No Exit: The Cassoulet Chronicles

Any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.”

― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

[The following is presented in black and white]

Day 1: I feel the void.  What is the point of existence?  How shall we live? What meaning can there be if all ends in darkness?  Is there any way to stave off the fear, the trembling?  I purchase duck legs.  I cook them for hours in fat.  The smell permeates the apartment.  I feel the crisp skin crackling.  Soon it will be confit.

Day 2: The beans, damn them, the beans!  I wake up in the early hours, sweating, clutching my night-things.  I haven’t soaked the beans!  What can be done?  Perfection is an abstract, unattainable.  I accept my fate.  The beans will soak for 24 hours, rather than 48.  I sit on my perch by the window, cigarette and red wine in hand, and think on lost love.  Oh legumes, why must you mock me so?

 [Solo cello]

Day 3: Forever shall I be a stranger to myself, but no longer a stranger to the neighborhood butcher.  He senses my need, the need for obscure cuts of meat.  We talk of Paris.  He gives me pork belly.  The essence of pork belly must not be confused with that of pork stew meat.  He intuitively understands my requirements.  I add a portion of pancetta.

Day 4: Stews.  Like the stew of my soul.  I am like Sisyphus at the base of the mountain.  Can I go on?  I can’t go on.  I might go on.  Should I go on?  I musn't go on.  But I will go on. I think.  I drink. I blink.   Shades of Andre the Giant.  And yet I am free.  Free to strive, free to fail, free to stick my willing hands down into the depths of duck fat.  Amanda discreetly vomits into her clutch purse.  And the red wine flows.

Day 5: My struggle has, as promised, turned into passion.  I gently ladle heavy cream onto seductively reclining potatoes.  I scrape hard nutmeg against unyielding metal.  There is no reality except in cooking (this I actually say in French).  My spirit bubbles in the cleansing fire of the oven.  I am browned.  I am whole.

[A woman of beauty and grace throws a single rose into the Seine.  She understands pain.]

Day 6: I am the shepherd!  I am the herd!  The breadcrumb crust has been applied and we wait in a smoke filled room, wondering if cassoulet will provide the answers we seek.  The crust is broken.  Steam escapes.  We meet like new lovers.  The silky beans.  The rich meat.  Duck caresses pork.  We lean against walls; no, not like Jordan Catalano.  Or at least, not like Jordan Catalano in high school.  Perhaps Jordan Catalano during his semester abroad when he LIVES.  And EXPERIENCES.  And LOVES.  DEEPLY.  Yes.  Meat.  I cover myself in fruit and syrup and realize that these moments are fleeting and precious.  Because it takes seven days to make this shit and a lifetime to find people who will put up with me and eat it.

I could never turn back any more than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where ? To this very moment...”

― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea