Happy 11th anniversary to my lost love

This reminds me of Paul a lot.

It's hanging up in a cafe where I go everyday for coffee. It's hard not to stare at it.


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Six months

I guess I am adapting somewhat, to my hideously shrunken universe.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that I didn’t believe I could go on living without Paul. I had joyfully and passionately made a lifetime commitment to him, and I didn’t make any move in the present without considering our future together. I didn’t have any concept of a future where he was not here.

But it seems like I have to acknowledge that I have actually gone on living without Paul, for six months. I still don’t know why or how. The will to survive persists. Even more baffling is how I have not only lived, but had successes, somehow. I’m not sure I am really even doing it. It seems to happen without my direct participation, at a distance.

I am deeply grateful to my family and friends for understanding how devastated I was and still am, and for giving me so much love and support.

I’m being made to understand that I am never going to “get over” what’s happened. And given the severity of it, I feel that’s appropriate. The best I can hope for is to get used to it. I don’t understand how I will do that, either, but what choice do I have?

Behold the Glove of Truth!

Here is Les modeling the first version of the Glove of Truth. I will be wearing the glove on July 23rd in our premiere performance of "Inquisition". It's equipped with sensors that will detect my vital signs and transmit them to Les' computer, which will analyze them and assign truth or falsehood. Then the computer will choose synth sounds and visuals to play and project in response.

Les is due back in the States next month and we'll rehearse and refine the piece then. The Glove of Truth and the software and all the non-human factors will be configured and tweaked and adjusted as we approach premiere night. Honestly I wasn't expecting for there to be a glove. Having all the sensors in one place does simplify things for me as far as staging. I can start to think ahead about how I will approach my half of the performance visually. So my configuring, tweaking and adjustment of myself as an instrument begins now.

The dear departed

Been thinking how to escape?
This strait-jacket of constraint
Been thinking what can be wrong?
With feelings that long to belong
Stargazing me
In an upside down sea
So weary this strait-jacket dreamer
So resigned to continue to suffer
But you've learnt that as you grow weaker
There's less hurt because there's much less to hurt
Stargazing me
In a tumbling sea
Up in the galaxy
Staring down on me
Stargazer reach out to touch
With your mind that frees you so much
Stargazer kissing your kismet
With bright jewel encrusted scars
Stargazing me
In tranquillity
Up in the galaxy
Staring down on me

-- Siouxsie and the Banshees

Culinary mourning

Paul was such an artist in the kitchen. He created meals that tasted incredible and communicated so much love and thought and enthusiasm. It is hard to accept that I won’t ever taste his cooking again. I am thinking of wonderful things I will miss for the rest of my life:

• His toasted cheese sandwiches. He made them for me often when we were living together. I would come home late at night from a full-time day working at the Eyeball and he would be all ready to make one, with sprouted bread and garlic aoli. They were so very good but they contributed in a big way to my former weight problem.
  
• His idlis, and sambhar, and aloo gobhi, and rice, and raita, made temple style. I could have eaten his raita with a spoon. I loved his idli-making device.
  
• His tabouli salad with the fresh tomatoes and the tiny five spice tofu cubes.
  
• His Lamb of Buddha stew, which was my family’s traditional lamb stew recipe remade vegetarian. He only made it once. He even made the parsley dumplings, steamed on top of the stew.
  
• His veggie fajitas.
  
• His Thanksgiving dinner, with Qorn turkey and savory stuffing and potatoes and veggies and gravy.
  
• His veggie stir-fries.
  
• His veggie paella with lobster mushrooms, and veggie sausage, and seaweed to add the briney taste.
  
• His cheese enchiladas with seasoned refried beans and yellow rice.
  
• His home-formulated spicy hot chocolate.
  
• His chili chocolate drops.
  
• His Hungarian casserole, which he created inspired by my friend’s gift of paprika brought back from Hungary.
  
• His stew pie, which he made by baking Worthington vegetarian country stew under a biscuit crust. When Worthington stopped making the country stew (a culinary microtragedy of its own), he created his own stew for the stew pies, with Qorn and potatoes and carrots and peas and mushroom soup gravy with special seasonings.
  
• His tempeh, mushroom and broccoli main dish. This recipe was given to Paul by Phil Gelb. I’ve tried to make the dish twice this year. The first time I didn’t do a very good job. The second time I did better, but it still didn’t taste the same.
  

I did manage to recreate Paul’s homemade pizza. I can’t count the number of times he asked me what I would like for dinner and I responded eagerly, “A Paul pizzai?” (pronounced “peetsye”). It was soon after I lost him, that I got the ingredients together and prepared it the way I had seen him do, and I was kind of shocked that it tasted just like his. I couldn’t believe it could taste that way without him there. Folks suggested that maybe he was watching over me and helping me while I cooked it.