i aspire to be this good

every so often i run across a piece of writing that is so brilliant, so lively and so compelling rue my career as a PR writer and long for true writing talent. in today's times, r.w. apple shared a piece of food writing that makes me:

a: ready to drop everything and rush to the american south to visit charleston and its surrounds;
b: inspired that american journalism isn't all negative and fluffy;
c: very hungry.

how can you not be inspired by this?

"Take oysters. Charleston loves 'em, especially the uncultivated beauties, 'meaty, juicy, salty,' that John Martin Taylor, the Lowcountry food maven, gushes about, 'continually washed by the incredible flow of our eight-foot tide,' then plucked from the mud of the salt marshes and 'garnished only by the glint of the January sun.'

"All through the colder months, oysters in vast quantities are cooked over raging fires and consumed at outdoors open-them-yourself oyster roasts, accompanied by heroic quantities of beer. Much the same experience can be had all year, in less raucous surroundings, at Bowens Island Restaurant, a humble cinder-block place on James Island, south of Charleston, where clusters of oysters from the Ashley River are steamed under wet burlap on a sizzling metal plate, then shoveled unceremoniously onto your table. Add saltines, hot sauce, maybe a squirt of lemon to replace that "glint of the January sun," and the requisite beer."

the article may be available for a short bit, so check it out while you can.