Lusciousity

It starts with a glass of wine. Or, more accurately, twelve. Of course, that’s how all good stories start.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First and foremost we are here to discuss with you, our loyal readers, all things luscious.

Yes, we are here to enjoy. Note that I did not say “to enjoy great movies”….”to enjoy life”… “to enjoy a nice meal.” No object is needed. You see, when dealing with lusciousity, “enjoy” does not have to be a transitive verb. It is a state of being, a fleeting Nirvana that lifts our vision from the unfortunate plethora of downers that plague postmodern existence for the fully thinking and feeling person. You cannot hold on to it, but you can seek it. You cannot press it between the pages of your Webster’s dictionary, but you can cherish it as memory.

Why lusciousity? Because sometimes even a Visa commercial can be luscious: it can grab you by the shoulders and shake you hard, saying “What are you waiting for? A written invitation to participate in life? Well, you have one. It’s called your birth certificate.”

If you feel we are overstating, then you, more than anyone, should read on. To understand lusciousity, you must overstate. But even that doesn’t capture it. You don’t “understand” lusciousity, you revel in it. Take that extra scoop of cool whip on your cake, then realize that you must raise the lusciousity by whipping real cream…full, fat whipped cream straight from the cow. Realize that minced garlic in a plastic jar purchased from the grocery store just will not give you lusciousity (or bad breath) like the carefully selected, peeled, and roasted head of fresh garlic. Plastic jar garlic is already diminished, captured, unfree to transport you to lusciousity. You’re divorced from the peeling, the cutting, the smell on your fingers that joins you with the experience. When properly executed, the experience of lusciousity seeps up through your blood for days to come.

But the wine, of course, the wine. A wine tasting, in fact. A room full of people, gathered to taste and talk wine. Light whites to bold reds. A setting where one is likely to be awakened to the subtlety of life disguised as minutiae. It was somewhere around the bordeaux, working our way through a line of fellow tasters that ebbed and snaked and somehow led us all back to the source, when we realized the essential aspect of wine we love. Now, we like a lot of wine — it’s good stuff — but wine we love distinguishes itself from the masses with one quality: namely, lusciousity. It fills your mouth completely. It’s sensual beyond taste. It’s a state to which many wines aspire, but only a few achieve. Of course, we don’t mean to sound pretentious or elitist. As far as we’re concerned this is perfectly in line with the American ideal of equality (even if it was a French wine that first crystallized the concept of lusciosity to our minds): anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and into a lovely pair of fleece-lined slippers. Lusciousity is a state of mind grounded in the fullness of reality, not a state of wallet. It’s the choice we make of how we want to experience life.

What does life take? It takes lusciousity. It takes a spirituality of abundance, even when scarcity is on the horizon.

Welcome to Lusciousity.

You know what’s luscious? Vacations. Vacations such as the one the Editors of Lusciousity have been taking for the last month.

Now where were we? Oh yes. Lusciousity is a state of mind, not a state of wallet…most importantly, a spirituality of abundance even when scarcity may be on its way.

At this point you might be thinking: “Huh?”

By that succinct — and frankly not terribly original — thought, we assume you mean, “But Editors of Lusciousity, I thought lusciousity was all about abundance, overabundance, really. I thought it was all about excess!” After all, we did say it started with a glass of wine, or twelve…

This is all true, but lusciousity is not a one-note phenomenon. Lusciousity is also about subtlety in that excess; it’s about layers. A luscious glass of wine isn’t great because it has the biggest flavor and is served in the largest glass. It surges toward you but knows how far to go before taking that crucial step back, asking your tongue to follow as it begins to dance.

This past month, and maybe even the next few weeks, are a perfect time for us to take a step back, and in the process bring the lusciousity forward. Some of you may have noticed that March 1 was the beginning of Lent. If you didn’t…well, now you do, and here’s the sparknotes: Lent is the season where many religious types give up stuff, as in, “No chocolate for Lent.” But that giving up is the flip side of taking on. You can always look at it two ways. You are both giving up chocolate and taking on the discipline of sacrifice. (A quick note to the non-religious/non-christian members of our readership: in your mind, please replace “Lent” with “Month I Can’t Afford Rent.”)

None of us had intended to give anything up this Lent, or take anything on for that matter. But nothing, really, was as we had predicted it would be. One of us felt the need for self-discipline where it was lacking before, one of us was starting a job he never planned to have, and one of us was healing from a wound in the very physical sense. And really, that’s just the beginning. Throw in a car mash up, a car bash up, and a couple of freak winter storms and your state of lusciousity is seriously tested. You look back on those words you wrote, you remember that taste of wine and friendship like it was another person’s lifetime. The world spins around and you aren’t sure that you are that person anymore. In fact, you’re pretty sure you can’t ever be that person again. In our own ways, we all took on the discipline of uncertainty.

And still, we all managed to find our way back. And we learned something about lusciousity along the way. Not necessarily something new, but something new to us…… the only way to really know the good times is to know the bad times too.

Perhaps you can relate to this? Perhaps you can’t? Perhaps you’re thinking “Whoah, I just like chocolate torte, I wasn’t expecting all this.” But you should expect this, because the mash ups and the bash ups and the Crash ups (how did that win the Oscar?) allow lusciousity to exist. Imagine that torte if you had one every day? Good, but tiresome. Now imagine it once every five years…now that’s a torte to celebrate.

So was this really a vacation? Let’s not pretend we all didn’t wonder if lusciousity could survive capital letter Life. Let’s not pretend that scarcity, or taking that step back, is always our choice. It’s never our first choice. As the Marie Howe tells us in her poem “What the Living Do”:

We want the spring to come and the winter to
pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss–we want more and more and
then more of it.

Our instinct is to accentuate the comfortable and eliminate the demanding, but luckily we can’t get away with it. Something always makes us take that step back, and we live through the experiences we would not have chosen. But they are necessary. They help us find and savor the luscious. As it turned out, one of us got an opportunity that he never knew he could earn. One of us realized she confused scars with imperfection instead of strength. And one of us found fullness in hunger. None of this came from excess, but it was luscious all the same.

Next time you raise your glass in toast, take a moment to mention when you were caught in the rain without an umbrella. It made that towel feel so nice when you got home.

You know what Mr. B____ always used to think Aretha was saying to him? “Ch-ch-chaaange. Change, you fools.”

Later, the Editors helped him realize that it was actually “chain of fools” (boy, his therapist had a field day with that one), but it got him thinking: there are some things at lusciousity.com that just need to change.

So far, Lusciousity has tended to be a once-a-month event. It occurs to the Editors that this does not exactly vibe with our goal of digging into the richness of what most would see as plain, ordinary, vanilla flavored life. (Not vanilla like creme brulee, soft serve vanilla. Too boring to live, which is the lowest level of lusciousity.)

Starting today, Lusciousity goes 24/7. We mean updates. More often. That’s all.

Stay tuned for statements of interest (FIFO vs. LIFO accounting; Definitions of Tonality that will surely reverberate down to the wee of your spinal column; discussions of Library blog titles) and declarations of all that is luscious.

Bring it.

Ah, what could be a more dignified way to conduct one’s life than with a hot cup of English Breakfast (milk and two lumps, please) at hand? This editor would like to reccomend a new and promising blog devoted to just such sentiments.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Tea cups!

Lizze Likes Izze

Summer has arrived here in Florida. Yes, there is a summer in Florida. It’s the time of year when temperatures in the 80s become temperatures in the 90s, sunny mornings lead to deliciously thundery afternoons, and you face third degree burns on your palms if you forget to put the sun visor in your windshield when it’s parked outside. That last part, not so luscious, but otherwise summer in the subtropics has its very own flavor of lusciousity.

Since Lusciousity the blog has its roots in fine beverages, I am going to take the start of summer as an opportunity to present some fabulous hot weather drinking choices. Let’s start with Izze.

I have to admit, after seeing pictures of Reese Whitherspoon’s daughter sipping this sparkling, sans refined sugar juice, I figured it was too faddish to be worth my tastebuds’ time. During a lunchtime Starbucks run last week, however, I decided to take a chance on it. I was still buzzed from my morning caffeine hit and it was just too hot for hot chocolate. So that pretty much left Izze or Jones Soda. I love Jones Soda and will likely devote a Lusciousity entry to it at some point the future, but heat does weird things to your taste buds and the idea of drinking pure sugar didn’t appeal to me. (Sidebar: the idea of drinking pure sugar almost always appeals to me.)

So I took a deep breath and took a closer look at the Izze. My Starbucks du jour was offering three flavors: Clementine, Pomengranate, and Grapefruit. They had me at Clementine. I have harbored an unrequited love of clementine juice since the Christmas I spent in Paris, where they actually sell quarts of it in supermarkets. It’s tart, rich, and smooth. Why drink settle for orange when you can have clementine? This is an excellent example of lusciousity in action.

So I stuck with the Clementine for about a week, and today branched out to Pomegranate. Excellent choice! Again, imagine the deepest, tangiest, and earthiest grape juice you’ve ever had. Now add just enough fizz to make it twinkle across your tongue. You’ve got Izze.

Further Izze research has alerted me to the fact that there are many more flavors to try, including pear, blueberry and blackberry. If you really want to get your Izze on, you can order T-shirts and download the Izze song from their website. All proceeds go to their community development work as part of Project Reach, which will probably relieve any guilt you have about buying this decadent summer treat.

In honor of Izze, I am changing the spelling of my name, as exemplified in the title of this entry.

In the last entry to this most luscious of blogs, my fellow editor mentioned the appeal of drinking pure sugar. I realize that in this day in age, this is not a popular notion – what with soft drinks in schools and childhood obesity – but right now I think it’s a fantastic idea. Now, when I discuss drinking pure sugar, I’m not talking about a coke. Coke isn’t pure sugar. It’s mostly sugar – appearing in that oh-so-appetizing form of “high fructose corn syrup” – mixed with whatever acidic liquids they use to create that appealing shade of brown. Not luscious. Occasionally refreshing, but definitely not luscious.

If you want the real deal, if you’re ready for the way to drink natural, pure sugar, then I have three words for you: sugar…cane…juice. We’re not kidding around here. This stuff will send you on a sugar high that could land you in rehab. You might not have known that these bamboo-like sticks are juice-able, but they are, and it will blow your mind.

I’ve only had one opportunity to enjoy this sweetest of sweet drinks. I was visiting south Florida with Mr. R______ and his sister when we came across a small Cuban restaurant (more of a stand, really). The moment the scent of black beans reached Mr. R______’s nose, he threw the wheel to the right and skidded into the stand. (As I understand it, the resulting car accident had only minor injuries.) After a thoroughly satisfying meal, we saw the juicer and stack of canes. There was no question of what we had to do. One glass was all we ordered, but it more than satisfied all three of us. As soon as the ever-so-slightly-thick juice touched my tongue…well, I realized I had never properly experienced “sweet” before. The beauty was in its imperfections. There were small bits of cane floating in it, and it had a distinct flavor, different from sugar water. I have to admit…at this point it all gets a bit fuzzy. I don’t remember much until I woke up in bed the next morning, but from the top hat, bowling pin, and mangos strewn across the floor, I can only presume that I had a good time.

So remember, if you run across a sugar cane juice stand, it’s worth your time to stop and enjoy; but please, this editor begs that you drink in moderation. Nausea is never luscious.

On behalf of The Editors, I would like to introduce guest contributors Frida and Diego. They are light years beyond this editor in style and taste, so I was thrilled to find out that they wanted to pass on some of their worldly wisdom. I was first clued in to their fine taste in summer beverages when, during a recent soiree at their Fort Lauderdale home (a work of art in itself) they introduced me to the m_____. (You’ll have to wait, dear reader, for the name of that drink and its luscious recipe, but it’s worth it.) Their recent trip to New York City provided them with a few sophisticated yet down to earth sips, which they have deigned to share with us provincials. I present the following report…

Young, Thai, and Legal

We got luscious! Me and the missus just got back from a thirsty Memorial Day weekend in NYC. Many hours were spent shopping for the new and the cool amidst the jet set in Nolita (North of Little Italy). A few doors down from the smoky and smokin’ clientele at Cafe Gitane we came upon a young rocker balancing a tray of sample juices outside of a new raw bar called Blue / Green, which is based in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). We sampled a pear/apple/orange/pineapple/carrot juice concoction which was absolutely delicious, and also sampled coconut water–young coconut water and, OMID (Oh My Intelligent Designer) was it exquisite–clean, soothing, with a nutty finish. Absolutely luscious. Young coconuts—who knew?!?!

I did a little research and found that Blue / Green’s website identifies the nectar we’d sampled as water taken from young Thai coconuts. Admittedly, anything young and Thai has some pretty unsettling connotations, but ever since our return I’ve been on the prowl for a local source. My Haitian work mate Le Roi Louis informed me that a visit to SoFLA’s Swap Shop on Sunrise Boulevard will yield all sorts of juices, including young Thai coconut juice. I urge Lusciousity’s devoted readers to search out some, STAT! Were it not for the fact that I’m a teetotaler, I’d wager that this would make one hellacious summer swooner as well, but I’ll stick to young, virgin Thai coconut water.

Salud, Diego.