as it turns out, i really really love carving turkey. tonight i went to a pre-thanksgiving dinner, at which there was a fantastically-cooked turkey nobody knew what to do with. i didn’t know what to do with it either, but doug, who had been handed the carving knife, chickened out and handed it to me. so i went after the turkey like a true novice at first, chopping the thing up beyond recognition. it became art soon enough, though, as do most of my endeavors.

when i was a bartender, i would make my drinks slow and beautiful. blood-red bloody marys sprinkled with pepper garnished with lemons and olives on a sword suspended across the salt-crusted lip of a goblet. pitch-black guinness stout topped with a perfect patina of dense foam. martinis with cracked-ice surfaces slick and cloudy with olive juice. each one a miniature art project, and i hated to see them go.

the turkey was no exception to the rule of my artistic tendencies, so by the time i was getting really good slices that looked like ones my dad would do, everyone was already eating. they were sitting in front of the television watching wild at heart which, from what i could hear while staring at turkey, is quite a disgusting film. the hilarious irony of the fact that i was up to my elbows in dead poultry slime while a group of people were yelling “ew! he’s touching brains!” was not at all lost on me.

i was coming into my own carving talents, and really getting going with the white meat (“oh my god! that guy’s arm is sewn to his face!”), when i noticed that the fantastically-cooked turkey wasn’t as well done as we’d originally thought. the middles of some of my beautiful slices had a rather disturbing gelatinous quality to them, which was scary considering the fact that people were already eating. but jon and i managed to round up all the uncooked parts before any of them were consumed, and i continued on with my turkey sculpting business, as the television screen spattered with gore.

i think my own heart as well is bloody and gelatinous on the inside. funny, i thought it was cooked dried and blackened all the way through, but it seems as though portions of it are still beating.  tapestried image, indeed…