Charcut vol. 18

September this year.

Sep 27, 2024

This month, I saw a sidewalk hibiscus that had big fat petals like human flesh. I saw other things too. Tennis balls floating on the Hudson. The sunset from my roof. A squirrel teasing a dog in Washington Square Park, and the light purple flowers that look like fairy skirts that used to grow on either side of the walkway up to the house in Newport. There used to always be bees, and I was afraid of them. I saw two crows take wing on my way to Sunday night dinner. I could hear them cawing after they were gone from my sight.

I’ve been feeding my friends again. A very favorite activity of mine.

The Fall Equinox was on Sunday, which, as long time readers will know, means that it was time for my quarterly dinner party. I usually try to pair the food to the season. White fish and strawberries for the summer solstice, leg of lamb and birthday cake for the winter solstice. I was going to make soup, because though I have been known to whip up a pot of soup in high summer, the experience is, of course, improved when one is not drenched in sweat while slurping it down.

But then! I went to the farmer’s market and soup felt ridiculous. Preposterous! The TOMATOES!!!!!!!!! I know I’m like a broken record with this, and it’s becoming my whole personality, but I really can’t describe to you what it’s like to be a girl who went her whole life (~24 years) without enjoying a summer tomato—who is now able to enjoy a summer tomato. It’s like I’m a baby. It’s like I’m discovering God. It’s like…

There was no way I was feeding my friends soup when the tomatoes at the farmers market looked the way they looked on Wednesday morning. It was time to do what any sane person would do: tomato tart.

To go with it? Pork tenderloin (which I always make too much of) and the escarole salad from Frankie’s 457 Sputino, which I tracked down online (can also be found in this book, I learned). I had it last weekend with my mom and sister and we were hooked. We tried to get our waitress to tell us what was in the dressing and she was sweet as could be but wasn’t up to the task. She kept trying to tell us it was just red wine vinegar and white pepper. What it actually was was walnuts. 10/10. I’m refraining from mentioning how beautiful the escarole was and how beautiful it is to think that escarole is beautiful.

I regaled everyone with my recent cockroach trauma, shared the perplexing news that my foot has grown a full size and a half overnight, learned about the Thanksgiving Miracle™ (something for all of us to look forward to), laughed at naked fire escape escapades, watched a setup happen in real time, & debated whether or not Rupi Kaur should be jailed for what she does—that last one over fresh-out-the-oven ginger cookies a la mode (a choice of vanilla, butter pecan, or, in a rogue decision on my part, mint chip ice cream).

I did my dishes all the while wishing that my lover had shown up to do them for me, but alas, he begins to see through my genius trick of inviting him to “join us for dessert.”

I noticed the other day that the geese are here and realized that I’m a reformed woman. By which I mean that I used to be afraid of geese, and now I’m not.

They’re here to overwinter. That’s what it’s called. The geese that are here are the same ones that were here last year and probably many years before that. Plus a few Canadian-born babies. You see, geese always nest and overwinter in the same spots. They even stop at the same spots on their way from one home to the other. Some (goose scientists I guess?) theorize that they smell their way from place to place and others that it’s the earth’s magnetic fields that guide them.

There are very few sounds that do to me what the sound of an overhead goose does. Very few sights too, as good as them together in the sky.

While I run I watch, and I see tennis balls on the Hudson and geese in the grass. But mostly, the people. They’re still out now for a while longer, before they go to overwinter inside their shoebox apartments or alternately, in Florida.

They’re sitting against trees with their book, smoking a cigar. They’re letting their electric Citi Bikes run while they gossip on a bench. They’re running, like I am, but usually faster because I’m slow, which is okay. They’re with their long-time lovers, eating a picnic on his and hers blue checkered blankets, spread over their laps instead of underneath. Their dogs are jumping up grabbing at their own leashes.

And all of it, facing the sunset because you can’t not face the sunset when you’re on the west side in the evening. You don’t have a choice! The sunset & Lackawanna & that flat face sculpture & the Statue of Liberty & don't you just think about what it would have looked like when none of this was here, and it was just trees, and can you even just imagine?

But instead, anthill, and good! Here we are running and picnicking and gossiping and smoking our cigars. And the sun sets, and the lights go on, and we’ve had a good day all things considered.

Is “Nothing Gold Can Stay” a spring poem or a fall poem? Both of course, spring is fall and fall is spring. I’ll never forget reading this poem for the first time in English class when I was fourteen years old. I couldn't get over how much was in it.

To intellectualize it (not derogatory), read this. To feel it, well: