My friend Joe, who has been with me for 30 years, passed away suddenly at the age of 57. That was almost three years ago. Clearly, the cause was a heart attack known as a widow. He hadn’t left his widow behind, but there were too many people in his life that were painful.
After Shiva’s first night, Joe’s sister took me to his apartment. Joe lived in New York City, his mother, Lincoln Square apartment, and there through the Covid-19 pandemic. He was still there after his mother passed away, but now he wasn’t caring for her, he was thinking about how to finally sort out his life. Will he build a small house? Put his music on the stage and live as close to nature as possible. Did he have the courage of love? But for his final days he was still sleeping in his sleeping bag on the floor, in the edited messiness known as artistic hoarding.
Together, we searched for clues about his final moments before death. We’ve incorporated Joe Yones. His camping gear, his cute backpacker Martin guitar, his still open McBook air is surrounded by the art of old Zen and motorcycle maintenance. “What do you like about him?” Joe’s sister asked me. There really was one thing.
“His sourdough starter.”
She seemed surprised at my answer. “Where is that?”
We entered a small galley style kitchen. The putty-colored slurry sat on the shelf in the middle of the almost empty fridge. I lifted the lid and saw a thin layer of Fooch, a clear liquid, on the surface. This is the accumulation of alcohol, a product of fermentation that appears when the starter is not being supplied for a while. But it smelled sweet like grapes. A carbon dioxide snap flicked over my nose. This was part of Joe who could live. I carefully carried it downtown by subway.
I met Joe in the early 90s. I am a playwright, he is a talented actor and we both belonged to the Waterfront Theatre Group in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was by no means romantic among us, but damn, we went deep. When it was revealed that we had the same cancer birthday, he felt like a spiritual sibling bond, 10 years younger. Eventually, when my real brother passed away, Joe was there for me in a way that even my lovely Bo couldn’t. There was something about the way he called me “Al.” He was the one I knew I couldn’t wait to get olderHe believed that the best role for him was as an older man.
At the time there was a tight family.–A group I went to Rutgers’ Maisonglos School of the Arts to learn about theatre–And we spent a long weekend at a place in Delaware County, where they call Flat Rock. There is nothing spectacular. It was a family farmer of a dormant bat-in present, adjacent to acres and acres of leaves, belonging to one of our clans. In the early 90s and later, weekend trips were frequently, essential, full of bonds, including time and nature, music and friends, and uncompromising necessities. Everything was abundant there.
Every season we would walk through the fields until Cassiopeia lifted her head. On one snowstorm winter night we were approaching our thighs with something white. Beating the weather, we returned to the warmth of the house, thawed, picked up some instruments, took some jams, then looked at what we could throw together for a group dinner. Joe stayed behind and practiced Tai Chi in the snow.
A few hours later I went into full throttle Jewish mother panic. Joe wasn’t back. Was he buried in snow drift? Was he awakening a hibernating bear? I was afraid from my heart with absolute certainty that I had to find him. People who knew him much longer than me, including my boyfriend at the time, assured me: Joe There was an animal instinct. He will return home when the time is right for him.
It was somewhere around 3am Boots sound, snow and heavy. “Joe!” I threw my arm around him, but I still don’t realize that worrying about Joe is not only useless, but undesirable. I was in awe of wow to recognize it The water bottle turned into blocks of ice, and his hands were warm. The man was a wood-like stove. Later, he coined the phrase “Joe doesn’t “weather.”
At that time, Joe had begun to bake. He completed his pie techniques, but he also bought one of those efficient and programmable home pan machines, a huge white sunbeam. Slap the packaged yeast, King Arthur flour scoops, and water. Press the button. And then I wake up to the warm bread. I highly valued freshness as I am a food snob, but I appreciated the results as homogeneous and spiritual. But who is throwing the stone? Certainly, sourdough was the road to go, but I was traveling too often to raise a starter and show him the real thing, so it was all ambitious for us until decades later, when Covid gave us the luxury of time. Then, when both were grounded, we finally compared notes over the phone on our sourdough journey.
The night I brought Joe the Starter home, I pondered whether I should keep him pure or mix him with my own. I went on a sentimental route. We reminisced together our last trip, pouring him into mine. Six weeks before his unexpected death, Joe coordinated his return to Flatlock for a long reunion. Call it a big cold version. This was Joe’s first foray into the world after the pandemic closure, and it was 20 years ago, as we were all in that sacred place. Some come from Ohio, some come from New York or New Jersey, and some carry all sorts of regulations. Of course, I did what I was doing. As someone who has written about wine and its culture for the past 30 years, I have brought more bottles than I can drink. Joe and I both brought bread.
I met him in person for the first time in three months and was worried that his right eye might be narrowing.–It was less open than the others. His face was grey. I should have said something. I should have it. However, he was so happy that our family was together again that I kept my mouth shut. On the second night, Joe drove out his powerful, homemade mushrooms–Another company in quarantine. Who can say no to Joe?
“Just a little,” I said.
“That’s true,” he replied with a smile. However, it didn’t take long before we knew that six of us were participating in it. It all began just after we went through the Bramble and emerged in the midsummer heat and sunset.
We roamed the fields and spoke as the full orange moon rose. Joe’s beloved mother had been dead for nearly a year, so her mother’s dementia had killed me. I poured my heart down on the hill in the middle of the newly mowed field. I stumbled upon myself, knowing that Joe was in intense mourning for his mother. But one of the rules for stumbling is not an apology. My friend listened enthusiastically, his head resting on his walking stick. The image is painterly and I put it in my pocket.
Then, when we could imagine eating while the bats flocked, and when the wine was ready, we brought out the bread. The Joe was all whole wheat. Each bread was arranged alongside a daisy splash oil cloth on the kitchen table. I declared his bread well, sipping on the Foillard Beaujolais I had poured. He disagreed. (He was wrong.)
“Are you really making lemon?” Joe didn’t give the starter any extra feed before baking.
“Would you let me prove it for two days?” As I did, he didn’t keep it cooler due to the sour fermentation, but it was baked quickly.
This was part of Joe who could live.
This January was a year since my mother passed away. Unlike Joe, she was 98 years old and her death was not tragic. With my new release, I ran away. I rented an inexpensive apartment in Paris, but based there and managed to catch up with winemakers from Georgia, France, Spain, Portugal and Italian that I had ignored while caring for Ethel. Then, in an instant, I was at home. Within seconds of entering the apartment, I threw away my bag and went straight to my fridge. My sourdough starter was a sad victim of my negligence and starvation. Of course, the situation was emotionally bothered, as what was in the jar was not just a starter. It was my friend.
When I left the country, I was out of the bread game. My crust was completely cracked, but I couldn’t get the sour, textured, and the glorious air pockets of breadcrumbs I’d been craving.
Now I had another chance. However, my blended starter was covered in black fur. Does it smell like he? Despicable corruption, all ruined flesh and rebellion.
Considering how much Joe likes to come to my place for dinner, I started scraping off the problematic bits, transferring the mash into a clean jar, and starting to feed it twice a day, not just with rye but with flashy high protein powder from Johnny’s factory. I always looked at the temperature as if it was a disease and tried to keep it at 76 degrees. I still couldn’t forgive myself at all to not say to Joe that his eye change might show something that was made.
My sibling was a cardiologist. I knew these things. Even if I knew what he was going to say, I should have argued: “No,” not only was he not having health insurance. He stubbornly believed not only in the pedestrians who inadvertently invaded his space, but also in his ultimate fate, not just his internal temperature, but also in his ability to control his internal temperature. His starter He was as stubborn as he was, clinging to the smell of death. I was despaired that it would change. My friend told me to trust the process and continue. One day she promised, I would smell that faint rosy.
By the end of the week there were flowers and fruits, and yet there was some decay. I was not pleased that the starter failed to release the sharp honey vine manicure smell that indicates health. So it’s hell – time to burn. I took my 10 grams of fermented and certainly the lemonade bubbly. The foam was clean, but the smell of the dirt on the rolls was still there. I mix the flour and water and let it sit for 30 minutes. It’s in the automation stage. I then added some lemon and waited for the smell of sea air on the bleached sand. Well, the confusion of that smelled flat. An hour later, on the second stretch and folding, I felt the continuous cycle of fermentation fairy dust, death and resurrection. The crumble and shreds have become elastic. The fabric was in conversation with me and was full of energy.
The only thing that comforted me about Joe’s untimely death was that he always did exactly what he wanted to do. Even if his water bottle turns to ice, he will remain on a frigid night, but he knew when to enter. “Not so, Joe?” I cried out loud as I finished my final shaping and placed the bread in the fridge. Then, in the finale, bread? I won.
Owning an intertwined starter was much more viable than visiting a cemetery. This is where Joe was able to respond to me. Ah, I have a good understanding of sourdough science and can know that Joe’s original culture does not exist in the starter. But that wasn’t a problem. There was a bit of his DNA there. Joe came back and put his original starter on his shoulder, making him believe he was open in the fields during the snowstorm. In a way. Not in the way I wanted it to be, but in a way.
