Not every night out involves furthering my cultural literacy. Among the purely indulgent things I did tonight:
Drank enough M. Lawrence "Sex" Brut Rose on tap at Pomegranate to cover three hours of conversation (because sex should start every evening).
Discovered the pleasures of a doughnut burger with bacon jam (yes, that's a burger with doughnuts where the roll should be), the epitome of sweet/salty perfection.
Shocked a friend who asked how much I actually make in a year ("But you live such a rich life!").
Got all southern with Dr. Pepper-braised short ribs with cilantro (I'm crazy about some fatty short ribs).
Marveled over a text about the uses of alcohol and those who come to that realization later rather than sooner.
Heard about why it's time to switch from acrylics to oil, made plans for an absinthe-fueled visit to the VMFA to see "Van Gogh, Manet, Matisse: The Art of the Flower" next weekend and admired a ten-year old with the prescience to invest in Apple stock.
Concluded that there's nothing like a smart and funny friend of almost 20 years. That there are so many parallels in our wild and woolly lives is pure gravy.
Was greeted by a stranger who said, "Now you're what I call my kind of woman. Hello, baby."
Joined a conversation at Balliceaux with formally-clad strangers about Hampden-Sydney boys and why their polite facades belie their true selves.
Listened to Rattlemouth's distinctive world music vibe from the front bar as hippie chick after hippie chick heads to the back room to do the "catching a butterfly" dance to odd time signatures.
Discussed the pleasures (plenty of parking in J-Ward) and perils (no hotel rooms in the state of Florida) of Spring Break week.
Researched what county faces the one where my parents live, finding that they've been mistaken in what they told me for 30 years. Wait, I thought parents knew everything.
Made time for current events - Hillary, Pharrell and renegade senators - and opinion-sharing on who's right and wrong.
Conclude that an evening that begins with a best girlfriend sharing a burger between two doughnuts and winds down with plans to make potato soup and soda bread for St. Patrick's Day is a giant step forward.
Now that's what I call my kind of evening. Hello, baby.
Showing posts with label pomegranate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pomegranate. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2015
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Mad About Good Books, Can't Get My Fill
I'd like to make a public service announcement. It's not winter.
Walking around today, I saw people in bulky jackets, scarves and hats. It was 65. Granted, drizzly, but 65 degrees.
When it's 65 in April, folks in these parts are sporting shorts and sundresses. Today suddenly, it's bundle up time.
Perhaps there's a chance it was a reaction, not to the temperature, but to the long-absent rain that fell all afternoon.
I know because I drove to the northern neck to spend the afternoon talking to a couple of award-winning sisters, the rain steady from the moment I left home and all the way to the Rapphannock and back.
While hearing one delicious story after another, one sister said that she didn't have any men in her life because she didn't want anyone telling her what she couldn't do.
Seems the David Letterman show had invited her on and when they called to confirm, she wasn't home and her fiance told them she wouldn't be able to come.
You hold something like that against all mankind, it seems.
So it was I spent a fascinating afternoon with the two of them, hearing 60 years worth of stories, with a whole lot of testifying and "uh-huh-ing" going on all the while.
We had a ball.
Back in the city, I found rushing water so deep in the curb along my street that I needed to shed my shoes before exiting the car.
I showered while it was showering outside, got dressed while it rained on and drove to meet a favorite couple at Pomegranate under a steady drizzle.
Not ashamed to say I like days like this. I can even do a stretch of them, just not daily.
But driving from J-Ward to Carytown, it was hard to miss how empty places were, even for notoriously slow September.
It's only rain, after all, and a mild, soft humid night at that.
Unless you're the Wicked Witch of the West, I think you're okay.
Because the only other occupants were taking up half the bar, we wound up right in front of the screen, so I just swiveled to look out the big front window and watch the rain and car lights make patterns on the shiny streets.
What screen?
This was not a random get-togetherbut a posthumous celebration of my friend's Aunt Doris, who would have been 95. In tribute to Doris, she'd had two martinis by 7.
I believe that's how the Doris tradition is kept alive, a nod to all the great adventures, drinking and otherwise, she'd had with Doris over the years.
Waiting for our food over Jean-Luc Columbo Viognier (with one abstaining for a cocktail), we toasted Doris and allowed our ears to wander with whatever Great American Songbook Pandora station they'd chosen.
Apparently it was just the kind of music Doris loved.
Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat "King" Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Gershwin.
I like New York in June, how about you?
I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?
I love a fireside when a storm is due
I like potato chips, moonlight, motor trips, how about you?
A far cry from last night's thrash at 821.Variety, spice of life and all that.
I'd chosen mussels and frites in a tomato basil broth, getting such a plentiful serving of mussels (and a mound of flaccid fries) that I left little room for bread sopping of what was a perfectly delicious broth, hunks of cooked tomato throughout.
My friends told me about having seen violinist Joshua Bell with the symphony Saturday evening followed by a discussion of Bell's performance next week at the Union Station Metro.
It'll be interesting to hear how differently people react to him playing than they did when he first tried it in 2007 and only a handful paid him any mind.
We talked about how much my friend dislikes listening to WCVE's jazz show with Peter Solomon and having the musical vibe broken hourly with jarring news.
In his opinion, they should hold the news until after jazz ends. First world problem.
Sharing notes on each other's full moon-like experiences last Friday, they told me about finding a girl passed out on a neighbor's lawn and I shared how I'd seen a girl go from vertical on a corner to crumpled on the curb in less than five seconds.
Rein it in, kids. Life's a marathon, not a sprint.
They both smacked their lips over their dishes - his enormous and vaguely obscene pig and bacon sausage over spaetzel and apples, her steak frites made with culotte steak, a lean cut I like for its toothsome meatiness and she did, too - and we agreed on Espolon for dessert.
My friend whined that his high school reunion had been scheduled for opening night of the Folk Fest. He's not pleased.
I heard about a new exhibit at UR showing the development of the Westhampton area from amusement park to university, just the geeky kind of thing I'd love to see.
My aunt Faye went to UR back in the '60s and never quite accepted the merging of the men's and women's campuses, despite being extremely liberal and forward-thinking. I think it had more to do with academics than anything.
The male in our midst was left behind when we got off on a tangent about VCU's Grace Street area in its heyday.
I told her how when I first moved here from Washington, I was thrilled to discover Sunny Day, a clothing shop on Grace Street that carried decidedly un-Richmond like clothes for 1987.
Squealing in delight, she said she'd bought two pairs of sky-high platform shoes there in the '70s, one pair black and the other silver, both of which she danced in until destroying the black ones.
The silver ones she still has.
And get this, she paid for them by the shoe, not by the pair. Crazy, man.
I told her I'd danced a half dozen times this summer and had on platform shoes every time. Old habits die hard.
Just for the record, I also like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips.
Motor trips, even in rain like this. Here's to you, Doris.
Walking around today, I saw people in bulky jackets, scarves and hats. It was 65. Granted, drizzly, but 65 degrees.
When it's 65 in April, folks in these parts are sporting shorts and sundresses. Today suddenly, it's bundle up time.
Perhaps there's a chance it was a reaction, not to the temperature, but to the long-absent rain that fell all afternoon.
I know because I drove to the northern neck to spend the afternoon talking to a couple of award-winning sisters, the rain steady from the moment I left home and all the way to the Rapphannock and back.
While hearing one delicious story after another, one sister said that she didn't have any men in her life because she didn't want anyone telling her what she couldn't do.
Seems the David Letterman show had invited her on and when they called to confirm, she wasn't home and her fiance told them she wouldn't be able to come.
You hold something like that against all mankind, it seems.
So it was I spent a fascinating afternoon with the two of them, hearing 60 years worth of stories, with a whole lot of testifying and "uh-huh-ing" going on all the while.
We had a ball.
Back in the city, I found rushing water so deep in the curb along my street that I needed to shed my shoes before exiting the car.
I showered while it was showering outside, got dressed while it rained on and drove to meet a favorite couple at Pomegranate under a steady drizzle.
Not ashamed to say I like days like this. I can even do a stretch of them, just not daily.
But driving from J-Ward to Carytown, it was hard to miss how empty places were, even for notoriously slow September.
It's only rain, after all, and a mild, soft humid night at that.
Unless you're the Wicked Witch of the West, I think you're okay.
Because the only other occupants were taking up half the bar, we wound up right in front of the screen, so I just swiveled to look out the big front window and watch the rain and car lights make patterns on the shiny streets.
What screen?
This was not a random get-togetherbut a posthumous celebration of my friend's Aunt Doris, who would have been 95. In tribute to Doris, she'd had two martinis by 7.
I believe that's how the Doris tradition is kept alive, a nod to all the great adventures, drinking and otherwise, she'd had with Doris over the years.
Waiting for our food over Jean-Luc Columbo Viognier (with one abstaining for a cocktail), we toasted Doris and allowed our ears to wander with whatever Great American Songbook Pandora station they'd chosen.
Apparently it was just the kind of music Doris loved.
Jimmy Durante, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat "King" Cole, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Gershwin.
I like New York in June, how about you?
I like a Gershwin tune, how about you?
I love a fireside when a storm is due
I like potato chips, moonlight, motor trips, how about you?
I'd chosen mussels and frites in a tomato basil broth, getting such a plentiful serving of mussels (and a mound of flaccid fries) that I left little room for bread sopping of what was a perfectly delicious broth, hunks of cooked tomato throughout.
My friends told me about having seen violinist Joshua Bell with the symphony Saturday evening followed by a discussion of Bell's performance next week at the Union Station Metro.
It'll be interesting to hear how differently people react to him playing than they did when he first tried it in 2007 and only a handful paid him any mind.
We talked about how much my friend dislikes listening to WCVE's jazz show with Peter Solomon and having the musical vibe broken hourly with jarring news.
In his opinion, they should hold the news until after jazz ends. First world problem.
Sharing notes on each other's full moon-like experiences last Friday, they told me about finding a girl passed out on a neighbor's lawn and I shared how I'd seen a girl go from vertical on a corner to crumpled on the curb in less than five seconds.
Rein it in, kids. Life's a marathon, not a sprint.
They both smacked their lips over their dishes - his enormous and vaguely obscene pig and bacon sausage over spaetzel and apples, her steak frites made with culotte steak, a lean cut I like for its toothsome meatiness and she did, too - and we agreed on Espolon for dessert.
My friend whined that his high school reunion had been scheduled for opening night of the Folk Fest. He's not pleased.
I heard about a new exhibit at UR showing the development of the Westhampton area from amusement park to university, just the geeky kind of thing I'd love to see.
My aunt Faye went to UR back in the '60s and never quite accepted the merging of the men's and women's campuses, despite being extremely liberal and forward-thinking. I think it had more to do with academics than anything.
The male in our midst was left behind when we got off on a tangent about VCU's Grace Street area in its heyday.
I told her how when I first moved here from Washington, I was thrilled to discover Sunny Day, a clothing shop on Grace Street that carried decidedly un-Richmond like clothes for 1987.
Squealing in delight, she said she'd bought two pairs of sky-high platform shoes there in the '70s, one pair black and the other silver, both of which she danced in until destroying the black ones.
The silver ones she still has.
And get this, she paid for them by the shoe, not by the pair. Crazy, man.
I told her I'd danced a half dozen times this summer and had on platform shoes every time. Old habits die hard.
Just for the record, I also like potato chips, moonlight and motor trips.
Motor trips, even in rain like this. Here's to you, Doris.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Floating Above It
There is no end to how small a town this can seem.
It happens all the time - I see a gallerist or restaurant person in the grocery story and they're so out of context that it takes me a sec to place them.
How there's never more than a few degrees of separation between anyone in this town.
Case in point: I am meeting a friend at his house and while waiting for his girlfriend to show up, he puts on a cassette tape of a band he was in back in the late '90s.
I spot a familiar face. The woman singing in the band is someone I knew a lifetime ago.
Funny how that happens.
Once his beloved arrived, we strolled over to Pomegranate, a neighborhood restaurant for them but one they'd never been to.
I consider it essential to know about any restaurant that I can easily walk to and from. I was assisting them with research.
On the way, I spotted Bertha, a woman whose backyard had backed up to mine for the 13 years I lived on Floyd Avenue.
Bertha had been old when I'd moved there in 1993 and I knew she'd lost her husband of 70-some years just a couple of years ago.
But there she was, sitting on the porch of the house she'd moved to during WW II.
Even though I moved away eight years ago, she remembered me almost at once and hugged me, eager to chat.
It didn't take long for her to brag about being 93 (she doesn't look a day over 80) and I asked her point blank if she attributed part of her longevity to her long, happy marriage.
She did and admitted she still misses him every day. "I was lost without him," she said.
It was a kind of wonderful flashback talking to Bertha after so long. Our lives had been intertwined for over a dozen years.
She'd lent me her lawn mower before I had one (her husband always reminded me not to cut the lawn in flip-flops), taught me how to make squash fritters with the abundance she grew at the rear of my back yard and was, in general, the neighborhood busybody.
When my friends started ahem-ing to get me off her porch and walking to Pomegranate again, I hugged her goodbye.
"Come back again soon!" she admonished as I re-joined my dinner companions.
You know, I think I will. That's a woman with some great stories and I'd like to be the one to hear them.
When we got to the restaurant, every patio table was taken, but there was plenty of room in the main dining room which was suffering a wilting sonic attack from a group of 30-something women catching up on each other's lives.
Let's just say I heard the words "wedding" and "pregnancy" a lot.
We massed around the end of the bar so as to hear one another talk.
From bread served with salty high quality butter to salad to ravioli, blue fish two ways and twice fried quail over mashed potatoes, my friends were seduced by Pomegranate's food.
At one point, he compared her satisfied food moans to those of Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally," high praise indeed.
The closer was Pomegranate's version of bananas foster and, for the chocoholics among us, chocolate pate with figs and berries.
When our server delivered the chocolate pate, he was quick to point out the locally grown Black Mission figs.
Took them off of somebody's tree, didn't you? I inquired.
"We totally did," he said quickly and honestly.
I'm just happy to eat figs; I don't worry much about whose tree they were plucked from. Call me old school.
The pate tasted as if it had been made with that same decadent high fact butter as we'd been slathering on bread, meaning the rooves of our mouths were soon slick with fat. Mmm.
Friend pointed out that the bananas foster didn't taste as if it had been lit (he's cocky because he'd made four of them in a night once), but was nonetheless exquisite in its rich banana creaminess.
By then, not only the patio had cleared out, but the final trio of the get-together threw in the towel and went home to their pre-fab lives.
We were the last. Walking home down Auburn, I pointed out that a block away, my father had been born.
That was a long time ago in a galaxy far away.
After my friends went home to their beds and early wake-up calls, I made one last stop at Cary Street Cafe to hear Fear of Music.
Josh Small did a couple of songs to finish out the opening set while I joined the people began pouring in.
Spotted a restaurant manager, a bartender, an editor, a banjo player and who knows who else among the expectant looking crowd.
Once the all-Talking Heads extravaganza began, it didn't take long for the room to become a mass of people dancing or at the very least, dancing in place.
All except three I saw, who inexplicably managed to remain stationary while some of the danciest music since Kool & the Gang (whom David Byrne once earnestly cited as the band's main inspiration) tried to wind its way into their body.
I don't understand. When you're hearing "Psycho Killer" or "And She Was" or "Drugs," the human body just wants to move.
Didn't we prove that back in the '70s?
A friend was charmed when a guy began filling the room with hundreds of bubbles raining down on the dancing masses, an effect I might have seen in a couple other decades.
She and I have been saying for ages that we were going to schedule a night out together and here we'd shown up for the same late show on a Tuesday night.
When the town's small enough, you don't even have to make plans. We're just not that big and it's kind of grand.
I'll say it loud and proud...I guess that this must be the place.
It happens all the time - I see a gallerist or restaurant person in the grocery story and they're so out of context that it takes me a sec to place them.
How there's never more than a few degrees of separation between anyone in this town.
Case in point: I am meeting a friend at his house and while waiting for his girlfriend to show up, he puts on a cassette tape of a band he was in back in the late '90s.
I spot a familiar face. The woman singing in the band is someone I knew a lifetime ago.
Funny how that happens.
Once his beloved arrived, we strolled over to Pomegranate, a neighborhood restaurant for them but one they'd never been to.
I consider it essential to know about any restaurant that I can easily walk to and from. I was assisting them with research.
On the way, I spotted Bertha, a woman whose backyard had backed up to mine for the 13 years I lived on Floyd Avenue.
Bertha had been old when I'd moved there in 1993 and I knew she'd lost her husband of 70-some years just a couple of years ago.
But there she was, sitting on the porch of the house she'd moved to during WW II.
Even though I moved away eight years ago, she remembered me almost at once and hugged me, eager to chat.
It didn't take long for her to brag about being 93 (she doesn't look a day over 80) and I asked her point blank if she attributed part of her longevity to her long, happy marriage.
She did and admitted she still misses him every day. "I was lost without him," she said.
It was a kind of wonderful flashback talking to Bertha after so long. Our lives had been intertwined for over a dozen years.
She'd lent me her lawn mower before I had one (her husband always reminded me not to cut the lawn in flip-flops), taught me how to make squash fritters with the abundance she grew at the rear of my back yard and was, in general, the neighborhood busybody.
When my friends started ahem-ing to get me off her porch and walking to Pomegranate again, I hugged her goodbye.
"Come back again soon!" she admonished as I re-joined my dinner companions.
You know, I think I will. That's a woman with some great stories and I'd like to be the one to hear them.
When we got to the restaurant, every patio table was taken, but there was plenty of room in the main dining room which was suffering a wilting sonic attack from a group of 30-something women catching up on each other's lives.
Let's just say I heard the words "wedding" and "pregnancy" a lot.
We massed around the end of the bar so as to hear one another talk.
From bread served with salty high quality butter to salad to ravioli, blue fish two ways and twice fried quail over mashed potatoes, my friends were seduced by Pomegranate's food.
At one point, he compared her satisfied food moans to those of Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally," high praise indeed.
The closer was Pomegranate's version of bananas foster and, for the chocoholics among us, chocolate pate with figs and berries.
When our server delivered the chocolate pate, he was quick to point out the locally grown Black Mission figs.
Took them off of somebody's tree, didn't you? I inquired.
"We totally did," he said quickly and honestly.
I'm just happy to eat figs; I don't worry much about whose tree they were plucked from. Call me old school.
The pate tasted as if it had been made with that same decadent high fact butter as we'd been slathering on bread, meaning the rooves of our mouths were soon slick with fat. Mmm.
Friend pointed out that the bananas foster didn't taste as if it had been lit (he's cocky because he'd made four of them in a night once), but was nonetheless exquisite in its rich banana creaminess.
By then, not only the patio had cleared out, but the final trio of the get-together threw in the towel and went home to their pre-fab lives.
We were the last. Walking home down Auburn, I pointed out that a block away, my father had been born.
That was a long time ago in a galaxy far away.
After my friends went home to their beds and early wake-up calls, I made one last stop at Cary Street Cafe to hear Fear of Music.
Josh Small did a couple of songs to finish out the opening set while I joined the people began pouring in.
Spotted a restaurant manager, a bartender, an editor, a banjo player and who knows who else among the expectant looking crowd.
Once the all-Talking Heads extravaganza began, it didn't take long for the room to become a mass of people dancing or at the very least, dancing in place.
All except three I saw, who inexplicably managed to remain stationary while some of the danciest music since Kool & the Gang (whom David Byrne once earnestly cited as the band's main inspiration) tried to wind its way into their body.
I don't understand. When you're hearing "Psycho Killer" or "And She Was" or "Drugs," the human body just wants to move.
Didn't we prove that back in the '70s?
A friend was charmed when a guy began filling the room with hundreds of bubbles raining down on the dancing masses, an effect I might have seen in a couple other decades.
She and I have been saying for ages that we were going to schedule a night out together and here we'd shown up for the same late show on a Tuesday night.
When the town's small enough, you don't even have to make plans. We're just not that big and it's kind of grand.
I'll say it loud and proud...I guess that this must be the place.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
More Feeling Than Fact
I made sure that this last day of July was a good one.
Beginning with a walk down to the river and along the pipeline walkway, I made the most of the blue skies and low humidity.
I chose to ignore the guy siting on the sidewalk who commented, "Look at those cheeks!" when I walked by.
This afternoon, a favorite drummer came by to bring me a painting he'd done for me in exchange for some writing I'd done for him.
He described it as an analogy for me: it has a decided colorful streak near the middle but it's not a bright painting. I loved it when he said that there are five other paintings under the one I ended up with.
It now holds a place of honor in my living room.
My evening began at Pasture for the "Case for Hope" drive, a happy hour collection of suitcases and duffel bags for children in foster care.
It's too good a cause not to support and I'd been out of town for the last drive, so I wasn't missing this one.
When I walked in with my three suitcases at 5 sharp, no one was there except Michele, the organizer of the event, and she was being interviewed by ABC.
Despite that, she broke to say hi to me before resuming answering questions.
After adding my bags to the pile, I headed to the bar for a glass of Conde Villar Vinho Verde Rose, spending some time talking to the guy from United Methodist Family Services who, like me, was wearing skinny orange stripes tonight.
What are the chances, we wondered.
Before long friends arrived: the PR whiz, my favorite Hopewell resident, the restaurant owner. I had just enough time to discuss "Cabaret," the music schedule at Strangeways Brewing and how hard it is to get a partner to do what you want before I had to leave.
After donating to a good cause, it was time for me to feed my head and Chop Suey was having a poetry reading.
Browsing the bookshelves before it even got started, I spotted the lovely poet across the room and she made it clear we had things to discuss after her month in France. Before long, she cornered me next to the music books.
Irish men, the Loire valley, camping near Geneva and bicycle tours, that's all I'm going to say about what she shared. Really, who could have a bad time in France for a month?
I especially loved her descriptions of how overwhelming it was to experience so much new and wonderful on a daily basis.
Then we found seats in the hard folding chairs arranged in rows between the shelves and waited for the magic to begin. I'm the first to admit that I love being read to.
Reading first was non-poet Meg Rains (mistakenly introduced as a "poof-reader") reading from a short non-fiction piece called, "The Memory of My Disappearance."
Favorite line: Memory is more feeling than fact.
Joshua Marie Wilkinson got up next and read for far too brief a time.
His last new book of poetry, "Swamp Isthmus" provided some intriguing imagery such as "the moon flinches, flickers" and "poems composed in the battle of night."
Sometimes night is a battle, no?
From "Fortnight's Insignia," he read, "So it's going to be that kind of a century?" and referred to "the storm's indifference to its vehicle," something I can attest to after witnessing my first hurricane earlier this month.
I would have liked to have heard more from this quiet-voiced man.
Last to read was Zachary Schomburg, whose poetry was referred to as "emotionally confusing," by Chop Suey owner Ward, who introduced Schomburg.
Saying he was going to read from his latest, "Book of Joshua," he explained the story began in 1977 and ended in 2044.
He began reading from the 1977 portion and then took audience shout-outs for the remainder.
After reading a section from 1977, someone called out 1982 and he read from that. Then 1993 and eventually 2014 ("Life is a slow farewell") and 2023.
"And then more stuff happens and then he dies," Schomburg said wrapping up quickly.
Next he put music on and read another poem to it ("I want inside you in a good way") and then added in a recording of words being said.
Schomburg continued to read the poem while the recorded voice ("This is Joshua, but not a Joshua you know") read something else and words overlapped. It had become performance art.
When the reading ended, we took a stroll up Cary Street to Pomegranate because while I'd been several times, my companion had never been.
Navigating closed sidewalks, frozen yogurt eaters (including a city councilman) and packs of annoying West End 20-somethings, we made it in time for happy hour.
Taking advantage of the hour with Pinto Gris, we began with blue fish two ways - pickled and hash- with pickled onions and beets with creme fraiche and crostini.
We noticed a table for one upstairs, off the main dining room and backed against a wall on a narrow overlook, a seemingly odd place to dine. It looked like the "time out" table.
You know, in case you misbehaved at the restaurant.
Next up I had buttermilk fried quail confit over obscenely rich butter whipped potatoes with pancetta cream and it occurred to me I hadn't had mashed potatoes probably since Thanksgiving.
Too long.
My date had an enormous and phallic-looking housemade pork sausage over polenta, positively delicious but way more food than I could have eaten, so I made do with one bite.
By the time we left, Carytown was a bit calmer and we window shopped, looking at bikes, lingerie and kitchen utensils along the way.
We finished off the evening with Cantina Puianello Lambrusco and oblique references to when pigs fly.
On a day as good as this, who knows? I'd like to think anything is possible.
Beginning with a walk down to the river and along the pipeline walkway, I made the most of the blue skies and low humidity.
I chose to ignore the guy siting on the sidewalk who commented, "Look at those cheeks!" when I walked by.
This afternoon, a favorite drummer came by to bring me a painting he'd done for me in exchange for some writing I'd done for him.
He described it as an analogy for me: it has a decided colorful streak near the middle but it's not a bright painting. I loved it when he said that there are five other paintings under the one I ended up with.
It now holds a place of honor in my living room.
My evening began at Pasture for the "Case for Hope" drive, a happy hour collection of suitcases and duffel bags for children in foster care.
It's too good a cause not to support and I'd been out of town for the last drive, so I wasn't missing this one.
When I walked in with my three suitcases at 5 sharp, no one was there except Michele, the organizer of the event, and she was being interviewed by ABC.
Despite that, she broke to say hi to me before resuming answering questions.
After adding my bags to the pile, I headed to the bar for a glass of Conde Villar Vinho Verde Rose, spending some time talking to the guy from United Methodist Family Services who, like me, was wearing skinny orange stripes tonight.
What are the chances, we wondered.
Before long friends arrived: the PR whiz, my favorite Hopewell resident, the restaurant owner. I had just enough time to discuss "Cabaret," the music schedule at Strangeways Brewing and how hard it is to get a partner to do what you want before I had to leave.
After donating to a good cause, it was time for me to feed my head and Chop Suey was having a poetry reading.
Browsing the bookshelves before it even got started, I spotted the lovely poet across the room and she made it clear we had things to discuss after her month in France. Before long, she cornered me next to the music books.
Irish men, the Loire valley, camping near Geneva and bicycle tours, that's all I'm going to say about what she shared. Really, who could have a bad time in France for a month?
I especially loved her descriptions of how overwhelming it was to experience so much new and wonderful on a daily basis.
Then we found seats in the hard folding chairs arranged in rows between the shelves and waited for the magic to begin. I'm the first to admit that I love being read to.
Reading first was non-poet Meg Rains (mistakenly introduced as a "poof-reader") reading from a short non-fiction piece called, "The Memory of My Disappearance."
Favorite line: Memory is more feeling than fact.
Joshua Marie Wilkinson got up next and read for far too brief a time.
His last new book of poetry, "Swamp Isthmus" provided some intriguing imagery such as "the moon flinches, flickers" and "poems composed in the battle of night."
Sometimes night is a battle, no?
From "Fortnight's Insignia," he read, "So it's going to be that kind of a century?" and referred to "the storm's indifference to its vehicle," something I can attest to after witnessing my first hurricane earlier this month.
I would have liked to have heard more from this quiet-voiced man.
Last to read was Zachary Schomburg, whose poetry was referred to as "emotionally confusing," by Chop Suey owner Ward, who introduced Schomburg.
Saying he was going to read from his latest, "Book of Joshua," he explained the story began in 1977 and ended in 2044.
He began reading from the 1977 portion and then took audience shout-outs for the remainder.
After reading a section from 1977, someone called out 1982 and he read from that. Then 1993 and eventually 2014 ("Life is a slow farewell") and 2023.
"And then more stuff happens and then he dies," Schomburg said wrapping up quickly.
Next he put music on and read another poem to it ("I want inside you in a good way") and then added in a recording of words being said.
Schomburg continued to read the poem while the recorded voice ("This is Joshua, but not a Joshua you know") read something else and words overlapped. It had become performance art.
When the reading ended, we took a stroll up Cary Street to Pomegranate because while I'd been several times, my companion had never been.
Navigating closed sidewalks, frozen yogurt eaters (including a city councilman) and packs of annoying West End 20-somethings, we made it in time for happy hour.
Taking advantage of the hour with Pinto Gris, we began with blue fish two ways - pickled and hash- with pickled onions and beets with creme fraiche and crostini.
We noticed a table for one upstairs, off the main dining room and backed against a wall on a narrow overlook, a seemingly odd place to dine. It looked like the "time out" table.
You know, in case you misbehaved at the restaurant.
Next up I had buttermilk fried quail confit over obscenely rich butter whipped potatoes with pancetta cream and it occurred to me I hadn't had mashed potatoes probably since Thanksgiving.
Too long.
My date had an enormous and phallic-looking housemade pork sausage over polenta, positively delicious but way more food than I could have eaten, so I made do with one bite.
By the time we left, Carytown was a bit calmer and we window shopped, looking at bikes, lingerie and kitchen utensils along the way.
We finished off the evening with Cantina Puianello Lambrusco and oblique references to when pigs fly.
On a day as good as this, who knows? I'd like to think anything is possible.
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