Life: January 2004 Archives
New Year's Eve was conducted about fifty paces from home, at our neighbors' house. About 10 of us crowded around a large, wondrously set dining table. A bottle of good red wine at either end through the whole affair. Our hosts--Arnie and Christy--worked like professional restauranteurs all evening. But they were in their element!
There were Cornish game hens (two dozen of them!) plus two sea bass dishes for Ann & me, since we don't eat the Standard Meats. Out came bowls of wild rice and steamed asparagus and something with pearled onions. At one point a luscious potato-leek soup. And baguettes of bread. We closed with a chocolate souffle under a sugar-butter sauce that one shouldn't eat except on one's death bed or as a last meal request prior to execution. It was that sinfully good. And then of course coffee--not just any coffee, but cappucinos and espressos, all the hand-made varieties.
Conversation veered from one topic to another, as it always does. I wonder whether a cultural theorist has ever studied the ebb and flow of dinner conversation around large tables at special events? One might begin scientifically by cataloguing the assorted topics: literature & film, work & play, travel experiences & destinations, fashion (i.e., what we were wearing that evening--I chose a black suit, open-collared tuxedo shirt, and my once-a-year black-and-white suede Hush Puppies, which generated considerable conversation, as intended. Ann was elegant and beautiful, also all in black, as is her custom.), vocations and avocations. Standard dinner table material.
Eventually, someone asked about my writing, with the typical question, "Are you a poet?" I hesitated, so Ann replied quickly in the affirmative. This sort of thing always makes me nervous, since often the next question is "What kind of poetry do you write?" And I am nervous because I've too many times embarrassed myself or completely mangled an answer. These friends may count themselves among the intelligentsia, but they'd stop short of describing themselves as the literati. They are bright, thinking people who don't read poems, as a rule, and so wouldn't actually think about language as the material cause of verbal art, or about a poem as a verbal artifact.
So I steered the subject toward blogging, which most had at least heard of. I described my experiences here and the delicious newness of the medium for me. Some of course want to visit to see what all this stuff is about, which I guess is okay. (I'm still experimenting with blog etiquette.) This too was probably a weak choice as I am hardly equipped to answer the technical questions that ensued. I was throwing "URL" around like I knew what I was talking about!
