Crit

Word to Bring Back: “Amphitryon”

– Definition: (French) n. person with whom or at whose expense one dines

– Used in a sentence: My father is a well-known and gracious amphitryon.

– Why: Aside from its capitalized Greek origin (Amphitryon was, according to Sophocles, a king of Thebes and companion to Heracles), famed 18th-century gastronome J.A. Brillat-Savarin is wholly enamored of its use in his seminal Physiology of Taste wherein it is synonymous with “host.” (If you’re going to steal, steal from the greats. Especially if they stole it first.)

Writing

Prosatio Silban and the Artistic Temperament

WHAT IDOL CAN BEAR CLOSE scrutiny without losing its magik over the spellbound?

Prosatio Silban sliced into his finger, swore silently, laid down his knife, and reached for the roll of self-sticking bandages tucked into his knives-bindle. Here it comes, he thought.

“Master Prosatio!” barked his client. “How many times must I remind you? You are here to work, not spectate!”

“My most sincere apologies,” the cook-errant murmured, not meeting her eyes. “You are correct. It shan’t happen again.”

His accidental wound was just one of numerous small errors leading to pointed reprimands in Prosatio Silban’s direction. To be sure, and also kind, it was not one of his usual engagements – a small gathering of some of epicurean Pormaris’ most noted creatives. And when such an assembly included the cook’s favorite author in all the Uulian Commonwell, the wide-famed and much beloved Barbatus the Elder, what else could one expect?

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Writing

Grace (A Prosatio Silban Amuse-Bouche)

“HAS ANYONE EVER SENT BACK a meal that you’ve prepared?” the tentative young man asked Prosatio Silban.

“Twice,” was the cook-errant’s reply. “It is not an experience I relished, or wish to repeat.”

“How did it come about?”

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Writing

Prosatio Silban and the Cryptic Cenotaph

WHAT WOULD LIFE BE WITHOUT the occasional unsolvable riddle?

In epicurean Pormaris’ far-famed restaurant district squats a prominent monument. It is an oblong, boxy affair, wrought of lavender marble, with carved ivory pillars framing each corner and a tasteful capstone covered in gold leaf. The street-facing side bears a simple brass plaque: “To the Unknown Gourmand.”

That is the first mystery.

Once yearly, but according to no otherwise-fixed schedule, an anonymous party deposits beneath the plaque a menu from a different local dining establishment.

And that is the second.

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Writing

Prosatio Silban and the Merry Misfortunate

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO become unforgotten?

“As for me,” Prosatio Silban said, raising his glass of white duliac to the Pelvhi’s Chopping-House customers crowded around him, “the most memorable person I ever met was a man who went by the alias of ‘Lucky.’ Let me tell you about our first encounter …”

* * *

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the limping, ragged man, and bowed deeply. “I don’t suppose you would, but I must ask anyway: Can you help out with a meal a fellow Uulian who’s down on his luck?”

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… [T]here is no need for you to go a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power and as well as possible, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity. Strive, too, that in reading your story the melancholy may be moved to laughter, and the merry made merrier still; that the simple shall not be wearied, that the judicious shall admire the invention, that the grave shall not despise it, nor the wise fail to praise it. … [I]f you succeed in this you will have achieved no small success.”
— Miguel de Cervantes (from the Prologue to Don Quixote)

X is X

We’re All Americans, Dammit

I’VE SAID THIS BEFORE, BUT it’s more important now than ever:

“I pledge allegiance to the Constitution
Of the United States of America
And to the ideal on which it stands:
One nation of individuals
Indivisibly intertwined
With liberty, justice, and peace for all.”

(So help me, G?d. So help all of us.)