slow life, back in the u.s. of a.

When I first got back to the U.S., I thought I was living in an alternate reality. I was unprepared for the gigantic supermarkets the size of football stadiums, where incredibly fat people prowled the aisles, throwing industrial-size boxes of cereal and pop tarts and donuts and frozen pizzas and 72-packs of prepared chicken wings. I wasn't ready for the self-checkout option, the futuristic ding of the machine each time it scanned an item, the disembodied voice. The fluorescent lights, the jets squirting mist in the produce aisle, coating the artificial-looking bright orange carrots and bright-green lettuce with a thin film of moisture, the weirdly echoing icy tundra of the frozen food aisles -- yes, there were more than one of them -- all of these were mind-boggling and hypnotically fascinating.

I found myself wandering these vast spaces, the supermarkets, the hardware and home-repair stores, the all-purpose Targets, the Walgreens, mouth agape, confused and overwhelmed. Everything so huge, everything so varied, so many choices, so many aisles, brightly colored packages and bottles, so much.

And yet, not to be predictable, so little. So little. They were oddly empty. Fat people in tracksuits, in a food-induced haze, buying mountains of prepared food-like food. Rotund, flabby children ripping open bags of cheese curls, stuffing them in their mouths, a frightening fluorescent sheen to the crunchy fat.

Whatever happened to the small specialty neighborhood stores, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker? Seriously, I miss the small shops, ubiquitous in Paris, very frequently found in New York, less in Chicago... in my limited experience anyway.

When I first moved to Paris, many many years ago, there were virtually no supermarkets IN the city; they were on the outskirts. I loved going to the tiny bakery, a window on the street where I lived, with a small space with one oven in the back. The lady who owned the bakery, an elegant redhead, knew that I loved the amandine cassis tarts, beautiful little works of art with a soft almond paste in the center and a cassis glaze with the fruit nestled into it, warm and buttery. When I was broke, which at that time was often, she would give me one, just because. We have remained friendly acquaintances, throughout all the years. Her shop has moved down the street, and expanded, to become one of the best-known bakery/pastry shops in Paris, and there is some silver in her gorgeous red mane, but she is still as elegant as she always was, and as warm, calling out, "Oh, c'est la petite Americaine," whenever I set foot in the store, even sometimes after an absence of many years. And she still gives me a warm buttery tartelette amandine cassis, presenting it to me with the gravity and humor of a benevolent queen. And I feel each time as if I've come home.

Those days are long gone. I was broke, living in a garrett space so much like old French novels describe, complete with candles for light and a slanted roof, a small fogged window set in it with a view of the rooftops of the Marais, the oldest neighborhood in the city. I had no money. I was living on love and I was young and I was happy. Life was simple.

Yes, those days are long gone, as are my days of wandering the streets of my neighborhood, slipping into the traiteur, where dishes of carrot salad, piquant with vinegar and lemon juice and raisins, and celery root salad bathed in homemade mayonnaise made my mouth water; into the butcher shop, where I would buy thin-sliced tender horse steaks for pennies, thinking that my thoroughbred horse breeder grandfather would be shrieking from his grave, visiting the outdoor greenmarket where we would sniff and squeeze the gleaming purple eggplants and fat aromatic tomatoes, inspect the fresh leafy greens for salad, laugh with the vegetable lady as she waved delicate golden chanterelle mushrooms under our noses, extolling their virtues in an omelette: "A simple omelette," she would lecture us, "just the fresh beaten eggs and some garlic, salt and pepper, and some of these beauties, sauteed with butter, thrown in as the eggs set."

Ah, yes, lessons in omelette-making from the vegetable lady.

That's how I want to shop.

As the world becomes progressively more and more automated, I think to myself, "I want none of this." I want none of the fluorescent, non-person checkouts, I want none of the plastic-looking vegetables basking in their artificial mist, I want none of the glazed overstimulted, no-joy shopping. I want none of this.

I want the home-baked bread, I want to sniff the fresh cilantro as I chop it to put in my shrimp tacos, the shrimp bubbling in butter in a saute pan with hot peppers and ripe red tomatoes chopped into little cubes and olive oil and mmmm garlic and shreds of young green onion. I want to make my chicken soup from scratch, sure, it's o.k. to use chicken broth to "beef" it up, but I want to cook the carcass of my roast chicken in water, with carrots and onions and mushrooms, the button ones along with some smoky wild forest ones, and fresh rosemary and sage and thyme. Maybe add a little hot sauce, but not tabasco, which just tastes like vinegar and pepper to me; use one of those Mexican hot sauces made from real hot roasted deep dark toasty red/brown peppers, that has depth of flavor and long slow heat, of course some red wine, to make it full and rich and round, and then simmer it for a long time before you throw in the noodles.

I want to eat with my hands, lick the sauce off my fingers, I want to use as much fresh as I can, because it looks beautiful and the smells, when they all get chopped, then combined with some fat, some real creamy butter, some fragrant olive oil, well, the aroma is seductive and lovely.

I want to eat with my friends, we're in the kitchen, drinking wine, listening to great music, chopping things, preparing things, everyone's helping, slow talk, bursts of laughter, it feels warm and soft, food is cooking, on the stovetop, in the oven, a kiss here, a hug there, someone bumps my hip as they move to put plates on the table, it smells great, it feels great, it sounds great. It's all part of the thing, the anticipation, the buildup, the joint effort, the time, the love that goes into it.

I want to eat fish, like the trout I ate years ago in the southwest of France, at my friend Alain's house, his 14th century "maison forte," which was half outside, half inside, built into the side of a cliff-face along a river, the kitchen just an open space half protected from the elements by the outward curve of a rock shelter, half open to the sky, the back wall of rock with moss growing on it, the open hearth where we cooked the just-caught fresh fish, sliced open and stuffed with fresh rosemary and garlic, sea salt and ground pepper, the flesh pink and tender when we cut into it, the flavor of the herbs and garlic bursting in your mouth. A bottle or two of a chilled Sauvignon blanc -- we worked on it throughout the evening, as we stuffed the fish and stoked the fire, as we grilled it and set the table. Then we sit at the beat-up wooden table, the night birds rustling in the trees. The stars bright above our heads.

These are memorable meals.

I want to eat chicken cooked in a covered pot dug into a pit in the dirt, covered with hot burning embers, buried in the red sand of the Australian outback, the smell of the roast fowl seeping out from the ground oven, we're licking our lips in anticipation, cutting into the bird, stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms, the fragrant steam. The vast sky, the full moon above us, bright as a reading light.

Now that I'm back in America, I want the real stuff. I know it's there. Real Americana, fireflies on the lawn under the trees, minor league baseball on a summer night, hot dogs covered with toppings, a drag race in the middle of fields in the Midwest, a fish boil in the north-center of the country, real BBQ in a pit in the southwest. I want country inns -- Mike says, "Yeah, baby, sure, there are lots of them here, let's go find one," as we drive to a gig one night, up north somewhere. He has a look of fond incredulity, as if he's dealing with the sweet little village idiot somewhere, she smiles a lot and she's a little bit slow. But I remember, when I lived in Vermont, there WERE country inns out on the snowy back roads, beautiful little places owned by a couple or a family, they cooked and served the food, it was all fresh and slow cooked, it was given with pride and love. Why is that a joke now?

Why do I see references to "slow food" now? Why has that become a movement? What has it had to become a movement?

Have we lost it all? The virtues of the doing of something, the process, the way it feels, the time it takes, all essential parts of it. Have we traded that for the lie of convenience? Does convenience really make us happy?

Why is it that as we drive from New York to Chicago, through the dusk, then the deep night, on winding narrow highways, through Pennsylvania and Ohio and oh, God, state after state, that there are no country inns? Why is it that he is right, that when we stop in a small town on our way, all we can find is a McDonald's, a Burger King, a KFC, an Applebee's and a steak chain, which, it turns out, is the best bet in town, the place for a night out, a chain that is brightly lit, filled with raucous locals hooting and hollering in the very bright bar, where the dining room is so eye-shatteringly outfitted with spotlights that we have to beg the waitress to turn it down, and when she does, the table next to us complains. We explain that we are feeling romantic, we wanted a romantic dinner, and they shut up.

They are round and large and unsmiling and they shovel the food into their mouths, not speaking a word to each other. They are annoyed that they can't see everything, clearly, on their dishes, and they depart, grumbling, in high dudgeon. We are pleased.

I will change this. I will make something else happen, in my own world. I will have a life that is filled with love, and choice, and fresh lovely colors and scents and flavors, and music that celebrates our ears and our hearts and our minds and our souls. I will have this. I don't want to live any other way. I will not live with earbuds in my ears, eyebuds in my eyes, butterbuds and cheese-food in my mouth, cynicism and acceptance in my heart...

I want a slow life, with "slow love," and "slow talk," and "slow drinks," and "slow evenings," and "slow friends," and "slow food."

Mike says: "Hey babe, let's grill some shrimp and salmon on the deck. We can marinate them, and we'll do some corn and you make that yummy salsa with the mangoes and the peppers. And some baked potatoes. Oh, and Dave said he might come by later. What do you think?"

I think that's a memorable night, a memorable meal. I think that's perfect.