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Sauce | Dec 26 2006

I had lunch with a friend at my favorite Japanese restaurant, Yamato, on Seventh Avenue. I ordered what I always order: the teriyaki salmon lunch box. It comes with miso soup, salad with carrot dressing, two deep-fried dumplings, rice, a California roll, and a little medley of pan-fried vegetables. Everything is first-rate. I particularly like the carrot dressing, although the dumpling sauce is yummy too, as is the teriyaki sauce. Even the rice is a cut above, fluffier and less sticky than elsewhere.

Also (and this is the point, really), I had nothing to say. I’ve had nothing to say for some time.

Related: I recently began a piece that begins:

All writing is positive. Even Beckett (perhaps Beckett most of all) is positive. His characters are compelled to speak, if only to speak of the pointlessness of it.

I wanted to connect this to Camus’s idea of suicide as the only serious philosophical question, but I ran out of steam.

About Yamato, I often have lunch there on Fridays. It’s a reward, a little treat, for a hard week of work. I bring the New York Times and sit at one of the tables near the big window that looks out on Seventh Avenue.

The waiter there knows me: he asks if I’d like the usual and I say yes. It feels nice to be known.