Update On the Vin

Well, I wrote Vin De Set, sending them a slightly condensed edition of the previous post. I didn't hear back from Ivy or Elizabeth, but Jason wrote me back, then we talked on the phone. He said that he remembered me (we road up in the elevator together), and that I seemed like a "pleasant person." Which I suppose is to say that in spite of my whiny letter I didn't seem at first glance to him to be a raving bitch. At any rate, he was nice, and acknowledged that they have some problems with being prepared at start time. In all fairness, it turns out that the night of my visit was the first open patio night, so they were stressed. And, he said the bar and dining hours are listed separately on the door. Guess I missed that. Alas, he didn't offer me a comp appetizer or drink, which, being the (reluctant) American I am would have gone a long way toward healing my broken heart. Oh, well. Sometimes I'm just grateful when people are nice to me. Sort of.

Vin De Set Leaves Me Lonely

Yes, I know I’m behind in the soufflé project. It’s been two weeks and I haven’t had the moment to go again. Apologies. And now baseball season is coming and I’ll barely have time to sleep. We’ll just have to see how it goes. It may be fall before I re-embark. In the interim I have the Amish Friendship Bread that Baby Ox gave me, and it should be fun to play with. I’ll report.

Meanwhile, I have another kind of food rant.

I went to Vin De Set on Saturday afternoon for a bite and a glass of wine, and was severely disappointed by the service, which is unfortunate, given the restaurant’s reputation and, well, resources.

The posted hours said they opened 4:00, and I showed up around 4:20. The hostess would not seat me in the rooftop “dining section,” but instead tried to seat me in the bar. One cannot see the celebrated view from the bar, so I took a stool seat in the bar’s patio section, even though it was more in the glaring late afternoon sun than I wished. I asked her, the hostess, if she was expecting all the rooftop dining room tables to be filled within the next half hour (there have to be 20 of those) and she said with conviction, “Yes, we’ve been getting calls all day.” I hesitated. I really didn’t want to sit in the bar area. She just stood there. She seemed a little exasperated. She clearly didn’t care at all to try to make me happy. “Oh, I don’t know if I want to stay…,” I said. But I was going to a play later and really didn’t want to make a drive elsewhere. Finally, I just sat at the least sunny table, and waited to see how fast the dining section filled up.

The wait staff was so busy setting up for dinner that it was easy for them to overlook us bar flies, over in the ghetto section. They were clearly dedicated to getting things right over in dining, which is of course a good thing, but to the neglect of those of us already there? OK. But my waiter didn’t even know the appetizer special when I asked, and had to go ask the chef. Clearly, even though the door said they opened at 4:00, they weren’t ready at 4:00. Why? Why could the door not say, “Bar open at 4:00, Dining at 5:00?”

No one came in at all until 5:17. This means I could have had an hour to eat, nearly. At 5:31 a 4-top and 8-top were filled; by 5:35, another 4-top. By then I had lingered over my sirloin burger and Pinot Noir as long as I need, considering the less than great time I was having, and guess what? All the other tables were still empty. Only three were inhabited. I really took this as a slap in the face. Was my business not important enough for me to be treated well? Hadn’t the hostess told me quite clearly that all the tables would be full within half an hour? I’ve been in Vin De Set with other people and received excellent service, even late at night. This was my first excursion there alone. Disappointed.

Perhaps relevant is that I’ve had semi-similar experience at the sister restaurant, 1111 Mississippi. If I go in early (though during the posted open hours) the staff is not ready to serve me. There, I usually do sit at the bar, because I like the bar staff, and it’s friendly down there (though lately there’s been more cigarette smoke than I can take). But still, if we’re open, shouldn’t we be fully open?

I’ve done a bit of solo, drop-in dining in Manhattan, and have not encountered this ghettoization. Even at Babbo, though I had to take a seat at the bar, the service was great and I was made to feel fully included in the little community that is that restaurant. Yes, that is it – at Vin de Set, dining alone, refused one of the several empty tables in the “proper” dining section, I felt, well, alone and unattended. Is this what Ivy means to do?

Relevantly, on Friday I had recommended the restaurant to a colleague at work, and he took his wife. He said they were seated in the bar as well, and had a very hard time getting someone to wait on them. He finally had to go off on foot in search of a waiter. I asked him if he was offered a complimentary treat, and he answered in the negative.

I will say that the pomme frites with garlic butter dipping sauce were grand – what could be more decadent? And I liked the construction of the burger, with it’s béchamel-ish interior/exterior painted on and the mysteriously flavored fried onion topping. It’s just that, well, I don’t like to feel sad when I’m dining alone. I go out alone to dine so that I can feel more a part of something than I feel eating home alone. Vin De Set definitely did not provide that feeling for me. Given the genre it aspires to, it should. Maybe they need a dedicated bar wait staff, instead of asking the rushed and frantic dining waiters to try to manage the bar diners while also setting up for dinner? Maybe they should somehow really be ready to serve when they open? Maybe, when service does fall short they could consider trying to make up for it somehow? Can anyone say amuse bouche?

Creatures Reified

Uncanny. Planning a poetry reading for the upcoming Lafayette Square Spring House Tour, and Her Grace sends me a link to Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market," as we were brainstorming about the reading in the InteliPub on the 17th. How close is this to my Creatures post of yesterday? Wow.

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/gobmarket.html

Also, plans for Art4Emancipation are coming right along! I just secured my friend Jeanette, who is a Missouri State Rep, for one of our judges. How about that? A mix of artists and politicians? I like it.

http://art4emancipation.blogspot.com/

But What Bird, Innocence?

We were at The Royale, an odd little InteliPub (you know, one of those places the liquored intelligencia seem to hang) on St. Pat’s Day, trying to listen to Americans read the Irish Greats (Joyce, et. al.) over the din of tipsy loud voices, when, through a silly little chain of events not worth the typing, a younger-than-I gentleman had couriered to me a note that read, “Roses are Red/Violets are blue/if Irish stands for beauty/then St. Patrick’s day is you."

Well. That’s nice. Left to my own judgment I would have simply smiled at him and considered it as skeptically as I consider most other human male sexual behavior. However, through the younger and less ennui-tainted nearness of the Darling Duchess, the look on her face, her proclamation that these gestures are grand and that the man obviously had more substance than one’s usual barfly, I decided to tell him Thank You for the little ray of sunshine. Our Duchess thought that some of my utterances to her privately regarding the note’s author were slightly less grateful than they should be, and I felt appropriately bad about it. I was, again, skeptical of the intention, but decided to take it as a compliment that my middle age could receive graciously but without obligation, and leave to meet Metal Ox for the symphony at the appointed moment.

Sadly, for one always feel sad when innocence is betrayed, once I left The Royale and The Duchess got to talking with Damion and his male companion, things were altered. The Esteemed Poet not only began to hit on Our Lovely Duchess Poet, but proceeded therewith to inform her he’d actually written the note for her, not me.

To Her Grace’s credit she did not believe him.

Still, we are sad for her glimpse into the world in which one cannot take much of what one sees and hears from certain humans at face value. It was interesting to me, quite, though, to see this innocence in action. It was like seeing an extinct birdlet emerge from a lake. The surface breaks, a shape forms and rises, takes flight, its shape informs nothing in the patterns recognizable to one’s brain save maybe wings and feet, and then, “Oh my God, it’s a bird.” But what bird? Innocence?

To turn it, innocence doesn’t recognize that other Creature, the one emerging from the tree line on the shore. The one that wants the bird for dinner. Doesn’t care if it may be the last bird of its species alive. The creature, Wolf perhaps or something like him, is hungry, and that’s all he knows.

Maybe this is where the fairies went. Or why they hide. For over and over from the woods comes the howling, Trust me. Trust me. Why don’t you just trust me? and then the laughter or ridicule from the Creatures themselves when the bird does trust. Couldn’t you tell I/he wanted to eat you? Stupid. This is the twisted heart. This is the mix of this assertion and that assertion that only the strongest and clearest of women can survive -- intact.

For there is the more common reaction: women who shut down their hearts entirely and become Creatures themselves. It’s like becoming a mercenary to fight the mercenaries. It’s the opposite of what Gandhi taught. It’s fighting violence with violence, fire with fire. Identifying with the abusers. Becoming the abuser to avoid the pain of the abuse. So women, girls, close their hearts and proceed to behave as they are treated, loosely and callously, and lose their true selves in the process. This is not to say that all men are loose and callous. It is to say that they appear for whatever reason to be able to disconnect their hearts from their genitals, for the pursuit of sex is part of their hunting instinct, and few of them have risen out of their animal natures. It is not progress, then, for women to behave as men do in this; to have sex without heart. It is, rather, a slip backwards in evolution -- becoming animal because the animal (The Creature, Male) gets more power and money and privilege and general validation than The Bird. Where maleness is considered the standard and womanness The Other, those who are participating in this belief will emulate the standard and distance themselves from The Other. Duh. So, no, I don't think random or loveless sex is progress for women. No more than I think young girls giving blow jobs on school buses is progress. Both are just evidence humans can be callous and animal like, and that women will identify with and pander to the power group if need be. Both are sanctioned by participating men becuase, why not? it gets them more variety of sex partners, though for women it's a compromise of their true power and beauty. This is not to say I have a prescription for who should be having sex with whom! It is to say, simply, that it would be better for the human race where we all to behave with more heart instead of less, and become more full of heart in our sex and pursuit of sex. That we all my benefit for greater awareness of ourselves and our true motivations, and that we look deeply into the eyes of anyone we are considering meeting with in such a profound way, and recognizing who that human truly is before we enter their vulnerable selves -- even, and maybe even especially, when that person is pretending invulnerability. Imagine if it became the norm to see sexual interaction as a sacred trust between two people? If we really had to see one another, really. Rape and slavery and eventually, even war (for war is a similar dehumanizing animal passion gone out of control) would just die away. If persons were no longer objects. No longer targets for sex. Or shooting. Or bombs. Violence would just... Simply. Vanish. Rape and slavery and eventually, even war (for it is a similar animal passion gone out of control) would just die away. Just. Simply. Vanish.

I must have done this to some extent myself, right, or I would have shown innocence rather than skepticism at the note? Or not. Maybe it’s possible to have the knowledge, but not become the pattern. At any rate, that is my challenge. The breathing through that temptation toward becoming the inflicter in order to avoid being inflicted upon. Indeed, the breathing through these temptations to be ungenerous or angry. Or even flippant, which I may have been in the case of the poem.

And so we are sad for the little bird. And happy for it, too. It swooped away from The Creature. But is it the same little bird, now? Our prayer for it is that the next man it meets is the only man it ever needs, and that man is Trustworthy. For to live one’s life long with that fine bird alive in one’s heart may be a very great thing indeed, for one’s heart. Would that innocence were never broken. Seriously. Can there be that much kindness in a world of humans? To never break innocence? Is it way too innocent even to hope for such a thing?

As an offer to the Gods of Men, to appease my dear Men Friends and Lover, to prove that in spite of Creatures I still love all humankind equally, scroll down to the video link below to see a lovely man do something awesome on the fiddle.

To be, or not to be.

I don’t know why I have such trouble following through on things.

Yes I do. Fear of failure.

I swore I would apply to the Wash U MSW program, even went to a meeting, then to a campus visit. The whole thing looks sublime. They have a part time evening program and tons of scholarship money. But the deadline has passed and I did not apply.

My writing career has gone no where because I almost never submit anything for publication. I have nearly as much unpublished work as Emily Dickinson had when she faded off into her father’s eastern garden. I’m not kidding. Unfortunately, it is not under my bed nor in my wardrobe; it does not sit romantically in boxes waiting for my non-existent sister to find and publish when I die. It lives on various hard drives and inaccessible blogs that no one will want to sort through when I go, even if they can find them.

This all really bums me out. It’s like I can’t sustain the energy it takes to get through the fear. I made the album when I was going out with Kevin, I think, in large part because he kept telling me, over and over, “I believe in your art, Margaret. I believe in your art.” It was like having a patron, even if he didn’t give me money. Imagine Beethoven without encouragement. Tchaikovsky. I don’t know, maybe that’s lame. They would have written their music, but would it have been heard? What if all of Van Gogh’s paintings had lived on his hard drive, which was thrown away when he died? No one bought crap from him while he was alive.

Excuses!

Anyway, all this is a lead in to my desire to muse about how several people over several years but more so lately have suggested to me that I should perhaps do some personal cheffing. I want to. This sounds fun, and hard, and scary. But less scary than endlessly sending poems around until one of 100 gets taken and eventually there are enough published for a book. But I’m afraid that once I put it out there I will jinx it, ‘cause what have I ever finished since my MFA thesis? I mean, besides stuff I do at work?

Oh, ya, and what’s all this stuff about “The Secret?” Is this more New Age positive thinking crap? Is this more blaming the poor for not envisioning their wealth, the ill for not envisioning their wholeness? Or is there something more to it? Is there anything I want to do that I really believe I can do? I hate being so frail in this, but the truth is I wish I had someone telling me often and often that they believed in my art. Is that just too pitiful? Should I try it? Or not? Argh….

Eensy Little Soufflé Update

You can see it on the left, soufflé iteration number two. Clearly, it’s risen. But not in the way one wants. This is such a strange science. Why would the thing rise on the edges for Julia and in the center for me? What entices a soufflé to rise where one wants it to rise? This is even more difficult than love.

Still, it did rise. Here’s what I did differently:

1. I did not open a bottle of wine just before beating the egg whites.

2. I folded the whites into the yolk mixture, but just barely. In number one I was quite gentle, but I folded until the mixture was more or less all yellow. This time I left large patches of almost-white. This did not seem to affect the consistency of the soufflé when I served it (to me).

3. I cooked it a bit longer. The absence of wine benefited my sense of timing.

4. I did fold some cheese into this one. Number one got a sauce on the side because I forgot the cheese (again, wine).

I don’t know if the cheese helped this one rise, but without doubt the soufflé with the sauce was yummier!

So, even though we do have some rising here, we must wait for the proper sort of rising around the edges before we count a soufflé as one of The Three.

Kill the Princess*?

Well, I’ve asked Metal Ox to do my finances for me. I am awful at it. Left on my own I am constantly in the hole. It makes no difference the relative amount of money I’m making, I just don’t seem to manage it.

Metal Ox is doing a wonderful job. He is a wizard. And, it’s not easy. It takes time and energy. And talking to me about money, which is a little bit like trying to talk to an engineer about poetry (which I’ve tried severally, and sad).

At any rate, last night we were driving home from my mom’s and discussing. I had found a pair of $325 Italian brown suede boots, with a nice heal, but comfortable for walking (come on!) on sale for $52, counting tax. It wasn’t that he thought I shouldn’t have bought them (during this, my financial recovery period), it was that he was trying to get through some idea about making choices between things. Like boots and sending my daughter abroad as a graduation present. Apparently I can’t afford both. Nor, it seems, can I afford even a monthly fine dining experience and sending Daughter abroad. I can’t? Wow. I know that he’s not fooling, but it’s just that, well, it’s hard to explain my feeling: a world wherein I can’t have even a monthly fabulous dinner out? Really? I mean, I gladly forewent such when my children were young and sacrifices were necessary in order to stay home with them and blah blah blah. That was fine. But now? I work all day! In clothes! I mean, not in pajamas, like I did when I was being an adjunct professor and mostly working at home. OK, yes, we’re just talking about the short term future during which I need to save up for Daughter’s trip. But still! As I tried to explain this feeling to him, the importance of the monthly fine dining, boots, and daughters, he finally sprang out, “You just have to kill That Princess!! That Princess has to die!”

“She can be trained!”

“No.” He was skeptical?

I thought of the shadow, the Jungian one. How Former Therapist had said to me many years ago the thing about having the shadow in for tea. How one doesn’t kill the shadow, because the shadow is part of one's self. One brings the shadow in and makes friends with it.

I don’t think of my princess self as shadow, though I suppose she has aspects of that, for her intention isn’t always to forward my well-being. She is a bit selfish, easily distracted by shiny objects -- or more accurately, usually, enticing aromas. She gets me into all sorts of trouble with her ugly sense of entitlement. She is, I suppose, I mean maybe she is? something of a saboteur.

But she’s improved herself over the years. Really. She recognizes the futility and masturbatory silliness of existential despair, and won’t let herself fall into it when persons don’t respond to her needs the way she’d like. She now realizes that persons are autonomous, and may be ignoring her because they’re busy, not because they wish her to suffer, or are indifferent to her suffering. This is a lot for a princess. Especially for That Princess.

Gads. How can I kill her off now? How would I do it? Guillotine? Chopping block? Poison? Anyway, I am opposed to capital punishment on ethical grounds. Any exception is corruption, and must be resisted. Integration is everything. And anyhow, I don’t know that M.O. would love me quite the same without her. I’m pretty sure I see responses of endearment at some of her, well, non-monetary manifestations. So, my task is to let her live, but she can't cause trouble. She has to do what Marie Antoinette never did. She has to be more like Elizabeth I. Or even II. She must be a Practical Princess. She must schedule state dinners only when the coffers can support them. And M.O.? He will come to trust her over time. Hmmm... maybe it's time for her to grow into a Queen?

So, Princess, Metal Ox; Metal Ox, Princess. A bow. A curtsy. Her hand. His kiss. Work it out.

*I am not referring to the Princess of the previous post (who will henceforth be refered to as Stormierbones, her blog name). I am referring to the princess that lives inside me.