The American Road:
To scribble something like a biography… I’m just getting to know myself. And I think I’ll always be just getting to know myself. I started writing when my consciousness began… ten or eleven or twelve. There were things to work out then—the people in charge didn’t make sense to me. They still don’t. I suppose the anarchist was born around the time when I was being reprimanded for genuflecting improperly. At any rate, I’ve always been contrary and not because it satisfies me. I was destined to become something like an artist and admitting it makes me uncomfortable. Something like imposter syndrome but I’ve enough confidence not to let that slow me down. And it’s likely best to er on the side of humility. I’m an artist because I’m not afraid to trust myself even if it means turning my back and walking alone period the end I will walk head-on into any storm yes yes like the buffalo those ancient and mystical creatures from the America that I love the spiritual America the America represented in the land and the people who worship the land. And from the land I secure my nourishment and from such nourishment I secure my medicine and anything contrary to this vitality is stopped at the gate protecting my god. KEEP OUT! And so it is natural that I would scribble a word or two down as meditation and it is natural that the spirituality of food would become something of an occupation.
I’ve been called a chef and technically yes I am but it doesn’t satisfy. There must be a deeper meaning in my experiences—you think I chose to search for it? People overestimate free will. We are beholden to the same laws of the universe as everything else. We are a product of evolution. Enslaved to it. My every thought is created by it. There is but the smallest sliver of light in front of us from the doorway to higher consciousness. And many of us likely cannot achieve it—we do not possess the capability. So it may be important for the artists to show the rest of us the way... if we consider the evolution of such higher consciousness important. And things here are muddy and murky and silty. Full of nutrients but we can’t see through them. And so I do not try to. I do not question the other side. I allow myself to be guided by an invisible force so that I may guide in return.
And so I’ve arrived at a place along my passage to the other side: a deserted cottage restaurant overlooking the Chesapeake Bay. And my wife and I are turning it into something like Candide: We must cultivate our own garden. One may call it a sort of restaurant. One may call it a sort of mecca of fine dining. One may call it a sort of art installation or even a sort of museum. On the menu are our ideas. Though of course the ideas must be rooted in deliciousness—no, no this will not be one of those restaurants that serve some inedible morsel out of a casted mold of my puckered lips. We are going back in time and forward. A sort of timeless buoyancy. There is rich history here along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Sassafras. There is opportunity for endless exploration. There will be pawpaws and catfish and waterfowl. There will be music and there will be fire. And there will be just a few of us dancing in harmony with all of it providing the night’s entertainment. Like a show.
This is the story of the cultivation of the garden.
It is easy to take my writing for autobiography. What isn’t? Though I do not write facts. I write what I see. What is a Van Gogh sky? What is a Basquiat face? An artist must indulge both lightness and darkness. Day and night. Yin and yang. Chaos and order. Good and Evil.
Autumn hours…
There are something like 180 days between the start of fall (now) and first day of spring when Sassafras is set to open it’s doors for the first time. I’m renovating the restaurant with my own two hands. I’m exploring the Eastern Shore. I’m cooking fish and waterfowl over fire. I’m running my upscale cocktail bar in Baltimore. I’m raising my two little girls. I’m planting this garden with my wife. And I’m documenting all of it, every day.
