I like beef.

A lot.

I remember being twelve years old and really grossed out by a scene in Dances with Wolves where one of the Sioux rips the liver from a newly-slaughtered bison and makes that priss, Kevin Costner, take a bite. I hadn't yet discovered my adoration/obsession with all things bovine. I watched the movie on TV a few weeks ago (what a load of shit) and the scene no longer icked me out. In fact, I've indulged myself in so many questionable beef dishes since {tons of tartars, tongue, ox-tail, various carpaccios and bresaolas, fried sweet-meats (umm, brain)} that the sight of the pulsing, bleeding raw liver actually looked delicious.

It's probably fair to say that if I had the money to nurse one, I'd have a beef addiction.

Yesterday, the New York Times dining section ran an article on Beefsteak. No, not the tomato or strange superfluously named cut, but a New York-originated tradition where men got together and ate large amounts (ok, all you-could-gluttonously-eat-amounts) of tenderloin, bacon-wrapped lamb kidneys, lamb chops, shrimp, crab and beer, usually for some political purpose. The tradition died out in New York after women obtained suffrage ( The Times quotes someone as saying it was because men felt uncomfortable with women watching them eat so much, but please), but somehow stuck around, and subsequently morphed, in North Jersey. Now, blue-collar men sit around, eating pieces of tenderloin dipped in butter and stacked onto Italian bread- not only does the bread serve to sop up fat drippings, but the men use it to keep a count and boast about how much bovine they've digested.

Sounds great!

Unfortunately, I belong to no organization that could sponsor one of the North Jersey events. And although Beacon Restaurant throws a beefsteak party every year, it costs $175.00, which is funding I just don't have right now. Also, it's happening on the Massachusetts/New York Primary Day (in honor maybe of Old Tammany's tradition of holding a beesteak?) and as I'm a Massachusetts voter who lives in Massachusetts for another month, I kind of have to choose Barack Obama over beef. Still, if I had $175.00, I might consider it.

Then again, perhaps my reticence has nothing to do with either the cost or my right to the franchise, but instead concerns a wine-tasting I went to at Beacon about three years ago. I got a little bit buzzed (or drunk, but I don't believe in spitting!) and stumbled over to the Huber's representative, who was the son of one of the winemakers, and blurted out, "Your Eiswein was the nicest thing I've ever put in my mouth." I suppose I tried to say it seductively, but it came out trashy and cheap, and, being Austrian, I don't think he appreciated it.

This might look like a harmless bundle of entwined threads turning into an innocuous piece of fuzz, but you'd be wrong. It's an image of my latest terror incarnate. This picture supposedly captures the byproduct of Morgellons Disease, which the CDC has now decided to research. Given my propensity for eczema and bizarre medical conditions (does any other twenty-eight year old you know have a fatty tumor nesting in his/her intestines?) I figure it's only a matter of time before I break out in painful sores which, in the interest of further humiliation, emit magenta and cobalt blue fibers, as well as a black wiry substance. The visual discomfort is then aided by severe physical discomfort as the feeling that bugs are crawling all over your body and under your skin NEVER ENDS.

I woke up this morning not focusing on my twenty-five page research paper which is due in a week, or pondering the fact that Heath Ledger somehow managed to circle the drain faster than Amy Winehouse and her crackpipe of despair, or even regretting that I ate macaroni and cheese with extra garlic powder at ten p.m. last night. Instead, I've obsessed about every itch, shiver and sensation, completely ignoring the ludicrous level of coincidence that would cause me to discover the existence of Morgellons the same day symptoms begin to manifest.

With any other disease, a counter-argument pointing out that I'm acting like a delusional hypochondriac would thwart my imagination and return me to my usual state of quasi-reality. However, most doctors won't recognize Morgellons and instead diagnose the thousands of people who have it as suffering from delusional parasitosis. Now that the CDC has appropriated funding to determine its validity, maybe those doctors of denial will change their tune. Until then, I'll be scratching myself into an eczematic frenzy.

Thanks to MorgellonsUsa for the image.

This Exile is almost over. If I measure the time in work, it's merely a matter of three exams, one research paper and one presentation. Temporally, I leave the hinterlands in six weeks.

This Elba Island used to be called home, used to be the cornerstone of my Yankee snobability. I could even conjecture that we were once in love; I could drive the intricate highways and bi-ways and one-ways like a person could trace the veins on a lover's arm...that is to say, with my eyes closed (if only the law permitted!). And what excruciating pain to feel the paradigm shift of love and home dying; the hurt of knowing, "this is not where I can be."

I do not mind opening with melodrama...