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PARIS, FRANCE.
It’s sometimes hard for me to distinguish between memory and fantasy. Between a linear reality and a self-preservation tactic. I find memories like pennies on the ground. Tails-up, unlucky, not worth much until you have a pile of them. I leave it alone. I leave it there for somebody else. It might grow a patina and smell like a bloody lip, but I leave it alone all the same.
This trip was different. I remember every detail of Paris. How many cups of espresso we drank one morning and how many magazines we flipped through at night. I remember the roads there better than in my own hometown. It was magnified, every sense heightened to take it all in. We walked a lot, got blisters, fell asleep at three in the afternoon. We ate eggs every morning and stuttered our way through the menu, nodding in agreement with the waiter when words fumbled. The discounted shoes, knock-offs in the flea market alleys. The bright blue sky and the long shadows the buildings casted at sunset. How quiet it all was an hour before midnight, sometimes our cravings for the best of us and we went out for ice cream. It was all real, all lying before us in a vast cityscape of garbled conjugations and silent consonants. We only explored those things we knew from the internet, the whole rest of the world was in hiding, secrets we discovered together.
I will go back to Paris; I have to now. I want to celebrate another birthday sitting on a picnic blanket by the Eiffel Tower. There are still over 20 restaurants I want to try. I want to buy antiques and reclaim them as heirlooms. I want to spend a day reading, a day sleeping, and a day walking. But there’s never enough time and I am back to work now. Butfive days in Paris were perfect. I am sure these memories won’t escape me so soon.
Fig+Bleu's Guide to Paris!
Stay.
We stayed in the Marais, which was such a relaxed neighborhood. This was our AirBnB.
Eat.
- Merci
- Epicure
- Bistrot De Boucher
- Le Procope
- Buvette
- Le Eclair de Genie
- Chez Denise
- Mi-Va-Mi (Lily had recommended L'As Du Fallafel but they were closed for Rosh Hashanah!)
- Paris Picnic
Do.
- Have a picnic near the Eiffel Tower
- Spend 4 hours in the Louvre
- Faceswap with Picassos
- Buy Kinder bars at one in the morning at the local shop
- Buy some antiques at the flea market
- Spend $200 on linens at Merci's shop
- And $60 on kitchen wares at E. Dehillerin
NEW ORLEANS.
I spent last week in New Orleans, just miles from a flood zone. I work for a company that has annual meetings, I worked 14 hour days to prove my worth. Notetaking, business cards, and a lanyard with my name and title printed on it. But all I could do was dream of food. I've become a hungry soul and I spend my time mapping out the fastest routes between happy hour and the main course.
I worked until Thursday, then found a boy waiting for me at a coffee shop a block away. We napped and ate oysters for three days. One day, we spent three hours finding the perfect place to eat; one night we wasted a hundred dollars at the casino in eight minutes. I've never been good at gambling, I take too long to make decisions.
My time in New Orleans is a tally of numbers, receipts, coupons I found online to save a dollar. Fourteen cab rides, eight glasses of a cold and cheap Pinot Grigio at the hotel bar. Eleven macarons and two scoops of almond gelato. Seven hours of sleep in a warm, warm bed and a two hour nap when I couldn't adjust to the humidity. Eighteen tarot cards I picked from a woman's deck. She told me I would be happy and never settle down. That the months of October and April are important to me. That the number 95 will change my life in some unknown way.
It's been a week since we left New Orleans and I'm not sure if I'll go back soon. But I enjoyed walking with no agenda and no pretense and no reason to hurry. I enjoyed going to bed full and sleepy and smiling. I enjoyed the traces of powdered sugar that seemed to settle in every wrinkle of my black shirts. I may not go back anytime soon, but I'm glad I stayed a few days after my conference, where I was tired of showing my worth.
Where I ate.
Lüke - Great happy hour and oysters. Didn't realize how good this place was, as I took it for granted being across from my hotel
Morning Call - As A Brown Table mentioned, this place is a nice alternative to Café du Monde and you won't feel so rushed
Café du Monde - Like I said, not worth the hype, as sad as I am to say :(
Mariza - Honestly? Probably my favorite meal. Perhaps I was craving some comfort Italian, but they really delivered on service and quality
Mr B's Bistro - One of my work dinners was here. Everyone had a great time with the BBQ shrimp
Red's Chinese - For some reason, I always crave Chinese when I'm on vacation and this was a great local place to chill for a bit
Commander's Palace - This was one of those places I felt we HAD to go to and I'm a sucker for a multi-course meal.
Willie Mae's - It really was the best fried chicken I had in town
Popsicle Week 2k16: Summer, and this Mango Chili Popsicle
There are more seasons than four. Summer is a procession of seasons. The Dandelion Season, the Firefly Season, the Stone Fruit Season. They’re signifiers, signaled by the Appalachian muezzin of the spring peeper’s call. They get us through the long stretches of daylight. The sun doesn’t set until 9:04 tomorrow.
I spent the better part of last week drunk, asleep on a couch and laughing with my family. We spent the week in North Carolina, in a house that used to be owned by my brother that is now a second home to my parents. I ate strawberries with my fingers and fed my dog the egg yolks my mother wouldn’t eat. I got a sunburn that turned my shoulders copper. I didn’t cry when I said goodbye to anyone in particular, but I cried a hell of a lot when I found out my sister was having a girl.
It was 2 hours to the beach each way and the ice melted in the cooler by the time we got there. My grandfather in his jeans, smoking a pipe on the beach. Anachronistic, misplaced, his very presence sitting in the lawn chair representative of every conversation we have together. My mother and aunt tanning on a quilt made by a great aunt, falling asleep with canned margaritas in their hands. We stayed until the gulls came too close. My uncle complained that the seashells were nicer in Florida. My mother complained the taffy was cheaper last year, but she bought four boxes anyway.
This is summer to me. The laughter, the sweat, the incandescent horseflies that reflect the pool tarp. Lazy, awkward, uncomfortable. Each moment was one I used to treasure when I was still in school; and if I didn’t have these small signifiers, they’d all bleed together into one long season.
And between Canned Margarita Season and Fireworks Season, there is Billy from Wit and Vinegar's Popsicle Week. Last year, I made Caramel Corn popsicles, and this year I opted for mango and chili. A chorus, a solstice, the melting of velvet on the tongue. Make these to combat the summer heat; make these to celebrate it.
Mango Chili Popsicles
Makes 4 popsicles (as that is what my mold yields), but the recipe can easily be multiplied.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup coconut cream solids (I had to use 2 cans of full-fat coconut milk for this)
- 1 mango
- 1 TB olive oil
- ¼ cup honey, separated
- 2 TB brown sugar
- ¼ cup confectioner’s sugar
- 2 TB orange juice
- ½ TB vanilla
- ½ TS paprika
- 1 TB chili powder, plus more for sprinkling
- 1 TB white sugar, for sprinklin
Directions:
- Prior to beginning, refrigerate your cans of coconut milk for 8+ hours until solids separate
- When ready, making sure not to shake the cans, gently spoon out the coconut cream and put into a bowl
- Turn your broiler on high and prepare a baking sheet with aluminum foil
- Slice your mango in half and coat with olive oil, one tablespoon of honey, and the brown sugar
- Broil for 5-7 minutes until top is browned
- Remove and allow to cool briefly before spooning fruit into the bowl of a food processor
- Pulse 10 times or until smooth
- Add confectioner’s sugar, orange juice, vanilla, paprika, and chili powder
- Pulse once or twice to combine
- Finally, add your coconut cream and blend for one minute to aerate the mixture slightly
- To make this extra smooth, put mixture through a sieve into a measuring cup (for easy pouring)
- Pour into your molds (this makes four)
- Mixture is thick enough to add popsicle stick before setting into freezer for 6+ hours
- When ready to eat, dip mold in hot water for 5-10 seconds and it should slide out
- Sprinkle with more chili powder and some sugar and enjoy immediately –this is a soft popsicle and will melt fairly suddenly
- Enjoy!
Make sure to check out all of the other exciting popsicles this week!
When my Parents Visit
We played poker that week, we'd draw the cards and shuffle them around. All the lives I used to live were buried in the compliments my parents gave me. To show the growth I've gone through to get to the house I live in now, with all its struggle and timid mid-century beauty. There was a distinction in how they talked to me, sometimes a whisper, sometimes cautiously. We talked until our voices were hoarse, all about how much I've changed, grown, become something.
We played poker and it kept my attention all week long, the dexterity of conversation. How we wouldn't dwell on any one subject for too long. How anything anymore is too painful to bring up, too trivial. It's easier to ask if the weather is always this nice and not ask if I'm happy that I moved back to San Diego. Time was short and days ran long. I've said it before, but time is just a trickster god. A coyote yelping in the distance, telling me I wouldn't see them again for another six months.
There's a thing in poker called a "tell". When a player can't mask his intent. When his subconscious twitches at the fingertips. When a player touches his nose, rubs his ear, clears his throat in the silence. I wonder what my tell was that week. I keep turning this over in the silence before I fall asleep: What was the hint I gave them all? What did my body say that my tongue could not? How well do my parents this person I've become to be able to pan through the fools gold of conversation for what they really were. How to navigate the minutiae to find the nuance of my biting lip.
The truth was that it's been six days since my parents left and it's been hard to stay positive, to keep my mind off how much I miss them. I think it read on my face, the truth is the tell was present in every movement, in every frown, in every smile I gave that stretch across my face whenever I caught my mom looking at me.
My parents left six days ago, but I cherished it all. Every moment, every heartbeat, every eyelash my mother would pick off my cheek and blow into the wind. I'm more like my mother than I ever thought possible, in our temper and our careful approach to love. I think about how much I've hated her before and I can't seem to find the reason for all of that anger. My father sat at the tail end of conversation. He's a good man, silent and awkward. My parents left six days ago and that happiness couldn't have lasted forever.
Our life out here is so different than my parents, I had to preface everything i showed them. "We don't normally go here." "We don't normally spend this much." "We usually just sit at home." I couldn't lose that connection, to remain down in the salt of the earth with them. I'd be buried in it, if I could. Preserved, cured. Perhaps in more ways than one.
We got seasick on a boat ride around the bay I arranged for Father's Day, they ate In 'n Out for the first time. We drank milkshakes and kept our eyes on the horizon. We ate at a Chinese restaurant where our waitress spoke Spanish with no accent and English with a heavy one. We sat on the edge of the world and watched the water crash on an outcrop of houses in La Jolla. We ate leftovers in our swim suits. My mother made coffee too weak; she got frustrated that the coffee pot wasn't like hers. My parents napped with our dog, Elsa, and then my dad slept for 12 more hours. We got tattoos to commemorate my continual, chronic years of not appreciating my mother's love. We hugged at the airport and my mother whispered in my ear at the terminal, "I don't know how much longer I can do this."
We drove home in silence. Her words still are ringing in my ear.
My parents bought a house in North Carolina, surrounded by forests in a town that only has a pizza place and a Dollar General. My parents called it a homestead. It'll be willed to me and my siblings. My mother is decorating it in greens and blues, colors of the ocean. My mother is going to get another rescue dog. She's decided on a lab. A boy. My dad wants to quit his job in ten years' time. They have plans, lives I only intersect at the periphery. They miss me in their own way, and I, myself, don't know how much longer I can do this.
A Greyhound Through Hill Country
It was hard to find a comfortable position. I'm long-limbed and can never stay still for long. I wrapped my body around an old leather jacket and road the north-bound Greyhound bus to Dallas last week. It gave me a reason to see Nolan, the first time in three weeks. Three weeks that quantified into a lifetime of changing perspectives and the resultant, nagging question of why did i do this?
The bus left at seven and pulled in by midnight. We sat in traffic for 45 minutes, and I read articles about the I Ching and cancer. My eyes grew dryer with every mile marker and I had a pair of glasses tucked into the backseat pocket. It was longer than I thought five hours could be, and the only way I could gauge that kind of time was San Diego to Phoenix, from San Diego to Las Vegas, from San Diego to the first gas station we stopped at the buy water and a burger on our way to El Paso for the night. All my starting points were from that Southern California town. And many of my ending points, too.
By the end of my time in California, I was no longer many things. I was no longer alone, no longer exciting, no longer young and naive and studious. No longer a law student, no longer confident, no longer the faltering idea of being someone else. I was myself and I have sacrificed for that kind of beginning, but I had to go to Dallas and see if it was all worth it. To look the wolf in the eyes at night and see if it howls the same as you howled inside. When it wasn't so perfect, when it was a shaggy puddle of old love notes that got ripped to shreds in an old cardboard box.
We met at the station and a male prostitute asked where I was going. It was pitch-dark and silent in the city, and in the distance you saw how expansive Dallas was. We passed office buildings that still had lights on and it seemed we found ourselves in another city, another few moments of exploration. We got a hotel for the night, a little room with a queen-sized bed and a TV that was screwed into the dresser. The fridge motor ran louder than my breathing and my body, naturally nestled into Nolan's, fell into the rhythm of his breathing.
And for two days, I felt whole. In a way I hadn't before. Longer than the three-week span of living on my own. Longer than maybe a year or two. It was no longer a question of "How will we survive?", but a question of when will the vast gap between us close itself? Inside you can fill barbecue joints, the Grand Canyon, and the biggest little city in the world. There is a five year age gap and the gaps in our teeth and a gap between my thighs because I'm only eating for one. There are memories I think I forgot and a tenderness in our words and fingertips that came out of the synapses of our mind, our fight or flight response, our relationship survivalism.
And we couldn't even kiss goodbye because we're in an unfamiliar town. We hesitated, standing at terminal five of the Dallas greyhound, my bag on my shoulder and a headphone in one year. I looked him in the eye and said, "I'll see you soon."
Places to visit in Dallas....Social House / Weekend Coffee / TENOVERSIX / White Elephant