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Gravy in a bowl does not glisten, it sits there thick and brown and steamy, wishing it was a leather sofa or a buffalo. Pour the sauce over the meat and you have a glistening coating that transforms the meat from something dead and burned into something transcendent, something that sets your mouth drooling in raw primal hunger, something more than just food. The glistening comes from the fat, the rendered tissue of generation upon generation of animal that builds in the muscles and sinews of each and every creature that walks. It is the stuff that holds the meat together, that cushions it from the shocks and assaults of life. It is kindness and care incarnate, and we boil it and bake it and roast it out of the formerly living things until it is greasy and unctuous and brown in the bottom of a metal pan. How horribly we treat this thing that loves us all so well, and still, even after we have abused it, teased it from the muscles, scraped it from the pan, and forced it into some emulsified brew with flour and water, still it loves us with its shine and its feel as it fills our mouths. We partake of this tangible tenderness and make it a part of our own bodies, but we cannot incorporate that love -- it hardens and clogs and chokes off our bloodstreams, wishing it could share the joy of life with each and every one of us, but killing us because it cannot.
© BrianKaneOnline.com 2000-2007