12/19/10 Figs (writing on 12/31)
My co-worker Ernesto offered me some the other day. The spanish word for figs is Higos, so close to the word for sons, Hijos, that you're going to feel like you're related to these little babies. Family already, they are so small and they have such tiny seeds. They are chewy and crunchy at the same time. And sweet and mild at the same time so that you don't feel like you're indulging. And chewy. My mom served them recently simply soaked/marinated in Kahlua. Dark brown and weird looking--dried of course, how could they possibly be delicious??? Then I made this figgy cake--I was looking for a Christmas figgy pudding, like in the song, but this is what I found: . Of course I had to substitute the nuts and the liqueur, because it was Christmas day and the stores were closed. But it came out fantastic, and one can't say enough about fennel seed in baking. Or figs, those unassuming little fruits, usually dried, with so many tender and surprising qualities.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
12/18/10 a scratchy sweater
Much like the scratchy towel mentioned at the beginning of this series, the scratchy sweater is heavenly if done in the right way. If you're going for the scratchiness, it just has to be plain wool, not virgin or merino, and if you want to enjoy itchy arms later, best to wear only a tank top underneath. Then it's glorious scratchy arms and scratchy belly and scratchy shoulders and neck. It's a sweater of a bunch of prickly-legged bugs crawling on you, and you want to run your own smooth fingers over yourself, and just cool yourself off with scritching.
Much like the scratchy towel mentioned at the beginning of this series, the scratchy sweater is heavenly if done in the right way. If you're going for the scratchiness, it just has to be plain wool, not virgin or merino, and if you want to enjoy itchy arms later, best to wear only a tank top underneath. Then it's glorious scratchy arms and scratchy belly and scratchy shoulders and neck. It's a sweater of a bunch of prickly-legged bugs crawling on you, and you want to run your own smooth fingers over yourself, and just cool yourself off with scritching.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
12/16/10 a boring person
Well, you meet her and she usually wears a stained, faded shirt and has a cough from chainsmoking and all in the household--man, woman, dog--all are overweight, and her house across the street is in disrepair, the yard overgrown with weeds and scrub trees, and when she starts talking you just better clear your schedule because she has a lot to say and you are going to be there for a while. I have lived across the street from her for eleven years, and slowly over time, her amazing spirit has shown itself to me.
In one of my incarnations I would have found this woman boring. I would have been judgmental about her clothing, or her health, or how she talks about her husband the fabulous bus driver, or her sister, the institutionalized Down's Syndrome patient. I would have been dismissive and gone looking for someone who would thrill me with positive feedback and beautiful details. I would have been judgmental and mean-spirited, and I would have written something poetically disparaging about her. But here is what I have learned: Stir the pot long enough, and the soup is delicious. Shake the tree long enough, and a perfect golden pear will fall to the earth. Listen with interest to the heart of another person, and what you hear will be as holy as if it were the prophet Jesus himself speaking it. Here is what I learned about my unhealthy, long-talking neighbor, over eleven years of occasional listening:
She has given asylum to a ghost. The ghost wears a red shirt, which on her first description reminded me of the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi. But no, my friend thinks of the ghost as Native American. She calls him the Chief, which might lead me to think she's racist, but given my friend's dark eyes and long dark hair, her vague, northern Minnesota lineage, which I think she's called part French, part Slavic, she could herself be native American. The ghost now stays in her house with her and wanders around her property, occasionally making ghostly comments on her relationships and life by knocking things off shelves or moving the laundry around. Prior to their current arrangement, the "Chief" used to wander around the neighborhood, playing pranks on people, like messing up their car or their trash cans, or driving all kinds of animals into a certain yard. The Chief doesn't do that anymore, now that he is cozy with my neighbor. In fact, he follows her instructions to the T, creating happy coincidences and beneficial meetings for various neighbors.
My friend has another magic power. Either that or she can summon angels at will. Here's how I know: She told me that her abusive first husband pushed her off the top of a 90-foot grain silo, onto a concrete slab on the ground. My friend describes grasping desperately at the external steel ladder as she plummeted, and breaking one or both of her arms to bits, and ruining her back, which has her disabled to this day. But she lived. She lived to tell about it. I think she has the magic power of flight, since she clearly was able to slow the speed of her drop to a fair hover by sheer mental effort (either that, or she called angels to her, who held her aloft as best they could during her fall). Part of why she lived was so that I could tell you her story, because she would be too modest to relate it herself.
My friend has a special relationship with babies and children. I have no idea what in her early life helped her form such beautiful and protective attachment to children. But she lost a baby once during a pregnancy, because of some other action by that first husband. And she is from a family of 10 children, and is herself, I think at least number seven if not higher in birth order. One thing she does to make something positive of her life, I think related to that loss of her baby, is that she volunteers to crochet clothing and burial gowns for poor and abandoned newborns in area hospitals. Also, she is a neighborhood mother hen, watching some kids after school and at the morning bus stop.
My friend has a special relationship with the disabled, or at least with her Down's Syndrome youngest sister, who is now close to 50 years old (my friend is a few years older). My friend finally obtained legal guardianship of her sister, after waiting for 30 years for her father, then her mother, to grow too old and/or ill to keep track of the sis. My friend has now systematically set about improving her sister's life, including getting the staff at her institution to teach her to read. That's right, my friend provided the right reading materials, incentive, medication change and devoted attention to allow a 50-year-old Down's syndrome illiterate to begin to read. To READ.
I truly think my neighbor is gifted and magical. But no more so than anyone else, than the people I ride the bus with and judge as boring, than my distant relatives who rarely communicate with me, than any person of any ilk who might read these words. We all have magic in our lives, in our stories, and it just takes patience--or eleven years of being neighbors, to bring it out.
Well, you meet her and she usually wears a stained, faded shirt and has a cough from chainsmoking and all in the household--man, woman, dog--all are overweight, and her house across the street is in disrepair, the yard overgrown with weeds and scrub trees, and when she starts talking you just better clear your schedule because she has a lot to say and you are going to be there for a while. I have lived across the street from her for eleven years, and slowly over time, her amazing spirit has shown itself to me.
In one of my incarnations I would have found this woman boring. I would have been judgmental about her clothing, or her health, or how she talks about her husband the fabulous bus driver, or her sister, the institutionalized Down's Syndrome patient. I would have been dismissive and gone looking for someone who would thrill me with positive feedback and beautiful details. I would have been judgmental and mean-spirited, and I would have written something poetically disparaging about her. But here is what I have learned: Stir the pot long enough, and the soup is delicious. Shake the tree long enough, and a perfect golden pear will fall to the earth. Listen with interest to the heart of another person, and what you hear will be as holy as if it were the prophet Jesus himself speaking it. Here is what I learned about my unhealthy, long-talking neighbor, over eleven years of occasional listening:
She has given asylum to a ghost. The ghost wears a red shirt, which on her first description reminded me of the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi. But no, my friend thinks of the ghost as Native American. She calls him the Chief, which might lead me to think she's racist, but given my friend's dark eyes and long dark hair, her vague, northern Minnesota lineage, which I think she's called part French, part Slavic, she could herself be native American. The ghost now stays in her house with her and wanders around her property, occasionally making ghostly comments on her relationships and life by knocking things off shelves or moving the laundry around. Prior to their current arrangement, the "Chief" used to wander around the neighborhood, playing pranks on people, like messing up their car or their trash cans, or driving all kinds of animals into a certain yard. The Chief doesn't do that anymore, now that he is cozy with my neighbor. In fact, he follows her instructions to the T, creating happy coincidences and beneficial meetings for various neighbors.
My friend has another magic power. Either that or she can summon angels at will. Here's how I know: She told me that her abusive first husband pushed her off the top of a 90-foot grain silo, onto a concrete slab on the ground. My friend describes grasping desperately at the external steel ladder as she plummeted, and breaking one or both of her arms to bits, and ruining her back, which has her disabled to this day. But she lived. She lived to tell about it. I think she has the magic power of flight, since she clearly was able to slow the speed of her drop to a fair hover by sheer mental effort (either that, or she called angels to her, who held her aloft as best they could during her fall). Part of why she lived was so that I could tell you her story, because she would be too modest to relate it herself.
My friend has a special relationship with babies and children. I have no idea what in her early life helped her form such beautiful and protective attachment to children. But she lost a baby once during a pregnancy, because of some other action by that first husband. And she is from a family of 10 children, and is herself, I think at least number seven if not higher in birth order. One thing she does to make something positive of her life, I think related to that loss of her baby, is that she volunteers to crochet clothing and burial gowns for poor and abandoned newborns in area hospitals. Also, she is a neighborhood mother hen, watching some kids after school and at the morning bus stop.
My friend has a special relationship with the disabled, or at least with her Down's Syndrome youngest sister, who is now close to 50 years old (my friend is a few years older). My friend finally obtained legal guardianship of her sister, after waiting for 30 years for her father, then her mother, to grow too old and/or ill to keep track of the sis. My friend has now systematically set about improving her sister's life, including getting the staff at her institution to teach her to read. That's right, my friend provided the right reading materials, incentive, medication change and devoted attention to allow a 50-year-old Down's syndrome illiterate to begin to read. To READ.
I truly think my neighbor is gifted and magical. But no more so than anyone else, than the people I ride the bus with and judge as boring, than my distant relatives who rarely communicate with me, than any person of any ilk who might read these words. We all have magic in our lives, in our stories, and it just takes patience--or eleven years of being neighbors, to bring it out.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
12/15/10 Sweet Blue dreams
Such sweetness, a store with winter goods for sale. Going in to the old general, with calicoes and dry goods and drop-forged iron tools hanging on the wall. Sticks of licorice root and well-swept floor boards with that worn, soap-scrubbed look and feel. A set of stairs down the back leads to a cellar full of cool blue winter light. You find everything there that you remember from every winter you ever had. The peach crate sitting on the ice, fishing with grandpa with that old styrofoam bucket, a metal saucer for sledding, the dangerous kind that could take out teeth, a game of crack the whip on the old ice rink near the school. A barrel stove in the warming house that you hold your cold, skate-clad feet up to. The dull blue of daytime forts you dug and huddled in, the dog that stays warm under the house. miles and miles of paths through the woods, footfalls each blue in the white drifts. The glacier in Alaska, the cool ocean and the brunt of sea ice that churns up. The ideas you have in clarity, the mittens and socks of friends. Some warm up to a peachy pink, but most are blue and clear and blue.
Such sweetness, a store with winter goods for sale. Going in to the old general, with calicoes and dry goods and drop-forged iron tools hanging on the wall. Sticks of licorice root and well-swept floor boards with that worn, soap-scrubbed look and feel. A set of stairs down the back leads to a cellar full of cool blue winter light. You find everything there that you remember from every winter you ever had. The peach crate sitting on the ice, fishing with grandpa with that old styrofoam bucket, a metal saucer for sledding, the dangerous kind that could take out teeth, a game of crack the whip on the old ice rink near the school. A barrel stove in the warming house that you hold your cold, skate-clad feet up to. The dull blue of daytime forts you dug and huddled in, the dog that stays warm under the house. miles and miles of paths through the woods, footfalls each blue in the white drifts. The glacier in Alaska, the cool ocean and the brunt of sea ice that churns up. The ideas you have in clarity, the mittens and socks of friends. Some warm up to a peachy pink, but most are blue and clear and blue.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
12/14/10 Personal illumination
Those moments when the gold light begins to radiate out of you like in those old 12th century gold-leaf paintings. The illumination was the dimensionality. Last night, my head popped open again, in a good way, and I listed to the air for news as some used to put their ear to the rails. Morning found me with an open heart--another pop in the night. How beautiful this world is. How fulsome, excellent.
Those moments when the gold light begins to radiate out of you like in those old 12th century gold-leaf paintings. The illumination was the dimensionality. Last night, my head popped open again, in a good way, and I listed to the air for news as some used to put their ear to the rails. Morning found me with an open heart--another pop in the night. How beautiful this world is. How fulsome, excellent.
12/13/10 storybook man, running the blizzard
wide-brimmed black hat, black coat, trailing muffler lit by street lamp that becomes a prayer flag. He carries the evening news in a bundle, with a carton of milk. The snow is shin-deep, the wind fierce. His strides unusually fluid, his hat piercing the blizzard like a beak.
wide-brimmed black hat, black coat, trailing muffler lit by street lamp that becomes a prayer flag. He carries the evening news in a bundle, with a carton of milk. The snow is shin-deep, the wind fierce. His strides unusually fluid, his hat piercing the blizzard like a beak.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
12/12/10 dark birds in a bright sky
On the bus--those dark fluttering, twitching starlings over Broadway in the periwinkle, rose-bright morning city sky.
It reminds me of the series I am writing on blackbirds.
It reminds me of sessions with the healer I visited twice in Paris. Her name was Michelle Cremisi, which I only remember because of how awkward it was to master the accent in my still-loutish French. I had seen her flyer on the bulletin board of the Maison des Femmes--the House of Women, where I was attending endless discussions on what to entitle a public survey on sexism that they had conducted two years earlier. Michelle offered "massage Californique," but didn't mention that her practice had turned to mainly "guerissement energetique"--energy healing--which I learned over the phone. She had a first floor apartment in one of those compact, European complexes that resemble military housing--uniform, concrete bunkers--a little forbidding on the outside.
It pays to get used visiting healers. Their offices and healing spaces mostly resonate with calm, open acceptance, soothing colors and fragrances. Michelle was no exception. I remember sitting with her in a small office space, and explaining in my halting command of the French, my wish to continue healing. And lying on the bodywork table in the teeny healing room, trying to describe the sensations I was having, as she moved her hands gracefully above me. The only thing I remember clearly was that "black birds flew out of my heart, dark birds like crows flew out of my heart." And in my mind's eye, while Michelle's hands and heart worked their magic, I saw the flocks of black birds leave like a dense river and ramble and flow over the roofs of Paris with their red clay tiles, a dark river that eventually passed out of reckoning.
And what were these dark birds that had fled my heart? The troubles and secrets of my life, my childhood perhaps, sad dreams that had roosted with their weary shoulders on the phone wires and in the elm trees of my life, my heart, like bedraggled migrants, waiting their hour of awakening to motion and evanscence. The dark birds of the heart, may they remember how to take wing. May they find the practiced hands of the proper healer, the clear skies of their proper capital. May even the darkest dreams hear the songs of even the most loutish tongues. May we all find our flight.
On the bus--those dark fluttering, twitching starlings over Broadway in the periwinkle, rose-bright morning city sky.
It reminds me of the series I am writing on blackbirds.
It reminds me of sessions with the healer I visited twice in Paris. Her name was Michelle Cremisi, which I only remember because of how awkward it was to master the accent in my still-loutish French. I had seen her flyer on the bulletin board of the Maison des Femmes--the House of Women, where I was attending endless discussions on what to entitle a public survey on sexism that they had conducted two years earlier. Michelle offered "massage Californique," but didn't mention that her practice had turned to mainly "guerissement energetique"--energy healing--which I learned over the phone. She had a first floor apartment in one of those compact, European complexes that resemble military housing--uniform, concrete bunkers--a little forbidding on the outside.
It pays to get used visiting healers. Their offices and healing spaces mostly resonate with calm, open acceptance, soothing colors and fragrances. Michelle was no exception. I remember sitting with her in a small office space, and explaining in my halting command of the French, my wish to continue healing. And lying on the bodywork table in the teeny healing room, trying to describe the sensations I was having, as she moved her hands gracefully above me. The only thing I remember clearly was that "black birds flew out of my heart, dark birds like crows flew out of my heart." And in my mind's eye, while Michelle's hands and heart worked their magic, I saw the flocks of black birds leave like a dense river and ramble and flow over the roofs of Paris with their red clay tiles, a dark river that eventually passed out of reckoning.
And what were these dark birds that had fled my heart? The troubles and secrets of my life, my childhood perhaps, sad dreams that had roosted with their weary shoulders on the phone wires and in the elm trees of my life, my heart, like bedraggled migrants, waiting their hour of awakening to motion and evanscence. The dark birds of the heart, may they remember how to take wing. May they find the practiced hands of the proper healer, the clear skies of their proper capital. May even the darkest dreams hear the songs of even the most loutish tongues. May we all find our flight.
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