Cross-Country Cooking

So somehow I'd come into this strange idea that she’s the one for me. At least in part. At least right now. I guess I formed that conclusion based, primarily, on how hard it was to leave her and her prevalence in my thoughts. Now, anyone can tell you that patterns and addictions are just about the same thing. Once you get into a routine anything outside of your proscribed actions becomes foreign and therefore threatening. Different is the anti-same. Having settled so seamlessly into her, the thought of losing that closeness and comfort was almost unbearable. I had come to need her. I'd developed a bit of a dependence on her affection and affirmation which, when it was first offered up was, I'll admit, most sorely needed. Emboldened by this attention, I began to create new inroads into the dense and seemingly impenetrable facade of my future, inroads chosen, in part, to recreate my person as someone she might find even more desirable.

The fact that she could value my company at all seemed a small miracle, especially when viewed in concert with her intrinsic beauty, intelligence and grace. She was, simply put, one of the most amazing creatures I'd ever met. Hell, I'd known that in college. That someone so fundamentally exquisite might find something worthwhile in me invited a closer examination of my personal inventory. I found scraps of things long abandoned and forgotten, bits of other lifetimes, minor triumphs and well turned phrases and strange and humorous monologues that lasted well into the night. In her I found a confidant and in me, stories to confide. In her I found a sounding board and in me, something to say. In her I found a lover, and in me, well, something to love.

And, oh, how wonderful it felt to let her love me. The way she smoothed my hair and read to me set my soul at ease. She cared for me like a mother and laughed with me like a child and I took it all without embarrassment or shame, because it was pure and it was honest and it was real. Finally I found myself free of my power-struggles. I didn't have to be bigger or stronger or older or smarter, I could cry, I could be afraid or hurt, I could be held. With her I felt so safe. Wrapped up in her arms, her breath in my hair, mine against her neck, her heart beating beneath me, the world was so far away. All my fears were groundless in the face of her reason, and her touch.

Bolstered by this confidence, at first hers in me then, slowly, mine in myself again, a plan began to form. A plan, I think now, truest to my own nature. A plan to roam as far as I dared. A plan, simply, to go. At first I hadn't even considered the fact that going meant leaving and part of what I'd be leaving was her. I suppose I couldn't truly conceive of the magnitude of what I might do, or my feelings for her. She began to make me so happy when I was with her that the next day without her plunged me into despair. Each time we came together I almost cried with the fear it would be the last time. And I don't think it out of place to say that I have never had a comparable physical connection to anyone, at times our intimacy seemed almost transcendent, to the point that surface and sense became one in the same. I can still feel her now, all these miles away, feel each curve and jut, each arc and flex, feel the shifting terrain of her body, feel inside her, watch the shape of me engulfed by her and, at the same time, feel myself devouring her.

KIMBERLY PAULUS
Coffee Slinger (extrordinaire) *(347) 678-1999

YOU WANT TO HIRE ME BECAUSE I’M

A hard worker new to Salt Lake City with an almost irrisistable charm and some halfway decent skills in the kitchen, too.

YOU KNOW I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING BECAUSE I’VE WORKED:

At the Ash Box CaféA neighborhood coffee shop at 1154 Manhattan Ave. Brooklyn, NY. 11211
Where I slung coffee all day long, prepared espresso drinks, made eggs, sandwiches of the traditional and hot pressed variety, served salads, soups and some pretty awesome daily and weekend brunch specials.
March ’06 to October ‘06

At Rene Pujol RestaurantAn upscale French restaurant in the Theater District of Manhattan
Where I began as an apprentice, learning each station of the French Culinary Brigade. I was trained in Garde Manger, the salad, desert and cold appetizer station, then the poissonier station where I prepped, cooked and plated fish entrees. I was offered a full-time positon but decided to travel instead.
March ’06 to August ‘06

At least 11 years in the field of Mental Retardation/Developmental Disabilities. In my final job in the field I was a Coordinator of Adult Day Services with a company called QSAC (Quaility Services for the Autistic Community). Before that I was the Assistant Supervisor at two residential facilities with YAI/NIPD (Young Adult Institute/National Institute for People with Disabilities). I can give you info and references if you’d like, I just needed to get out of the field.

EDUCATION
I got my B.A. (with honors) in Psychology from Wagner College, Staten Island, New York. I double minored in Philisophy and Religion. I spent a year At California Lutheran University during my undergrad and spent a semester abroad in India, studying Buddhism through Antioch College in Ohio. I graduated in 2002.

INTERESTS
Long walks on the beach, deep conversation, finding a job.

Or rather they do, they’re just thin and weathered, as if the wind from the mountains inverted them. And they’re drier than we are on the coast. Proximity to the ocean changes people. The closest of us get brined. We live a rough life in the elements, drink rum, eat fish, know it’s salt that runs in our veins. Those farther away know sky and rock and feel the hum of us all in the dry thin air. We are bleached out and tanned and polished by the wind while the others, they’re freeze-dried, their colors in tact but weightless. It’s the salt you see, the mother we never had, calling to us into the crash of the waves. Stepping into the ocean is coming home. Climb a mountain, you’re ascending to the sky. Curvaceous they may be but mothers they are not. They are cold and powerful and can eat you alive. In the mountains, exposure is real in a way it could never be in marshland. 5 below and snowing still amongst the pines and birches and laurels is cold but pretty. Out here, you can freeze to death on a sunny day. There is something vast in this wilderness that feels like swimming so far out into the ocean you know if you swim any farther you won’t make it back. You see your own death. You see real defeat. You see the world as it is; so much bigger than yourself. You see your own mortality. And you see wizened folk without any lips and you think to yourself, God, I miss New York.

You turn around and realize you’re half way up a freakin mountain!

Oh, and how the hell you can ride 15 (uh, well, they’re not exactly) blocks one way and then have to ride 52 and a half to get back to where you started?!? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Go Utah!

My friend Anna has one of the best voicemail prompts ever. In it she says the usual, you missed her, leave a message, etc. Then she asks her callers to tell her something wonderful that happened to them the day of their call because it would make the her smile and maybe the caller as well. Anna is some kind of wonderful herself and, halfway through Wyoming I did a little thinking on the nature of wonderful things.

“Hey, it’s me, I’m in Wyoming, as in ‘No, really, why- oming?’ It’s snowing like you would not believe and here I am in the middle of it all. Why, oming, did I come this way? This is, in and of itself, somewhat wonderful though. If you consider wonderful to be a word describing something which is full of wonder, inasmuch as something which is awful is full of or has the capacity to awe. And if we consider something awful as something having the capacity to awe, I then, am wonderful. As in wondering if I’ll ever get the hell out of Wyoming, which is pretty awful right now. Call me back. Bye.”