2. More Food

The hood on the camera was forgotten and cause the intriguing shadow in the form of a giant's finger on some of the photographs. 

There were:

canepes of hot and sweet Thai chili sauce spread, goat cheese and figs, apricot or sour plums

Sacks of Thai-Chinese fusion stir-fried salmon with shitake and carrots

shot glasses filled with carrot-potatoe-pea and gherkins sauteed with garlic

tiny plates of lentil kofte with mango pickle on baby romain leaf

lentil kofte, plain, wrapped with sheep's sorrel leaves

tiny oven roasted lightly kebap spiced meatballs with cheese

small borek filled with cheese

small borek filled with ground beef

Plates of fresh carrots, cucumbers, radish, cauliflower and broccoli with dip

Circasian chicken tartalettes

aubergine and pine nut pilav cooked with olive oil in small ice cream glasses

bulgur with pepper and tomatoes and basil wrapped in swiss chard on porcelain spoons

Antioch Surk cheese , shredded celeriac and sweet radish filled fried seashell pasta

entremets : jelly, cream, and sour cherry or raspberries with sauce

It is 27 hours later, the guests are long gone and we are still eating .

Our alcohol consumption was only six bottles of French champagne, two bottles of Scotch and  five bottles of wine  besides some beer, Raki, and a few glasses of gin and vodka tonic.

An Engaging Engagement Party 1 : The Food

There was a glitter to the food, possibly due to the transparent wrap for protection against poking fingers before the guests arrived.

ART BY DESIGN

Art is only for my sake,
Even when it is the inedible piece of a cake
Kept in a dreary room in many a museum
Or bereft of gladiators and lions in a coliseum.

December 2012

A VISIT

It was of a time. It was of no time.

The queen sat in her night gown with pointed pursed nipples sloping

downward. A lady-in-attendance had her legs tucked under, lest a stray

ray of energy should reach her vacuous eyes through the feet if they

touched the ground.

The obvious cat sprawled, turned on her back, 

stretched and fetused back to slumber.

I tried to remember my questions linking time and technology to the princely

grandson who etherized in and out, to no avail. This was not the place for

logic and meaning. There was no coincidence, accident, chance and

probability. It was all as it had been and will be in this solid block of

timeless time.

I extricated myself slowly, silently, carefully shouldering aside strands of

inertia and cobwebs of  momentum which were still trying to unwind from

monolithic memories. 

The door to the multi cases of stairs leading to other obvious,

sprawling cats stood open in front of me.

December, 2012

Printed With Approval of Her Royal Highness

THE ETERNAL FEMALE COMPANION

(Written after another union of the minds, in the eye of the storm)

 She is very efficient in reminding you of where you stand. "You are somewhere," she says, "but I cannot see you well, nor do I wish to admit to your presence or absence in this time and space except as a target of unease. A nuisance value is what you can hope to achieve at best. That is, if you speak out at those times, but stop before her irritation hits higher levels.

Disappearing does not help much. Memories of those frequent minor catastrophic times grow out of proportion in frequency and severity unlike their natural relatives or accidents.

Staying quiet is taken to mean you belittle her unhappiness, while consolation is regarded as condescension.

Do not ever try to buy her off with an immediate present. An expensive one will remind her of the time(s) you had vetoed expenditures because of tight budgets. A cheap present will make her feel cheap and even more unloved.

Attempting to talk about the good old times of sharing months, years or decades of good times, adventures, children, success stories or goofs, reminds her that all that is now in the past and will never happen again because you are old, a grouch, insensitive, egotistical, unloving, not the same person, sick, disgusting, hateful, difficult, uncaring, self-centered, lazy, depressed, diabetic, obese, with bad eye-sight, with too many implants, and so on and on.

Waiting a while and trying to get her to discuss plans for a new vacation, a visit to children, a new venture which may help the financial or emotional coffers almost always also backfires. If she is unhappy with her present lot which has you in it why should a future with a great deal of more of you cheer her up or even interest her?

Can you supply a young prince charming to take her out of the dumps? Never. You should never even consider this. This would be the worst affront and insult to a loyal spouse whose loyalty can be the subject of thousands of romances from time immemorial.

The best solution that I have been able to find in all my experience and thirty odd years of marriage is to arrange for a close friend, another woman, who has had similar or worse experiences with another detestable male, to call her for a longish session of talks about life and misery. It helps if this friend has told her a number of times in the past, "Your husband has some redeeming features, but, honestly, I cannot understand how you can stand his holier than thou and know-it-all attitude."

International Politics Lecture

I find it interesting that the British are very good in putting together recent history and facts (a la George Smiley!!) into a coherent whole, to explain issues almost anywhere in the world but do not appear to care enough to come up with sensible possible forecasts and analyses for predicting the future on the basis of what they have concocted. Or they really never had this ability or the agenda.



The Americans are very poor in reading behind and between the lines and have difficulty in explaining the past or the present in realistic terms. What is worst, the Americans will then go ahead and build their own fantasy futures based on crumbling or stacked decks of cards. They then commit themselves to these false futures and have difficulty in changing political, economic, military, (even automobile production) policy to meet the true facts as they become known. By the time they have the clockwork re-arranged, oiled and in working order, the facts have changed and they have a new set of myths, disregarding some of the old ones, replacing others and producing new ones at science fiction writers workshops posing as universities although they also have some very good think tank institutions with better and rational capabilities which are not so popular because they criticize more than they advise.



And then, there are all the puny power hungry individuals and groups everywhere in the world who try to cheat and connive to get a larger portion of a pie they cannot eat in comfort let alone take with them.

April, 2012

Mutatis Mutandis

AN ETHICAL POEM




People who moralize

Also demoralize

But do they realize

That what they do, others may plagiarize

Those others who live in many a high-rise

And over us towerize

With smirks and leers and smiles they specialize

Always calling it compromise

When they publicize

What they proselize



Ahmet Cafer Celebiler

April 2012

(Thinking of politicians, Ministers of Education and such)