Skins

'System Is Fair,' says the red pop-up screen of System Mechanic 7, a PC utility, better known as a thingy, that I run at regular intervals.  All it takes is a mouse click to activate forces that optimize memory, reduce clutter and update your archive.  Every bit of this is splendid, largely because I do not know what it means.  Not to worry, what it really means is things are looking up.  Something has been improved.  Optimized.  Being an American, I know that my day is headed the right way, progressing, becoming ever more efficient.  This is goodness, which as everyone knows is adjacent to godliness.  And it's only 10:30 AM.

Are there other portents?  Damn straight.  I knocked my waist pack off its table (having decided to avoid British ridicule by not calling it a 'fanny pack,' nor confuse Americans with 'bum bag').  As it toppled, I quite spontaneously lamented 'why?'  Instead of denouncing myself for being stupid.  Good signs both on-screen and off.

What is to be done today?  Chekhov's characters spend all three acts mulling this over.  But I'm going to get on with it, accomplish the job in...well, I don't know.  Fast.  As fast as my Swedish wheelchair can carry me to Peet's.  That's where the action is.  Or the inaction.  And I'm not sure which is better.  On the way, I experience the introvert's dilemma.  I hope I will run into someone I know, while fearing I will run into someone I know.  Which is it?  It is both.  No wonder I am going in search of coffee.  But is it even coffee?  What do I expect to find in caffeine?  I am more than adequately rested.  I have just pounded the cardiovascular shit out of my exercycle.  All things physiological are optimal.  All cylinders are pounding, not to mention all ventricles.  So why Peet's?  

Because of that moment of roadway abandon, not here and not there, just moving.  Not progressing either.  Just on the move, loosening up the system.  Having already had the blessing of System Mechanic 7.

I can deal with the world and its decline much better now that I am no longer receiving any newspapers.  Still, my guilt is tangible.  The general reporting staff of the New York Times is essentially the last one remaining in America.  But there are larger forces at work.  It's a tradeoff.  Over my cappuccino, I read Naomi Klein's account of the oil spill.  Man über nature being the real culprit.  Yes, she is right.  I am about to hear the same thing at the Minnesota Men's Conference for five days.  And don't know what to do but make my own garden grow, not to mention compost.  And who will grow what when I am gone?

And what really goes on inside a compost tumbler?  Yes, rotten contents are stirred and aerated.  But they are also turned upside down.  Like fortune itself.  One moment the Angel of Death drives your wife from the kitchen.  Next thing you know, Jane is there demonstrating how to make tomato sauce.  While at the same time the next downcycle is under way, in the form of age, if nothing else.  And just about the time you hit the bottom of life's garbage bag, damned if closer inspection doesn't reveal the thing to be lined with silver.  So relax, that's what I'm thinking this morning.  Give up and relax.

Really hard to relax with the Tea Partiers carrying on in the nation's capital.  But easier if you only read weeklies like The Nation, for that leaves a whole six days to worry about something else.  Like the fact that some mistakes are irrevocable, cannot be undone or even comprehended.  Take my decision to not grow Roma tomatoes.  The consequences are currently boiling away on my stove.  Quite amazing how many tomatoes it takes to produce sauce.  But even more amazing if one has foolishly...perhaps foolishly, this point not being yet determined...not grown Romas.  The latter are known for their pulp, of course, delivering more tomato bang for buck than their counterparts, be they beefsteak or cherry.  

The thing is, Romas simply are not as profuse.  So what?  Fewer tomatoes might still equal more tomato content, their essence boiling down to more sauce.  But who knows?  Don't go hunting around the Internet for some tomato density trade-off algorithm.  You'll be disappointed, trust me.  So trust what?  Fate?  That's what I did in the spring when I planted Renée's heirloom tomato seeds.  Couldn't be bothered to sort them, putting each variety in a labeled seed starting tray.  Oh no, not me, being all casual in this rejoice-'tis-spring moment of agronomic abandon.  And where has it gotten me?  Staring into the slowly bubbling tomato cauldron on my stove half regretting, but mostly puzzling, over the decisions that led to this moment.

And relieved to know the entire matter is moot.  For shortly Jane will arrive.  I can't recall what she's been up to this morning, but something ecclesiastical and energetic.  And she will soon direct her energies toward me and the bubbling tomatoes.  Someone defined the Good Mother as one who truly wants what's best for you.  And what have I been searching for in my life if not this?  No one embodies this better than Jane.  Even if the very definition provides troubling fodder for the introspective and introverted mind.  Such as defining what's good for you.  

Good this afternoon?  Good a decade from now?  Does the Good Mother play the long game?  How could she, no one knowing how long the game will be?  And if no one knows, who knows what's good?

Tomato skins come off naturally, if you give them a chance.  That is the only sure conclusion I may have reached in my entire life.  I have tried many approaches.  At one point, dating from my first marriage, I was even the owner of an authentic Italian tomato press, a hand crank device that mashed tomatoes, forced them through a sieve, juice and pulp flowing out one side, seeds and skins out the other.  It was wondrous to behold, this thing.  And I could still behold it, if I wanted to.  But I don't.  I prefer to do what I do now.  Boil the tomatoes, pull out the skins with tongs, fuck the seeds.  

And rest assured that the seeds will fuck you.  The skins too.  Trust me, even after they have been boiled for hours, subjected to high and prolonged temperatures, tomato byproducts remain indestructible.  The hours-long cooked seeds may find their way into my compost...only to sprout next year.  I keep digging up curling dried skins of tomatoes I must have grown in 2005.

So Jane and I will shortly determine an afternoon course of action, vis-à-vis tomatoes.  There is talk of cioppino.  Jane brings with her the patented knowledge that the latter contains anise, better known for its starring role in licorice.  Who would have known?  Wonderful to be able to cook together, more or less.  Admittedly I star in the shopping role.  But he also serves who only rolls and buys.  

After all, rolling was more or less how I began my day.  I wonder if when one faces death, all other life issues get put on hold.  Something about the dairy section at Trader Joe's naturally sparks this speculation.  I will be there later this afternoon.  Shopping to do for the tomato sauce, milk running low.  Did Marlou have unfinished business in life?  Or did I have unfinished business with Marlou?  Or was our business finished?  And hers?  Why did she go all the way to Sweden with her grandmother's ring in the last months of her life?  An arduous journey to bring her closer to what?  To that moment when she touched the ring to the ground, was that it?  Did Marlou feel some sense of completion?  Or did she just bow before the mystery?  And is the latter the best that anyone can do?

I bow before the bubbling tomatoes, having little postural choice in the matter, the stove being where it is.  The skins come off as though leaping into another dimension.  They know themselves to be immortal.  Boiling, composting, time itself, being as nothing to them.  Jane has phoned, her arrival delayed, but I have her shopping list.  And I feel I am coming out of something like a long sleep.  Death has laid siege to my home.  And departed.  Leaving me behind with the tomatoes.  Which boil and boil, and reduce and reduce, until there is surprisingly little.  But there's plenty for cioppino, if you're lucky enough to have someone around who knows about the anise.