Soon enough the sun set and I was drinking mezcal and chatting with those who showed up. Professor, childhood friend, writer, painter. The meal began, and the food was eaten. There were barnacles in brine and mezcal worms. The beans were great. Stephen and I agreed on a perfect done-ness of the beans even though he called himself “Mr. Al Dente”.
I opened the performances by saying grace. I brought a plastic bag full of pine cones to invoke Dionysus. Here is what I read:
I would like to invoke Dionysus, the God of religious ecstasy, theatre and ritual madness. He was known to carry with him a pine-cone-tipped-honey-dipped-fennel-stem sceptre, drinking cup, and an ivy crown. From her book “Pagan Grace”, Ginette Paris writes: Since Dionysus brings intensity, life without him is a bore and psychosomatic research has confirmed what the maenads knew a long time ago: boredom and repression can kill you! Dionysus won’t stand for us being governed only by the light of reason and everyday awareness: then he becomes the vengeful ‘bringer of madness’. In ancient Greece, the Dionysian festivals were associated with feasts. A legend of frenzied women in Dionysus’ cortege has them tumbling down mountains catching animals and devouring them raw.
In the spirit of ancient, sacred, ritualized hedonism, I have three graces for this meal.
A Buddhist grace: In this plate, I see the entire universe coming together to support my existence.
A reddit grace: Over the teeth and through the gums, look out stomach, here it comes. Yay God!
Dionysus grace: EAT, DRINK, AND BE MAD!
Tara sang haunting and hypnotic incantations. Zack Darsee and Elisee Houcek read from their new book, From The Pocket of Agent Dickenson. Then they screened seven videos of the “recipes” being assembled. Pinto sheaths. Infant in martini glass with soaked bread. Lots of gloved handwork. As usual, I was laughing loudly in the crowd and hoping my laughter came off as I experienced it: with reverence. Sebastian, S.Maria then played a smashing set. I was spiritually moved, I was the guy at the show who was dancing and swaying whilst everyone stood still. I couldn’t help it.
To conclude the night, I read the final paragraph of The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.
Alice B. Toklas first published the cookbook in 1954 to make up for her “unwillingness at the time to write her memoirs, in deference to Gertrude Stein’s 1933 book: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.”
“Our final definite leaving of the garden came one cold winter day, all too appropriate to our feelings and the state of the world. A sudden moment of sunshine peopled the gardens with all the friends and others who had passed through them. Ah, there would be another garden, the same friends, possibly, or no, probably new ones, and there would be other stories to tell and to hear. And so we left Bilignin, never to return. And now it amuses me to remember that the only confidence I ever gave was given twice, in the upper garden, to two friends. The first one gaily responded ‘how very amusing’. The other asked with no little alarm, but Alice, have you ever tried to write. As if a cookbook had anything to do with writing.”