Archive for August, 2006
(Val Prieto, high priest of Cuban American non-identity, with the gun he’d like to use to shoot me. Hmm…what IS he doing with that left hand…?)
I LOVE this Leonard Pitts column!
I’ll tell you where I’ll be on the morning after: Here at my desk, writing novels and scripts, calling my friends on the phone, jogging my usual route, picking my kid up at school, cooking in my wonderful kitchen, browsing galleries in Santa Fe, reading books, gardening - in other words, living my life exactly as before.
My life, in short, won’t change at all - because I have never defined my life around hatred for someone or something. It’s not sensible. It’s not healthy. It’s not SANE.
Me? My life is lived in the present, not in the past and future as is the case with the sad majority of Cuban exiles in Miami. My life is here, now, and wonderful, and it has nothing - you hear me, nothing! - to do with Cuba.
I hope to GOD Castro dies. See, I can’t wait to see what happens to people like Val Prieto minus Castro. What the hell are they going to do with themselves if they can’t spend 14 hours a day obsessing on Castro and the other 10 obsessing on me? What will they do if they can’t spend hours a day photoshopping Che Guevara’s head on a platter, or making fake videos where someone pushes Castro to the ground? What will they do when they can’t waste their days doing shit like this? They will cease to exist to themselves without their indentifying TARGET.
Is it any surprise, given this group’s self-abdicating culture of negative identity (I hate [fill in blank] therefore I exist only as NOT [fill in blank]) that my Miami stalker would choose to call themselves the NOT me? They have spent their entire LIVES being NOT CASTRO. They don’t know how to exist in the affirmative.
Sad as hell.
Don’t they realize their nonstop obsession with “Cuba BC” and Fidel Castro (or me…?) does nothing but undermine their own humanity all the while validating the object of their hatred as much, much more powerful than THEMSELVES?
Sigh.
Better to spend your energy developing yourself as a layered, interesting human being, I say, in the world in which you actually reside. Bitterness breeds reverse compliance.
It’s like teenagers who think they’re being cool and “independent” by doing things their parents think are bad; they are still, whether they like it or not, centering their very lives around their parents’ rules, even if to break them. They are still living under their parents’ thumbs.
Best to think critically about things, and make your own rules. Better to live your own life with yourself as your only reference point.
Ironically, Pitts failed to note that this identity based upon hatred goes both ways with Cubans. In Cuba, Castro has been able to maintain power by constantly scaring the shit out of his people with the threat of a Yankee Boogeyman. Here, Cuban exiles have failed to assimilate to the world in which they’ve lived for more than 40 years by obsessing on Fidel.
The morning after will be interesting, and, one imagines, oddly quiet. I can just see it now. Castro dead, Val Prieto changes his nationality to Venezuelan, just so he can draw pictures of Hugo Chavez as a pimp for the rest of his days. He can become the NOT Hugo Chavez.
Otherwise, he’d have no identity at all.
My friend Ross had us over to dinner a couple nights back and his girlfriend Karen breezily whipped up an impromptu feast for six of us in not much more than an hour, including dessert. And what a dessert it was. A fantastic shortcake crowned with perfect little gems of summer fruit glistening with a honey-and-champagne syrupy glaze.
There were a couple things that made this shortcake special though. The shortcake biscuits were on the salty side, a perfect foil for the sweet ice-cream and honey tossed fruit. She also took care to cut the fruit into tiny wedges allowing you to taste a medley of stone fruits and figs all in one reasonably sized bite. Each piece was perhaps an inch in length with the backbone of the wedge no wider than 1/2 an inch.
This is my remake of a terrific summer shortcake, but before you get started be sure to read the recipe headnotes.
Me, Ross, and a mug of beer at a wedding in Mexico last year.
mainimage=summershortcakes.jpg
Champagne Summer Shortcakes
You can use all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, white whole wheat flour, or a blend - 2 cups total. Karen’s were all-purpose based and they were lighter in color and had a less dense crumb. I wanted to try the white whole wheat flour and they turned out tasty as well, just not as signature looking. She did a drop biscuit, I rolled and stamped. You can do either.
Use the best, most flavorful fruit you can find. The ice cream and shortcakes are really just a stage to show of the wonderful plums, figs, nectarines, and peaches of the season. Feel free to mix and match your favorites. No frozen fruit.
Shortcakes:
2 cups flour (all-purpose, whole wheat pastry, or white whole wheat)
3/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 stick of organic, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch chunks
1/4 cup granulated sugar
a scant 1 cup organic milk
1 egg white
A bit of coarse sea saltHoney-champagne syrup:
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup champagne (alternately, sparkling water or just water)Summer fruit:
- I used a mix of tiny black mission figs, black pluots, and yellow nectarines. Sliced into tiny wedges. Figure on about 1/2 cup of fruit per shortcake.a pint of top notch vanilla ice cream (I used Laloo’s goat milk ice cream)
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Make the shortcakes: Sift the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar into a large bowl or food processor. Using a pastry cutter or 25 quick pulses of the food processor, blend until the mixture resembles tiny, sandy pebbles. If you are using a food processor transfer the mixture to a big bowl and using a fork stir in the milk until just combined.
Either drop directly onto a parchment-lined baking sheet (like drop biscuits), or turn the dough out onto a floured countertop, knead just once or twice to bring the dough together, roll out 3/4-inch thick and stamp with 1 1/2-inch biscuit cutter. Brush each shortcake with egg white and sprinkle with just a bit of coarse sea salt (and a bit more sugar if you like). Bake on the middle rack for about 12 minutes.
Make the syrup:Put the honey and sugar in a small saucepan over low heat and stir until the honey loosens up and the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and whisk in the champagne. Toss the fruit wedges in the syrup.
To serve: Split each shortcake open and top with a scoop of fruit and a dollop of ice cream.
Makes about 12 medium-sized shortcakes.
Last night, Red Beard and I went drinking with some friends. (I did really well with my plan of Not Drinking last night by having five glasses of wine.) There was a couple at the bar I’ve known for a while who are getting married in October. I met the male of the couple through Julie several years ago, and although I’m not close to him, I’ve seen him at social occasions several times over the years. Red Beard is one of the groomsmen in the wedding, and he’s taking a golfing trip in early September for the bachelor party.
Red Beard and I chatted with the couple and they showed us pictures of this gorgeous leather couch and huge flat screen TV that are their current objects of affection and debt. They left early because they were tired, and no one gave them a hard time because they live kind of far away. So after they left, I said something to Red Beard about their upcoming wedding. And he was like, “Rrrriiiiiiight. About that … when I was golfing with the guys on Sunday, he told me that they have to limit the number of guests they have coming to the wedding, and so I’m not allowed to have a plus one.”
Me: “Wait … so you’re telling me that I’m not invited to the wedding?”
Him: “Yeah, I guess I can’t bring a guest, but maybe if enough people decline, then they’ll let me.”
Me: [blinking back tears.]
Him: “You wanna go home now?”
Me: “YES.”
I was raging all the way home. I said, “I understand that the best man not only doesn’t have a girlfriend, but he’s in the worst dry spell of his life. It makes sense for him to not be invited to bring a date because it would be some random chick, if he could scrounge one up right now. You however, have a LIVE-IN PARTNER. What am I supposed to do, adjust your bow tie on the wedding day and tell you to have fun while I sit at home in my bathrobe and wait for you to stop hanging out with all of our friends at this wedding??? Our Thursday night happy hours are gong to be good and awkward, since I will be the only one there who isn’t invited. I can’t wait until after the wedding when everyone else talks about it and I WASN’T THERE.”
We rode the rest of the way home in silence, and then when we got in the door, Red Beard sat down on the bed and grabbed me and hugged me. Then of course I totally lost it and started crying. So he said, “This is bullshit, I’m not going to this wedding if you can’t come. I can’t believe I didn’t freak out on him before; I should have told him that you’re important to me and I won’t stand for this. You’re going to be around a lot longer than he ever will be. I can’t believe a friend of mine would do something to hurt you. I’m going to straighten this out tomorrow. I’m going to tell him that if you can’t go, then I can’t either.”
The knowledge that my man has my back and will stick up for me certainly helped stop the tears. I told him, “Well, maybe we should think of a diplomatic way to handle it.”
Him: “No diplomacy. I’m just going to lay it out for him.”
Me: “We should probably wait for the invitation first, just in case. It’ll probably arrive this weekend.” He agreed.
Julie called me this morning to discuss the issue. She’s invited to the wedding, and her husband is also one of the groomsmen. She’s pissed. She went on about how they are disrespecting mine and Red Beard’s relationship by insinuating that it’s not important and it won’t last, they are dissing me as a person by excluding me, and this whole scenario is just wrong and it sucks. She told me her hubby said he would be mighty angry if he were Red Beard, and there’s no way he would go to the wedding unless they repented and sent an invite to his significant other. Julie sent an email to Red Beard today telling him that he has every right to tell those two buffoons to go f*** themselves.
What a pain in the ass. Even if this gets resolved, there’s bad blood. I’ll know that they didn’t intend to have me there. Still, hopefully Red Beard’s, “Invite her or I’m out,” will work. If they make it right, I’m far more likely to forgive and all will be well in the end. And if it doesn’t get resolved and I’m ultimately left uninvited — it’s war. Now here is a situation where hatred is constructive.
