Recently I was doing a bit of decluttering (although I have not yet perused The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up) which included finding a number of notebooks, canvas bags, and the like loaded with endless scribbled drafts of poems and essays. In one little book I find, inter alia, the following:
In the bed
my sunburned husband snores
21 years married
an anniversary of no
particular importance
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
and later on:
His head is served up
on a huge white collar
his forehead, too, is white.
His lips are serious, sealed,
His mustache narrow.
His eyes point sideways
but somehow pin us in his gaze.
He holds a small book in one hand
atop a brown Bible
one finger a bookmark.
He is seated.
He is standing up.
His robes are flowing toward us
black and white
marked with a spidery cross.
This poem (which I have edited a bit as I transcribed it here) is about El Greco's portrait of Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, which I have long loved to distraction, and who actually once came to visit me in Durham at Duke's Nasher Museum of Art as part of an exhibit, which meant I was able to go to the museum obsessively to get my fill of Fray Felix (as I always call him in my head because I like the alliteration) during his stay in the Bull City. And in finding this picture below, I also just learned that Fray Felix was himself a poet who dedicated four sonnets to El Greco! How great is that?
The hell with life-changing magic; I'm not getting rid of anything I've written. Maybe one of these days I'll finish Fussy Eater, which starts, " 'Poison peas' my dad always said to me whenever they were served, knowing of my dislike for them."
But I thought this post was supposed to be about the tenth anniversary of a great meal? Ah yes. Well, my notebook also includes some entries from a 2006 trip to Germany and Spain, including the description of a meal the four of us ate on Monday, the 3rd of July, in the Catalan city of Girona. The facilitator of the writing group I was part of at that time had recently been there herself and recommended a restaurant that she said was both excellent and reasonably priced, called Draps. (I'm delighted to report that it appears Draps is still alive and well -- "Draps: A Culinary Experience To Be Shared in Girona!" one recent diner proclaimed -- and affordable -- "at convenient prices!")
On the way to the restaurant, I recorded, we heard nuns singing in their ancient stone convent, the music coming through the window-grill that separates them from the world, and then the clink of silverware on plates as their evening meal was served.
I've written MEAL AT DRAPS at the top of one page. And then I describe the meal:
Water from a little blue glass bottle
2 Spanish wines -- white (slightly effervescent) and red
Cold melon and ham appetizer drink served in a tiny martini glass
3 dishes (which we shared)
Fresh thin ribbons of pasta with shrimp, duck, spinach, and mushrooms served over a bed of lettuce and radicchio
Grilled vegetables -- peppers, eggplant etc. (oh what were the et cetera?) on a tart of puff pastry, topped with strong goat cheese sprinkled with black sesame seeds, drizzled with some sort of vinaigrette
"El Pop" -- roundish pieces of octopus served on small square pieces of potato (one piece of octopus per potato) covered with red olive oil, sprinkled with paprika. Bread to soak up every last drop of the red, paprika-scented oil (must have been smoked paprika, pimenton)
2 decaf Illys (for Dino and me as I recall), a brandy for Dan, and two desserts:
El Pecat ("The Sin"): a dark chocolate pudding on a pool of creme anglaise
Crema Catalana -- a sort of Spanish Crème Brûlée topped with caramel ice cream and cinnamon sauce
As I recall, the restaurant itself was quite moderne and stylish but I cannot really recall the details -- why did I not write about that? But then I turn the page; I did!
Water glasses were curved and multicolored
Tables were square dark brown wood with fresh pale brown table runners and napkins (which were folded into long narrow rectangles)
The plates were white and in unusual shapes (I had drawn a sort of curved crescent with squared ends to demonstrate one of them). Below the crescent, I wrote: "We laughed and ate and talked about Dalí," as we had gone to the Dalí Museum in Figueres earlier that day.
"We leave at midnight. The upstairs of the restaurant is still filled with people."
What a memory! What a meal!
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