St. Louis: For the Senses: Seafood City

Seafood City, University City, Missouri. 2018.

Am I so far off from a dog? I'm beginning to think not.

Seafood City, University City, Missouri. 2018.

A dog of my childhood joyfully rolled in putrefying fish on a stony beach, the rot taking color in yellow and orange, to sing with the squishy stench.

Crawfish, Seafood City, University City, Missouri. 2018.

One of the joys of entering Rouse's Market in Lafayette was the smell of fish, both raw and cooked.

There was that not-quite-right blend of boiled, spiced crawfish with sticky sweet buns and a bottom note of crawfish etoufee at the Crawfish Etoufee Cookoff in Eunice. Here's what I wrote about that then:

It's extraordinary to smell the fragrances of  muddy bayou, spicy crawfish boil, and cinnamon buns all at once. I couldn't decide if I loved it or felt repelled by it. Attempts to come to a conclusion required many careful inhalations, to no avail.

So when I entered Seafood City on Olive Street in University City this summer, the intake of breath brought a sensory rush from the mixture of fresh and fishy, raw and cooked, the living and the dead, beauty and gore.

Seafood City, University City, Missouri. 2018.

There is pleasure in this as there is in approaching a terrifically pungent, soft cheese. The aroma is preposterous, but the flavor and texture are so fully sensual, and the combination of all is splendid. Which reminds me of this one anchovy I consumed recently. This small, floppy grayish-silvery thing, homely; but its oily, fishy, salty dimensions of flavor required deliberation of thought and closed eyes to extend the life of their chorus.

On my first visit to Seafood City, I saw my very first jackfruit. Until then, I'd only read about them. They are huge!

Jackfruit, Seafood City, University City, Missouri. 2018.

The idea of a Buddhist style chicken puzzled me as I guess I thought Buddhists were vegetarian.

Buddhist chicken, Seafood City, University City, Missouri. 2018.

I wonder how "fresh" is defined. Minutes? Hours? Days?

Fresh pork blood, Seafood City, University City, Missouri. 2018.

A slide show of my visits to Seafood City below:






This isn't the first time I've been a "scentsual" tourist. There was a satisfying trip through the Celestial Seasonings plant outside Boulder, Colorado in 2016.

I will likely need another hit of Seafood City before I leave Missouri this year.

Toronto: Fish on the Underground Path

Fish, Toronto's PATH, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. June 2016.

A couple of times, Sandy and I walked the underground pedestrian highway (the PATH) to get from a point A to a point B.

As with Tbilisi and Istanbul, Toronto's underground system houses shops and restaurants. Ripped from this page are highlights of Toronto's PATH:

• According to Guinness World Records, PATH is the largest underground shopping complex with 30 km (19 miles) of shopping arcades. It has 371,600 square meters (4 million square feet) of retail space. fact, the retail space connected to PATH rivals the West Edmonton Mall in size.
• The approximate 1,200 shops and services found in PATH, employ about 5,000 people.
• More than 50 buildings/office towers are connected through PATH. Twenty parking garages, six subway stations, two major department stores, eight major hotels, and a railway terminal.

I liked a collection of steel fish laid into the floor at one spot.

I like the imagery of us humans swimming desultorily through the PATH air stream, poking our heads in, around, under small pebbles and rocks as we make our way.

Letters From Matt #11: Haramachi, Japan: Bubbly Things

 

Postcard from Matt, July 1991. Japan.

Letters From Matt are letters from my brother, Matt, from various of his domestic and international travels. The letters span decades, and I share them on Living Rootless at intervals, in no particular order. 

September 1991
Haramachi, Japan

Dear Mzuri,

Yesterday I bought a plastic aquarium and some inexpensive fish (by Japanese standards, they were cheap, anyway). I was really excited about the purchase and am right now listening happily to the bubbles vibrating the plastic container and making a noise that anyone else would consider annoying 

I set up the project on my big windowsill in my classroom. Hopefully, it will generate a few words of English from my students like maybe "Would you turn that noisy thing off," and maybe some words of admiration from some. 

Not wanting to buy a bag of rocks to cover the bottom, I rode my bike to the beach for my own selection. Surprisingly, I bumped into the new English teacher from the next town. She's a pretty blonde (I told her all your blonde jokes. Ain't I the suave one.) from Connecticut. 

She helped me collect rocks. We oohed and aahed at each one as if we were buying art objects.

As we were hunting for rocks, I spied one of those hand-blown green glass bubbles that were used to keep fish nets afloat. I lunged for it greedily, yelling "Look! It still has the net wrapped around it." I wonder how long it had been floating in the ocean. A typhoon passed through just one day earlier so I guess it brought the bubble along with it. Maybe it had sunk to the bottom of the ocean with a big rotten fish in it and finally after all these years came loose and washed ashore. It's a small glass bubble just bigger than my fist.

Matt's Japanese fishing bubble, years later. Credit: Matt

This morning at 6:30 a friend picked me up at my apartment and we went canoeing in his 13 ft Coleman canoe. The river was high and fast and the canoe not very stable. Water lapped into the boat as we cut through bumpy water. Today is a holiday because of the Autumn equinox, even more special because a full moon has come at the same time and that's good luck. We have a holiday at every solstice and equinox. 

Thanks a lot for the book. I just started it and it's very interesting reading for me now. 

Take care, 

Brother Matt

Lake Atitlan, Guatemala: Fresh Fish on the Fire

While sitting in my favorite chair at La Iguana Perdida, along the stone walkway next to the lake, I watched a couple of men reap a fish harvest for dinner.

Fresh fish dinner in Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

Fresh fish dinner in Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

Fresh fish dinner in Santa Cruz, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. April 2016.

And below is some live action of same:

In the video, you can see how hazy the sky was. This was how it was most of the time during my stay at Lake Atitlan. And Antigua.