And speaking of reproduction, Robert forgot about his taxes and started thinking about taking deep breaths of magic vapor. As Jessie was pinning her socks to the hardwood floor, Joanna came back from the kitchen and poured out several gallons of frozen peas. One of the peas rolled into Jessie's sock so I said, "Hey guys, do you think I could get my face on Mount Rushmore?"

And no one seemed to answer me. The day grew warm, the planets moved and the Earth spun. Robert rubbed the back of his arm against Jessie's side, trying to get rich quick, and I jumped awkwardly from the armchair to the coffee table. They decorated this house really nicely, Joanna observed as she chewed on some peas and some frost collected on the sides of her mouth. Bill's wrists red, he said "sing song about the freedom and how nice things are." So we all gathered in the center of the room, socks greened with pea shells, and put our arms around each other, but Robert accidentally punched me in the mouth but I laughed really hard and told him that when the fridge door closes, the light goes off, but I'll always love you, Joanna. Joanna looked at me intensely and thought, "wait, bald eagles aren't actually bald." For a brief minute we all pondered what had just happened, and shrugged it all off, chalking it up to the beautiful day and all the books on the shelves in the living room.

Jessie started taking those books off the shelves to read all of them. I wished Robert hadn't started throwing those mints as hard as he could against the wall. I made Bill and Joanna some Hawaiian punch but Bill looked down and showed me that he had already fixed himself a glass. Joanna walked to the record player, picked it up, and carried it over to Jessie. She reciprocated by placing a book entitled "On Another Chance" on top of the record player. Robert apologized for accidentally punching me in the mouth, I said, "Listen man, we're all from different backgrounds. We are all unique, every footprint and fingerprint is unique. We are so unique. The differences between us and other usses are so big. I am unique from Bill, and Bill is unique from everyone. Do you guys see what I mean?"

I think Joanna fell asleep. I took some curtain and rendered a red inkblot drawing of her sleeping, sometimes I caressed her forehead and hair. Bill looked at me and said, "all the Blackhawks! all the Blackhawks!" and Robert agreed. Jessie put one pea in the bookshelves for each book she had removed, it was beautiful. When Joanna came to we were all sleeping, so she stepped out onto that beautiful front porch. The grass on the hill sat still and these simple brown birds flew back and forth slowly. I had a dream with so much cheese in it and I remember that, in the dream, I was so grateful it wasn't Swiss because of the holes! Joanna had found a basket and now it was covered with leaves. She woke me and Bill up and asked for help. We obliged.

Things really took a turn for the worst when Robert started fighting with Jessie. He called her a "cunt" at one point and we stopped scalping the hummingbirds and offered to help. Jessie said it was too late and that something might be burning in the kitchen. We all walked into the kitchen and stared at Robert on the way. She was right, Bill had turned the oven on when he was tying rope around all the knobs in the house, we didn't want to see what had burnt so we just turned the dial and exhaled deeply. Robert hadn't followed us into the kitchen, in fact, we didn't see him when we returned to the living room. I cleared my throat.

"I've never been a pretzel, and I've never gone para-sailing, does that make me a criminal?" Jessie and Bill shook their heads. Joanna looked down. "Which is why, since you only live once, and since Robert is gone now, we should maybe get to know each other a little better." I don't know where I found the courage to suggest such a thing, but I did, and thankfully (I guess), it mostly blew over.

Ghostplank

Two slips dunked up and down in the harborwater. I hadn't touched either of them. Dark, greenish, black-and-blue water - poisoned by billions of journeys over the top - foamed white as my clipper cut through. Tiny pink capsules of seawater scattered at wake's edge. Once fully absorbed, there are brief periods of hypomanic calm. Warm sunbeams reflected earnestly off the harbor surface. The shimmering waves weren't close to as majestic as the battery skyline, which boasted a mosaic of horizon-stamped windows framed by dull limestone and oxidized copper. From my vantage I gazed down the barrel of Manhattan and eastdrifted. My socks were a little damp so I took them off - feet seeking fuzzy shelter.

Although man has relentlessly girded this landscape, carving deep into the ground to thrust higher into the sky, the encasing harbor remains a furious showcase of nature. My sail dug in, windwhipped to tears but stubbornly-driven and earnest - an authenticity at odds with the sunbeams, for my sail travels singly at sea. We don't rely on Friends.

Windwhipped to frenzy, I had no tac[t]. My spirit sunk low, faceplanting the deck. I thought of your dog face and wholly derivative life. You're right! There is cause for alarm!

Rance

My heart gurgled to a boil and I exhaled. I gawked oddly, in an odd eyeball configuration. I sat there and I saw him. I saw him and him and him and her. Thinking, the castle is built, swing around back. Fill the void and do so iron-clad. Do so with dumbbells and without oil. The mistake's been made. He said, "I ain't gonna fuck it up this time." The gauntlet has been thrown. How does that go? I sit and listen. A man and some dirt and a stylus.

The man sat up on a rainy urban day. He checked around. A mirror he found looked back at him. He saw the street and heard brakes and sat. "I remember how foreign it sounded to them, how they couldn't believe yuppies lived down there now." I mean, where did they think yuppies lived? Maybe they hadn't given it much thought. Maybe they had no need to. They had no need to. I saw twirling my thoughts like overcooked noodles. In the sense, in the season, I try and you falter. Which is an odd combination?

And then I realized I didn't care. I looked to the north and realized I didn't care, and the beat played on, and I oriented on myself, and I hatched a plan. I cracked through and lived differently thereafter for a time. And then I found myself awash in reluctance and regret. And then I found myself back. My cells flavorless and meek. Maybe the answer is a fresh start, a new beginning. So the log came back, as it always does. The torpedo drove towards my ship and I watched it panicked. I didn't care. The slanted eyes both drove me away and magnetized my heart, and the irony couldn't be more humorous. I slammed that dream on its head long before it mattered. I am embarrassed to be associated with certain correspondence; I am embarrassed to be associated with the Catholic faith, and with suburbia.

When the summer dresses you, you win. When the winter dresses you, I win, and in this balance, time flies. And such soaring, buzzing time passage makes me wonder, and it makes me downright symptomatic. I see a yellow tank and a, now I'm just giving up, I've surrendered. I saw a yellow tank with bum wheels. And this is just perfect: "Walk softly tonight, little stranger, into these shadows we're passing through, talk softly tonight little angel, you make all my dreams come true." Didn't even plan it. One of those mental/coincidental crossroads.

I stood there watching boat after boat embark up or out of the Hudson. It was raining and draining me and the city's spirit. I stood there at the base of the Manhattan Bridge. I stood and watched everyone disappear. I watched softly, and I talked lonely. I saw them leave and boats don't move very quickly. It's heart-wrenching, and it made the liquid in my heart boil. It boiled unapologetically. I saw the wind bully the rain procession on its side. The greyness was overpowering. There she goes with the clan: a toddler and a Queen. The boats went on and some had there own. I smoked a blunt. They're headed to the Caribbean. He's headed to save the world. She's headed somewhere she doesn't want to go. And then, in a most surprising twists, they're headed to heaven.

The window closed, now housekeeping began. The process hadn't been particulrly democratic, but that's not reality. Ya know what else isn't reality? All the shit in the periphery, and my lovely herb garden. And my lovely spread out in the country. All the details hardly made a difference. All the darkness and coziness counted so much more than the adornments and craftsmanship, and the boat, and the riverboat, and the pocketknife stuffed slickly into a leather holster, correction, self-correction, regulation. Slap slap slap slap across the face such that the hand lands where it started, backhand to the right side of the face, my mirror gawked back. I lowered my head and smiled into the summer breeze. The warehouses passed by me, the planets past me. The zip code changed twice.

And I stood there like a dolt.

Konijn Grease

[A] lapine creature with grayish fur, a symbol lacking substance to this point, like ribs in a skeleton shaped like a harp, or a calf tattoo thereof, sought to fill some void in the Boney Silence, or at least, to finish off this sentence, bunnyspoke, "my muscles are amber," and steeplechased down a wooden plank or a red tower and [sopped] beer.

Which is to say, had I had it my way when I was cruising around the other day, I would have enjoyed a cold beverage in the hot sun on those old wooden planks down on Rabbit Island, which may soon be gutted. Despite a persistent sideshow, the place booms with life and playful melodies deep-fried in big bass notes from the 70s.

And if one is not moved to write or paint or sing or fuck while or after being there, I doubt they ever will; either that, or they have a serious problem weighing them down, the kind of problem that sits in the middle of their darkest brainroom. It sits there like a spiteful zombie on an aluminum chair. It sits there staring ahead intently, and that's it. No Amazonian river rat, headless pinup, plastic palm tree, mucosal half-shell, frayed-wire amplifier, rubber-wrap butt or boob fat, low-mast lonestar bandera, oily rubber tire, or Atlantic-Pacific pectocranial psychopath can stir an emotion nor budge the problem from its seated position, from its gilded throne pressing down, down, down.

From that skeletal device and its ribbed cords came a beat so bold it thundered out to Marine Parkway, and in the wake of its baritone, it blasted whitewashed paths visible without electricity, and planes flew south a touch two turns before touchdown. Would an outsider, some educated dolt, some landlocked potato five thousand miles from a body of oil, point out the "steep decline of nutritional rigor"? Yes, but even these types have a home here: like teepees on planes. If you look at anything in the sun your depth perception fades and your teepee can be on the planes: to your girlfriend or boyfriend, or whomever you'd like. Down here, there's plenty of room.

Inside Fate's plans for the island dangling by French trains and American crossties there is a freakishly large atlas of diagrams, and they're not really diagrams so much as they're outlines: simplified black ink drawings on what may have been white paper.

Tens of thousands of years ago, two lapine creatures fell into a hole with a box of crayons and some special seeds from the Sky World. A Left-Handed Twin sculpted a long narrow chunk of land, called it Manna-hatta, and plopped it down in a groove between what is today Long Island and the mainland. Dirt scattered all around and settled on top of the atlas. The Twin, who had already moved on to shooting clay disks, left his mess behind for his brother, the Right-Handed Twin, who saw the rubble and inadvertently knocked the two grey rabbits inside the hole along with the atlas. They procreated in an ultrachromatic frenzy beneath the soil for hundreds of years, exhausting the crayons and leaving a raw (and quite colorful), primordial scenery caked on the shorescape.

A chest filled with rubies soaked in hot oil tilted forward as if bound to a rickety old axle, and at a certain point I would have guessed was well after inflection, the whole chest lunged forward, emptied its contents, scorched hair, scalded scales, popped balloons, ignited the Coney underworld, and flash-fried a display cabinet. I saw it with my own three eyes.

Forager's Fregola Soup

Fregola Sarda reminds people of Israeli cous cous, but to me there's no comparison. Fregola are densely packed, round pastina made with semolina flour and toasted. You cook fregola in boiling water (or broth) for about fifteen minutes and you get a great semi-soft, semi-tough texture with each tiny ball. Because the rolled flour is toasted, there is a slight nutty flavor to fregola. The "Sarda" part refers to Sardinia, where fregola originated. You can find fregola in specialty markets, in NYC I've seen it in Di Palo's on Grand Street, Dean & Deluca on Broadway, and some specialty markets in Brooklyn. The big corporate chains (Whole Foods) will start carrying it soon because it's becoming trendy and because whoever makes it over in Italy has caught on to the rustic-looking-packaging-800%-markup strategy. I paid about $6 for 1.1 lbs (500 g) at Di Palo and $6.49 for the same package in Brooklyn...not bad. Both times it looked like this:
You can make it for a cold salad like you would with cous cous but again it's not cous cous. Anyway, I prefer fregola in soup. My first experience with fregola was with a recipe for Fregula con Cocciula (Fregola with Clams), a golden soup prepared with small clams, small chunks of pancetta, thin slices of garlic, a tablespoon of tomato paste, saffron threads, and a toasted crostini (recipe: saute the first four ingredients for five minutes and mix into fregola that has been cooking in boiling broth for ten minutes, cook for five more minutes, serve topped with the last two ingredients - done).

The other night I mixed fregola with a woodsy soup recipe to great success. Woods, nuts, sage. This is a forager's soup.

Forager's Fregola Soup
Serves 4
10 oz Fregola Sarda
10 cups fresh chicken broth
20-30 oz cannellini beans (2 small cans, 1 large one)
5 oz baby spinach, washed, drained
sage, about 8 leaves
garlic, four cloves thinly thinly sliced

olive oil
white truffle oil
salt
pepper

1. Heat the chicken broth until it boils, when it does, reduce to a simmer and throw in the fregola, you want it to cook at least 15 minutes, stir occasionally.

2. Add the sage and garlic into a small pan and very slowly heat until the leaves and slices crackle (maybe five minutes).

3. Rinse the beans and then, in a food processor, or, with a fork, mash them into a paste.

4. Add the bean paste to the garlic, add a little more olive oil, and then add to the soup.

5. Five minutes before serving, throw in the spinach and stir it into the simmering broth.

6. Top with a copious amount of salt and pepper to taste. Serve with two brave drops of white truffle oil per bowl. Bless America. Bless Sardinia.

Mute?

7.5%/2666

I recently downloaded this wallpaper, because I think the best place for a calendar in this day and age is on your desktop. One of the first things I thought when I saw this was: "I like my bun toasted or grilled a little." This is a minor point, and I should've kept it to myself. I guess.

Bolaño continues to water-down superlatives unless they're trapped inside the critics' minds. It doesn't get old because superlatives these days need watering down. Superlatives should be felt, they don't need to be sloganized and piped into the sky. He delivers a dream-sequence in this section and a few random explorations. All of these arrive via the physically mute Morini. There's the principled London bum and the Messianic painter who cut off his hand to create the ultimate self-portrait.

I love the exposition of a "stilted" conversation between two intellectual acquaintances, neither of whom had much of a sense of friendship or loyalty but had fallen deeply in love with a younger, dumber, scholar who appreciated the mysterious Archimboldi by rote — an odd breed of passion that neither of her suitors give much thought to. Here's just a bit:

The first twenty minutes were tragic in tone, with the word fate used ten times and the word friendship twenty-four times. Liz Norton's name was spoken fifty times, nine of them in vain. The word Paris was said seven times, Madrid, eight. The word love was spoken twice, once by each man...

He uses phrases like "or whatever," expands on how cruel and extreme the mind can be while the body is timid and restrained (Espinoza's fiery plane crash), compares Morini to Eurylochus, and includes a list of Italian desserts attributed to one Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a nun.

And in a small amount of writing, he's done the love triangle, the thoughtless woman as a stained-glass vessel for two middle-aged friends' base desires, the juxtaposition, the thoughts, the hopelessness, the attempt at normalcy, discussion on how long it takes each of them to come, and their pathetic abandon of basic manners in the face of what certainly feels like selfish attraction. He's done all this radically, and in a way I hope he turns it on its head even more, not because turning things on their heads is what gets me off or what I think should get me off, but because so far I'm getting a waft of splendidly fragrant sarcasm about their behavior, about their thoughts, and about the whole situation. This is an attractive aroma because really, is there a better option when you're ninety-ninth in line to take-off into the hellhole airspace of real adulthood, than irony? (which reminds of a conversation I had with a chess player in a chat room, see below).

wellredbaron73: you just didn't think during that match. i knew your 3rd to next move before i made my first. i would recommend sitting in silence and concentrating on something.
z911: haha, no i didn't. what is that like an exercise?
wellredbaron73: i guess
z911: that's a good idea i should try it, do you do that?
wellredbaron73: no, i don't need to. my attention span is fine, see my rating?
z911: yes sir, that's very good
wellredbaron73: well, nice playing with you, best of luck, and remember, try to focus and really think ahead
z911: ok

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34/898/2666

About form, I was sure, the author had paved his own path (or in less cliché terms, the author had employed a style all his own, not mimicking anyone else). It makes an interesting read, as it's fresh, and these days, unassuming freshness is hard to find, easy to detect, and frankly, difficult to reproduce. The style keeps you on your toes (or in less cliché terms, this unpredictable quality makes the reader quite attentive).

He also does this thing where he states something about a character, and then immediately after, he completely undermines it with a straightforward rebuttal to the initial statement. Well it's not really a rebuttal — it's not black and white like that. It's more of, here's some hot soup, oh wait let me throw an ice cube in it. Nothing is as extraordinary as it originally sounds, how the character wants it to sound, or even how the author first said it. Everything's kind of muddled, or, if not tempered entirely, exists in an extreme, useless state hidden inside the thoughts of a character, or in the ultimately subordinate, descriptive language of the story.

How do you begin to praise the 4-page sentence? It's unmistakable, when you turn to that spread of fully-justified type, it dawns on you that you've already been reading this weed of a thought for a page and a half, and that's the best way to describe what he does with the sentence about the Swabian. It's not a "stream of consciousness," which is the shit I try to do, it's a purposeful ramble. It's the exploration of a branch to its terminus, a steady retreat...repeat. It's a masterful stroke by a talented artist. I can't even identify the purpose yet, but overall I just don't see this guy as someone who does things for a reaction, or is experimenting — he's not. It also contains a story of a story about Buenos Aires in the 20s, the phrase "meat emporium," the phrase

...words that to the little gaucho sounded like the moon, like a slow storm, and then the little gaucho looked up at the lady with the eyes of a bird of prey, ready to plunge a knife into her at the navel and slice up to the breasts, cutting her wide open, his eyes shining with a strange intensity, like eyes of a clumsy young butcher...

(how good is that!), and all of this a discussion that happened in the past, over a sparse German meal of sausages, potatoes, and beer. Good god Roberto, you've done it! Persist me to the 96th percentage, carry me Furiously onward! To the house.

I wanted to write a story about an urban professional who walked along the sidewalk late, late one night. Leaves rustled and the last lamp on the block went dark. A smallish man jumped out of the hedge and put a knife to the yuppie's neck and said, "give me your wallet." The miserable man quickly realized he only had $7 on him, so he gave him the wallet, crying, and then said, here, I have an iPod and a phone. The mugger thumbed the three bills and then caressed the shiny hard disk - content. He began running off in the direction the yuppie had just come from. The yuppie yelled after the man, and said, "Hey!" "HEY!" The guy turned around. "Hey come here. Can you do me a favor?" The mugger was twenty feet away from the yuppie's urine-stained slacks. The pathetic man rolled up his sleeve and said, "can you slice my arm?" The mugger ran off.

Taxi 2

One organization, the Rapture Fund, is offering a "Rapture Will" that provides terms by which a Christian can transfer his or her estate to the Rapture Fund in the event of the Rapture. The organization's website indicates that funds are to be used for publication of the Gospel during the Tribulation. Stop and go all day long, I see some old friends, I see my brother. Some have phones and some plain don't. It is a white cloud connection to into a foggy realm growing foggier with each denunciation. Both these worlds, one that no one inhabits and the one where I live, one where a few people make money and one where my value is similarly ludicrous, I am enchanted by the lures of the former. They are huge and romantic, in the sense that they are ego-driven. The core of our Earthball must be so stressed out these days - too much pressure. I am a half-step from the door. I have my left foot in a warm tub and my right foot is an inch from the outlet. I'm just trying to step through, I said. So I ran with copper armor clanking and a sense of dignity misguided. I am a karate kick away from having the abandon I wish I had. Death and war and loss and pain, I know them in abstract. I don't have a shortcut because I don't know the address. I wonder if I would even take the shortcut, and I feel I wouldn't. But it would be nice to get there.

A Torch Taken

After making my first taganu, I told my family about it, discreetly, one person at a time. Taganu is an Easter "pie" traditionally made in my Dad's home village of Aragona, Sicily. Aragona is a tiny commune outside of Agrigento, a province in southwestern Sicily. My dad and his sisters are all from this little village. Every Eastertime families bake up this eggy, cheesy contraption and, I'm told, bring it to a town square where some resident experts judge them and choose a winner. As my family started to open up about the whole tradition (my first taganu earning me additional details), the most outstanding part of it is how small and exclusive the group of people who know about this thing really is.

Now that I think about it, maybe it's the whole competition thing that made getting the recipe and technique for taganu so difficult. I guess you're trained not to divulge your special touch if there's a contest every year. Anyway, two of my aunts have carried on the tradition here in the States, and I've been eating taganu every Easter since I've been little. They never share much more than the already obvious ingredients, however, and there are definitely some technique pointers that need review.

I turned to the Internet, I googled "dianoo" (that's the phonetic), "dianu", "dyanu", "dyanoo", etc. Nothing. It begins with a T. I finally found a recipe when I typed in "Aragona" and "Tuma" - the name of the mild, semi-soft, sheep's milk cheese used in the dish. There's an article about it on about.com. It gives a brief history and the recipe, and I followed it loosely.

I actually came pretty close to the taganu of my childhood with my first attempt (my aunts never mentioned whether or not any of my family's taganus (tagani?) ever won the competition). Here's a recipe and some thoughts on the process. As you'll see from the list of ingredients, the whole congenital-heart-problem thing sort of makes sense now!

Makes 1 Taganu*
1 ciabatta roll, sliced about 3/4 inch thick for 14 slices
1 lb. Tuma cheese (or substitute 1 lb. Toma Piemonte), finely sliced *
3 cups Pecorino Romano, grated
12 large eggs
1 lb. mezzi rigatoni
13 golfball-sized Italian meatballs, halved (see notes)
1 1/2 cups fresh Chicken broth
1 heaping tsp. cinnamon
pinch Saffron threads
1/2 cup Parseley, finely chopped
Anti-stick lipid of choice (lard, butter, PAM, oil)

Preparation
1. Make the meatballs, set aside to cool, half them.
2. Saute the sausage meat for about five minutes
3. Cook the rigatoni in boiling, salted water two minutes short of package instructions, drain, set aside.
4. Heat the broth and as it comes to a gentle boil add the saffron threads, set heat to lowest setting.
5. Beat the eggs, then add the grated cheese, parseley, cinnamon, salt and pepper.

Assembly
1. Coat the inside of the oven pot with anti-stick agent.
2. Dip both sides of 4 slices of bread in the egg mixture and line them up on the bottom of the pot. Repeat with 6 more slices of bread and line up around inside walls of the pot.
3. Take a handful of rigatoni, dip in the egg mixture, and spread out on top of the bread. It should be 1 rigatoni high.
4. Scatter a few halved meatballs in this first layer.
5. Pour a little egg mixture over the first layer.
6. Cover the first layer with Toma cheese slices and a little sausage meat.
7. Repeat at least once more, reserving a little more egg mixture for the last 4 slices of bread.
8. Gently poke three holes in the cheese-egg-meat mixture and pour the chicken broth over the top.
9. Dip the last 4 pieces of bread in the egg mixture to cover the taganu.
10. Layer more Toma slices on top of the bread, maybe drizzle some olive oil, and say a rosary for your arteries.

Cooking
1. Bake the taganu, uncovered, for three hours in a 350 degree oven.

Notes
- I used a metal "loaf pan" that I bought for $0.79 from the supermarket. It's about 12 x 6 x 6 inches if I had to guess. I'm going to continue making it in this shape, it works well with the bread slices.
- Don't drown the bread slices in the egg mixture or you won't have enough for the inside. Just gently cover both sides with a brisk dip.
- You don't need much additional salt for this or you'll ruin it...there's three cups of grated cheese, a POUND of another cheese, sausage meat, chicken broth, and salted pasta. Basta.
- The photos above and below don't show the sausage meat, I'm going to add this next year.
- The photos also don't show the rigatoni-egg mixture dip, I'm going to do this next year.
- And finally, about the cheese. I told my family I found tuma. I thought it was just another pronunciation miscommunication, but it was not. The correct cheese, for the Platonic taganu, is definitely tuma, a sheep's milk cheese from Sicily. I used toma piemonte, a cow's milk cheese from Piedmont, all the way up near France and Switzerland. I defrauded the taganu deities, and I will try to get my hands on tuma next year as penance.

Hopping Home with Ed and Jim

The afternoon was normal. I sat atop the metal ladder and chatted with Jim over the top of the aluminum shelving between aisles twenty-three and twenty-four. I turned away from Jim for a second to sneeze. I wiped my nose with the bottom of my Centre Megamart apron. I looked down at aisle twenty-three. I have been fronting premade pie crusts for an absurd amount of my life, I thought. "No, I'm working a double this weekend. I don't think I'll get out in time." Jim looked disappointed. "I guess I could try to switch with someone." Jim looked up. "I'll let you know." I had been a lousy gambler all my life. The carnival was in town, but that wasn't the point. The point was that I never asked anyone to switch, and I missed Jim's party.

After my double I went out to my lonely car in the lonely parking lot under the tall white lightpost. I sat on the hood of my red clunker, shoulders surrendering inward, neck stretched low. I looked down at my stupid shoes. What kind, what symptom of a, where should the...I straightened my back, trying to crack the tension out of it. I leaned back slowly and finally laid down completely, legs dangling off the side of the Dodge.

Bells rang and some old woman answered. She said, "won't it stop?" The next and last stop on this train is...warm and inviting, who could refuse? The bells were counting down the ties in a cord attached to a hulking steel orb cast in deep black. The ties slid down and down until eventually, a yellow-caped hero revealed himself. It was this kind of eventuality that slowed progress so. It was this anticipation that momentum consumed and languished therein. And I stirred and stirred this ingenious machine's tanktop - but it was weak and lethargic and refused the warm air.

It was this cartoon scenery that called us all back. It was this nursery tale that swatted and gashed us, our faces mangled and throats sore. Against an ancient brick wall the black orb pounded, weakly at first and more weakly thereafter. There are carpets of course and such traditions well-noticed. A fire on the crossties shimmered in the rain. We doubted so much and counted our chances, in a redrock hotel on the Utah frontier. A shadow moved up and shifted in the crackway, the door was less open than closed.

Anticipation personified as a blackboard under fire by an impotent brainstorm of timid white chalk. The blackness retreated as the scrawling lay siege, propped up by the classics, bold-face texts and maybe six or seven magazines. Its hand was shaky and it's sketches suffered, but more directly, the board grew unwieldy - and what remained, of course, was misdirected passion, aimed anywhere but the board — that's generous — aimed away from the board. Hope grew out of this meaningless fog, it was the hope for a cleaning, a fresh start, more daylight, shifted responsibilities, crafty excuses, all things hardly head-on.

When the board cleared up and the blackness returned, the walls eroded and deposits formed. It was a false sense of security, indeed, a trap. There will never be order when the clean slate is restored. May the texts be erased and bold-faces scorned, may the periodicals be shredded and foundation fall. I want to peel off this hood and build a new engine, I thought, but I got in my car and drove straight home.

The Dust

Ever see one of those Aztec cheekbone sets coming at ya down the street? Two tan roof slopes at a subtle incline type of thing. A while ago, I stood before a mirror and set my type. "Ah yes." That moment of realization. I need a few to get from here to the next city. The next city was Tegucigalpa, at the intersection with the whitewashed church sitting cozily on the dusty yellow sand. As usual.

Two bikes slowed to the intersection rhythm. They stood and said something in their native tongue. Something along the lines of, "I thought you were gonna go." So then they each started at each other, and slowed again. One said, under its breath, "For God's sake I thought you were going to go." The other one said, under its breath, "Jesus, I thought he was going to go." This kept on for a while, in front of the white church at the intersection of two dusty gravel roads in the yellow desert. Surely God was present, who else was driving?
If God tilted this scene on its side, as if it were the background under a glass cutting board in God's kitchen, and all the stones on the gravel path rolled out onto God's kitchen floor - THEN, I'd believe in God. Holy Moholy. If God picked up one of the bikes and twirled it around in a dusty wind funnel that was actually the water drain in God's kitchen drain - THEN...you know. Joan. Joan.

All the little rocky gravel chunks rushed down the serpentine staircase and crashed in a most inconvenient manner for the earthball, and by that I mean the volume on Earth was turned up by a few thousand centibels. It was like when you get your ears back after a cold a thousand times magnified. And he stood there, Napoleon, standing all Vitruvian in between the Legend's legs (he was also standing Virtuvian - only there was fire coming out of his mouth and he looked glorious). I've never been so proud, I've never been so spiritual.

And then a drone came - it was God's amplification correction system, correcting the rolling stone's effects on the earthball. A few ballerinas slipped sideways off a bridge, off the "cutting board." Ted, a man, crashed his car. Two Aztec men looked up at the sky from their rooves (well, not their rooves). The drone had to continue for a while. Oh it was gross. It was a Dark age. It was not what I'd expect. Then the drone receded and these little fader tests slid up and down and the sky flickered as the drone came back in the background. The church shuttered. The floors creaked and the kickstands used all their might to prop the bikes up. They both said, at the same time, "let's get out of here man."

All this at the same time it was too much for me to believe. I've been fed dogma before.

Empty Are The Fairgrounds

A smile or a smirk thick a downbound chat leaves my blood fuzzy and heartbeats gluggin. I lick it up! The tall brown trunks gallop brisk by the castle. An old English estate roll gently nudge a thick blurry line left to right climbsky, fairground, south border. The downbound border swim a silky slick reptile, stride an old English horse - from America, fly a fruited plane, [exam] pass an ocean too many, you've gone too far.

We watched the dinghy descend with the tide. Some seaweed was visible on its shaft. It looked as if the nutrients had been sucked dry. There was a stiff skeletal breeze on my nose and knuckles. I pocketed my hands and hummed a lunar tune. Flies are 'seabugs' when they live near the ocean. They scratch and crawl and hum lunar tunes. I picked up the news and the top fold whipped in the wind. A headline ran and drops of inky water hit the sand between waves. I heard wood creak and felt insects on the undersides of my ribs and crawling in my earlobes. The bridge of my nose itched interminably and the salty air bit at my eyes. All the wood tunes were lost on me. All the fiery warmth escaped me. And I stood and wished I were leaning. I breathed out and didn't feel like breathing in, because all the goddamn seabugs sang meekly in my ears and slid down little tracks on my scalpstrings.

In a black pasture we groomed and grazed. The man in suspenders sat there thinking about nothing, and alternately, he realized his hunger and the noise his workers made. He achieved this great little equilibrium among the swinging bench, his ass, the sole of his foot, and a porch spindle. He thought, supper bowl grain tax hummer yelluh spring pitch plow sleepy trucker tax chain. I ran up to the aluminum door next to the swing and bashed at it with my skull until blood from the gash ran in the metal crease.

After our ears stopped ringing in the flourolight hellhole, the perpetrator left the room and we gazed at each other. He went down the elevator and bounded down the lobby stairs. He clicked and clacked in his highway shoes. "Until further notice, the answer to that question is 'same shit, different day.'," he replied, but he had no idea the troubles we'd seen. And the troubles mounted tall black steers. Down the highway we escaped, these two tricky chords rapped successively. Rain clapped on the hood and filled the streets.

Thirty-Five Minutes To Ten

I neatly folded some harina masa into my stockings, and this left the commission bewildered. And what was the name of that ridiculous song I enjoyed so. What I'm trying to say is that I never liked the Simpsons as much as you guys did! I'm a friend in the end, and the word 'testicles' is both an ice-breaker and a powerful punchline word. Those are the two, these are the two, them's the two. Lisa and Bart. Lisa double-peeled the fleshy beans while naked and amidst the exotic jungle animals. They were quiet but very, very aware. Demarcus and the pinstriped haircut kid, staring at the canvas. "It's a Gauguin, and it's not for kids." (I would check with the MPAA on that one - last I checked...PG...[shrug]).

The commission laughed heartily and the bald man in the back with the South African accent dropped a few coins on the ground. Everyone laughed some more, and I kept folding the corn meal. Lisa kept parboiling and peeling those dreaded, fleshy beans. Bart cried at night, when the pencils were down, when graphing calculators recharged. Antonio fell on the Tampa ice, and when he looked up at the sky, he felt America. The America from that song about the fruited plains and the multitudinous bounty of wheat.

This is a back-loaded endeavor said the man indicted in the automobile manslaughter lawsuit. You are a suit, Thrill, and that's ironic, sure, but it's more than that. You're a whore. Lisa's no ho! Bart! I went to this new city the other night, and I noticed some sweet nothings. I caressed them on their legs; between me, my love of carnal pleasures, my hands, and Her sweet nothings, were some tamale-ass stockings like you can't believe! And that's what happens down under when I'm involved.

Through a small hole in all of this (it had been cut by an Italian-American craftsman), I saw a birthmark on a butt cheek, but that went out of focus quite, and I mean, very, quickly, and in the distance I resumed my quest. In a distant era, beyond major chords, where brass isn't a factor, a faction, or another word for testicles, there are tightly-pulled lines. And on that banjo he played a fishing ditty, and it went something like this:

To all the rocks and stones who delight in my hunger
I don't care, I'm a fisherman proper
You're a wild salmon robber
I'll have my way with you.

I slapped everyone all at once, and in doing so, irritated lots of people I didn't know and never had a problem with. This is the method. This is the mathematical method. Step one, oh shit! You fell down the abyss! There was an abyss so close to step one and look what you did. I suppose you're still falling, it's an abyss for god's sake. I made some eggs, they were gritty, and I slathered them all over my pool table. Picture a pool table with corn-ass grit felt, pale yellow because I used inexpensive eggs dropped down a conveyor belt that screams its anthem:

So this isn't my day, but what is?
There are the stinky ovulating gatekeepers
But the shop is a Catholic shop, and Master believes.
So nothing slides on Sundays. Just my icy steel, weeping pysche.

There are insects, and there are parties. There are green hues, and there is a war with guns and bullets and heat. Do you know what's involved in refueling a fighter jet in mid-air? They do it. They do it, you need a cable. I fear for our collective organs. And then the typo came. The typo was bent over like a desperate twenty-something on an anonymous Friday night when the monotony of the city got to her like a hurricane gets to all the marine animals. And it cmae hard. Like the second-hand starting a run from the summit. I whirled around and picked up some sand. And I uh...picked up a glob of it, it was sandy. I whirled around like an Olympian discus-thrower, and I showered like a decrepit man - and the acid stung - it climbed and slithered through my skin. I felt the temporary pain; I felt my rationale.

I know these two dudes, god I wish I had a story about a time they made a corn joke, but the bottom line is that corns don't happen to them. This is a different era and there just aren't advertisements like that anymore. There are products, there are white, porcelain plates and they know no owner. Misplace me. Mommy I'm lost. There are quiet fish and loud fish and tiny fish and big-ass cornbread jalapeño dunkers and I'm gonna turn myself in, once and for all - spill my GUTS! "You should come too!" one dude said to the other dude! There was a knock and the units filed in. There was a sinister man keeping track of everything in the corner with a clipboard and some banana chips. It's always...always about nutrition. Ain't it Thrill? You suit. I'm bitter, and you don't want to see me up-close, Lisa. "Go ahead!" she said.

But I had to save you. Your altitude was distressing. Terminal velocity is reached very quickly when you fall into an abyss. I jumped into the abyss, singing the Song of the Abyss:

Roll and throw and lift and listen
I'm the captain's whip, the seamstress' zipper
Can you feel my depth or hear my whisper?

We're headed down to the Maker's lair
Wheels and apples - laws and globes
Expose your bare neck, chest, and bones
Your fancy moves aren't your own.

You've scaled and froze and wiggled around
So trace back brother! Swim back, friend!
They'll find you one day!
Rotting far down, fancy clothes on bones
Filleted and poached for dinner!

Changing Guards

In consideration of an edifice's verticality, that is, its upright girders, one needs context. So we provide this measure, at once, below. References are provided in short fragments - specifically - if unsophisticated.

Throughout its history, my street has maintained relative anonymity. And for that reason it believes in the Lamb. For that very reason, it elaborates upon weighty matters in brief gasps and short strokes. It is the attention-deprived nervous system of city streets. It can not deliver packages of increasing complexity or increasing volume. My street has fulfilled the promise of streets federated upon the fleshy underside of the Manhattan island, and has done so with quiet dignity despite its short stride, ambiguous pronunciation, and deepening paracitification.

You may recall that during the last few years [exposition of statistical trend]. I mean, isn't that a kicker? Big smile. Frantic chuckle fishing, frantic code red code blue the worst color code alarm. Nothing? So it's passed. I seek to describe the rigid cell wall in uncertain terms: it's over. It's over. Continuity is no longer an option, I doubt ordinary chemical treatments can help in this matter. There are two hard outer crusts between us, and I learned of these conditions bathed in a golden light at an uneasy altitude atop the city.

So the throne awaits. The lofty throne that has been occupied so many times before. From this perch, a panorama of the ages surfaces awkwardly against the walls. You can see the breaks in the wallpaper. You can tell that the architect was unable to acquire certain permits. So walk up to the throne. Stumble up, this is a public monument, after all. This is a split-second recalculation, an unthinking audible, a fiery near-disaster. There is an inscription but I'm too lazy to read it. So I stumbled down. I rolled off like a statistic in a mime show. We cornered in together, but agreed on something at once: [secret opinion on the Anglo-Saxon linguistic arsenal]. The train was packed, so we wedged. We ruined a world we weren't always part of - no I'm not thirsty.