Slow Down, Please, Slow Down, I Need To Find Peace Anywhere In Me, I Feel Like I'm Under Water, Struggling To Get Air

--"Hitten", Those Dancing Days

I've been frequenting a coffe shop/bakery near my new home called Jongewaard's Bake and Broil where they serve the absolute best pie I've ever had. This week alone I've taken home two chocolate cream pies--this, after I finished up my absolute scrumptious breakfast there on Sunday with a slice of their killer key lime pie. I don't know--I've never been much of a pie person until recently and it's places like B-N-B that have helped to convert me.

I guess you could say the first time I was shown the light was on my recent trip to Louisville. Toby took me to this local attraction called Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen. I hadn't wanted to, but she made me try the key lime pie there instead of getting the cake or the ice cream and I've been hooked ever since. Before then I was strictly a pumpkin pie man. I didn't like any other pies, especially fruit pies, and I wasn't even willing to give them a chance at all. Hearing her talk and watching her devour her slice of Dutch Apple with Caramel (supposedly their best seller) made me think that there was something to the pies there ad turned me around.

I noticed the behavior in myself, but I've never actually been on the other side of a person totally convinced that their favorite restaurant or bar can actually save your soul. Whether it was Breanne insisting I check out her favorite barbecue spot (Fincher's) or my own brother talking up this burrito place in San Francisco while I was up there, we all have our secret spots that we like to pretend we discovered. Not only that, but I think we're all guilty of wanting to impress our friends with what great taste in food we've got. But until Toby practically chained me to the boutique chairs in Homemade I thought I was the only one who perceived of taking friends to their best restaurants as an intervention. I thought I was the only one who looked upon exposing people to so-called "good" food as being unironically altruistic and altogether humane thing to do.

It wasn't just important for her to get me to try it. It was imperative for her to get me to like it, to love it. Again, I knew how she felt because I've been there too.

I don't know what connects a lot of our well-being to food. I don't know if arose from the primal association of food with life or if it arose from the sense of satisfaction that soon follows a good meal. All I know is that there are few things in life that are as easy to enjoy and to share as food. It connects us all, binds us all together in a way language, dress, and even ideologies can't. I may not understand what a person halfway around the world may be going through, but everyone--I don't care who you are--appreciates a good meal. Even though what constitutes "good" may fluctuate person-to-person and country-to-country, the desire for a good meal is universal.

A meal is so much more than the food, though. Marion gets that. A meal goes far beyond what's presented on your plate. The pie is much more than the sum of its ingredients. What the pie actually is is the chipped blue plate that's probably been used to serve thousands, if not millions of people. The pie is the quaint atmosphere and great people I happened to meet that day. The pie is the history and ritual that binds that particular community together. The pie is the conversation, the laughter, and, yes, even the tears that usually accompany a dish of its caliber. The pie is the memory of friendship, trust, and caring that all good experiences entail.

More to the point a good pie is the sense that there is a joy out there that transcends literalism or reason or even logic. You don't have to figure out a good pie; it doesn't require thoughts or feelings or planning. It doesn't involve mapping every step of the way or itineraries or schedules. It isn't an exact science. You enjoy a good pie because it tastes good and because every time you have it you feel good if only because you remember how good you felt that one time you had it. For example, I could have only a so-so key lime pie a month from now at some place I happened to fall into. It could taste as average as a store-bought example that's been sitting out for a week. Yet the experience will still prove to be more than satisfactory because key lime pie will always remind me of Toby and Homemade. Every time I take a bite now I'll remember how wrong I was in thinking that nothing could ever taste as good as all that she made it out to be. I'll remember thinking that I'm not the last arbiter of what makes food good. And I'll remember that at least one person out there knows exactly where I'm coming from when it comes to food she likes and wishes to share.


now I know how I plan to make things easier
for everyone including me
----

"So you're saying that this piece of pie holds all the answers to life's questions? That, if I bite this, it'll all make sense?" I asked.

"Try it."

"It can't be all that good."

"Would you just try it already?"

"Okay... wow, that is good."

"I told you.... You want to know what makes key lime pie so great?"

"Shoot."

"It's because when you bite into it, it makes your mouth pucker. Like this."

"And?"

"Gosh. It's perfect for kissing.... that's what good pie is. It's like being kissed, bite by bite, till you're feeling all better."

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers