:: Monday 16 July 01 ::
Went to Le Grand Aioli yesterday, a street fair held every year somewhere around Bastille Day and originally intended, as the name suggests, to celebrate the glories of garlic. Much garlicky food is indeed sold and consumed and great quantities of beer are drunk; but since it's held in the Warehouse District, which was (maybe ten or fifteen years ago) the epicenter of artsy hipness in Minneapolis, it's also an occasion for regathering the tribes of the artsy and hip from whatever parts of the city they scattered to when the Warehouse District was taken over by the moneyed artsy/hip wannabes.
The food is still good, and the beer flows like wine, and the bands run the gamut from kick-ass to regrettable. But the people-watching is what I go for, and the scenery was fine. Since it was hot, there was much lovely skin on display: some beautiful men, deeply tanned and shirtless; some staggeringly lovely young women, with downy golden arms and thighs; clusters of pretty pretty queer boys canoodling; everyone chatting, laughing, moist with sweat, glowing with the simple pleasures of alcohol and music on a hot summer evening, and the pheremonal hum running from body to body.
I had a couple of quick beers, got mildly buzzed, and did the crowd-drift of the unattached voyeur. Crowds and noise and heat are things I usually avoid, but on occasion there's pleasure in in the sensory wash of it all, like body-surfing in a warm ocean, feeling oneself being gently buffeted around. Though I was not (for once) The Oldest Person in the Crowd--there were a few other grey heads in attendance--I was one of the only unattached people, solo in a sea of couples and clusters, and even without the beer I could have gotten a buzz off the collective thrum of erotic energy. Being alone in a crowd gives one a way to hold that tension between part of and apart from, to walk the border zone that seems to be my turf.
Once, as part of a tedious series of ice-breaker getting-to-know-you activities at a new job, a group of us were asked, "If you could have any super-power, what would it be?" For me, the answer was immediate: invisibility. I mean, think about it -- what a gift, to be able to go anywhere, drift intimately through people's lives, seeing and hearing everything, with the barriers of other-consciousness down. One of the great ambiguous gifts of age is that one does in fact become less visible; every year, as I go back to the fair and drift through the crowds of the young and lovely, I become more inconsequential, less tangible, just a dowdy middle-aged lady of no particular interest. There was a time when this would have bothered me quite a bit, because there was a time when it really mattered to me to be seen--seen as noteworthy, striking, maybe even desirable. There was a time I wanted to be part of one of those heated clusters. But as I get older seeing matters so much more than being seen, and the best way to see is to be invisible oneself.
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And, for those who are interested, a good aioli recipe:
1 cup olive oil (the good stuff, fruity, green, earthy)
2 large egg yolks (in these days of salmonella contagion, best to use
pasteurized eggs, alas)
At least 6 large fresh garlic cloves
Salt
Mince the garlic, and put in a blender with the egg yolks. Buzz briefly. Then, with the blender running on a low setting, slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Stop the blender as soon as all the oil is incorporated. Salt to taste.
This is heavenly spread on slices of good sourdough, or as a dip for lightly steamed vegetables or artichoke hearts, or slathered on grilled salmon or chicken or steak.
"I'd learned on the highway and in the circus, in the army, and at boxing gyms that even if you have a cutman in your corner to stanch the blood, it doesn't obviate the need for stamina, self-reliance, and keeping oriented to what I think of as the earth's magnetic field. You can have allies, mentors, be married, but still you're going to be alone most of your life, and if you're going to run off the rails, you had better be good company for yourself."
--Edward Hoagland