The In-N-Out Burger “secret menu” is anything but. However, some fast food restaurants have done a better job at maintaining their honor and keeping their lips sealed. In this piece, I conduct an investigative report.
Spring is here. And so are burgers, sea gods, and tridents, as the author takes liberties with Wordsworth.
1. It is early morning, the light gathering indistinct at the window, but breaking open, above the buildings. Scooping down into the dark secret of the ceramic cannister, and fishing up the beans–the sudden violent sound of the grinder, in the kitchen. Into the paper funnel, and the water reaching boiling on the stove, comes to join them. Brown, you think. The rising exhalation is deep and brown.
This morning, I wished for a cabin in North Carolina, an anchorite’s hole, a Pilgrim At Tinker Creek mind space where the chatter would cease. And our internet connection got shut off.
In Fisherman’s Spring, Roderick L. Haig-Brown writes, “In a world of great and varied beauty, nothing is more beautiful than water, especially moving water. I am aware of the beauty of water frozen into glaciers and icebergs, their immensity and power and the glorious light that the sun can summon from them. I have again and again admired the breathless early morning calm on lakes large and small and the reflection of the hills about them. The power of the ocean storms and the glory of ocean surf in sunlight have a magnificence beyond almost anything. Besides these splendors, the intimacy of a fisherman’s river may seem a slight thing. Yet I think that flowing water in all its forms is most beautiful of all.”
Dear Rennie,
Every year, Mabel Bywater hosts this insufferable garden party to mark the beginning of spring. She insists on shipping a pair of ‘period dress appropriate’ bloomers along with each invitation, and this year, between the advanced honey badger threat, and my best dress being one that’s cut close to the knee, I just don’t see the sense in wearing them. I’m going with pants.
But, what should I bring for a covered dish? I can only make so many decisions surrounding this thing. Your advice would be most appreciated.
Sincerely Yours,
Knees Not Out Today Thanks in Yonkers
Fecund verse, the nature of germination, life itself.
I had always wondered what might be a lethal dose of coffee, until I met aforementioned sound man/coffee aficionado Jeremy Lemos. Last year I had the privilege of going on a world tour with Jeremy and the band & crew of Pavement. Everything about that tour was marvelous, including Jeremy’s almost obsessive scavenger-hunt-like perseverance to take anyone willing to tag along to the best competition grade coffee shops around the globe. Now, like the vegetarian thing, I have to qualify myself; I am not a “coffee person,” but I have been drinking it every morning since I was 11 years old. (Sorry Mom.)
The author’s ode to a dying fridge, by way of Edgar Allan Poe.
Ripe verse from poet Ileanna Portillo.