Beginning with the clarity of this: Wishing the world a warm, happy, loving new year. May patience and peace abound.
This is the year I realized that the best was behind me. The tide turned suddenly, or so it felt. Likely it was building slowly and I didn’t notice. I took the change in perspective hard and still am.
Watching Transparent the other night, an Uber driver says to Aly, “To be alive is to be sad,” which felt like the encapsulation that I needed. All my life I have fought sadness, always been able to get back to a feeling that the pinnacle was ahead, and lived for a sense of possibility. This year the fight drained out of me, the pinnacle revealed itself as a fantasy and a sense of possibility became a shapeshifter.
Naming the feeling, acknowledging one essence of being human, poked a hole in my bursting balloon of anxiety and the tension blasted out in a hard, straight stream.
It’s been an interesting year. Necessary. Painful, frankly.
And now, on to the young people! As it should be. I live with one, thankfully, and pay close attention. He does not pay close attention to me, but I am louder, more persistent and more tenacious, so the messages may be slowly penetrating. At any rate, it is an equal exchange of knowledge and wisdom, and I am happy to turn the wheel over (occasionally) to “The Young People”, the neopols*.
Teddy, the spectacular Claire – visiting from Brooklyn, and I made a foray to Union Market for oysters and smoked fish from Neopol Savory Smokery. Who better for a sandwich safari than those who are always full of appetite? They are still growing! Future bound.
That said, the boy was reluctant to eat my fishywich. He wanted meat, meat, meat. No surprise. More smoked whitefish for Claire and me. And Neopol is not short on meat, let me tell you – chicken, pork, duck, sausage and more.
It’s nice to watch someone slice with skill and concentration. That’s how he was doing it at Neopol, not distracted a bit by the snaking Sunday morning line. Beautiful silky stuff, that salmon. 
The year came to a warm end in terms of company, the air outdoors and the heart inside me. Sometimes the warmth emanates from love and sometimes it’s simply the fire of struggle. Either way, the new year is upon us tomorrow and I hope that new perspectives settle in comfortably for everyone.
To be alive is to be sad. A ha! We are all in this together. And from that comes a solid foundation of happiness.
2016. Bring it!
*Neo is a prefix from the ancient Greek word for young, neos (νέος)
Politicians propose, support and create laws or policies that govern the land and, by extension, its people.
The actual root of “politics” is indeed the Greek “polis,” meaning “city.” This produced the Greek “polites,” meaning “citizen,” which in turn produced “politikos,” meaning “regarding citizens or matters of state.”
So, I take Neopol to mean young citizens or something along those lines. My take on the word. Perhaps it just means guppies or is some other fishy reference.
The menu was more ambitious and varied than Il Bambino, but nothing about the place felt fleeting or too trendy.
The turkey was off the bone of a roaster, the kraut crunchy, the bread marbled and grilled. What more could one want? Not halved was smart. The sandwich would have self-destructed had it been severed.
The Lunch Encounter 
