Greg Emilio
A Recipe for Eating Memory
To purchase a fine meal is to purchase a fine memory.
—Jim Harrison
Sing now of sea buckthorn and blackcurrant butterfly. Sing of preserved morels from spring, and the little skewers made of mother of pearl. Sing of quail’s eggs, fried marigold flowers, pickled pinecones. Sing of the funky, cider-like wines, holding bulbs of vague effervescence up to the light like you know what you’re doing. Sing of tall grasses loitering along the banks of a lazy tributary. Sing of wax broth with bee pollen served in a honeycomb cup. Sing of just-picked black cherries erupting on the tongue.
Sing of being newly in love, looking across the table at someone you actually want to spend the rest of your life with. Sing this recipe easy, butterflies pinned and framed on the wall, dead in their wingéd iridescence. Sing of gleaming greenhouses and the dank cellars where edibles ferment in the shadows. Sing too the monolithic oak doors you opened to see the entire kitchen staff waiting there, arms crossed behind their backs, the famous chef looking you right in the eye, saying, Welcome.
Sing of the high Nordic light at Noma, stumbling out at ten p.m., dusk like the whitewash foam that lingers after the broken wave rolls back into the sea. Sing of the shark-blue water glittering in the canals of Copenhagen. Sing of the hottest and driest summer on record, everyone reveling in what is aberrant, a ghost of things to come. Sing of drinking GAMMEL DANSK, ink-black and bitter as a betrayed lover, with locals at a dive bar, absurdly overdressed, the final minutes of the Croatia versus England World Cup semifinal unraveling on a small T.V.
And because you do not want to, because you have a problem speaking about that which is not beautiful, sing of the several months-worth of rent dumped on a single evening. Some food, drink. Sing a season of working doubles, twelve-hour shifts, to pay your way. Sing sweetly of your privilege, for who lives like this? Sing of the money you should be spending on student loan debt rather than Michelin-starred restaurants. Sing of signing tip lines in exchange rates you don’t really understand. Sign so you can get back to singing. Sing so you can’t hear yourself thinking.
Sing because tomorrow trembles like a mirage. Sing because there’s nothing left to chew, sing the empty plate. Sing back the light, the raw feeling of new love and the purgatory of layovers. Sing bags under the eyes, the slippery thing about time. Sing the body and all its splendors. Remember. Sing the victuals of the good flesh continuing.
Sing, you fool, the prodigal wages of memory.
