Learning to Walk.

I have little artistic ability, but I still like to draw. From early memories of drawing faces under the spell of a fever, frantically scribbling the sweat to my pores so I could fly to Florida for a vacation to memorizing (or not) chinese characters based on how they seemed liked posed bodies, I have a fondness for the human form rendered as a series of uncomplicated lines.

That's why I carry index cards and a pen in my bag. I draw something, I write a caption. I do it in stick figure form, both in image and narrative. The last few days I have been working 12 hour days, hoofing between gigs and then hoofing home. I have seen a lot, but I have not written much. My bag carries me across town, my bag carries computer and book and notebook and an out-box/in-box compartmentalization of index cards scribbled on crouching in leaves as each image type writer strikes me to pause and note. Whether they will be anything or not, I don't really care. Matchstick strikes, we write.

Chowder Head.

So I'’m in a bar the other night drinking Olympia cans at $1.75/Hr. to sit and watch basketball and type, free from Mormon roommates and the insanity of my house. Looking down the bar are many people I know as friends, people I’ve worked with, people I sell wine to. We are all doing the same thing, escaping, some from different things than others. Next to me is Scott. I have known him for years and want him to win. Win like Ghengis Khan won, not like Hoover won. He makes films. He writes. He sees words rendered to image in a way I can hardly imagine, let alone describe. Scott likes hockey and has always had a little thing for the Cayenne Pepper story. I put it on the Blog the day before, and while writing it was thinking of him.

Well, he's rightfully disappointed in the rendering. I was reading a piece in the Art of Eating today about Fish Chowder and how it is properly made. The author described her mother in the kitchen, building the soup from the bottom and how the first step was to "“try out"” some salt pork. Not render, though the same thing, but try out. Under intense heat, melt the fat, leaving an oil to cook in, removing the meat bits that remain for use later on. Cayenne Pepper story is my first step in a proper chowder. Something I will return to when there is more time, something that will come together. Something that will taste real. Thanks, Scott, for your faith.

Confession.

I live with Mormons. Mormons don't wash their dishes. I embrace difference. So long as the sons of bitches clean up after themselves. More to come.

A pack of dogs.

Setting: Two people who have been to third world countries talking about stray dogs and buying an English language paper, food and the company of old men all while taking a stroll.

Me: Stray dogs are never vicious because they know they will get shot.

Her: No, they're homeless. They know they'll get more scraps of bread through kindness than by being mean.

Now, with three jobs at three of the best places to work in Portland, I have to wonder my motivation for not being a mean stray dog.

I'll think about that when I walk home, the scooter pooped out last night and I've slept 7 hours in the past 48. It's time to listen to Emininem and be white and angry. Just not angry around the right people.

Cayenne Pepper.

Thinking about heading back into the kitchen has me thinking about being in kitchens and the stories one collects there. Everyone who has spent time cooking has a book of stories that grow like fish in booze, and I am no different. The one thing about this story that I like is that it has never grown, despite the company and despite the proximity to last call.

I’ve started this entry pretty much the same way the last three times I’ve written and accidentally deleted it, inserting here that friends should stop reading now since they’ve already heard it in my voice. So, fuck that. I’m not changing facts but I’m changing how I tell it. This is a story about a time in my life where I smelled like raw food exposed to the heat of a kitchen rather than my most recent incarnation as a person who smells like cooked food exposed to moisture.

Serrated knives scare me, and the ones that arrive fresh from the Restaurant Supply Store do so even more. Sharp knives cut you. Sharp serrated knives rip and cut you with a ferocity few can understand. I’m working the line on the cusp of what looks to be a slammed Friday night and new serrated knife takes off most of my fingernail and the tip of my finger. I am spouting blood and head to the sink to minimize the impact on things other people might want to eat.

Water from the sprayer just makes the basin look like rosé as it tickles my ring finger bone. I am working with Co-Co the soothsaying lesbian pan slinger extraordinare and Friend/Owner-husband, husband of Friend/Owner-wife. The latter two have a shared belief that Cayenne pepper not only clots cuts, but cauterizes in its wake.

“Put some Cayenne on it” says Friend/Owner-husband. I’ve done it before with minor cuts, and though it doesn’t feel pleasant, it has worked. I do it. I watch a steady stream of now orange blood flow into the sink. Tickets are flying out of the printer. Friend/Owner-husband comes over, looks at the wound and says “No, more, and press it in.” I am Jeff’s idiot: I do just that.

Seconds later I am staring at my toes, feeling fire in every vein, bursting out of my feet, passing out and saying to Co-Co: “There is bread in the oven and I am passing out now.”

True to form I do so in dramatic fashion. Face over ass into the sink, bouncing my head off the divider and landing in the trash can. I wake up to water being splashed on my face. With my Cayenned hands I wipe my brow, essentially maceing myself. “I need air” I fumble.

As I am being held from behind, escorted from the kitchen, drunk waiter thinks that I am choking. He punches me in the sternum. A full restaurant watches a semi-coherent, actively bleeding , dressed in kitchen whites 21 year old take a pop to the chest as his friends try to get him to air and rain.

The air feels good, I get escorted to the emergency room and squirted with super-glue. My only replacement was called in from a first date stinking of latex and resentment. I come back and tap him out, working the rest of my shift.

I am tired of this story. I was tough as nails. Once. It’s true.

Active Memory.

Something I wrote in 2001 that popped back up last night. Forgive the poetry, but I am about to ride just for the fun of it.
___________

i played basketball
alone on a court
in northern minnesota.

i slit a deer's throat
minutes after it was hit
by a 1995 Toyota Forerunner.

i watched a hispanic boy
turn bright red when his lure
was snagged in a drainage slough.

i shot poorly there
the sun was bright and hot
as it is in summer.

i think it was the right thing
to do. someone helped
my knife our kill.

i would have helped him free it
but figured he knew
the water better than me.

next time i will face east.
that late in the day it will
be easier to see what i've done.

Pots pans and ovens.

Washed dishes. Done in record time. It is not even past last call. This is getting too easy with my new +2 Dexterity, rubberized "Norwester" professional dishwasher/scooter boots. They might make the ladies cringe, but damn if they don't help get things clean. That and they cost $12.

There would be a picture of them but phone is officially fritzed from all the moisture in my life these days. When people call it trembles instead of vibrates and pictures are way beyond its humble means.

So, having reached the highest rung on the dishwashing ladder, I am sorry to say I will place my favorite scrubby on my bureau tonight and leave the house in the morning without it in my pocket. I am embarking on a new job, one that will have me working a schedule and cooking food. I will get to learn how to make pizza in a wood fired oven, and I will do it with some of the best in the business. I am enough of a food-theory dork that this really excites me.

It excited me more to hear that a certain "most eligible bachelor" from Barbaresco visited the joint the night before and declared the crust "so high it could only come from Naples." The was some thumb and forefinger gesture to accompany that was likely hyperbolic. Bless the Piedmontese.

I am apparently working my way through the elements this cycle of my life. First there was Earth. Chopping vines with my trusty cane knife, working my way through hot red hills of dust and stone. Next came Wood, barrel upon bacterial barrel salvaged from ruin and reeking of old oak. Water, obviously has been dominant for weeks now. Water inside, water outside, the world is made of water. Now my sponge-like skin will come to terms with wood fire, the sizzle your arm hair kind as you reach back with a paddle and dive into the mouth of 750+ degree beast that is their to do your bidding but might sooner look to take a bite out of your flesh. I seriously wonder if I will turn to ash.

I should get nice and waterlogged for my early morning adventure sans scrubby. My skin needs it, my body needs it, it's time to ride the scooter to the hills for a last look at this pure element.

Trying to Find Zen Among Middle Aged Men.

One thing I like about the wine industry is that there is an infinite amount of knowledge to be had, and I get to learn something new everyday. My job, often, is to answer questions. I don't expect that anyone who is not employed in the business would be able to do so, but I am often impressed by how much more "hobbyists" know about wine, and I love learning from them. That said, if one more person asks me a question as a vehicle for them to launch off on how much they know, interrupting me in the process, I am going to crack some skulls.

I try to remain humble in this business, as I can't possibly know everything, but when someone asks me a question and then interrupts me so they can hear their own voice, I want to walk away and find something heavy to brain them with.

So, I'm sitting at the "Genius Bar" at the local Mac Store trying to not lie in order to get a new Ipod and I see this same phenomenon occurring for the poor schmuck doing his best to provide "customer service." People are just plain rude, getting in his space, asking questions about bathrooms and Ipod cozies and he is treading water on his college degree, making retail wage despite his diagnostic powers.

It takes a while to get help, but I am patient and drop a few snide comments about the folks he has to deal with. I am rewarded, an hour later, with a new Ipod and his cynical smile. "I don't want to know what happened to this." I sign papers, I back up my hard drive and feel rewarded for the patience that all of those middle aged men with a whole lot of nothing to say. Still, if someone else asks me if the "French red from the Rhone" I offered them is from France, I will be irate.

I hate the mall.

I don't buy things, I buy food and wine and sometimes a cocktail. I buy time with friends out. I do not own things. So I bought an Ipod Nano 2 weeks ago. It let me listen to Social Distortion on the scooter and drowned out the honking cars as I zoomed past. Same day as the "Sopping" post I was running late for an interview with seven layers of wet things on my person before I had to hit the shower. Pat pockets, layers in the drier. I am now sitting in the mall trying to convince someone else to get me off the hook for the idiocy of trashing my little piece of digital love by forgetting it in a jacket pocket. There are people here that you would never see anywhere else in the world. They are beautiful and prim and buying buckets of technology. It is raining out, my meter is about to expire and I really hope they give me a new Nano. More to come.

Flash II

Two weeks and a year ago, to the day, I was where I am in the picture.

Today, steam rising from manhole covers in Portland means it is cold. Frost on windows means it is cold. Sopping wet gloves knuckling under and freezing means it is cold at least by these standards. It is a dry cold and my five layers to keep out rain mean that I am warm and dry. The corner from Morrison to MLK lets me know to drive slow out of the slide that ensuse.

I don't care about the rest of the day. Felluga Mollamata, a blend of typical Friulian varieties, tasted like blown leaves and tires that held together and did their best on corners. It smelled like petrol and pineapples the way the corner near Burgerville near the convention center did when I got held up by a light. It is Italian German. It is what I like in wine: crisp, precise, talkative and intelligent.

I don't care about the rest of the day. A conversation with my father that felt like an appreciated belch at the Thanksgiving table.

I don't care about the rest of the day. A mantra now with pizza, porcini and pomodoro.

I don't care about the rest of the day. Soundtrack and layout. Finding music for a place and placing words and images.

My name is Jeffrey Jassmond and I was either grown in the shade or the sun. My skin is dry and a new day comes tomorrow, despite the frost.

Flash.

Late breaking news seems to indicate Nostrana has switched from Ivory to Dawn dishwashing soap, a move that, as a former manager makes financial sense to me. However, said change leaves me, as a dishwashing consultant, with dishpan-typing-hands.

The change only inspired me to rock the pots a little harder, trying to beat the last table out of the restaurant. There are two ways this could be read: I was making a ruckus that could be heard at their table, but what I meant was that I wanted to get the hell out as quick as possible, proving my worth to the kitchen. The latter did not happen because no one told me Sunday was deep clean day (though I should have guessed.) All the dishes are done, one cutting board, sheet pan, and then my station to clean, when the hood vents come back. Hood vents are the pieces that filter grease through vent system. They are disgusting little creatures that cut your knuckles and reek of everything bad cooked away that night. Most restaurants clean their vents once a week. Open kitchen restaurants, especially ones that have wood smoke streaming through their vents, need to be a little more aware of the eyes of their guests.

Nostrana cleans the vents above the rotisserie every day, and it is a minor inconvenience to a skilled dishy such as me, but another sign of the attention to detail they are cultivating. The problem is that tonight they also sent me the sauteé line vents, doubling (at least) the time to finish. These vents also smell nothing like woodsmoke and everything like a week of everything bad that left the food that folks pay a kitchen to take away for them. My stomach is rocks and gravel from a bad place, but the job is done by 1.

And to close: if you go to a wine store and ask questions, please take the time to hear the answer you are given. You may agree or disagree, you may speak back. Please do so intelligently and in turn. The person answering your question may still be sopping wet from the dish-pit, the rain, or both, and they may very well have dishpan hands. Don't earn their ire.

Sopping.

I used to forget how wet it gets here. You take on this “Oh it’s not so bad” mentality to make you think you are better than Californians, to make you feel like it was a good choice choosing here. I don’t want to be anywhere else, but let’s be realisitic. It is wet. It is windy, and being on a scooter in those conditions is less fun then it might be the rest of the year. Compound that with a suicidal squirrel that somehow manages to find itself under both of my tires, and you have what is definitely a startling experience: you have two tires to your name and both of them are dealing with the reality of a squealing, wet little rodent providing a bump bump. Add to that a fogged helmet, wet leaves and puddles of water popping up in the ten feet to apply the breaks and you are looking at where you just came from, a neat 180 of squirrel behind you.

I have run over animals in a car before, but doing so on a scooter makes you rethink the same like visiting a slaughter house makes you rethink having a butcher. It also makes me want to calculate the odds that that little guy was absolutely meant to die at some point during the day. I say a prayer, take off my headphones and realize there is water in the gas tank as I try to throttle away. Putt-stutter-putt. Don’t squirrels hibernate this time of year?

Exercises to relax:

Looking up images of Folled bales of hay and trying to figure the math.

Reading a piece written by a current Reedie on the audience for Family Circus.

Drinking Chateauneuf du Pape and watching Star Wars.

Imagining falling at something less than 9.8 m/s squared.

Imaging that this, or any city, can eradicate homelessness.

Looking at a puddle of fetid water to smell what washed down the hill.

In closing: I always think of Cobb when I remember this Koan, or story, or whatever it turns out it might be:

Two monks live on a mountain, one a distance below the other. Downstream monk is feeling cocksure and all meditative. She sees a leaf of lettuce in the stream as she embraces being divine.

“Sign of a wasteful being” she thinks to the rhythm of the pounding steps of upstream monk coming to dive face-first, save-your-head-from-fire, i-miss-my-lettuce-leaf into the water. I imagine, in my hope, that upstream monk caught a salmon, or a rainbow trout in his teeth, the leaf secured in some other clutch. These are all trappings. I Feel like a drowned monk.