Yuletide unofficial chat

This short story wasn’t to any markets’ taste, but I think it’s a meal you may enjoy.

You’ve probably found when looking into the gaping, dripping maw of an ancient beast of the sea that there’s a moment where your fear is so powerful you can feel your self split, groping along all possible paths in every alternate universe for one in which you are not here, in this moment. Don’t be tempted to let that experience define you, it’s what you do after, once you’ve realised you are well-stuck in this probability, that matters.

I’m not too proud to admit that the first few times I found myself having to make a choice on how to behave after coming face-to-nerve-twanging face with the horrors of the unknown I did what any small animal would do before a monster. I screamed, or my knees collapsed beneath me. I even ran, once, little good that does when the very world around you ripples in the wake of something that incomprehensible. Eventually though, the unknown becomes expected and, if you encounter it enough, familiar. A looming mass of flesh pushing from the sea can be a comfort, not a horror, if you see it often enough.

Living in L—— I did, we all did. If you want to be more than a tourist in a seaside town you have to just get used to some things. The smell of the day’s catch that city folk wrinkle their nose at when it drifts to their wrought iron patio tables at the tourist restaurants, the way a house ages before its time, salt-crusted shingles and sand-scarred plexi windbreaks, grocery stores filled with cans and dry goods, the only affordable fruit the small hardy things that don’t need to be trucked over the mountains. Your habits change, your recipes change, you learn not to look the beast in the eye when it decides to wild on the cliffs, the same way you do with the neighbour’s wretched little near-sighted dog who can’t recognise anybody until they’re close enough to smell.

And I wanted to be more than a tourist. I had as much right as anybody to settle there, since I’d grown up just on the other side of the range that kept L—— from getting any bigger than the mid-sized town it was. Small as it was, there were a half-dozen motels, a handful of bed and breakfasts, and even one actual hotel with a lobby and rooms linked by carpeted hallways instead of fenced bits of sidewalk. Even in the winter, there were a wealth of stores to support the tourist season. Milk might cost twice as much but I could walk a few blocks to buy it rather than drive twenty minutes or more. It was, for me, a city.

There was a nice café in walking distance as well. And I mean the kind of nice where, when summer is done you can find townies sitting comfortably, having morning coffee or a sandwich lunch, enjoying pastries and specials off-menu in the warm centre of the shop while the spill-over wing to the side waited the rainy season empty, chairs upended on four-tops.

Determined to become a known entity, my first winter there I visited the café three times a week, always on the same days and ordering the same handful of simple things. It pushed the limits of my wallet but the rainy Wednesday I walked in and saw my order already up I knew I’d become a regular and the expense felt worth it.

It was the next year, my face now familiar through the seasons as the person who owned the cottage with the green trim down past the sculpture park, that I was allowed to graduate from regular to townie. The girl behind the counter brought me my bowl of thick chowder with extra crackers—I like my soups to be practically solid—and gently set beside it a small plate with some sort of empanada steaming soft and lonely in the centre of the dish. I say empanada but that was just my first impression. It was as much a pasty or a karipap, a flaky and golden-brown circle of crust folded over and sealed prettily along the edge with a fork-pressed twist. I looked up at her while I crushed the crackers in their packets, curious.

She told me that it was on the house and she thought I might like to try something new, calling it a “seasonal special.” I let it cool to a safer temperature while making inroads on my chowder. The pastry was sealed perfectly, no leaking gravy giving me a clue as to the contents.

When it felt safe to pick up, I did, gingerly, my fingers sending a cascade of buttery flakes onto the plate. I love empanadas or, more truly, any culture’s hand pies. That all humans have, at some point, decided to wrap their favourite starches around fillings for crunchy treats on the go is something beautiful to me. Eagerly, but carefully, I took a bite and was rewarded for my earlier patience by a filling that was hot but no longer the searing temperature of savoury lava. With all hand pies it’s the second bite that really tells you what it’s all about. There was a rich oiliness of meat that surprised me, having become accustomed to the lighter textures of the type of fish found in local waters. It was paired with something dustily herbaceous, and I guessed it was a blend of the wild sage and mint that competed for what dirt they could wrest from the razor-sharp sea grass. But, other than that, this was very much a meat that relied on its own juices, salt, and time for flavour.

Looking into the empanada as I chewed, admiring the proportion of gravy to meat, I saw it was the kind of dark flesh that chars almost purple-black, bordering a rich red. Despite the clear presence of those richly-tinted myoglobin proteins there was undeniably the flavour of the sea to it. I liked it very much and spent the rest of my meal alternating between my chowder and the pastry, ending up full enough that I grabbed a coffee to keep me from a post-meal nap.

In my satiated bliss I forgot to ask the server what the meat was from. As I walked past the sculpture park to my cottage with the green trim I resolved to remember to inquire on my next visit—and to possibly see what other seasonal specials were now available to me.

The coffee, sugary as it was—made with the small café’s dedication to its syrup collection—was enough to keep me going not only past my body’s desire for a siesta but into the parts of the night that are rightly the next day. When I finally let myself lay down, I was certain I’d see the sun rise but almost immediately slipped into dreams. And with them, I saw the beast for the first time.

There are things I can’t tell you and things I won’t tell you, for my safety and for yours, respectively. I’d thought myself inured to the gut-dropping realisation of how small humans are against the deep and the things that dwell there. As I’ve said, this coast and its waters were as much home to me as if I’d been raised there. Normally, confronted with expanse beyond easy comprehension, at the most I feel a momentary doubling as if a quick measure were being taken, a comparison. And, on realising that I am but a mote in the eye of the sea I move on easily.

Thrown as I was into this apparent dream there was no subconscious preparation, and my reaction proved my confidence a liar. I’ve already described my initial and subsequent reactions to the beast and won’t bore you with them again, but I do want to impress that even semi-prepared with a life familiar to the unknowable I was humbled. I woke with my alarm at my usual time feeling hollowed out, my mind unable to piece together what I’d seen.

Even the most core-shaking dreams can only haunt you for so long and, despite a sharpness to the edges of the world that I could (and did) associate with too much coffee, my day passed easily. I did find myself staying up a bit later than I often preferred, not afraid to go to sleep but not eager to either. But, eventually, sleep I did and no dreams found me there.

The next day was another one for visiting the café, and this time my bowl of chowder was accompanied by g?i cu?n and a shallow dish of dipping sauce. Like all summer rolls the thin rice paper skin showed the contents as easily as that of a glass frog. I identified those familiar local vegetables that grew hardy in my kitchen garden, and thin strips of the same rich meat that had filled the empanada. Tasting the sauce with a fingertip I identified the familiar sweet-salt of hoisin, which seemed like the perfect accompaniment.

As before, I made inroads on my soup before delving into the local specialty. A mix of corn from cans and fish from the day’s catch, the café’s chowder is a reliable and filling dish with an almost indulgent creaminess that slides luxuriously around flaking meat and sweet bursts of corn. Thickened with crackers added at the table, it becomes the kind of meal on a spoon that can sustain a body until a late supper.

In contrast, the g?i cu?n was a light thing, refreshingly cold, the vegetables within crisp, the delicate skin of the roll barely containing the filling and giving way easily under teeth and tongue, the mingled meat and greens spilling across the tastebuds. That rich, dark red meat played well with winter vegetables, their marriage made all the better when dipped in hoisin. I asked for another when the server came by with my regular coffee to-go, and she demurred at first—like all the specials the summer rolls were made in limited quantities, just enough for the café’s regulars. I let her know I understood but after I’d stood to gather my things she came up with a small paper bag and held it out, smiling.

It turned out to contain two summer rolls and, as it was a Friday, I set them in my fridge to savour over the weekend.

The day wound on in a regular fashion. This time my to-go drink was a plain house coffee, poured from the same carafe that filled diner cups with the sweet-burnt perpetual stew of brew that is anathema to any coffee connoisseur but which I find comforting and nostalgic when lightened with one too many single-serve creamer containers. As my regular bedtime approached, I found myself eagerly anticipating my dreams, despite the initial horror that still wrapped down my spine and through my guts with the cold slap of kelp.

Despite the coursing spark of excitement running parallel to that cold chill, I fell asleep easily and found myself once more on the cliff, once more beholding the beast. Despite my best efforts, I did not comport myself with more acceptance or dignity than our first meeting. I woke to the soft brush of winter light painting empty colour across my room, feeling disappointed with myself. The malaise of failure hung over me through the morning, compounded by seeing the bag from the diner in my fridge while preparing breakfast.

I took myself and my recriminations to the beach, which was a pleasant stroll down the street and on through the bush. There were several better-built beach access points for tourists, but if it wasn’t raining there was little need for wooden steps to the sand when decades of feet had beaten an easy track along property lines and between the trees. It was a more pleasant way to encounter the ocean, watching more and more sand mounding up below shrub and tree, supplanting the rich earth that allowed some plants to grow surprisingly well even as the elements did their best to stunt them.

The sheer pleasure of the winter wind pushing your body along the beach, like a cold but firm hand, can focus your thoughts to little else than the experience of existing there beside the water. Sand and salt in your teeth, the weak tea of winter sun magnified against the water and pale sand so that you must squint or be blinded, you find your senses filled in a way that slows circuitous thought until it can be straightened and followed.

My own worries disappeared as they arrived, mirroring my footprints filling up with water and smoothing themselves out as I walked. Perhaps I was unworthy, to cower to cringe as I did. But worthiness can be earned, the same as I was able to prove myself a member of the community to the town itself. I did not arrive in town expecting to be heralded as a lost son come home. I had to earn the right to be given a nod hello, for advice to be given at the nursery, for directions to the hidden hiking path that afforded a breathtaking view and a source of sweet water trickling between rocks on its way to the ocean. And, of course, I had to earn the right for this newest blessing—to be given access to the truth of the town.

Proving myself worthy of this gift was another thing to be earned. As much work as you do in curbing pride, you will again and again have to pull up the invasive plant of ego that threatens the life of good sense as thoroughly as English ivy or Himalayan blackberry. And, like those plants, it can, in turns burn you as it is cut away or tempt you with transient sweetness as an exchange for being left alone.

Fortified with these thoughts, I returned home and made myself a dish to accompany one of my leftover g?i cu?n. While the rice cooker perfumed the kitchen with the florals of basmati, I put together a simple peanut sauce, pulsing the roasted legumes with sesame seeds to meal while the coconut milk and curry reduced over heat on the stove. Once everything was combined, with fish sauce, local honey, and my personal favourite spices, my mouth was watering in anticipation.

There is nothing so simultaneously simple and satisfying as a sauce over fluffy rice. The slippery, glutinous gravy of western-style chow yuk, toothy comfort foods like tuna rice, the full-mouth nostalgia of localised favourites like mole or gochujang, or even the bachelor tradition of a can of chili, rice is the perfect friend to any possible mix-in.

I was no stranger to the magazine-simple three-step peanut sauce that only asks for creamy peanut butter from a jar, but my cupboards and my desire supported a more classic preparation. And I felt that the summer roll, and the implications of it, deserved the care. Even sat overnight in the fridge, it was as good as fresh, if not slightly better thanks to a day’s worth of flavours melding within the softening skin of the rice paper wrap. It paired perfectly with bites of saucy rice, which I washed down with the cloudy cider a neighbour had sold me. Like many people in L——, the wooded streets were full of small business owners who supplemented the whim of seasonal income by turning their hand to tradecraft. That bottle of fresh-pressed cider was one of a case that had been part of a deal made with a farm on the other side of the mountain range. Barter can’t pay the electric bill, but it can soften a price in a way that pleases both sides.

Washing up after my meal, I let my mind run lazily over the ways I’d found myself folded into this economy of partial trade. I didn’t have much to offer myself, but there always needs to be someone ready to turn the extra goods into folding cash and my cupboards that winter were rich with the results. Flakes of sea salt that were too low grade for restaurants but the right quality to sell to a cousin who then made their own small profit. Myrtlewood utensils with flaws in the handles that only showed up on shelves in the off season, at a discount. Salsa blends that hadn’t been a hit during the last spring’s farmer’s markets.

I found comfort in thinking of how the threads between myself and the town wove more tightly as time ticked on and I could feel them tightening slowly and inexorably, their weight as much a comfort as the satiation of a warm lunch. I can confess that my mind was not fully occupied by my various Saturday activities, knowing as I did what the night would bring.

As I finally lay down to sleep, I prepared myself for disappointment. To assume one could know the unknowable was a level of pride I must disdain. Slipping into sleep, I felt that I had made a sort of peace with my upcoming inevitable failure. This, I found, was in itself a type of pride.

When you confront the shifting cat’s cradle of terrible possibility that halos an ancient beast of the sea, you may be reminded of Christ’s crown of thorns, the artful blood and symbol of pain seen every year in passion processions. You may be forgiven this embarrassing cultural mistranslation, though you’ll not find time to dwell on the gaffe as the fractal of it slices you cleanly into quivering pieces. You can be assured there is no pain and you find yourself somehow whole, but instead the aching memory of pain, of every kind of pain, echoes through your nerves with the pulse of hangover. Other things will happen as well, while also not happening, and the truth of both will slowly pull you to strings. The eternity of it, the echo of it, will fill your marrow when you wake.

I did not overcome my pride, nor my fear of failure that weekend. Nor for many weeks after. If you’ve ever had a particularly bad cold, the kind that changes how you breathe, you’re familiar with how your state of being becomes “somebody who is sick.” You can’t fully remember what it was like before you took ill, what it is like for your lungs to do their job quietly. You are only able to eat between gulps of air denied you by your nostrils. This becomes your identity so fully that you aren’t aware of the progress of healing that is happening silently within your body.

Then one day, you wake up and you are breathing easily. You may not be at 100%, but the cold has left you and it’s the body equivalent of tidying up after a particularly raucous party.

And so, for me, one day I found myself on that now familiar cliff—which was not a cliff—and I beheld the horror towering above me, spilling around me, filling my veins. And the beauty of it, which I realised had been tapping around the edges of my perception since well before my unworthy eyes had first fallen on the beast itself, it consumed me as fully as any of the terror had previously. I’m not ashamed to say I wept. Nor am I ashamed to admit I backslid, that it took many more meetings, alone and with others, to allow myself to accept its truth. But nothing worth the effort comes easily. A new recipe requires practise and patience and allowing for failure, but when you finally perfect the dish, you can taste the time put into learning it, allowing it to change you. And my soul, my self, was no different, when I joyfully stepped into the loving mouth of my creator.