20 septembre 2007

Lesser works

(I'm afraid I've been really busy trying to get everything done for my grad school application and have thus not had a chance to write anything new, so for now I'm giving you a lesser prose chunk and a poem I wrote my French class that is very forced because I made it rhyme. Since I rarely even rhyme English poetry, it was an interesting exercise. Anyway, I promise to write something better soon)

Chance Encounter in the Supermarket
"You don't want that."
"Excuse me?" I turned around to see a man my age looking concerned. Concerned about what, I wondered. I failed to see how my choices in the produce section bore any impact on his life.
"That particular zucchini squash."
"Oh? And why is that exactly?"
"Because I picked a better one before you arrived."
I looked at him trying to derive some meaning from what he was saying.
"If you come over tonight, I'll show you how to make an amazing zucchini squash dish."
"Is this some sort of joke?" I couldn't tell if he was trying to make a really bad pick up or if perhaps he had just wandered away from his institution.
"It's not a joke. I need to practise, and I get tired of trying to rate my own food. Plus the professors like when we can turn in feedback pertaining to our outside work."
"Rate your own food?"
"Yeah. It's hard for me to judge my own dishes. I mean, I want to like them, because I made them. At the same time, I can pretty much always sit there and think of way I could have, would have, should have tweaked the recipe and pretty soon I convince myself that it was a terrible dish. My professors say this is not an uncommon phenomenon."
"Professors?" I was sort of feeling like a demented parrot.
"I'm going to a culinary arts school. I actually moved here just for that reason."
I understood what he was saying, and I was able to relate that I knew about our culinary arts school -- best in the nation -- but I kept up the parrot routine. "Just moved here?"
"Yep, maybe a month ago, if that."
"Wow." Sometimes I amaze myself with the degree of insight in my statements.


Printemps
Le printemps – une renaissance :
une fête des fleurs,
un mélange d’odeurs ;
la beauté en abondance.
Écoutez au rouge-gorge qui pépie,
son chanson, après le silence longue,
est sucré comme une mangue,
et il m’assoupie.
Les petites fleurs, vraiment précaires,
s’efforcent contre la neige,
le soleil aident et déneiges,
la nature extraordinaire.
Encore, la froideur des nuits,
nous couvrit comme un manteau,
mais cette saison d’amour nouveau,
elle brille, elle reluit.

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