Hands of Bean

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The thing about growing fucking vegetables is that you need someone to share them with. All the beans come amazingly at once, as a big orgasm of fruit. That’s the fruit of the plant, I know, beans aren’t fruit. They’re legumes.

Protein. Apparently beans are the reason parts of the globe were repopulated by folks who discovered them as ‘the poor person’s meat’. People grew stronger, taller and stouter,  and had more children, with all that cheap protein. This happened in about the 10th century, in Europe at any rate.  Before then, the nobles fondled beans in their pockets, and exchanged them as gifts. The peasants starved. And then we have dear Jack, whose beanstalk represents the aspirations of the lotto-ticket buying working class.

So – I want to share my crop. I planted seeds, tended them, watched them grow, and the harvest is nigh. Those are good things, right? They demonstrate good things about me. And this is my overriding feeling – that I have a warty, bumpy beautiful life full of songs and vegetables that is essentially underutilised… (I just wanna be used, goddammit!) and that in the giving of myself, I shall receive. The same old trap – to give, and hope for love. To perform, and win affection. Manipulative bastard!!! Fucking conditional love! Let off!! (I like to think that the ‘performance’ has more to do with my own intrinsic pleasure nowadays. I am happy to fall in love just for the sake of falling in love. To be moved by the muse, and inspired to pick flowers. But who can I give them to? Myself? Who can I sing in time with? This is the problem. Like a tree falling in a quiet forest… I am that tree. And falling is beautiful, beautiful.)

Nonethefuckingless, I want to share my amazing broad beans, or fava beans, as they are referred to in Silence of the Lambs. I made a paste out of them recently – let me be honest – it half-worked. Finely diced, plenty of garlic, olive oil, lemon, pepper, a drop of tahini… (ok, there was no tahini.)

Chop it all up and fry it and then apply a hand-blender in merciless fashion

Broad beans – broad flavour, broad taste, and quite a peculiar one, which always takes you by surprise. Otherworldly. Thinking about all the energy that goes into making that relatively tiny little bean inside its thick soft sheath. All that energy! – sunshine, water, cells generating and multiplying into tall plants with many leaves, and pods longer (but mercifully much much thinner) than my own little trousered yardstick for pretty much everything in life.

Yes. Beans. Where were we? Perhaps the best is to put them in an Ottolenghi-type thingy. He does salad. He does broad bean BURGERS! And he does this mash-up thingy with broadbeans and artichokes. Gratuitous foodporn:

from the book PLENTY...

Maybe when I could be arsed enough to cook a hot meal for myself.. but. No. Eating this gorgeous crop on my own feels like a loss. I will have to turn that around…Pick up the phone.

that green stuff with the lemon... those are the beans. and that sexy light brown stuff. that's the hummus.

… and do honour to them, make them intrinsically good, just as they are. And oh! Look, here comes an old friend, the best kind. (Well, an entirely different kind from the new type of friend.) The mother of my godchild arrives, and together with him, they shell the pods. And we share them.

All is good in the garden. We keep on planting, watering, weeding, trellising, mulching, harvesting… the cycle of life spins on, the wind is in my hair, and my lips start to make a song…

First for Love, Second for Money…

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The pony-tailed Porsche-driving shrink smiled. I smiled back. Yes, that sounds about right, I thought.

This was during the rebound relationship with HotRocks. Blessed as she was with a stratospheric income, stock options, good genes and even better connections. If only I could just hang onto her skirts, she might pull me through to the promised land. But, surprise surprise, we had a clash of values.

It’s not easy dating a banker – you need to make regular deposits. Get creative with your credit. All I could spare I I toted up and scrawled in her ledger, but soon found I needed to pay more attention to my own investments – my children. They, in their mid-divorce confusion, needed a father that wasn’t looking the other way.

I was in her debt, as her patience started wearing out. She bought me expensive presents and then told me I was hiding behind my children. That I was a coward. That I couldn’t cook the books. So I consolidated. Closed my account. It was a relief. For me. For her – well, she threw the book at me. I guess she’ll run a better credit check next time!

Still, I think about her, wonder how she’s doing. We’ve chatted on the phone a couple times. HotRocks has good capital. I’m sure she’ll attract the right investor.

Couscous a la HotRocks

A mind-numbing creation, which I can only dimly recall… It was served at our break-up meal, made by her. I think it involved cranberries, pistachios, raisins, diced peppers and parsley, folded into a buttery dish of couscous…

Navigation Error, and a plate of cheap food

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Holy fuck.

It’s taken me two years to get to this point -  drifting, lolling, flopping about in a boat. Well, a metaphorical boat, obviously. There is some land on the horizon, I’m just not sure if I’m arsed enough to reach it. I could be somewhere vaguely offshore, I’m not sure… near some uncharted island, with my name written in the sand. Let’s see what happens when the grog runs out.

As the captain of said craft, the good ship D, I confess I have spent too much time drunk in my quarters, pissing away my chances – I found it easier to just stick my cock out of the porthole. If you’ll pardon that image…

With the best intentions and a coat of new paint, I once set out… Did I take my bearings properly? Did the stars shift when I fell over on deck? With the engine stalled, the sails ripped, whatever crew I had – the odd enthusiast, here or there – cursed me and swore never to sail with me again. Even the rats have left. I have a parrot for company – inside my head.

Staggering down to the galley again – whoopsy! – I’ll see what I can rustle up. I can hardly see through my beard! 1.5 potatoes, and an onion. That’s my supper then. After which I can sleep some more.

Maybe tomorrow the sunrise will be spectacular, and I’ll find myself scrubbing the decks, humming a shanty.

Chef Shady’s Cheapo-de-Posh Potato Mash with Frazzled Onion and Flatleaf Parsley

2 spuds, peeled, diced, boiled, with a little salt, drained and mashed with a little butter and milk. Add more salt to taste. 1 large onion, finely diced and fried over high heat in butter/sunflower oil, with a teaspoon of sugar – allow to crisp and caramelise. Serve with a few leaves, if you have. TOTAL COST: R 2.50??

 

A Good Curfew

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A thesis of The Divorced Cookbook is that the re-singled individual who finds him- or herself cut adrift needs to find some sort of anchor, and that the ritual of preparing and enjoying food can serve this purpose, especially when one couldn’t really be bothered to do so.

Setting out a plate for yourself is sometimes extremely difficult. Instead, we eat standing up, next to the toaster, glancing at the clock to check whether it’s late enough to go to bed. Or, after an evening of self-medication, furiously assembling a cooked dinner just before midnight, eating it, and switching off the lights – like they were some kind of final hurdle.

Time alone used to be a privilege, now it’s just scary.

Early to bed and early to rise makes you healthy, wealthy and wise. Or – a dull boy. Last night, after watching most of The Hunger Games, I decided to pack it in. As I was retiring, I realised that this idea of a good curfew could be developed further – not just paying attention to the finish line, but to all stages of the race. For example, if a went to bed at 9.30 pm and read for half an hour, then at 8.00 I could watch a ‘sode or a film, at 7.30 I could eat my dinner, which means at 6.45 I could start preparing it, after my 6.25 phone call to the kids. This would be roughly when I returned from my suburban stroll with the dogs, after my late work wrap-up stint, from 4.30-5.30. I might precede this with a mountain walk from 3.00-4.00 and a shower at 4.15. From 2.15 to 3.00 I would be reading on my bed and having a short nap. Before this – from 8.30am – I could do what passed as ‘work’ – usually, writing and refining proposals, or putting them into effect. And eating toast.

Today, the alarm went off at 5.30 am. I faffed around on the internet for a while. But I felt that I had a structure, something to hold onto, something I could use to pull myself out of the time-swamp I have wandered into, and where I’ve spent the last two years.

Imposing a good curfew has these unexpected benefits. And when I look up the origin of the word curfew, I get this. Curfew means ‘cover fire’ (from a regulation to put out your fires at a fixed time each evening), via Old French: cuevrefeu, from cuvrir ‘to cover’ + feu ‘fire’.

Indeed. I shall cover mine. I have burnt myself enough now.

A back window closes as D-Day approaches

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Seems like ages ago that X2B and I sat on the back stoep together and made our decision.

We were numb, by then. The words had spun themselves into so many chains around us. She had gone away with the kids for the weekend, in an attempt to get some final perspective and give me some time to decide. (A precursor to the current loneliness – the empty space that weekend was a portent of things to come… although I didn’t register it at the time.)

The weight of our married life was becoming heavier and heavier. The only option seemed to throw it off.

After the kids went to bed she came outside for a smoke, to our routine spot. Two chairs side by side. A deep breath, and like every breath, it touched a deep well of pain. Once we’d made our first answer, another question was asked: So – are we going to separate, or do the whole shebang, and divorce?

Mere separation didn’t seem appropriate to the spinning into and out of confusion we’d experienced for several years. We felt that we’d given it our all. There was no faith left, no hope that there could ever be light on the horizon for us. Although there was a sense of relief, it was of the raw and scary kind – like an open wound that you had pulled the scab off for the last time and gone ‘oh fuck’ at the blood, but that you now knew was going to heal. Somehow.

I moved out.

That was wierd.

Then I moved back in when they all moved out.

That was wierd.

Months and months and months have gone by, with all sorts of gnashing of teeth. Although X2B and I communicate often and well, and it’s as good as it gets, divorce-wise, only now has the reality of my children’s regular absence hit me like a ton of bricks.

It feels like solitary confinement, and the bars are made out of dates and times. When they align, the doors slide open and I get to enjoy the presence of my children. It feels like I’m walking around in the prison yard, in a rare patch of sunlight. Maybe that’s also because I sense that I’ve done something wrong that I need to feel punished for. That’s my shit – the stuff I need to forgive myself for.

Yet – we remain undivorced, despite our decision. There has been a more-than-amicable settlement – assets have been split in twain, and a mediated agreement is in effect. It has been signed and witnessed but… that’s as far as it’s gone.

For me, this means that a back window has always been open, and I’m trying to figure out what that means. Not that it’s the sort to wriggle through… and land naked on a cold floor calling for help. No, not that sort. It’s not a backdoor either. It’s a small high window, enough to share some light. I think it’s been left open so that we can talk about the children – those whom we hold most dear.

If we were divorced it would have been that much colder. Harder to talk. But this way, with us both preparing to now finally board up that window, things have been as good as they can be between us. And that’s been important for us all.

 

 

 

Talented Hunky Shopper Dad Sexy Ninja Guy

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I have mastered my skills as Shopper Dad, if only to survive.

With two kids who make ‘homes’ and other interactive nests amongst the shopping displays, I have become a ninja of decision, operating on a higher shopping level than the numbed-out masses that swirl around me. I have such a little time…

Within a fraction of a moment of a hint of a second, I can spot, spy, source and size, and a mere breath later, decide. (The famous “4 S’s follwed by a D” mantra.) Not just price, but paypoint, purpose, and profit for life. (The not-so-famous “4 P’s and half an L” mantra.)

I am a blur, a piece of grey. Invisible, except to the sensuously inclined. The doe-eyed shop assistants I beckon with a scarcely flickered ‘brow – should I need them.

My skills are founded on one principle. I want for nothing. I am stone. Simple.

There is not a hair out of place in the bouffant of my mind – nothing, NOTHING eludes my razor-sharp gaze, my cutting eyes.

I pay. An unwelcome hassle. Whistle. The children come running. Ninjas in training. They will inherit the old ways…

 

 

Leftovers

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Leftovers. Little bits left in the fridge of the soul. Or the heart’s icebox.

The parts of X I find there – little pictures and flashes of memory I didn’t know I hadn’t cleared away. I half-expect to turn around and find the evidence of a slaughter – outlined like a corpse, heart-stains bent by the shape of what we once had.

I’m shocked when I feel them, these sharp little shards of memory, shocked to discover these things still in me, these thoughts. Like little depth charges. Boof!

I wonder where she is. Who she might be with. That I should even care what she does, and with whom! Now is not the time for such rumination, it can only lead to ruin. That which was denied to me bestowed on another. Yes well, that particular restaurant has closed down. We didn’t want to eat there anymore. Although we might lament it’s passing. Tastes change.

There are other things, indelibly burnt. A certain behaviour, for example, wrapped in layers, which I thought had long ago reached it’s best-before date, but to my amazement, is still there, a stale habit, locked away in emotional tupperware.*

I rub my stomach. Shut my eyes and look at the floor. And think: after having made the meal – the marriage – with the requisite oaths and promises – it seems we bit off more than we could chew. Seven years in, and we were well fed up. Feeling full, feeling empty. Did we get the recipe wrong?

Perhaps I thought the end result was more important than how it was made? Did not pay enough attention to the ingredients of my loving. Yes, that’s it: I wanted something perfect, when all we needed was to break bread together.

What did we make? A stew? A curry? A Hungarian goulash of a marriage?! Or a series of dishes, served through time: some exquisite moments that melted in the mouth, sure, and some unpalatable, difficult food, rounded off with a… just dessert. Ha! Some sort of feast – the feast of your life.

So.. there are leftovers. The table is set for one, and the kitchen is cold. Packed away inside me, feelings that transform with the bacteria of longing, of loneliness, of the way time printed us. One day I might look and find they’ve changed.

In the meantime, I pick out the scraps in my teeth. I will not eat tonight, I feel. Early evening, and there is a lump of risotto in the fridge, and an adulterated chicken. Rather wake up with an appetite? I will not be able to sleep.

Wait. It might be an idea to remove oneself from harm’s way. I could plug this hunger, stop myself from bringing up the past. Avoid those random depth charges. Let me try, just try, to ennoble my existence. It doesn’t have to kill me.

PASTA RAPIDE – 10 things in 10 minutes.

  1. Boil water, salt, toss in pasta.
  2. In another pot, simmer LOTS of garlic and chilli in olive oil. Fresh or dried chilli is best – not the ground kind in the picture – but use what you have. Simmer, don’t fry – don’t let the garlic brown if you can help it.
  3. Add a spot of white wine if necessary – to keep things juicy. You can do this at any point.
  4. Throw in anchovies. About four or five per person. which means, er, four or five.
  5. Stir. It’s not necessary for the little fishies to disintegrate. But they can. Depends on you.
  6. Check pasta.
  7. Add masses of roughly chopped parsley to the ingedients.
  8. Drain pasta in minute no. 8. Drizzle with some olive oil.
  9. Toss pasta into pot with all the tasty stuff. Stir. Grate parmesan or grana cheese into the warm pasta, season with black pepper.
  10. Serve with a bit of fresh chopped parsley for garnish.

There you go! Feeling better?

*Tupperware – fuckerstuff. We know that this word derives from tup (middle English, origin unknown) -(often as noun tupping) chiefly British (of a ram) copulate with (a ewe). Vulgar slang (of a man) have sexual intercourse with (a woman). And -ware from Old English waru ‘commodities’, of Germanic origin, perhaps the same word as Scots ware ‘cautiousness’, and having the primary sense ‘object of care’; so, tupperware is literally, fuckerstuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Teaspoon of Anger

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fork you! (notice the bent tines...due to repeated use...)

I think I know exactly when The Anger was mixed into my bloodline. And it was more than a teaspoon – rather, a bucket of low-grade bitterness, laced with some particularly offensive vitriol.

Although diminished over time, it is also concentrated and transformed, and continues to slosh about, leaking with no warning, causing untold harm and injury. It oozes from my siblings, and occasionally drips from my children. In therapy, I am learning ways to flush it from my system. A painful but effective process.

Although we are all unstable elements, prone to combust, none of us are as explosive as my father was. He was an only child, after his sister died young., and lived lived with his parents into his thirties. Problems No.1 and 2, right there. His father was an ornery old man, stubborn as a post, who renamed his wife Patricia, as he preferred it to her christened name, Irene (!!) She was the one who sold his Anglo-American shares without his consent. (I think there was a massive outpouring of wrath at this point.) This allegedly changed him from being a dapper gent into a bitter payroll clerk. Problems No. 3, 4, 5 etc. My father grew up in this dark shadow, developing a spectrum of intolerance that included tempers, outburts, bigotry and childishness. And despite this was a wonderful man, a warm man, with time for you and a listening ear. Confusion.

Although Senior, the grandad, seemingly had much to be proud of – he was an accomplished athlete with a string of legendary feats (knocking out champion boxers at Ellis Park, scoring winning goals in Cup Finals, beating Olympic qualifiers at the 220 yards, playing provincial cricket, etc.), my father felt a sense of shame over him. This came into sharper focus when Senior and “Granny Pat” moved in with us, into a semi-detached flat, until he died amidst a pile of false teeth, urine-stained pajamas and stinky pipes.

During those years I saw my father explode with astonishing regularity, slamming doors so hard they came off their hinges, and hurling glasses from the table during the obligatory (and painful) shared Sunday lunch. We emptied our plates, dutifully.

This anger was in turn distilled in me, as I learnt from his strong example. I too learnt throw tennis rackets and punches. And I came to resent the role I was assigned to play, the First Born, the Golden Boy, who felt he needed to excel in order to win his parents affection. “No-one remembers second place,” I was told, and “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” Another favourite mantra of my father’s was “Winning is not a matter of life and death, it’s more important than that.”

(I’m unsurprised that X was afraid of the geyser of anger she sensed in me. So I stopped it up. Her own anger, which was substantial, and knotted with a sense of despair, was prone to flash as well. So she developed a system of ‘mood warnings’ – something which was uttered before a tantrum was scattered around. It worked, to a degree.)

I was taught to perform – that performance mattered more anything. And so many times, many many times, I deliberately sabotaged myself in order to shake of the role I’d been assigned. And now, somehow,  am finally unlearning that slowly. Small steps. My instinct to stab myself in the eye if I do not achieve a perfect 10 is acknowledged with helpful regularity. I try to sever the trans-genrational curse – this is something at least – and do not raise my voice against my children, or try not to – we have a code on this.

Yet when anger is gratuitously expressed – especially in the case of one of my siblings, with astonishing consistency – I am rendered impotent, mute and afeared. And when my children shout at me, I want to shout back. And sometimes do. And then it’s as if that whole bucket that was stirred into my bloodline all those years ago has been tipped over me. And all I can do is to say sorry.

Perhaps we are all like that? Reactive – emotionally coiled, we spring off like traps except that we’re always walking into our own ones. Why can we not avoid the familiar pitfalls and chasms, the steeping family cliffs?

As we grow we learn the paths around them. We need to look into those chasms and allow ourselves to be weak, and to be strong. We need to breathe. Never forget to breathe.

filling in the spaces

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Wandering in the dunes... my son, equipped with his special stuff: his resilience, his humour and his love of life.

Filling the space that their absence has created is sometimes terrifying.Sometimes I sit on the steps at the back of the house and wonder what to do with myself.

I miss my family, I miss what thought I signed up for when I said “I do.”

Some folks stay married for the sake of their children. They use well-worn masks to cover their secrets. But tears still flow from behind the mask, tears that crystallize into bitter pills, which are fed to their children. And they are pills which cannot be named.

I’ve met people who wished their parents divorced, and people who’re glad that their parents parted when they did. And some people who wished that their parents had let go a long, long time ago.

Our decision to separate was partially for the sake of our children. So they could live in two happy homes instead of one tense one.

There was guilt, for a long while. That these innocents should have this turbulence visited on them – it’s not fair. There’s the tendency to overcompensate, to make oneself completely available during the short times you share, despite needing your life to continue: mending the roof, taking out the garbage, all the other humdrum shite.

My heart is squeezed when I am reminded of their fantasy that we all live together. For, although there was no infidelity, no scandalous series of episodes or ‘divorce event’ – we confused our counsellors (we tried three, in all) – I’m coming to understand that X2B and I were just built different. And we’ll do the best we can. Still a family, but constellated differently, that’s all.

But it’s hard. We’ve been split asunder. Endless things to remember from one household to another. Bicycles and school uniforms. Medicine. Favourite things. Company. Empty chairs and empty beds.

Yet, no matter how confusing this is, even after two years separation, I benefit from this clarity:- that besides the pain in the asynchronous love-dissolve, I know why we did it. We have our eyes on our children and our hearts firmly invested in them.

And I’m happy that this is what we have created, as divorced co-parents – an easy and instantly honest way of discussing our children, and ourselves in relation to them. There is no bullshit with us getting in the way.

Especially on a Sunday I miss being with them. It’s a beautiful Autumn day. We went by bike to X2B’s house this morning, for the handover. A suburban meander. I’m back home. The sound of the fridge humming, and my Malawian neighbours chatting in their yard. Birds in the trees. I have to make a plan: otherwise I’ll probably just drink. Come to think of it, I am already… Now I really need to make a plan!

I hope the kids are having fun with their mom. I hope they’re doing all the things I love seeing them doing: exploring, making things their own, singing and playing, riding their bikes, intrepid, alive in their bodies, laughing in the wind and yelling. Or resting on their bunks, reading, or chatting with each other.

I miss listening to their world. I miss the easiness of having them in my home. All the time. Not just on Wednesdays from 2.30 til Thursday morning, and Saturday to Sunday, 10am to10am.

And then a picture message comes through. There’s my daughter hugging a vintage birdcage at the fleamarket. She’s right there, on my phone, and I’m part of what’s happening and somehow sharing with her. I’m still in a family. I remind myself. It’s just differently constellated. And there’s more time to fill. Which is tricky.

Which is why the newly re-singled parent would do well to heed this advice: get yourself busy in the kitchen, make yourself a meal that ennobles your solitary state, something exceptional, that carries you away in the sweep of its creation.

But I’m not hungry. I’m too lonely to be hungry. I think I’ll just eat toast. And smile at the idea of my daughter, my son.