Let's Go in the Talking Room

The time to make up your mind about people is never.

The time to make plans to see one of the pithiest romantic comedies of the past 75 years - and make reservations at Spoonbread - was weeks ago. Pru and Beau collected me shortly before sunset and we navigated around VCU because of tonight's basketball game, of which we were all completely unaware.

We landed upstairs at Spoonbread this visit, sipping Left Coast Pinot Noir and eating ourselves into a stupor with the aid of an affable server who lavished attention on us, including crawling under the table to wedge folded paper to stop the table from doing the see-saw.

Talk about clever, an amuse bouche of especially decadent pimento cheese rested in an edible cracker spoon with swipes of spinach aoili and tomato fondue for dipping. "If we used edible spoons all the time, we'd never have to wash silverware again," Pru noted with delight.

I got to hear about one of Beau's Christmas presents to Pru, a laser-cut listing of all the rules of the house (hers, that is), all of which he's gradually learned over the course of the relationship, stipulations such as "don't bring up a topic unless you can go deep on it." True enough.

The most succinct: "Mix wit, sarcasm and profanity. Shake well." This is one of those house rules that follows us wherever we go, so it's actually more of a lifestyle rule, just as applicable in situations far from home.

Meanwhile, the menu had fresh appeal. Not going to lie, this frequent diner was terribly impressed to see changes and tweaks to the fish and seafood-heavy menu since we were last there in November.

Much like then, every dish succeeded splendidly tonight, not just in execution but in sheer over-the-top largesse, whether it was the killer South-meets-Asian pork sriracha collard green rolls (more, please!), a repeat from last visit of the completely obscene foie gras over spoonbread or tonight's special, bouillabaisse with an Old Bay broth.

I could have mainlined that broth, so of the Bay it tasted.

While originally billed as having John Dory along with shrimp, lobster and mussels, our server was mistaken, but since the kitchen made up for the missing Dory with a lobster tail and rockfish, no one was complaining, although even with Beau's help, I couldn't finish the bowl.

Now, the chocolate mousse tart, that I managed to polish off while the happy couple downed caffeine and our server belatedly showed up to advise us of the after-dinner offerings - Sauternes, Madeira, Port, Chartreuse, Fernet - which spawned a discussion about places to go after a film or play for drinks and discussion.

While they have some fine late night choices, Spoonbread only stays open till 10 during the week and 11 on weekends, which might not be late enough to really dig deep, depending on the subject matter. Nevertheless, we added them to our list of possibilities for the future

At the Byrd Theater for "The Philadelphia Story," I found us seats in my favorite row (no visible springs in the seat), immediately spotted two women passing a silver flask back and forth two rows back and heard my name called by a theater critic in the row right behind me.

Turns out his girlfriend had never seen "The Philadelphia Story" while her friend considers it her favorite movie. The minute Pru sat down, I introduced the two of them, since it's also her favorite film. Naturally, a film discussion group sprung up immediately, with Beau doing his best to listen in and grin.

In short order, we discussed the gender issues of "The Apartment," Jack Lemmon's limitations as a dramatic actor and why "High Society" should never have been made. My contribution was telling everyone about the upcoming Fascist mini-film fest at the Bijou, two can't miss weekends for film and democracy fans.

The course of true love...
Gathers no moss.

While Pru can recite the script along with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart, it had been a couple of years since I'd seen the classic comedy of remarriage from 1940 with its non-stop wittily romantic script and the added bonus for me of a 32-year old James Stewart, lanky, full of attitude and, as usual, achingly sincere (no one says "doggone" like he does).

Whiskey is a slap on the back and champagne's heavy mist before my eyes.

Besides, I have to love a film showing a party where the band is still playing while people are still dancing and talking and it's 4 a.m. Can I go to parties like that, please?

You have unsuspected depth!

Knowing we'd want to end the evening on a conversational note, I'd made sure to have wine in the house and a fresh stack of newly-acquired records for the turntable in case we opted for here over a more public gathering spot.

We did and while the two of them prefer '70s (Roberta Flack, Art Garfuckel, CSNY) over '80s, I slid in both because the pithy dissection of male and female behavior, traditional gender roles versus expanded and Beau's passionate prosecution of marriage meant that half the time they were arguing their points, not paying attention to the music.

Except when Gladys Knight and the Pips came on, at which time Pru was visibly dancing in her chair.

Nearly three hours into our conversational soiree, Beau reminded us it was a school night for him and we wound down our closing topics, making up our minds about absolutely no one.

As is to be hoped, nothing had been brought up that hadn't been examined in great depth using wit, sarcasm and profanity. That's just how we do.

Oh, dear, is there no such thing as privacy anymore?
Only in bed, Mother, and not always there.

None Such as She

You know it's unpleasantly cold and windy when I forgo my walk for a movie.

I'll concede that part of the allure was that it was "The Philadelphia Story," guaranteeing the wittiest of dialog from Hepburn, Stewart (no one says "doggone" like that man) and Grant, but I'd also read that it was considered one of the best "comedies of remarriage," a genre I hadn't even know existed but was apparently big in the '30s and '40s.

What is it about a couple being together, divorcing and then remarrying that seems romantic to people, I wonder?

Cracks about the working class like, "I can't afford to hate anyone. I'm only a photographer," got things rolling.

For the record, writers can't afford to, either.

Or the mother/daughter conversation.

Mother: We both might face the facts that neither of us has proved to be a very great success as a wife.
Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husband.

I've heard it happens.

Give the film's year (1940), politically incorrect jokes abounded, like, "Since this is the south parlor, I rather expected picaninies and banjos" and "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives."

I heard a woman in the row behind me ask her companion incredulously, "What year was this film?"

Three quarters of a century ago, my dear. We've come a long way, baby.

Language aside, the movie demonstrated three essential things: that champagne is the great leveler, women who don't drink lose their husbands and that you can never be a first class woman until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty, namely your husband's.

Lessons learned.

I finally got around to walking late this afternoon, once the sun peeked out from behind the bank of clouds and the temperature reached a balmy 35 degrees although it felt like 26 with the wind still gusting.

But I had no choice because my legs were aching to stretch, cold or not.

The highlights were the woodsy aromas of fireplaces smoke and seeing a skater knocking a hockey puck around on the frozen tennis court at Abner Clay Park.

Probably a transplanted mid-westerner or northerner.

Once the sun went down, I joined a group of poetry-lovers, partially to share body heat but also because I love having poetry read to me.

Chop Suey Books was filling up fast when I arrived in time to see the store cat, Wonton, knock over books as he sashayed from table to table.

Owner Ward said Joshus Poteat had been doing readings at the store since they'd opened and I bet I've been to almost all of them.

Naturally he read first, and like the poet who introduced him, Allison Seay, said, Josh has his own Wikipedia page, so he's a pretty big deal.

Allison is right, though, for as many times as I've heard him read, I always enjoy it.

From his "Orinthology" collection we heard "People Who Kill Me" with lines like the evocative, "Evening light folded around her" and "As if her nakedness was a chore I could forget."

Now there's a way to woo a woman - tell her more about the evening light folding around her nakedness.

Explaining that he was getting to the point in his life where he didn't care to explain things and his books were getting more conceptual, he said he was just going to start reading and we could extract what we wanted from it.

Given the past week's weather, I was taken by the line, "The snow, absolute in all its vastness," from "Illustrating the Snow Line."

He referred to a joint project he'd done with architectural historian Roberto Ventura but didn't want to go into detail about it.

He didn't need to for me because I'd not only gone to Ashland to see the show, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," here, but bought one of the pieces the two had created for it.

As he read "Illustrated Construction for Railroad," I eagerly awaited hearing, "There is agreeable sound here under the thistle," the line carved into the collaged piece that now hangs in my living room, reminding me of Josh's poem whenever I need a fix.

Saying, "It's nice that people want to come out for poems," he showed a map of the land in North Carolina where he'd grown up and said he was working on an essay about it.

Then he clarified that whenever a poet says he's working on something- an essay, a novel, an article- he's really working on new poems and so was Josh.

So new it doesn't have a name yet, but my favorite line so far was, "A living radio mouthing news to the wind."

Then it was Allison Seay's turn to read from her book, "To See the Queen," about her struggles with depression.

"I saw a figment of my imagination, I was healed and that's my story," she said to explain the progression of the book, which had not been written in order, the third section's poetry having been written first.

"I strung up a clothesline in a room and hung my poems up to figure out the structure of the book," she explained. I don't know about you, but the thought of poems on a clothesline struck me as poetic in and of itself.

"I wish I could arrange the disturbances of my life," she wrote in "The Difficult Way."

She said that learning that stanza was Italian for room changed her poems as she began thinking of each poem as a house or town with rooms.

In the title poem, "To See the Queen," she wrote, "My life for a while was forgotten and so repaired."

With lines like that, it wasn't surprising that she acknowledged, "My book is despairing, so I have to check with the audience to see if you're okay."

We were, but she seemed a tad shaky at times.

Sharing a favorite lines from Yeats, "We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, out of the quarrels with ourselves, poetry," she went on to read some new work written during or since her first trip to Italy.

It was wonderfully different, as in "Inside the Well," with the lines, "All I need is the climate of you."

She closed with what she's calling her "spinster poems," a term referring to her 14-year old students' concerns for her unmarried status and her own jokes that she is a spinster.

"When we can, we save what we wish would come back," came from "May, the Occasion," and concluded the reading.

It's nice that poets want to come out and read to us on a Saturday night.

With words of longing and blackberries swirling around in my head, I walked a few doors down to Secco for dinner, finding a stool open in the middle of the bar.

I began with a small plate of delicately tempura-fried oyster mushrooms with lemon-espellete ailoi while chatting with the couple next to me who were curious why I wasn't drinking ( a fair enough question at Secco).

Moving on to an earthy and filling Asturian bean stew with smoked chorizo, slow-braised pork and leeks and the last order of garlic and herb focaccia in the house (they'd also 86'd the Spanish tortilla), the couple on the other side of me requested an audience.

"Are you Karen from 'I Could Go On and On'?" he asked, remembering meeting me at Amour Wine Bistro last summer. I'd noticed her earlier, specifically her curly hair, but couldn't place her out of context.

Like me, they'd been at Amour's anniversary party last May when the disco music was loud, the mirror ball spinning and we'd met and talked.

Tonight we just talked...about Amour's reopening and the couple's upcoming move to Dallas (a place I don't care for except when it houses my best friend).

It didn't seem to bother them that I wasn't drinking, much less to excess like a writer should. In related news, I don't have a wife to beat, either.

I only wish I had enough quarrels with myself to write poetry.