Through Bullion Glass

[“Do you want the truth or something beautiful?” — Paloma Faith]

March 12th

I blushed as I listened to the olive-skinned pair get to know each other in an easy exchange of colloquialisms, my words faltered before they had even been formed. “Piacere”, I said, and immediately regretted it. Their expectations would be high now, I had once called myself fluent but now felt vulnerable. It had been too long since that language last left my tongue. Smiles and torrents of words poured forth from the two Italians as they generously brought me into their conversation and I wanted so badly to answer but the vowels all came out misshapen.  He was a northerner, and I couldn't fathom his vernacular. I bowed my head and resumed an embarrassed silence.

I yearn for that language, the key that unlocks so many memories of the place where I felt complete. That year, the Sienese had truly taken me under their wing. As if connected straight to my heart, my ears swam happily as I listened. It couldn’t last, though, and as the other boy left, a great wave of nostalgia rushed over me, swallowing my sad heart whole. Take me back, portami via.

March 15th

A long, lethargic run in the sun, stopping at intervals to drink in this new landscape with a quick toe dip and splash in the lake. I still harbour that longing for the familiarly worn, red stones criss-crossing the piazza, either scalding or cool as shadows tick across the shell-shaped square like a sundial. Yet, I am contented here now, too. Lake Travis.

Today, we’re going to see Hamilton’s pool. I sleep until we take an off road detour to avoid a traffic jam.  Our short cut took us straight to the cause of the jam. Police cars peppered the highway, left unoccupied at odd angles as their drivers had pulled up hurriedly and leapt from them. I swallowed as my sleepy eyes took in the scene beyond them. Everything seemed paused as a helicopter buzzed in the hot air overhead, also surveying the wreckage. Cars, crumpled like empty soda cans were strewn everywhere, unrecognisable. No survivors, I concluded: there could not be.

March 15th

Hamilton Pool was an alter world, with the dripping overhang stretching on as though my eyes were of bullion glass. I took a long gulp of damp air and discarded my shirt and shorts, discarding my insecurities along with them. I needed to feel alive, for those who were not, as well as myself. I dug my toes into the chalky mud, my soles gripping the stone as I clambered my way under the pelting water. Bowing my head to it, I sat foetally until I felt new again and the others joined me.

March 16th

In San Antonio we booked a cheap hotel room between the five of us. The stale air of the room reminded me of that night alone in Rome, my last night in Italy. The man had asked me how I wanted to pay, and then I couldn’t lock the door so I spent the night sitting on the Spanish Steps and sharing a bottle of wine with strangers. Gini had called them “socks-on hotels”; that was another person who had died too soon… I’m back at Emmett’s Grange, a child clinging to her jacket as the wind tore at my hair, bumping across the moors on her faded red quad bike. Mossy limping along beside us and the Scottish Blackface ewes stamping at the old dog with defiant eyes. Then I’m at number 35, home alone after school having excitedly opened an appealing-looking letter addressed not only to my mother but also to me! My jaw ached as my face contorted and great sobs shook my body, hot and cold: An invitation to her funeral.

As the evening draws in, we go downtown. Sleeping horses plod the streets with their cinderella carriages dripping in neon fairy lights and fake flowers. Perusing the River Walk, we finally settle down at a table outside at The Iron Cactus. Conversation flows and we are all at ease again, enjoying ourselves. I savoured a very good martini that slid up to the salted rim like an oil slick with every sip. Laughter cures everything.

The Anemone

The Anemone

My anemone heart is closed to the dusty, bloodlust desert, 

It’s tendrils tightly furled. 

 ‘Don’t breathe that dead air’, it whispers, 

Shrinking from a toxic touch.

 I feel it swim in the

Reservoirs of my eyes, windows so damned dull,

Opaque still nobody knows it’s there

For all to see. Paned with iron.

My soul’s clamped in, clammed up,

I shrink away from a clammy hot touch. 

It buries itself in itself, 

Bares itself only

With a laugh

 So hearty

That the meaning is stifled. 

An ocean lies over me, one great droplet,

Magnifying and distorting 

The sky that is so dry

On the other side.

Under here,

Looking up at everything

There’s oxygen that can’t be found in air. 

I watch as,

Drifting through oil smoke clouds,

The moon hangs upside down,

Too large,

Kissing the horizon. 

Preserved in my watery paperweight,

Those crimsoned tendrils wave mockingly, 

 And recoil

As the hands and hearts of others

Reach through and puncture that perfect surface,

Leaving trails of grit

And other places

On the doorstep of my world. 

The Lost Art

Food is like art, and recently I have been an artist without a muse.

In Italy, England and Wales, I found inspiration in my environment, my friends and my family.

In Texas however, I remain completely uninspired culinarily and anyway, I have only a fridge and a microwave in my dormitory and I am fed at the university dining hall. Fortunately, when the team I am part of travels for competition, we eat out on university expenses. Despite what would at first appear to be a saving grace, I have not been impressed with the quality of the American restaurants that I have been to. Most of the places that we go to are chains; in four months I have only been to one restaurant that was individual and did not assimilate another.  That restaurant was Crown Pizza in Beaumont. An intimate place, Crown Pizza serve pleasingly fresh Italian food in an old shipping container. 

Otherwise, all of the steakhouses and “Italian” restaurants have been disappointing. Famed for their steaks, the Texans certainly won’t be beaten on size but there is nothing special about their flavour. I have also learnt never to order the popular accompaniment to them, the loaded, baked sweet potato. Although my expectations of Italian food here were not as high as those I had of Texan steaks, I was equally as dismayed with it. Every pasta dish that I have been served so far, claiming on the plastic menu to be ‘authentic’ , has been bastardised. The lily has been gilded in suffocatingly sweet or rich sauces that have far too many ingredients.

Perhaps this was why I was so enamoured of a pocket-sized cocktail bar that my old friend Erika introduced me to in Cambridge on my return home at Christmas. The menu was handwritten on good paper whose stains added romance, the inky letters in an elegant scrawl. Artful candlelight, beautiful glassware, provocative photography and fantastic classic cocktails were the perfect accompaniment to such a long-awaited reunion. I drank a smooth sidecar.  The gentle warmth of the cognac and cointreau was a wonderful antidote to the cold night. Having blushingly reprimanded the barman for attempting to remove my glass without my having completely drained it of its dregs, I followed my sidecar with a whisky mac as one last guard against the frosty walk home. 

The next day, we drank another luxurious thing; very good coffee. This was made properly, not “l’acqua sporca”  that I had come across in the States. This was taken both at Erika's house and in Limoncello, an excellent Italian deli down the road. Continuing my indulgence at home, my mother and I giggled every time she brought out her “Rich Italian” blend. If only….

During my stay, Erika also demonstrated just how easy it is to make wonderful food when she smudged some avocado onto slices of bread for lunch putting a poached egg on the top and smattering it with a little salt and pepper. Another example of the wonders of a simple combination of ingredients whose flavours just compliment each other was the bruschetta of goat’s cheese, roasted grapes and walnuts that I made for our solstice party at home. Why is it so difficult to find such classic combinations in America without them having been meddled with and overelaborated? As the Italian saying goes, “Don’t tell the peasants how good fruit and cheese tastes together”.

To give an overview of my culinary homecoming, I cooked and cooked over Christmas and New Year and almost everything was Italian. Venison ragù made with the pici that Mum had stashed away from her last trip, Gennaro Contaldo’s tiramisu al limone, the youtube recipe for which I watch every time I make it even though I have it written down. I just enjoy the way he says “eaps” of sugar and the part at the end when we exclaims incredulously “sometimes, I can’t believe I cook so good!”. Me neither Gennaro, me neither… 

 I can’t believe how much I have longed for the most basic of dishes that I used to cook regularly for myself, that both of my parents always cooked for me and that somehow just tastes better when they cook  it. That dish is pasta with tuna, garlic and anchovies. It is my ultimate comfort food and was probably the most satisfying meal of my entire christmas holidays. 

Not absolutely everything was Italian however. At New Year, staying with my Grandma, Dad and Stepmother, I touched upon some French cuisine. Dad and Kate had presented me with two beautiful cookbooks for Christmas, and as they are now living in France, one was of course, a French one by Rachel Khoo. To treat my Grandma, we cooked a masterpiece each to conclude the three courses of our New Year’s Eve meal. My father created the starter, inspired by Rachel Khoo, of scallops and brown shrimps in filo pastry. As usual it was pure wizardry from the boyish old man in the cowboy hat and the chocolate cigar. Kate served up a fabulous piece of roasted pork with the most moreish of crackling around. And as if we weren’t all gluttoned out already, I really went for the sucker punch with the darkest of chocolate cakes you could ever imagine for pudding. One of Rachel Khoo’s, it was called “The Black Beret” and the cointreau that we drank with it cut it better than a knife. 

Yes, I unapologetically prefer Europe to the United States based on the food alone. It makes me feel homesick and my heart (which would appear to be in cahoots with my stomach) simultaneously longs to be taken back to my beloved Italia. I won't even start on the other things that depress me about America. Yet I feel that I am being hard on the stars and stripes. I am sure that somewhere there is good food hiding away waiting to be found. We shall see...

On the plane I read some F. Scott Fitzgerald and I was struck by a line which read “It was not an American bar anymore - he felt polite in it, and not as if he owned it.” Kinda says it all. 

On my arrival back in Texas, I had to pass my lunchtime in Houston IAH airport while waiting for the shuttle bus. Dehydrated, I was shocked to find that water was more expensive than soda. Welcome to America.