Brown Water Time
On the Leeward Island of Tortola, there is a house on the north coast, just east of the island's western end, built into the side of a mountain some fifty feet or so above the shoreline. I am fortunate enough to be related to the owners.
This house faces out onto the sea and the neighboring island of Jost Van Dyke. And at a certain hour of the evening, when the sun reaches a certain distance from the horizon, the whole scene suddenly, briefly explodes into the most magnificent colors. In this house, these colors signal the onset of a very special time of day: Brown Water Time.
This is a tradition I believe was inherited from the next door neighbor, Mrs. Tidswell. Mrs. Tidswell is the octogenarian widow of a real old-fashioned British colonialist, a vestige of white imperialism that remained behind to savor the land and the sea after the more blatant trappings of empire were swept away. Until she was hobbled by hip surgery a few months ago, Mrs. Tidswell rose every morning at 5 am and walked down the mountainside to the sea for a morning swim. She still wakes up at 5 am, but she doesn't make it down to the sea anymore.
Mrs. Tidswell has many lessons to teach her neighbors. One of the most valuable I've learned from her is this: No civilized human being will drink gin after noon.
The islands struggle to cultivate a culture of relaxation. A day on the sand and in the sea may relax you, but island life has its own stresses. The washed-out, rock-studded dirt roads between the house and the beach, or between the house and the nearest grocery store. The mosquitoes that attack every inch of exposed flesh not protected by chemical repellents. The overbearing need to conserve the painfully finite resources of potable water and electricity.
On Tortola, drink is part of the culture of relaxation. There is rum; there is beer. The children drink ghastly malt-flavored sodas. But in this house just west of a beach called Smuggler's Cove, where even gin is forbidden while the sun is casting its dying light, civilization has one last lesson to aid in the struggle of island culture against the meaner realities of island living. A glass of inexpensive scotch whiskey -- bought by the handle in a duty-free shop in town -- poured over a few painstakingly prepared and precious cubes of ice, and topped off with a dash of club soda. In this house on the side of the mountain, the day's last glimpse of paradise -- bathed in rose-copper light under a blanket of lavender skies -- is captured and preserved in a glass of amber liquid, where it can be nurtured after darkness steals away everything but the gentle rushing noises of the waves. Even as the mosquitoes wake from their daytime slumber to begin their nightly feast on my blood, I cannot shake the thought from my mind: there is no better life than this.
I understand Mrs. Tidswell takes her brown water neat. She's much more rehearsed in this than I. But I'm a quick study. And I have a week to practice.
This is it. My last visit to the original Frost Street, where it all began. This was the place I called home for my third year of law school. There's something sinister about the 3L year. It's utterly superfluous from an educational perspective, so you have lots of free time to discover what you really like to do, just before you strap in to your first life-sucking job in the legal profession. I realized I love to cook, and was just starting to get good at it when the demands of a legal career left me with few opportunities to practice my newfound avocation. Such is the way of the world, I suppose. But for a couple of days in early June, I went back to the place that gave this blog its name.
I've always believed he's better suited to the law than I, but it's nice to see that in his third year of law school, my brother has come to understand the importance of good food shared with those close to you. We're all proud of him. Congratulations, little brother. Good luck on the bar exam.
Yes, I've been gone for a while, but for good reason. Last week I was downtown for jury duty during the day, and in the office at night. If working at my firm is like having two jobs, going to jury duty on top of it is like working three. But now I've got lots of stories from Chinatown to share with you.
Trial lawyers and jurors are lucky in that the Manhattan courthouses border Chinatown on its western edge. Manhattan's Chinese quarter teems with cheap, satisfying eats, particularly Cantonese food. Radiating out from the intersection of Mott and Pell streets is a maze of gastronomic delights, which I'll be sharing with you over the next few days. It's good to be back.
The meat markets in Chinatown are mostly indistinguishable; they all carry cuts of meat that I haven't seen before, whole animals and parts of animals I've never tasted. Split carcasses of birds of every size - some with their heads still attached -- sit alongside whole fish and meats that still look like the animal they came from. Some of them have been salted and dried until the bones and flesh share a uniform brittle crunchiness; some have been pickled in vinegar, oil, and chilies; some are fresh, some are frozen. There is jellyfish here. There are buckets and buckets of chickens' feet. There is liver and stomach and heart of pig. There are various bone-studded chunks of flesh I can't even identify. There are fish heads. There is all manner of dead creeping and swimming and flying things that look at once slightly familiar and inexplicably alien. And everywhere you look the Cantonese lacquer of soy sauce, sherry, and sugar -- that quintessential marriage of saltiness, sweetness, and richness that can draw a covetous glance from the most sated diner -- glistens beckoningly at you.