Of Taste Buds and Concrete Blocks

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Lorenzo and Markie are the latest inhabitants of the downstairs room. They’re quite delightful. He is going to the Culinary Institute of America and she is – well. Supporting him.

Last night Lorenzo prepared homemade ravioli. Tricolor. It was quite yummy.

Over dinner, we discussed sensory apparatus. “For instance,” Lorenzo said, “I have a really keen sense of smell. Like the other day, I smelled something burning before the person who was cooking realized he was burning it. So, I ran over and said, ‘You better watch that,’ and the guy rolled his eyes and said, ‘Whatever, dude,’ and then poof! It burst into flames. My sense of smell.”

“Well, either that, or you’re psychic,” I said.

“No, really. Look!” he said. He stuck out his tongue. It was very oddly grooved. “My taste buds move around.”

“My tongue looks like that, too,” Linda said, and she stuck out her tongue and bingo! Same grooves.

Now, Linda has an incredibly good palate. She can taste things that I can’t. One of those people who can eat something and then recite back a complete list of the ingredients that went into the recipe. She’s a real foodie, too. So’s Lorenzo. Given the tongue anomalies, that now makes perfect sense.



I’m still in a dark mood. It upsets me that I can’t throw a mantle of protectiveness over the lives of the people I love to keep them from all harm. Almost enough to put me off love altogether.

Today, I’m off to Staatsburg to do taxes for the remnants of those ancient families, living in four cordoned-off rooms of those dilapidated, moldering Livingston mansions with which Staatsburg abounds. Very Thomas Hardy, no?

Who was I having this conversation with the other day?

We were talking about the Livingston mansions and the 17th century ruins that are everywhere around here if you know how to look for them, and she said – I remember, at least, that the person was a woman – “But, of course in Europe, these wouldn’t be very old things at all!”

And I said, “Well, Europe is newer than you think. A lot of the cities got bombed into the ground in the last World War. You see a lot of concrete block architecture in Europe, particularly in the South. It’s actually a lot more picturesque here.”