Pellet Fuel

My brother forgot about me last week, but delivered a generous Home Depot gift card early this morning.

I joked with Billy about having to walk through Home Depot past the gas grills and fryolaters and tool belts and reclining patio chairs right up to the pallet of wood pellets.

"Yeah, Merry Christmas," he said. "Pellet fuel."

"Welcome to adulthood," I said.

*

The flannel Billy gave me already has a rip at the sleeve. It is a truth of the W: the W ruins all. Glasses, jeans, shirts, coats. Anything that might be rended gets rended. It is time, sped up, despite being, phenomenologically, a place of delay and weary slowness. Molasses dripped over the space of stars! Let's get dramatic! Woo heeee!

I hobbled along on my bad knees. I ate liver with bacon for lunch. I took a razor and sliced lids off forty boxes. I bleached a toilet. I filled a dumpster.

*

For New Year's Eve, I made a roast pepper vinaigrette that I spiced up with a roast jalapeno. At first, it was too spicy. More so than I expected and too much to be pleasant. But then, with a mere thimbleful of white vinegar -- and I wasn't expecting this -- it transformed and the heat of the jalapeno was pushed way to the back, as a mild aftertaste, and the taste of the bell pepper, spitted on a knife and burner roasted, came to the fore. There was an accent of lemon, and balsamic and garlic sauteed in olive oil. It was peppery and sweet and tangy. And I'm hoping that it will go well over baby spinach, toasted almonds, and mushrooms.

All the cooking I've done recently has only made it clear how much I don't know. I'm at the point where my naivete shines through and I find myself wishing for a grandmother who could have brought me into a tradition. Not just a mutt hodge-podge of things various and superficial, but a rich, yeasty, malty tradition coming from earth and trees and backyard wells. Too romantic? Well, in a sense. But it comes from a feeling of rootlessness -- of a lack of foundations.

America! America!

Set the gas tanks on fire. The cold is here and the cold is gone.