Dinner With Friends

Readers will remember our friend Dr. Steve from several entries in The Buddha Diaries as a great healer. Now we know that he's also a great cook! I don't think he'll mind if I mention that we went over there to dinner last night and had a great evening of food, wine, and conversation with Steve and his partner, Tim--that passionate collector of sometimes difficult, always engaged political art whom I interviewed a while ago for my "Art of Outrage" series on Artscene Visual Radio. They live in an elegant home, architecturally designed by Tim himself in uncompromisingly hard edge style. It's always a pleasure to be in a home where art is taken seriously, and where it makes its presence known. And always a pleasure to engage in real conversation--impossible, generally, at large dinner parties or in noisy restaurants. Steve's home-made pasta was delicious--so much lighter, somehow, than the store-bought variety. Enhanced by an excellently-crafted sauce and followed by an incredible chocolate cake, it made for a first rate dining experience. In our busy lives, it's easy to forget the importance of this kind of human intimacy and exchange.