“But I don't want comfort.
I want
God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom,I want goodness. I want
sin.”
Taking my cue from Aldous Huxley, I have up-ended
my life, shaken off the familiar, and entered the world of traffic and trains
and quaint little houses down the lane. Forgive me for being a bit metaphysical,
but it seems, after an exhaustive search for a new place to live, this is where
I was meant to be. Whether my reasoning is the stuff born of rationalization or
the magic of a mystic cosmos remains to be seen, but after Greg and I watched
the possibility of four different mountain houses we wanted and loved appear
then disappear against all reason, we landed on what I am, in an effort to
preserve some sense of wildness, calling the prairie. There’s a garden and spruce and aspen and lots and
lots of trees, but there’s also sidewalks and chain-link fences and neighbors
within eye-shot, along with the sound of traffic on the highway.
To me, this is real danger.
I’ve long said my sensibility runs toward silence
and space. And I’ve spent a decade
living on top of a mountain by myself, cultivating what I’ve called my cowgrrl
ethos. What this means, I suppose, is
that I have learned to do things for myself:
split wood, heat a cabin at 8500 feet in winter, contend with bears and
fox, battle the yearly onslaught of mice, live just beyond the easy reach of
modern conveniences, meet each day and weather pattern on its own terms---and
be lonely. Friends and acquaintances have long wondered aloud about what they
think are extraordinary circumstances, but to me, the setting was comfort. I have found a certain sense of safety in inhabiting
the perimeter.
In moving out of the mountains and in with Greg, I
have left that all behind. Yet, I have
the sense of the world calling my name; maybe it’s time see a different face of God.
These past weeks, I’ve seen it in the prairie fall,
which has been warm and glorious and blessedly long, after what was a cool and
wet summer on the mountain. My
experience of autumn color in recent memory has been preternaturally cut off in
late September as aspen leaves fell and I spent days on the mountain or hurried
home in the chilly mountain evenings and growing canyon dark. But down here, Greg and I have eaten al fresco
almost every October night, sipping cava or Modelos laced with lime and
watching the light in a sky wider than imagination through elm and apple
trees. Sunday mornings, I’ve made familiar
foods: apple galette and the big
pancake, but Greg is cooking too. Our
first week together, he made roast chicken and mashed potatoes, and spectacularly
simple and delicious street tacos made from pan-roasted chicken thighs, chopped
Mexican onion, avocado slices, cilantro and sour cream.
A good poem is deceptively simple too. You look at lines leaving an inelegant curve against
a white page, but the reading of the words, the journey through the poem leads
to a lovely elsewhere not first evident.
Today I am thinking of the poetry of pizza.
It’s the first thing I served the then
city-dwelling boyfriend after nearly two weeks of dreamy early morning emails
and long, late night phone calls. In
those days, the world felt as big as the night sky full of stars, and we were
at the center of it. I’ve made the two
pizzas we shared that first night—a classic Margherita and one with Gorgonzola
and apples—dozens of times as a way for us to celebrate, mark the passage of
time, remember, and show love.
Today, as I watch the season change from the lush
clay-colored walls of my freshly painted office, I am of a mindful of making
something new to go with our new home and life together. Greg and I have a love
affair going with the potato, especially when it comes to French fries,
so I begin by slicing red potatoes mandolin-thin and tossing them with garlic,
rosemary, olive oil and plenty of kosher salt.
Onto a pan and into a hot oven go the potatoes until they are a very
firm al dente. The kitchen smells
autumnal, full of earthy garlic and potato tinged with the sharp crack of
rosemary. After the potatoes cool, I pull out a pizza dough with my hands
(never use a rolling pin or baton if you want beautifully puffed and pocketed
crust) and brush it with more olive oil and kosher salt before arranging the small
seasoned circles of spuds. I sprinkle a little Parmesan and some goat cheese
along with a bit more fresh rosemary before sliding the pizza back into the
over.
I pour a glass of cava and wait for Greg. Tonight, there’ll be God and poetry enough to
fill the evening.
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| Rosemary Potato Pizza |
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