I Had Yet To

 

The Duchy of Savoy was annexed by France 1860 and today it is the French department Savoie, on the border of Italy at the base of the Alps.  Sadly, I’ve never had a chance to visit, but this afternoon I am enjoying a cold glass of the Vin de Savoie, Apremont.  Yeah.  How to describe that ruddy, rocky taste that holds it all down?  I’ve learned I should blame it on the local grape, Jacquère from which the Apremont are exclusively made.  Their cartoon label served as a mnemonic, and is candidly why I tried it more than once.  It was easy to remember.   But now I’ll probably ask if there are more wines from the Savoie, the next time I visit that shop. 

 

Countee Cullen figures prominently when one considers all the cross referencing during the Harlem Renaissance.  Adopted, gifted, he won city-wide poetry contests as a student at DeWitt High School in the Bronx, attended NYU and later Harvard.  Bound for glory, he married royalty at the age of twenty-five or so to Yolande Du Bois, the daughter of W.E.B.   The marriage only lasted nine months though.  And all of the analyses of this work seem to need to account for some degree of his unfulfilled promise. 

 

Between 1928 and 1934 Cullen produced five volumes of poetry.   I read many of these this morning in a collection entitled “My Souls High Song, the Collected Writings of Countee Cullen.  Voice of the Harlem Renaissance.”  So many of the early poems are dedicated to other important personages of the time.  Adopted, saved from the poverty described in “Saturday’s Child:”

 

Death cut the strings that gave me life,

 

And handed me to Sorrow,

 

The only kind of middle wife

 

My folks could beg or borrow.

 

. . . it strikes me that he was a rather grateful individual, kind and reciprocal to those who had extended kindness and friendship to him.  His heroes were Keats and Shelley and he mastered Latin and Greek the latter of which he used to discern his own translation of Medea.  And he died that the age of forty-two.   Carl Van Vetchen has a photo of him in what looks like the rocks of upper, upper west side Central Park.   And that made me stop and think about all the things I had yet to do. 

 

Not on the short list but now, on the master list of things-to-do involves researching the proper ingredient proportions for pancakes.  Younger daughter wanted em’.  Older one was in if I could unearth maple syrup, which I did.  And I suggested that I wanted to teach the younger one how to make them.  It was only a step above making toast, in complexity, I haughtily suggested.  So we set out a bowl.  She said she wanted them thin, crepe like.  So I offered we could eye-ball the proportions, an egg, salt, water and flower and I tried whip up some silver dollars.  I had high hopes.  “Were they great or really great.,” I asked like a idiot.  Then the pause.  I see.  They were too tough.  That’s what happens when you press down flapjacks like they are tortillas, you fat head.  I’d innovate.  Let’s pour them into this four-receptacle, egg-poacher, multi-soufle type pan we’ve recently been handed.  I'd redeem myself.  And this time the bottoms burned and the inside was wonky.   Crestfallen, I discussed the syrup covered compromise that was nonetheless entirely consumed.  Next time then.  I will promise to check a recipe for approximate proportions before I flip flapjacks.

Sunday, 08/10/20