Recipes for Trouble

Airports and luggage and jetlag. Halting, stilted conversations with family members. Presents for people – your siblings, nieces, nephews – you hardly know.

There will be rewards, too. The food, the smells – they are part of you, a part you had lost. Your mother’s light, frail embrace. The breakfasts she will make for you: greasy fried eggs, rye toast, as though you were not able to make breakfast yourself and she were not eighty-one years old. Your grand-niece, the tiniest member of the family, whom you will hold in your arms.

You have been in exile. You left them physically three decades ago or more, when you left for college, that incredible rupture, that train ride to Nova Scotia to the ends of the earth, or so it seemed at the time. You left them a little bit more as you grew into being an artist, though not the kind of artist your father had been. Conceptual, avant-garde, post-modern: you learnt a new language they’d never be able to speak.

And then, you, the naïve girl with long hair she sometimes wore in braids around her head, like a Ukrainian hippie girl - you met a species of woman you’d never known existed. Assertive, defiant, funny. Sensual, soft, and tough. You joined their collectives, went to their rituals and celebrations. More new words: patriarchy, sexism, empowerment. Your life changed, beyond recognition.

That was twenty-five years ago. The languages you’ve learnt have changed, adapted, become smarter and more ironic. You don’t make conceptual art anymore. You’ve had to figure out ways to make your words and images reach larger audiences. You had to change, too.

But they have changed very little, it seems, and so, you are still in exile. Your mother, for all that age and resignation and mourning have softened her, will never utter your lover’s name, even if she is sitting in the same room. Your siblings will rarely ask about your life, even though it has become almost as conventional as theirs. You will speak of some things – being a professor, the sales of your last book – and not of others. You will always be speaking out of turn, without being asked. The conversation will focus on tropical holidays, the children’s dance performances, the owning of homes, the selling of cars.

You have been in exile. Although you were never banished, not really.

You will give presents. You will kiss cheeks old and young. You will make a dish for Christmas dinner, The Guitar Player’s root vegetable puree. You will make do, and your mother’s tentative pleasure will be its own reward.

So many of us are dealing with exile at this time of year. Some will emerge, others not. Some will find that easier or more difficult than others.

Christmas. It’s a queer thing.

May its fleeting, beautiful moments (holding that baby, getting together with queer friends before or after, skating with your lover, being at home alone and enjoying it) shine bright.

Wishing you

illumination
radiance lustre
incandescence
iridescence brightness enlightenment
brilliance

on the occasion of the ascent of the sun and return of the light.

Happy Solstice!

New York is full of food smells, tantalizing, nostalgic, obscure. My nose leads me in and out of delis and bakeries. I am always hungry in New York.

Pizza joints everywhere. Hot pretzels with mustard, sold from carts on the street. Aromas wafting out of Mexican taquerias, the spicy smells of Israeli takeout, of knishes, and of Chinese food.

The first thing we ate, as we emerged, dazed, onto the streets of New York was the best babaghanoush of my life, squishing out of a pita bread sandwich. I was dazzled by this three-dollar piece of heaven from a so-called Israeli joint at the corner of Ludlow and Rivington, called Three Monkeys.

We were headed to ‘Inoteca which was really just across the street. But we couldn’t help ourselves. It was the smells: of felafel, bourek, chicken shawarma. We had to have a taste.

Then we strolled through an indoor food market on Essex Street, like the kind my parents used to go to in Edmonton, in the winter. Booths of vegetables and fish and Mexican ingredients. A tiny, delightful cheese shop run by a quiet dorky man. He had me taste the strips of parmesan he’d laid out, which I was to dip into balsamic reduction (a new appetizer idea! So simple!). He couldn’t wait to have us try a new peppery chocolate he’d acquired. I bought a shard of an expensive bell-shaped cheese arranged in a display case of its own. We had it with bagels the next day.

By then it was time to meet friends at ‘Inoteca, recommended by Ann, and others, too. It was modest, not what I expected, yet the friends, Coffeshop Dude and Sensitive Artist - two twenty-something queers - thought it pretentious. They were young, those two, not really into the ‘Inoteca vibe which is all small plates and cheese selections and matching wines. They laughed at the eleven dollar cheese plate with not a lot of cheese, and then ate it up. I’ve. Only. Ever. Eaten. Mozzarella. And. Cheddar said The Coffeeshop Dude. She chewed on the cheese with great delicacy, comparing the subtleties of flavour. I told her about my cheesey friend at the market, two blocks away. Plates arrived, of uneven appeal. We weren’t wowed by the egg and cheese bruschetta with truffle oil, but Coffeshop Dude and I swooned over the grilled octopus on fingerling potatoes.

There were amusing fried chickpea flour fritters we dubbed “fish fingers” for their shape and because we couldn’t recall the fancy Italian name. (The menu’s all in Italian, which is pretentious and reminds of a leftie art critic I used to know who thought it stylish to insert entire, untranslated Spanish phrases into her reviews and essays). There was a beet-orange walnut salad I could have made at home, but Coffeeshop Dude had never tasted beets before, and liked them. There was an entire bottle of red wine, Primitivo, at a good price and there was life and energy and fun as the tables filled up with a savvy, laid-back all-ages crowd. There was anxiety, or envy, or sadness, from The Sensitive Artist, who, far too jaded for her age, turned up her nose at our list of things to do in New York. Sweetness, too, as she told the Anti-Poverty Organizer, a kind of aunt to her, that she had a Christmas present for her.

We ended the evening with a stroll around the Lower East Side, so changed since I knew it as a young art student, when it was the domain of Jews and garment industries and tiny Cuban diners. We walked in and out of small glittering shops and high-end vintage stores, the phantom limb of the shmata district of yore. We chanced upon Katz’s, a Jewish restaurant, another phantom limb, and bought bagels and a tub of cream cheese to go, two dollars for the lot.

Fell asleep that night with sirens and car horns and voices and music playing their discordant symphony on the pulsating streets below.

I am always hungry for New York.

New York, city of shadows, city of light.

We wake up early in the morning and I go in search of bagels. The light is grey and pale. The streets are being cleaned by a phalanx of African American men, working silently in the cold.

Later in the day we go to the Whitney Museum to see a show of Kara Walker’s work. Her work is primarily composed of black silhouettes on the gallery walls: a dream, or a nightmare of slavery and sexuality; as one writer put it, “historical narratives haunted by sexuality, violence, and subjugation but made using the genteel 18th-century art of cut-paper silhouettes”.

The work is relentless, haunting, heartbreaking and, somehow, a relief. That someone could embrace the taboos in such a way allows the audience to confront them too.

Almost all the security guards are black.

Afterwards, we go to Rockefeller Centre so The Anti-Poverty Organizer can see the giant Christmas tree. I’m showing off this beloved city, where I have breathed in art and culture and theatre and the life of the streets for several decades. It’s only her second time in New York. She’s never even been to Times Square.

On the way there we stop to watch a group of young African American men in matching red homeboy apparel break dance on the street. They are graceful, loud, exuberant; their bodies flash, spin and fly. We cheer them on. The cops arrive, and we boo, already a devoted audience, but the break dancers ask us to stop. They pass the hat furtively, and leave: you can get arrested for busking in this town.

As the audience reluctantly disperses I see that there is a line of people wearing Disney character costumes, also standing on the street, in a solid, silent, boring line. The police have not made them leave, and it makes for a disturbing portrait of a city whose face has been cleaned up almost beyond recognition.