Truffle-Gathering

The county plow guy finally went down the road yesterday morning around 10. Ray had been shoveling and snow-blowing drifts in the driveway for a couple hours when, in an amazing gesture of holiday generosity, the plow guy came back and scooped all the way down the driveway. I felt like crying. But instead, I got out of here as fast as I could and went shopping. Civilization. Whew. Ray doesn’t know how close he came to being forced to make flour & salt dough ornamental knitting needle toppers...I was seriously stir-crazy.

So today, with my winter demons released, I’d like to get some writing done. I write mostly poetry because there’s still something mysterious and inexpressible and (because I share the masochism of the sporadically insecure) painful about the process of writing poems. And I can flog myself even more knowing that 9.9 people out of 10 (that poor .9 guy) won’t ever read a poem that isn’t funny, filthy, or rhymey. But I haven’t finished a poem since I published a book in November, and I’m feeling sluggish, bloated, lazy. I’d rather bake something.

I write other stuff, too. I thought in this season of overeating I’d use my favorite metaphor—food—to explain how I think about different kinds of writing.

Blogging is like a Butterfinger (chilled, not frozen). It’s pure pleasure, a secret indulgence you really shouldn’t overdo. It’s sweet, chocolaty & peanut-buttery, and has virtually no nutritional value except the gazillion calories that migrate instantly to your thighs.

Letter-writing is like penuche. Penuche-making is a dying art that was once practiced regularly, especially at holidays. It takes a little time, patience, and a Martha Stewart candy thermometer. Not much nutrition here either, but it doesn’t matter, since penuche is a labor of love meant to be given away.

Short story writing is like biscuits & gravy. Roll up your sleeves. You need some muscle to knead the dough, and the process can really mess up your kitchen. It isn’t complicated, but without the right ingredients in the proper proportions, you’ll have flat, rock-hard biscuits and lumpy gravy that no one will touch. There’s some nutritional value, maybe a few carbs for energy and some protein in the gravy to keep you digesting for a while.

Poetry is a delicacy, petit foie gras in saffron truffle sauce, made from the rarest, finest, freshest ingredients, rooted out by pigs named Sarah or Maude, and gathered by hand in the most unexpected and unadulterated places on earth (or elsewhere). These ingredients have little-known and poorly-understood nutritional, medicinal, maybe even metaphysical properties that somehow feed the body and support the spirit. But this stuff is labor-intensive. Boy howdy, you’d better have an apron on, and you can plan on spending many long hours tethered to the stove, sweating like a racehorse. And when, after starting, stirring, feeding the concoction to the dogs, then starting over again you finally get it right, you’re still not done. You have to make it LOOK good, perfectly elegant and effortless, a Monet en plat. This stuff can make you laugh & cry if it all comes together in the kitchen, and its serving presentation can make grown men run for the coat room to weep in secret.

Today we’re supposed to have a bonafide warmup, with temps in the 10-15 above range. The peacocks will come down from the rafters and forage in the snow, the dogs will want to stay out longer and play, and the barn cats will head to the grain shed for a hand or two of poker with the mice. Still, any delicacy worth gathering is buried deep under Jack Blizzard’s frozen feet, so I’ll whip up some cinnamon scones topped, of course, with crushed Butterfingers. I owe my Aunt Daisy a letter…