Eat out and take in at Amerigo's

Amerigo Nashville. Broadway & West End. Me in coat and tie at a business dinner, a meet and greet with Dr. Cardia from California. I arrived late. Interstates in Nashville are just suggestions planted here and there on whatever strip of asphalt seems to be heading in a similar direction. Just because you are on I-65 S right now doesn’t mean that the situation will remain so. Most likely, you will split, merge, turn, and split again into a half-dozen other highways, some lesser and some greater, and each one may or may not continue as I-65. The atmosphere was hushed in deep, black leathers and earth tones, lit by hanging, oversized ambient globes. People’s voices crowded into close seats and intimate booths, thrumming and hustling each other for aural prominence. White napkins. Couples celebrating engagement; young men and women laughing at each other’s stories heard for the first time; mature couples out with friends; and business dinner people. “Thom!” I turned to see my table.

“So nice to meet you Dr. Cardia,” I said, he rising slightly from behind a bruschetta al pomodoro. No memory of the handshake; he’s trying to figure out who the heck I am. I scrunched into the seat opposite, beside The Storyteller and his wife, Anne. Across the white linen, Dr. Cardia, and to his right, D.W. The conversation was of the bruschetta, of the flight – introductions still being made while I fussed over the wine list. “I’ll have a glass of the house Pinot Grigio and a water, please.”

I really had no idea what I was doing at this meeting. The Storyteller and D.W. are both my superiors, the former by several degrees. I resolved to play conservative, but simply couldn’t help myself: “Now what is anhedonism?” Dr. Cardia opened like a collector given leave to bring out his rarest finds. He talked for 20 minutes at least, and I couldn’t help smiling at him, enjoying the pleasure of being in the presence of someone talking about what they love. (My heart laid its hand on theology.) We were all leaning in, and asking questions. The rising rate of pastoral infidelity; the American ADD phenomenon and its drug of choice, Ritalin; the inhibition of pleasure centers in the brain by a culture addicted to serial melodrama and hedonistic bombasts. Ultimately, he concluded, we so deaden our pleasure centers in the brain that we can no longer enjoy anything. We become like zombies, feeling nothing, enjoying nothing. A kind of depression sets in which is not sadness but emptiness. Real pleasures, good company, ripe fruit, beautiful sunsets, and especially delayed pleasures such as those achieved in listening to good music or acquiring a foreign language, become impossible without treatment. And what kind of treatment? This sounds so much like the consequences of gluttony and greed, I thought, “So are you saying, then, that a spiritual discipline like fasting, rather than be an avoider of pleasure, actually re-awakens our pleasure centers and opens a door to the experience of legitimate and authentic, rather than manufactured, pleasure?” Yes, he said, and then talked about some studies with recovering cocaine addicts. Hmmm…now that would be an interesting book. One that addresses not only the spiritual reasons behind the ascetic disciplines, but also supplements that with good scientific-and-brain research demonstrating their impact upon the whole psychosomatic person.

The Storyteller took over, and the conversation turned to the children of famous Christians. No gossip here, just good, wholesome stories; human life together, whether one is an author or international speaker or no. When everyone ordered coffee, I thanked God that Dr. Cardia ordered a cappuccino, as I did the same. Oh, you cannelloni al forno, only that cappuccino could have done you justice! “I have to bring L. here.”

It was a pleasure to meet Anne. Sunday school teacher, philanthropist, business woman and mother who opened a story with the descriptor “infancy narratives” – a beautiful woman with a young and wonder-full soul, I could see why The Storyteller married her. And, as he told tale after tale, I could see why she married him. I liked being around them as a couple, it made me feel good about being a human being. It made me feel good about my own marriage, and I missed L. There was a sad note, though. Anne looks so much like George Eliot, aged a bit. “Here is what she would be like if she were a Christian,” I thought, and my heart felt the loss.

Afterward, we stumbled out into the cool and neon Nashville downtown. I walked and whistled to the truck and climbed inside. Checked the messages. QE, still struggling with a cold. Sir Walter Raleigh answered the phone, and Oh the happy news: a boy! A boy! A boy (and, I’m told, quite apparently so!) I’m still excited and thrilled. John G. and I wrapped up the evening, where I blabbed far too long but he got to talk library speak and H. said a few words. This day was a table of the Lord, and I ate and was satisfied, and, even now at the end of this post, please understand that there are baskets left over.