Butcher This, Filet That

I should be at work, but instead I’m pretending to peruse the “Local Brews” section of the liquor department for the seventh time.

            Cory convinced me this would be good for me—maybe a chance to network with real butchers—but he couldn’t come because he’s out of town at a barbecue competition.  Seems like he’s competing somewhere almost every other week.

            It feels like ages since I’ve been behind the block.  The last real butchering I did was in Ste. Gen with Eli.  The opening of Foster’s restaurant keeps getting pushed back, and I don’t want to bother him because I know he’s really busy with that.  The last time I talked to him he said May first; I just read on interview he gave for St. Louis Magazine’ June issue, which didn’t have an opening date.  He posted a picture on Facebook of a shiny new tabletop bone saw and Dick Machine and I about crapped my pants.  No more dull hand saw!  
            And between two vacations, Mother’s Day, a head cold, and the start of summer—which means weekends fishing and/or camping out of town (signing up for that Sunday morning outdoor soccer league was a huge mistake)—I’ve seen very little of the shop.

            I feel stagnant.

I need to branch out.

So here I am.

La Aprendiz del Carnicero

I have always belonged to the ocean, and the moon.  Two entities forever locked in a love affair—a constant push and pull, back and forth—and like an anchor, my adulation for them has always been rooted inside of me.  They can’t form words, yet their existences are inexorably linked for all of time; something outside of them draws them back to each other again and again.

As I sit back in the sand and listen to the crashing waves, I allow the sound to enter me; to become my breath and my heartbeat, the pulsing of blood in my veins.  There is a gentleness in the way the tide washes over the shore, but there is violence crashing far across the bounding main.  Watching the silver glint on the roiling black sea, I know that this is the most I could ask for out of life:  the moon and the stars, the salt on the air, the surf and the sand.   

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