In December, I took a trip to West Texas with my parents. I decided to do an experiment on my notes app, documenting recipies, quotes from conversations with relatives, and segments from books that connected with each day’s events. The lefthand column, quotes from primarily Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, were all segments read on the same day that the notes on the righthand column were made. Over the course of this practice, the synchronicities became more and more obvious. 

    My primary goal was the collection of recipies, and an exploration of food as lanuage. I compiled footage of my relative’s kitchens in the video linked below.

 

Day 1 Sun 22

   Pork al pastor, bacon, skillet potatoes
   & a cappuccino

“My brain needs a shower,” I say to Mom in the Oakland airport. I see myself seeing the words coming out of my mouth, and my face reacting to her reaction.

   An airplane coffee

“We’re walking towards Venice,” my love wrote yesterday, “We got nostalgic.” He sent a photo of the Venice Las Vegas canal. “This is totally insane,” “Ahaha.”

   A bite of a protein bar

A grey apartment off of the freeway, where balconies all the way up have men smoking on each their own lawn chairs. Texas porch culture.

“He’s all talk. One time there was a fly in the house and he said don’t kill it, that’s my friend!” Aunt Christine said about Uncle Larry.

   Sautéed and bell peppers over rice made by Christine and vegan cheesecake
   & wine

“He did King Creole in ‘58, and then there was Las Vegas.”

Uncle Larry was an Elvis impersonator in his day, and would often perform Elvis covers during the holidays. That night we watch King Creole.

On Vegas: “It’s the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements, bizarre and beautiful.”
“There’s no time, no night, no day, no past, no future.”
-Joan Didion, Marrying Absurd

Day 3 Tues 24

   Bacon, fruit
   & coffee

“My friend at the YMCA thought it was someone smoking a pot cigarette,” Larry said on the Kokopelli icon seen all around the Southwest.

In brownsville Texas, peyote went for for 30 cents a button.

I scroll back in the groupchat for friends’ updates.
“Chat chat my vision is being attacked by sensation. Oh my God this is so awesome but it feels like everything is breathing on me and everything is like feathers and they're like moving and like the way peacocks too. Oh my God fucking man shut up stop doing that. Oh my God, it's getting closer”

I read the transcription of the voice note: “Chat I can't text right now because the words are moving. They're breathing in and out and like and oh my God oh my God what the hell I am, I think I just caught the moment. I fell even deeper into this cause like at the fuzz I'm wearing fuzzy pants leg right now and I could see like the fuzz on them. I'm like. Moving and breathing oh my God I wish you could see what I saw right now Oh my God, I could see myself I look so awesome. Oh my God.”

“I can feel music, my breath, and my heart they like all breathe with me and I feel them like a music or resonance”

   Chicken sandwiches, fries, and a coke from a Dairy Queen in London, Texas

Hear the Marfa church bells.

   Roast and broiled carrots and stuffed potatoes and squash made by Jane
   & wine

I led a family excursion to the Dollar General to pick up Quaker Oats for the next morning. Because it felt important to me.

I called my love and he had gotten an alarm clock from his parents for Christmas - one with the intentionally most ear-grating beeping.

“Anybody who thinks this is all about drugs has his head in a bag. It’s a social movement, quintessentially romantic, the kind that recurs in times of a real social crisis. The themes are always the same. A return to innocence. The invocation of an earlier authority and control. The mysteries of the blood. An itch for the transcendental, for purification.”
“I sit in the sun listening to a couple of little girls, maybe seventeen years old. One of them has a lot of makeup and the other wears Levi's and cowboy boots. The boots do not look like an affectation, they look like she came up of a ranch about two weeks ago. I wonder what she is doing here in the Panhandle trying to make friends with a city girl who is snubbing her.”
-Joan Didion, Life Styles in the Golden Land

Day 4  Weds 25

I’m incredibly happy. It’s 2:44 and I woke up from a vivid dream where I talked with Dad in a ramen restaurant. I understand “loved ones” now. I’m being inspired by things that people should be inspired by. I feel...

   Dollar General Quaker Oats, with locally grown pecans
   & coffee

   Pickles and pickled beets

Particularly inspiring converstion with a brilliant woman in the kitchen pt. 1: Jennie Lynn.
She told a story about how she lost all her money in her early ‘20s in Vegas with her first boyfriend.
I mentioned wanting to find place to film the sunrise on super-8. She grabbed two pieces of paper from the fridge, taped them together, and drew me a treasure map in blue sharpie. An expedition!
She gifted me an artifact too. A magnifying glass helmet that she had used to paint on film. She said she’d been waiting to give it to someone who would appreciate it.

   Lamp, stuffing, asparagus, and summer squash pie

“It all comes back. Even that recipe for sauerkraut: even that brings it back. I was on Fire Island when I first made that sauerkraut, and it was raining, and we drank a lot of bobuorn and ate the sauerkraut and went to bed at ten, and I listened to the rain and the Atlantic and felt safe. I made the sauerkraut again last night and it did not make me feel any safer, but that is, as they say, another story.”
-Joan Diddion, Personals

Filling:
2 cups cooked, puréed pumpkin or squash (canned pumpkin is fine)
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbs. molasses
1/2 tsp. ground cloves or allspice
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. powdered ginger
3/4 tsp. salt

2 beaten eggs
1 cup evaporated milk
1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust

Day 5 Thurs 26

   Quaker oats snuck into artsy hotel cafe (saved $12)
   & an americano

“There’s a whole movement now to try to save the toads,” says Bob. Certain toads in the Sonora can have psychedelic properties when licked.

“I know a lot of these old timers who’ve been smoking pot for 50 years.”

“Don’t mess with Texas” actually started at an anti-littering campaign. I’m reminded of Uncle Larry who “couldn’t hurt a fly,” and “Texas Tough” plastic bags from H.E.B... The Texas Tough culture is a ruse.

   Made Jello

I see a book in a hotel gift shop. “Texas best Walks.” I pick it up to a random page, and see San Angelo River Walk. San Angelo was our next stop. I take a photo. Next expedition.

   Canned pork & bean tacos with avocado

“You don’t serve a Texan pre-folded tacos”

We go out with Bob to feed the horses. They follow us in the truck over to the hay feeder and Bob piles on hay for them with a pitchfork. The older horse steals mouthfuls hay from a younger one’s pile.

   Quinoa, rice, chicken bowl
   & spiked hot chocolate

...served to us by the resturant owner, a frenchman, currently drunk, with a pair of binoculars dangling around his neck. He, Bob, and Jane talk about housing prices and he laughs a lot.

The midnight train horn...
A half-real nightmare where a man talks about company earnings on the radio, I think I’m parylized so I try to get up and get ready but my legs don’t work and I fall on the floor. I wake up, and go talk with Mom, still awake, in the living room. There’s a bad feeling in my gut... it’s the eggs in that pie from yesterday.

Day 6 Fri 27

Mom and I set out before sunrise, following Jennie Lynn’s treasure map. Filming on my super-8 gifted by another female hero of mine from LA.

“If it works it works. If it doesn’t then we still saw the desert at dawn.” That and javelina hogs that crossed the highway in front of our car.

“It has to do with energy in the body,” Mom says about my nightmare. Hypnogogic states.

   Quaker oats and banana
   & coffee

Now, my own excursion. And I’m off. My walk of Texas.

    Candy cane from the Marfa Library
    Canned cold brew

I read a book I find called Dinner with Persephone, not expecting the first random page I turn to to be an Elvis fever dream.

I think about all the funny American-European crossovers: Venice, Las Vegas. Paris, Texas. London, Texas. The French resturaunt owner.  

I visit an art installation at Ballroom Marfa. The local Julie Speed. I read her pamphlet where she brilliantly talked about her process, including a description of how she uses magnifying glasses to paint details.

   1/4 cigarette and a candy cane

I read part of another book, How to Cook A Wolf, by MFK Fisher. She rejects the idea of three meals we’re told are balanced, and instead listening to our guts for what we eat.

That night at a dinner gathering with Bob and Jane and others, I’m texting my British friend Instagram reels of a woman putting gliter in gravy and mixing beans and marshmallows. “Oh dear bruv,” is her response. 

Helping Jane in the kitchen, we laugh, and she looks at me as if to say, you’re all right, kid. I cracked Jane’s Texas Tough image. We make a main and three sides, all with some of my favorite ingredients ever. I ask her for the recipes afterward and she gives freely now that we’re friends. 

   Steak, apple-fennel-onion dish, squash-quinoa dish made by Jane and I
   & a lot of wine

“Elvis Presley walks in, with sideburns, tight jeans, boots, and a white T-shirt. His eyes are red-rimmed as if he’d had a long tavernaki evening the night before, and when he introduces himself his Greek is a fantastic hybrid, its great polysyllabic mouthfuls lapping up and down in the slow currents of a Georgia accent. "Con us permiso," the Mexican mutters.”
-Patricia Storace, Dinner with Persephone

“Now, of all times in our history, we should be using our minds as well as our hearts in order to survive... to live gracefully if we live at all. [...] We must change. If the people set aside to instruct us can not help, we must do it ourselves. We must do our own balancing, according to what we have learned and also, for a change, according to what we have thought.”
-MFK Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf

---

1 1/2 pounds butternut or kabocha squash, cut in a small dice (1/2 to 3/4 inch) (about 4 cups diced)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 leek, white and light green parts only, cut in half, cleaned and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fresh thyme
2 ounces parmesan, grated
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cooked quinoa

1. Preaheat oven to 425° F. Cover a baking sheet with parchment. Toss squash with 1 tbsp of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Spread on baking sheet in an even layer. Place in oven and roast for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until tender and carmelized. Remove from the oven and turn the heat doen to 350 degrees. 
   
2. Meanwhile, heat remaining olive oil in a medium skillet and add onion. Cook, stirring until it begins to wilt, about 3 minutes. Add leek and a generous pinch of salt and cook, stirring, until onion and leek are tender, another 5 minutes. Add garlic and thyme to cook, stirring, until the garlic is fragrant, about 30 seconds. Remove from heat.
3. Oil a 2-quart baking dish or gratin. In a large bowl, beat eggs and add salt and pepper to taste. Whisk in milk. Add onions and leek mixture, squash, parmesan and quinoa, and combine well. Scrape into prepared baking dish.
   
4. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is lightly browned. Remove and allow to cool for 10 minutes or longer before serving.
   

---

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pound fennel, trimmed and thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt

Day 7 Sat 28

   Oatmeal, jello
   & coffee

“I heard the documentary on Martha Stuart is pretty good,” says Jane. “She’s been here to Marfa numerous times,” Bob adds.

On the road to San Angelo, we stop at a roadside “BBQ diner,” so that I can use the restroom. I walk in on four men in a dark room full of slot machines, who all look up at me. I mumble something and leave.

As we approach Big Lake, I think of a modernly mythological Nausicaa landscape, with it’s windmills and watertowers.

   Chicken fajitas and steak tacos

We talk in the car of the differences between the Terlingua Chili Cookoff and Burning man (not many.)

“At fucking 80 years old, she’s still saying ‘I lost 5 pounds!’” Mom and I talk in the kitchen about her mother.

   Catfish tacos
   & hot chocolate

“One word is too little, two words is too much.”

Day 8 Sun 29

    Banana, peanut butter
    & coffee

Some family friends of ours have three kids, who we visited along with their grandmother in her house. I hung out with the oldest child, a seven year old, while the adults talked around us. 
The grandmother: “There’s no telling what’s in our bodies.”
The mother: “It’s too late but I threw away our black plastic spoons”
We had more fun than any of them.
A magnetic, clay pile of shit, gifted by our good friend Matt, “to hold your shit list on your fridge.”

   Chicken fajita bowl

“I hate eating in public restaurants,” I hung out with old friends, two sisters, my age. 
“I’ve always wanted to pretend to be a food critic at a nice resturaunt.”

    Chips, queso and sweet tea

We went to British American Antiques, a warehouse outside of town. Two old southern ladies drinking boxed wine and eating crumbl cookies ring us up, with their four dogs and two cats behind them. “Want to try this crumbl flavor? We’re not sure what it is.”

“It tastes like… like…” We laugh on the car ride back as Sophie takes the most hesitant bite of the frosting before spilling it all over the backseat. We think it’s butterscotch pecan.

    Shrimp dip

“For a lot of people it’s the only creative outlet they have,” say the women in the kitchen on cooking.

“Postmodernism is destroying this planet.” The men say.

   Pork sirloin and mashed potatoes

Particularly inspiring converstion with a brilliant woman in the kitchen pt. 2: Jonzie
We talk about being an observer. And about still lives. She told me her story of going to school for philosophy and absoluetly despising the culture. I think she’s an angel from heaven and we touched each others souls that night by the stove. 

“Nor does he understand that when we talk about sale-leasebacks and right-of-way condemnations we are talking in code about the things we like best, the yellow fields and the cottonwoods and the rivers rising and falling and the mountain roads closing when the heavy snow comes in. We miss each other's points, have another drink and regard the fire.”

Day 9 Mon 30

    Club sandwich
    & a cappuccino

We meet the Empty Nester club for breakfast. They tell stories about when the theater in town would play one movie for the whole week.

“Y’all should check out the martini bar when you’re there.”
“What’s the martini bar called?” 
“The martini bar.”

“It must be hard to be musician. In a band. Only a few ever get as big as Elvis.”

   Handmade tamales by Eduarda
   & burbon

Love

“My heart melt… like ice cream, you know?”

With love

   Hot chocolate

Day 10 Tues 31

    Quaker oats
    & coffee

“Don’t let California get to your head!” Were Carol’s last words to me as we drove off to make our rounds making last visits.  

    Steak fried rice from Kozy Kitchen

I read Joan Didion’s essay on Hawaii and thought about the Islands of Texas. And the highway that connects them through oceans of desert which were once in fact, all underwater, you can see it on the way the mesas are shaped by ancient waves.

We drove to Fredericksburg, a German settlement in West Texas with a german sister-city, Montabaur. Texans drank beer and ate bratwurst while walking through the historical downtown of gift shops. Another Euro-American connection.

   Mezcal shot

“Juri wrote!” Says Dad. Our Texas-obsessed distant relatives from the Czech-Republic, who we had visited when Christine did a DNA test.

Love

    Tortilla soup from casa chloe

My love is at Funburger. It’s “hm… mm… not bad at all.”

I get a call from my friends back home, all drunk. Hi Leonie and Jorge and Claire and Elias.

Channel surfing: we find: 1, The last scene of The Aapartment, 2, The Twilight Zone episode where a woman is dying of heat only to wake up to the fact that she’s dying of cold, 3, The Walton’s, where I can’t stop laughing at “Jim Bob,” and 4, we end the night by changing the chanel to a country singer performing in Vegas for the new year. Cowboy hat and everything.

“I once met a woman in Dallas, a most charming and attractive woman accustomed to the hospitality and social hypersensitivity of Texas, who told me that during the four war years her husband had been stationed in Modesto, she had never once been invited inside anyone's house.”
“Their children still marry one another, still play bridge and go into the real-estate business together.”
-Joan Diddion, Notes from a Native Daughter

Day 11 Weds 1

   Oat kolache
   & a cappuccino

“The minute they’re comfortable, they’re gonna eat each other’s brains out,” we decided about the way that human evolution is going.
Then we make a plan to unite America under buckwheat bread.

   Bratwurst with potatoes and sauerkraut

“Luckenbach, Texas, feeling no pain,” the car radio, “...except for everyone eating all that cheese and gluten.” Mom laughs at her own joke until tears.

   Chai latte from the airport

   Texas Burger from the airport

I eat my Texas Burger, look out the plane window at the sunset.

“A bright day” plays automatically in the car on the way home, usually an annoying glitch, but instead of turning it off it plays, and we all say how funny it is that we never listened before.

“The desert, any desert, is indeed the valley of the shadow of death; come
back from the desert and you feel like Alcestis, reborn. After Nogales on Route 15 there is nothing but the Sonoran desert, nothing but mesquite and rattlesnakes and the Sierra Madre but
an human endeavor east, no trace of the floating to occasional Pemex truck hurtling north and once in a while in the distance.”
“A party at someone’s house in
Beverly Hills: a pink tent, two orchestras, a couple of French Communist directors in Cardin evening jackets, chili and hamburgers from Chasen's. The wife of an English actor sits at a
table alone; she visits California rarely although her husband works here a good deal.”
-Joan Diddion, Letter from Los Angeles

We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don't take our trips on LSD
We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street
'Cause we like livin' right, and bein' free
We don't make a party out of lovin'
But we like holdin' hands and pitchin' woo
We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do
And I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all
Leather boots are still in style for manly footwear
Beads and Roman sandals won't be seen
And football's still the roughest thing on campus
And the kids here still respect the college dean
And I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee
A place where even squares can have a ball
We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all
And white lightnin's still the biggest thrill of all
In Muskogee, Oklahoma, USA