Grapevine Fires

Something odd happened to me today.

I frequently walk home from the library in my small New England town that serves as my office while listening to a podcast. Today was no different. The subject of the podcast was what was to be expected of the Trump presidency. (An aside: If you're as sick of seeing fake soul searching, heartfelt personal essays full of deeps thoughts about the residue of the 2016 election, you can breath easy. This is not about that.) I began to ascend the street that climbs a hill, at the top of which is my extravagantly 1980's house. Across the street from my home is an 18th century graveyard full of large, gnarled hardwood trees now naked and skeletal in this, the heart of North Eastern Winter. The roadway of the cemetery is sunken and rounded on it's edges like some of the ancient country lanes you seen in rural England. Like many truly old grave sites, it is not well maintained other than the monthly mowing it gets in the Summer months and many of the stone grave markers has fallen over from frost heaves or rascal teenagers.

As I began to trudge up the hill the podcast was winding down. The hosts were making jokes and finding places between the bricks where the grass could grow about potential Trump upsides. Self-educated, independent American minds is what I think they were hoping for. As the broadcast faded out, bumper music started to play. I hate bumper music. I don't listen to podcasts for recreation. I listen to them to expose myself to new ideas and to listen to intelligent, reasonable people talk to one another. Bumper music is a waste of time, but this time it sounded strangely familiar and the freezing rain was starting to come down (real freezing rain, not metaphorical freezing rain) so I delayed skipping to the next in my cue.

The tune was somber and sweet. It sounded like something I had perhaps heard in a dream recently and I had been taking Melatonin. As I reached the halfway mark of the hill, now turning steeper as the overgrown wall of the graveyard's edge came just into view the lyrics went:

"The wake up call to a rented room

Sounded like an alarm of impending doom.
To warn us it's only a matter of time.
Before we all burn
Before we all burn
Before we all burn
Before we all burn.

We bought some wine and some paper cups
Near your daughter's school when we picked her up
And drove to a cemetery on a hill,
On a hill.

Watched the plumes paint the sky gray
As she laughed and danced through the field of graves
There I knew it would be alright
That everything would be alright,
Would be alright
Would be alright
Would be alright
Would be alright."

I pay attention when synchronicity starts popping up in my life and the last few days had been more full of it than the entire previous two years. Some people think that synchronicities indicate that you are on the right track or "doing the right thing", or whatever... I don't know what they signify, but I tend to observe them none the less "just in case".

Anyway, I'm not much for sentimental, touchie-feely music these days. The world is too full of dicks that need kicking for me to indulge in that sort of thing. But the timing had split my skull like a bullet through a banana. It was too much to ignore. In a matter of moments I found myself sitting on a toppled headstone and crying as the dim gray skies pattered the hood of my parka with perfectly clear, frozen rain drops. 

As it turns out the song was "Grapevine Fire" by Death Cab for Cutie. When I later googled the lyrics and found out I had been emotionally hustled by the mother of all mediocre, emotionally manipulative bands of the early 2000's I cried again. In fact I'm crying as I write this, much to my chagrin. The point is that, sometimes, even Death Cab for Cutie can be the vessel of an important message from the universe. No matter how much it pisses you off. 

And what was that message? Change and Uncertainty. Maybe you've noticed lately that the whole fucking world seems to have lost it's mind? Change and Uncertainty. You could certainly pick out particular elements that lead to it: automation and software making many types of jobs obsolete, various looming crises in debt-based economics, the end of materialism and and the rise of scientism, the education system becoming increasingly poopy and potentially obsolete or even the recent election that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. You could probably go on naming nuts like Forest Gump for hours or days on this topic but it boils down to the fact that we're just in a really weird place right now. A moment of massive Change and Uncertainty and it scares the shit out of us. 

I was watching my son tonight as he stretched and sighed in contentment, fitted tightly under the arm of his mother and tucked beneath the soft down of our bed cover as she read him a book about ducklings. At that moment I think I would have given almost anything to feel that kind of warmth and comfort I can just barely remember from my own childhood. I found this spontaneous emotional desire shocking. However sweet and tender I might have been at age 2 that was a long time ago and the intervening four decades have forged me into an emotionally muted, unsentimental dick, of sorts. I just don't do that kind of thing very often and it really snuck up on me that I could become so overwhelmed by the afore mentioned Change and Uncertainty as to have a plus-sized emotional outburst twice in the same day. 

There's an epiphany here somewhere, I'm sure of it...

The thing is that this is not an easy time to be an alive adult human. We're seeing the shadowy outlines of the kind of radical change that only my grandfather, who was born before cars or airplanes and lived to see world war, atomic bombs and space flight, could understand. If you want to get tied up in knots about how scary the world has become in the post-end-of-history era, be my guest. Go right ahead. One thing I can tell you for sure is that stress and strain will not put a dent in the gears that are currently turning. What you can effect are your friends, family and yourself. If you're an uptight dour dick, the effect will not be positive. Take it easy on yourself. Lighten up. You're only human.  

Now a Recipe:

 Grilling over burning grapevine clippings is a long tradition at small vineyards in the Mediterranean and they really marry with the simple flavors of rustic Med cuisine. Certainly you can grill anything over these burning grapevine fires but I think fish or marinated white meat things (like chicken or rabbit) OR lamb are best. What follows is a dual purpose dressing/marinade that you can use for either.

Ingredients
1/4 cup decent olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar (NOT cheap stuff)
3-4 sprigs fresh rosemary, chopped fine, no woody parts
2-4 cloves garlic, minced fine
1 tablespoon paprika or Aleppo chili powder
freshly ground black pepper, salt to taste

Make
Combine all the ingredients and mix thoroughly. This stuff should be pretty salty and acidic because you're using it to completely season unseasoned fish or meat so make it taste that way when you adjust the seasoning.

Cook
So, this is where it gets tricky. Not all fish likes to be grilled and fewer still like to be marinated and grilled. When in doubt grill gently un-marinated and un-seasoned, then baste with the flavor paste above towards the end or use it as a topping relish of sorts. Or both.

Meat, on the other hand, doesn't give a fuck. Rule of thumb: the darker the meat, the longer the marinating. So beef heart: 24 hrs. minimum. Lamb leg: 8 hrs. Rabbit: 6-8 hrs. Chicken: 3-6 hrs.

To cook with the grapevines you need A) dry grapevine clippings (get these from vineyards in the early Spring when they prune their vines) and B) a charcoal grill or the like. Start with charcoal and get a good bed of white coals going then add the clippings a minute before you want to start grilling. Taste the romance.

Pairing
Box wine and paper cups