restingmotion

Kitchen Chronicles

Yesterday was stove cleaning day.  Never anyone’s favorite task, but happily for me, this new stove is one of the easiest stoves to clean I have ever owned.  This is also true for the Stove Vent.  Everything pops out, everything is easily washable, and although the tasks still takes time, I find I can make fewer excuses to avoid it.

It also helps that the new farm sink is large enough that I can submerge the burner grates.  The sink is divided, but the divider is only half-height, so there is plenty of room for large things when needed.

Soak. Wash. Dry. Replace.  

Start the next round (stove vent panels) (oven racks and panels where needed).  The whole process still takes me much of a day, admittedly because I take breaks between stages.  I am learning to accept that I can no longer stand for a full day without significant breaks.  But acceptance is one of life’s major lessons, and one with which many of us struggle.

 

Today I made biscuits. Not the best biscuits I have ever made, but still tender and flaky and good, especially considering they are the first biscuits I have made in what 13 years? 15 years?

 

When I was in college, I spent two summers living with my maternal grandparents in Pasadena Texas.  The summer job opportunities were better in metropolitan Houston than in Stephenville, especially considering that I got out of school at the end of May, two weeks later than most Texas universities.  One of the conditions of my residency was that I get up and make the biscuits for my grandpa before going to work in the morning.  I got pretty good at biscuit making.  Since I love biscuits, and George enjoyed biscuits, I continued making them for a long time.

 

One thing I did learn over the years is that biscuits can be frozen.  Although my grandparents may have made fresh biscuits every day, we rarely ate more than a biscuit or two at a time, and although I grew up with cold biscuit sandwiches, George never quite adapted.  But I learned that if you freeze the just cut biscuits on a tray for 30 minutes, you can then toss them in a container or freezer bag, and bake them at will from frozen, and although they do take a few more minutes to cook, the advantage of having a bag of biscuits (like having pie crust, or cookies, or scones) in the freezer ready to bake is a treat.  So I made the biscuits but only baked a couple for my breakfast, placing the rest in the freezer.

It wasn’t celiac that stopped my biscuit baking, although admittedly that did slow me down.  I had a lifetime of expectation to overcome, and a lifetime of baking skills to recalibrate.  Gluten-free doughs simply are different than wheaten doughs.  But I actually stopped making biscuits when George had cancer and the nutritionist that worked with him during chemotherapy put him on a very low carb diet.  Somehow we never fully went back.

 

But during this time of sheltering at home, and less social contact, perhaps I have been craving carbs a little more, and perhaps I am trying to ameliorate my tendency to go through carb-binges followed by fasts.  This week, talking to my family about their recent adventures in biscuit-making, and then later with a friend about scones, I realized I wanted to make biscuits.  And so I did.

 

The experiment was only a partial success, which is not surprising.  I made baking powder biscuits, the basic kind I started with oh so many years ago. The flavor was good, they are tender and flaky, but they could have risen more, and I have not quite figured out temperature regulation and baking on my new stove, even though I have lived in this house almost a year now.  Well, I have cooked; I have roasted; I have braised;  but I haven’t really baked.  The learning curve continues.

Several things could have gone wrong.  I believe I picked a good GF blend.  Although I made my own years ago, I have since experimented with several packaged gluten-free flour blends and I used one I think would yield good biscuit results. Biscuit results vary even with wheat flour, and although I am a Texan rather than a “true” southerner, I prefer a biscuit made with softer, lower-protein winter wheat, or its gluten-free equivalent.  I would never make a biscuit with bread flour, whatever the components of that bread flour might be.

 

My baking powder could also be old.  The can was unopened, but it is possible I bought it soon after I moved in.  I don’t know if baking powder keeps as long as it is vacuum-sealed, only that once you open it it fades quickly.  I also think I overworked the first part, where one works the fat into the flour.  I did not over-mix once I added the liquid, or overwork the folding and turning, but that first part may have been critical.  The oven was too hot, the biscuits cooked too quickly, and I am certain this also had an effect.

 

But overall they were good biscuits and I am looking forward to the challenge of refreshing old skills and perfecting technique.  To me this is like a game.

 

Monday Miscellany

It seems that all I can manage right now are these odd updates.  The coherent stringing together of long passages eludes me.  I initially blamed this on my back, but that is not truly the case.  Let us just say that the peripatetic nature of my brain is currently jammed on run, and, despite the fact that I take two brief periods a day for silent contemplation,  “always running” is far more descriptive of my mental process at the moment than any nod toward “peaceful contemplation”.  I am not unhappy at home. There is plenty to occupy my attentions, but I also recognize that a certain lack of close human contact leaves my nerve endings slightly leaning toward frayed. This too will pass.  In the meantime, if you know someone who lives alone, give them a call.

Another group of the Azaleas I purchased last fall are blooming.

And I am digging a hole.  It is a slow and tedious process.  This is an area near the garage, which is hot and sunny, and where I intend to plant rosemary.  This photo was pretty early on in the dig, and the soil ends about 4 inches down, at least an inch of that is really just mulch.  So I have a lot of digging to do. 

I have since excavated much of that small cut out where these plants are supposed to go. I have two “tuscan blue” rosemary plants, which grow quite large and tall in an ideal site, and have delicious flavor.  They are iffy here, but this site is hot and sunny and a place where I can easily protect them if necessary.  But first they need a good place for their roots to grow.  I now have three small buckets of rocks and am still digging.  These buckets were purchased out of desperation.  Kitty litter buckets would be perfect, and about the biggest thing I can hope to lift, but at the moment I have none.

Impatience and busy synapses being in the lead right now I am also cataloging fabric and back to sorting and putting things away in the studio.  And working on masks as well as a few other things.  The house and the studio are therefore cluttered.  “Little Piles Everywhere” would be the story of my life at the moment.  That is directly related to my inability to write thoughtful blog posts.  But I know this will settle out in time and life will simply move forward at the pace it will move forward. Eventually my brain may slow accordingly.  At least I am starting to sleep a little better.

I did update the knitting blog with more details about my pink sweater.  Very little else has happened since then and I will gradually move from cataloging fabric to yarn and staring into the deep black hole that is the UFO closet.  It will be good to have a list, and from that list create goals, things to work through with items that can be checked off as minor accomplishments. 

 

 

Five Things Friday

1. The first solitary fava bean is poking his head up through the earth.  Hopefully he is merely one among many.

2. There is precedence for this hope, as the first solitary cherry blossom appeared a week ago now.  She will probably fade before other blossoms fully emerge, but there are enough new buds that this fledgling tree will put up a small show; it is more than I expected in this, its first spring.

3. I also finally got the pea trellis up, just in the nick of time as the peas tendrils are long enough to start climbing.  I ordered this trellis from Gardener’s Supply and it was not difficult to assemble, even though the directions did say it would be easier for two.  It would have been.  And, had I not been experiencing increasing back spasms as i worked on it, it would have been more symmetrical and perfectly balanced.  But it works.  And I am grateful.

Originally I hoped to build my own trellises, but I also realized — when I planted peas days before leaving, when I had a busy social calendar before we all began sheltering in place, before I fell and injured my back — that I would not have time.  I picked this trellis primarily because it looks much like the trellises I made from copper plumbing pipe for my garden in Hyde Park.  Those were all given away when I moved to Tennessee and a condo, as was my pipe cutter and my soldering equipment.  Hopefully this will last at least a season, perhaps even two or more, and by then, if I have regained my gardening abilities, I will set up soldering shop again.

4. The peas will also need some thinning out, although not too much.  I seem to remember that peas are more productive when they are not too widely spaced.  Anyway, I did harvest a handful of shoots to add to my salad at lunch today.

5.  I am recovering since my fall and am doing more, but am still working slowly.  Yesterday, working on the trellis, I realized that although I am moving so much better, although still quite slowly, I cannot stretch, even my arm to anything beyond a casual reach.  Any stretch, from any position really sends me into spasms, as did fastening clips anchoring netting to the trellis frame, if not very close to the body.  Today I am taking it easy and not allowing myself in the garden even though it is a beautiful day and I keep telling myself I can just do a little bit.  Instead I am working on short core-strengthening and light stretching workouts, interspersed through the day with rests and chores.  And I have knitting and reading materials piled up by my comfy spot on the sofa. I do have other posts in mind, things I want to write about, but today is the first day I have been able to sit at a desk for more than 10 minutes or so, and somehow assembling longer thoughts into something coherent does not appear to be something I can do from a cozy corner of the sofa — I need the harder discipline of a desk and chair. 

 

Stay safe....

 

 

A Friday Five

Look!  Dare I say I might actually complete a post on a Friday? 

 

This post will be but a simple thing, and probably a bit fragmented, but the “five things Friday” format seems to be a good starting place, as I pull myself back into regular postings, balancing of the simple and the day to day with the wider ruminations of my meandering mind.  Perhaps acceptance is also key: acceptance that I am one of those people who are restless of mind; one of those people who always dreams of doing more; one of those people who is never bored.  I live in a world define by the concept of a week. Even though the pacing of my own time is somewhat more fluid, I still begin each week filled with grand plans of everything that will be done by weeks’ end, and, somehow, I still fall short of my own goals.   

 

So, where are we this week?

 

 

Poinsettias:  I attended a workshop/demonstration at Stanley’s Greenhouse, focused on holiday arrangements.  The event was inspiring and although I have never considered arrangements to be one of my gifts, I found myself excited by possibilities.  I was also inspired by the variety of Poinsettieas that were filling the greenhouse, especially the variegated variety shown above.  Apparently I have given poinsettieas short shrift, a situation that may need to change.  But first, Thanksgiving travel, and the opening of the Christmas boxes, newly out of storage.

 

 

Pickled Ginger:  I opened the first of three pint-sized jars of pickled ginger I put up in October.  Oh my!  It is good.  It is the best pickled ginger I have ever tasted.  Not jut something pretty and a bit sharp/sweet on the plate.  This ginger is something I want to use in its own right.  I got a little overwhelmed the week I put this up, and it is not particularly evenly sliced, not as decorative as it perhaps could have been, but the flavor is superb.  I added it to an impromptu stir-fry of chicken and bell peppers, and it elevated the dish to something special.  Now, despite the fact that I initially worried that I would never use three pints of pickled ginger, I am worried that I will run out before I can make more.

 

 

A Book:  Recently it seems that my reading is somewhat circular meaning that as I read each new book I find myself circling back to books I have read before, mostly recent reads, but often books deeply filed away in the interstices of my reading memory.  And so it was this week, when I was reading a new book by my friend Rob Gieselmann, Irony and Jesus,  that I encountered this statement:

How many times have I sunk in water because I could see surf and gale only, having lost sight of the other side.

And, a few lines later, “go to the other side”.  Such a simple thing and often also such a difficult task.  In this instance these words also provided a spark of insight, a coalescence of sorts, about how to write about Deborah Levy’s new novel The Man Who Saw Everything, a book I finished reading last week.  In this novel Saul Adler is attempting to cross Abbey Road.  It sounds like such a simple and inconsequential thing, and in one sense it is, but as the novel progresses we learn that nothing in this short novel is what it seems. Truly. Nothing.  What seems inconsequential proves full of weight, and what should be full of weight almost vanishes in the ether.  

 

I am in one sense torn here.  I believe The Man Who Saw Everything to be an incredibly beautiful and powerful novel, one that I find both essential and impossible.  It is a novel I recognize that many people will not be able to stand.  Truly the story itself is simple, straightforward and a bit boring.  But the novel is not about the story.  And I cannot tell you what the novel is about without disrupting, even perhaps aborting your experience of the novel.  It is, actually a novel whose meaning and interpretation is multi-layered, and that in and of itself is a marvelous feat of writing and design.  At the moment I see a novel about fragmentation, about who we are, how we become the people we become, but also about chance, distraction, care and carelessness, and about the possibility and impossibility of memory.  Our memories shape who we are, but who we are today also shapes our memory.

 

 

Another Book:  And this of course sent me back to another book, a book I read in September (I still haven’t caught up with September books).  This book is also about memory, or, more exactly, Shafak uses memory as a vehicle to tell the story of a life:  the life of a woman, the life of a town, a country, a culture.  This is a poetic novel, a turbulent novel, a novel that could seem overwhelmingly bleak except that it is not. It is a novel filled with beauty and hope. Shafak’s poetic way of setting a scene, of describing a place, made this reader feel palpably present. Beautiful, powerful, touching, absurd.  It is a novel about Turkey.  It is a novel about women. In fact it is a novel about all of humanity, its joys and its tragedy, captured, if only for a moment.

 

 

A Sock:  After a brief interlude where I worked on other projects, I have returned to sock knitting.  Necessity called.  I do need another pair of socks, and although it would be easy enough to buy such a thing, I prefer the ones that are knit by hand, simultaneously luxurious and practical.  I turned the heel on the second sock last night, perhaps staying up a little later than I should to be sure if was finished.  It is now smooth sailing to the end.  Hopefully it will be finished this busy weekend, but then of late it seems all weekends are busy.  Hopefully it will be finished and blocking before I embark on Thanksgiving travel, ready and waiting for me upon my return.

Break Time

 

The fountain by the small back patio is up and running, for the first time since I moved into this house.  Already, I feel its calming vibes.

 

But you can expect a blog break, beginning today.  Yesterday I burnt my right index finger, picking up a roasted eggplant by the stem.  The eggplant itself had cooled; the stem had apparently been transformed into a still-burning piece of woody charcoal.  I should have known better.  Now I do.

Above is a picture of my index finger, all bandaged.  Yes it is dirty.  Friends drove me out to an Azalea nursery in Sevierville, where I purchased 17 azaleas, some of them good sized.  I purchased 7 evergreens and 10 natives,  6 varieties in all.  Despite the fact that I was trying to be careful, and I can't really do much with my right hand, certainly not with that index finger, the bandage did get dirty looking for tags on plants.   It is OK, I was due for a cleaning and bandage change anyway, and my finger remained clean.

 

There are things one never things about until forced to do so, the importance of the index finger is one of those things.  I can still walk and go to the gym. Salman Rushdie's new novel is waiting for me on the sofa.  I may not manage to vacuum the floors.

 

And now that is all I can type for today.  I won't tell you how long this brief post took. Have a good week and I will be back soon.

Recovering from what I didn't know

This post is about a path, my own path, and a question.  The path was set by dreams and questions of the things I want to do in this latter part (third? is that too much of a wish?) of my life.  The question also. 

 

At the beginning of the year, in my first post of 2019 in fact, I wrote that I was returning to the gym and walking on the treadmill, focusing on health not fitness.  I did write about walking slowly, deliberately, about focusing on proper breathing, and proper hip motion. I wrote about some of the background, about why I now needed to focus on these things, the natural breathing and moving that most of us take for granted, and which somehow I had lost.  Not lost motion.  Nor lost breathing.  I managed both of those, but did I manage them well or had I somehow lost something that should come naturally?

 

In January I managed to avoid admitting was how difficult this was, and what a tenuous, perhaps even questionable process I was undertaking.  I avoided mentioning that I fretted about whether I was pursing a pipe-dream, fretted about risks (mostly in my head) and whether the gains would be worth it (they may well be).  The goal was to walk slowly, breathing solely through my mouth (hence no talking), to walk slowly enough that my pulse stayed only in the aerobic zone, and did not cross the anaerobic threshold, even for a moment.  The goal was to learn how to breathe again. The goal was to build basic aerobic capacity, which will lead to stamina, not necessarily for fitness, at least not in the short term.  At this slower aerobic pace, breathing through my nose should help strengthen lung perfusion and build capacity, at least as much as can be done given my structural fault-lines. 

 

What I didn't say was how slowly I had to walk, and how difficult that was, not so much physically, although it took concentration, but emotionally and psychologically.   I was a person who put in my 10,000 steps every day.  Who lifted things and walked and who considered myself basically healthy if not fit.  I knew I had a long way to go, that I had become soft and sluggish, and I did not like my sluggish self.  But I was not prepared.  I was not prepared for how little I could do, for how long it would take to improve, and for the way the process would trigger my inner demon, the inner voice telling myself that I can never be enough.

 

When I started in December I was walking so slowly that the act of walking itself had to practically become a meditative action.  I had to hold on to the treadmill firmly with both hands, I had to take agonizingly slow, long deliberate steps, purposefully rolling through my stride. Eventually I worked up to a speed of 0.8 miles-per-hour, which although still horribly slow, would allow me to read on an iPad.  I worked through all my back issues of the New Yorker.  I walked for 1 hour, eventually working up to 2 hours, less than 2 miles, deliberately choosing times that the gym was fairly empty because I was embarrassed.  But I couldn't increase the speed.  Even at this pace my pulse stayed just below the aerobic/anerobic threshold.  I knew it had to get better.  I doubted it would ever get better.  I would leave the gym and walk across the parking lot in the cold air, walk up the stairs to my apartment, and my pulse would rush across that line, and I would fret.  MY team -- doctor/trainer -- told me that I was supposed to avoid high pulses, although they also told me that this would just slow the process and I would get there.  I remembered back, when we found out I had a hole in my heart, in my late 30s, when just getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom put my pulse somewhere in the 80% of max range and my doctors muttered about how I did any of the things I did.  I remember that I survived and I recovered.  I could survive this too.

 

But for months nothing happened.  I stayed mired there.  I eventually got my speed up to 1.2 mph.  But I couldn't go any faster.  If speed was worth, I was worthless.  I knew this wasn't true, but my inner demon continued to chip away.   I needed an incredibly long, slower, almost stretching walk to move from a junctional rhythm into a normal rhythm, but even that was nothing new.  I had always needed that, and it wasn't until I was older that I learned it wasn't "normal".  But what is normal anyway.  And does one have to be normal to be healthy? Chalk it up my scoliosis, to that previous atrial septal defect and repair; I will never be normal.

 

In my previous life, when I was fit, I would warm up on a stationary bike, which always seemed to stabilize me and allow me to push harder than anything else.  But I couldn't pedal a bike, even at no resistance, without my pulse racing. I missed the ignorance of those days, the way I took for granted that I could do anything I wanted to do.  I wanted some of that blissful assurance back.

 

And then there were the setbacks.  I had a couple of colds.  I discovered I am allergic to cats, and forced confinement in an apartment with a cat meant I couldn't breathe.  I got a sinus infection.  I got the flu.  In May I stopped trying altogether. I was packing and preparing to move.

 

After  I moved I decided to start again.  I found a gym buddy.  I went to the gym 6 days a week, occasionally 5.  I still do.  Immediately I learned I could walk at 1.6 mph.  Such a simple thing but I was euphoric.  Breathing through my nose is easier.  I do it most of the time now, and can tell I take deeper, longer breaths.  I was able to use a recumbent bicycle, granted only at level one, but that in and of itself was a huge motivation.  I can actually get better.  I am actually getting better.  

 

I can now ride the bike at level two occasionally, I can increase my speed or resistance for short bursts before my pulse rises too high.  I can walk at about 2 to 2.2 mph holding on, but only 1.8 if I allow my arms to swing freely.  In fact I really can't do that last thing yet, walk on a treadmill with my arms at my side.  What happens is that the pace is too slow and I want to walk faster, as soon as I walk faster I stop rolling my hips and my gait becomes more marionette-like. As I speed up and my gate changes my pulse changes as well.  I don't feel bad, if anything, psychologically, I want to push harder.  But the goal is not pushing harder, not yet.  I know pushing harder will actually push me back, and I will have to slow down.  

 

Now that I am finally progressing I can see that there are benefits and I want to be the best, healthiest me I can be.  I know that although I have trained myself, without even really meaning to do so, into believing that doing more faster is the way things are supposed to be, this is a myth.  It is one of the myths of the culture I live in, like the myth of fitness.  Fitness is good, but it is not health.  I want both, or as close to both as I can achieve, but of the two health is more important, and it is a somewhat fluid state.  I need to start with health.

 

Does this seem like a project? a long term-goal? I suppose it is.  But it is not.  Sometimes it feels more like an anti-project.  Don't push, keep those goals flexible and even wishy-washy, accept that some days will be slow and others surprisingly fast.  I still have to work on keeping myself from pushing.  But the effort is paying off -- in my breathing, in my stamina and long term energy, which still has a way to go but which is increasing, and even in an increasing sense of calmness and a willingness to just sit back.  Sometimes we think we are moving forward when are really digging a hole.  Sometimes just moving is enough.

Sumer is icumen in.......and I am not prepared

ARGHHHHH!

 

That is exactly how I felt yesterday morning.  I settled down.  A period of morning meditation, or at least stillness and deep breathing, helped, as it always does.  I don't necessarily expect profound thoughts, or even necessarily anything akin to medication or prayer on a daily basis, but I do feel that even those mornings  when all I can do is be still and quiet have a profound effect on my equilibrium during the course of the day.

 

But still.  We are getting into crunch time.  In roughly seven  weeks the house will be finished, at least, supposedly, finished enough for me to move in.  In 8 weeks I will be home, fully home.  I need to start packing.  There are still tons of things that need to be decided, chosen, tended to and so forth and so on, and even so, in my head "move-in" remained some amorphous future goal, not yet fully formed, distant and obscure.  Until yesterday morning, when I awoke in a panic.

The kitchen cabinets were (are) being installed.  Having seen them I knew my first choices for pulls and knobs were not going to work and I was jolted awake, filled with nervous, buzzy, vibrant, jittery energy.  I swooped around the web, looking at cabinet hardware, simultaneously worried but oddly calm.  Calm because for the first time, at least in terms of doors and knobs and pulls, I knew exactly what I wanted, knew the feelings that cabinets and their hardware should evoke.  I had vision.  

 

I had been asked to select cabinet hardware a few weeks ago, but at the time there were no cabinets in the rooms, just empty spaces.  Selections and choices had been made but those choices held only an ephemeral place in my thoughts.  Too many choices and decisions had been made but had not yet materialized.  My brain felt simultaneously overflowing and empty.  So my initial choices were made based on an abstract vision.  Some of those initial choices were good, others not so much.  I had a better sense of the library, for example, or the guest bathroom, than the kitchen.  But both of those rooms were evolving steadily, whereas the kitchen remained a blank box, white and empty. And then, with the appearance of cabinets, even standing around like awkward teenagers unsure where they were to go in life, clarity descended like a clichéd vision of clouds opening, and I pulled together a new hardware list.  It is not yet final, there are still a few samples to see on site, and final decisions to made.

 

Bur hardware was not my only source of panic.  Summer seems to have suddenly peeked its head around the corner.  The weather went from cool to hot, at least according to my mind.  I am not a good southerner. 80° is hot; it is my ideal of the perfect (maximum) summer temperature.  Alas, I have never lived somewhere where this was the reality of summer and it may exist only in my imagination.  Come August I will look back and think how pleasant the world was when it was only 80°.  Yesterday morning I pulled out a step-stool and climbed to the top of my closet, pulling own boxes of summer clothes.  Piles materialized as I struggled with questions.  What fits? What doesn't? What can I wear now?   Eventually I found something to wear but my summer wardrobe, with all its unanswered questions, remains, waiting for answers and yet more decisions, in piles around my bedroom.

 

The good news is that I have scheduled the movers.  I need to start packing.  As I shift my closet, my winter things can be packed for the move.  I shan't need them.  Well, I am going to Chicago, so I can keep one or two outfits.  

 

Actually many of my winter clothes are showing substantial wear.  They may not last another season.  I was thinking of making something new, but I see no point in that now, at least not in making cool-weather clothes.  The hot season beckons.  If I make something it will be for wear in this season.  Right now, I simply need to balance my thoughts of making with my thoughts of moving.  My dreams remain in creation mode, imagining art and craft and a world of possibilities, while the reality is that I need to be pulling in and putting away. I am moving into make-do time. I can make things for current use with the materials at hand. Nothing new comes in unless it is specifically needed for the house, but my time really needs to be in preparation, not creation.

 

It is morning again.  I am not in as much of a tizzy as yesterday morning.  I have a plan.  I have boxes, although some of them are still in my car.  If I want to pack the apartment and remain sane, if I want to pack without excessive back pain, I need to start now. I need to work slowly and steadily throughout all the other decisions and activities that are yet to come.  I am not yet quite calm, but I have taken that all-important first step.

 

A Catch Up Post

It seems that a month-long break did not quite eliminate my indecision regarding book posts, and now I feel the overwhelming need to catch up, to post not merely an update on March reading, but February as well.  Actually I suppose I just want to make collages of all the covers, and I feel no need to write reviews or synopses.  It seems I can live with that.  Sometimes pretty sparkly things, pictures and surfaces are enough to hold the memories that lie beneath.

 

I did think that I the reprieve would allow me time to explore purpose and intention, to come up with some kind of coherent plan or theme for this blog, but all I really learned was that I am really not interested in limiting myself to any specific set of topics or themes.  So much for that.  Increasingly, it appears to me that there is a time for plans for schedules and goals, a time for "forward motion" and a time to just go with the flow.  I'm opting for the flow, whatever that means.  Frankly all I decided is that I don't have to decide.

 

And so I had fun playing with collages.

As you can see, I read five really good books in February and a lot of popcorn fiction.  I'd rather spend 2 hours with a simple bit of fictional fluff, than watching an average movie or television show, but that is just me.  And a good bit of this reading was accomplished on the treadmill, in the time I have devoted to slowly walking and teaching myself how to breathe properly, engaging in this tediously slow pursuit of this health-more-than-fitness project I decided to take on for this year.  My trainer, and yes I have consulted one, told me it would take at least six months before I saw real results, possibly a year, which isn't much when I think that I am probably trying to reverse 45 years worth of bad habits.  Nonetheless, I tend to grow depressed and think it is all a waste of time, and then I notice that I actually see improvement in little but profoundly telling ways. Besides which, we all know that fitness does not necessarily imply health.  We see evidence of this all around us, though we try to convince ourselves otherwise.  The obverse is, of course, also true.  And so, onward.

 

The light reading also offered me a lot of quiet time to absorb the other, simultaneous and more transformative, reading.  The five good books all challenged my basic assumptions and views of the world in one way or another and those tumultuous feelings always need time to seep through the intersteces of one's neurological make-up.  Nothing earth-shakingly new in terms of basic information, more just an aspect of turning a corner and seeing something through new eyes.  Yes, I am writing in oblique fragments.

 

Ahh, I see somehow my March collage is more linear, with the best books at the bottom and the most frivolous on top.  The Elena ranks as the fluffiest book of the month.  I don't believe it even filled the available time in a flight from Knoxville to Atlanta, therefore less than an hour. Mostly easily forgettable, but with scattered jewels of thoughts.    There seems to have been less popcorn fiction in March, but there was also less treadmill work due to travel, adventure and a sinus infection.  A couple of these books showed up on my Instagram feed, and I like that format as a way of sharing impressions and passing thoughts, snapshots of a day, once again without a particular plan, or any need for explanation or consistency.

 

I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter was purchased on a whim and donated to the Children's Diversity and Justice Library.  Ordinary People and Solar Bones will remain on my shelves.  Channeling Italo Calvino, who said "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say", it seems like these two novels offer the promise of a longer conversation.  I've never been a person who reads a book only once, which is, of course, also why I am building a library.  Classics and personal favorites, the promise of books yet unread, the familiarity and ongoing conversations with beloved words.  I miss my library.  That reunion will be quite sweet.

 

Wonders

There are moments in life when we learn the world is not what it seemed, not what we had previously assumed it to be.  Sometimes those moments are full of discord and upset.  At other times they are miracles of wonder.

I remember one such episode as if it were yesterday, although 38 years have passed.  It was the day I picked up my glasses.  I don't remember much about the actual day, about picking up the glasses, or about walking to back to my dorm from the optician's.  What I specifically remember is walking into my room and looking out the window.  It was spring; the trees were filled with buds and blossoms. I could see individual flowers on the trees, I could see the leaves beginning to unfurl, individual leaves, not just an impression of greenness.  I could see the leaves from a distance, not just from proximity, when I was standing near a tree. I suddenly realized that the world was not meant to look like a late Monet painting, and I was entranced.  Whenever I look back on that day, that same feeling of entrancement floods my memory.

 

I am certain that I had once seen well.  I hadn't needed glasses as a child after all. I did have a tendency to cross my eyes, and it turned out that I had some congenital abnormalities in my vision or the way my brain processed the input from my eyes.  But I am also sure that my eyesight faded so gradually that I never thought it about it, never really recognized what I was missing.  Until it was revealed. 

 

That same sense of wonder returned to my mind this past month, the day I picked up hearing aides, although this time I was awed not with sight, but with sound.  Much as with my glasses, I knew I needed help hearing and I was ready to have the hearing aides.  I have seen too many people who wait too long, whose brains are no longer able to cope with the additional stimulus, who cannot adapt to what was lost.  I was determined that I would not be one of those people, so I went into the appointment knowing I would walk out with hearing aides.

 

Even so, I was not prepared for the symphony that awaited me once I walked outside the door.  The birds were singing and I was enveloped in a cloud of song, sweet sopranos, base rhythms, melody and harmony intertwined.  I have always loved the sounds of the birds, loved even the sounds of the leaves in the wind, finding music surrounding me every day, but I had not realized how much sound I had lost, how enveloped on a cushion of sound I could become, and my first wish was was simply that I not forget, that I not allow this marvelous cacophony to fade into the background, that I not stop paying attention.

 

Yes, at times I was uncomfortably jarred by certain sounds -- the beep of my car telling me I was too close to something, the first time my phone rang, the sounds of traffic in downtown Knoxville while I was at big ears.  But I adapted.  And there were other sounds as well.  The soprano sax was sweeter, soft female voices were easier to interpret, I could hear the chirp of a bird despite the traffic, the splatter of drops of water. The melody of the earth is still present no matter how we try to pave it over.  I could focus upon, and pick out the sounds from specific voices or instruments, much more clearly than I had before, much like the way I hear music in my head when I read a score. I walked around town, I listened to music both in concerts and on the street, and I felt like indeed, I had big ears, big ears that were reveling in all the miraculous sounds, large and small, that surrounded me.

 

I hope I never lose that wonder.  I am sure that there will be more days in which I am preoccupied, in which I don't pay attention to the many wondrous details surrounding me.  But I hope that I recall to stop, to look. to listen, as much as possible. 

 

Five Things Friday

1. Rain and headaches.  That was yesterday.  I woke up with a headache and the rain started before my first meeting ended.  I was completely scatterbrained and drove past my second appointment and was therefore late.  It seemed wise to spend the rest of the day quietly at home, where little actually got done, but I'm OK with that.  Cold rainy days seem perfect for random laziness.  Perhaps the headache was a gift.  The pounding eventually subsided around 6 PM, when I had another meeting, but I still felt subdued and unfocused. I can't explain it but all has returned to normal this morning.

2.  A building rises from the mud.  Yes.  Foundations are in place and they started framing the garage.  Roofing materials also arrived and perhaps soon there will be a roof on the addition to the house.  That period from Thanksgiving to Christmas felt awfully long, as progress was slowed by rain and mud.  Waiting can seem interminable, and although necessary underlayment was progressing, I was feeling somewhat subdued about the project.  Foundations, HVAC, and electrical wiring, as necessary as they are, don't look like much when they are going in, and I didn't realize how much I yearned to see something, anything, that looked like I might live in it again.  Perhaps I just hadn't recovered from the shock of loosing plantings due to the need to replace and expand the buried drainage system, or the shock of the disruption of the backyard when the old garage was excavated and a buried septic tank was discovered, a buried septic tank that had to be removed. Every day it  felt like the mud was increasingly exponentially.  In December, that sense of having lost control was palpable, and although it is, perhaps, shallow and frivolous, seeing the framing take shape, floors and walls begin to appear, has lifted my spirits considerably.

 

3.  I made chicken stock this week, for the first time since probably before Thanksgiving.  The beef stock surplus is dwindling as well, so I will probably be back on a weekly stock-making schedule before spring is well established.  With this batch of stock, I also made a pot Attukal Paya, a spicy Indian soup or stew made from mutton legs and/or feet, except that I used lamb because that is what I find at my local Asian Market.  I've been making the soup for a few months now, off and on, but this is the first time I started with a base of my own rich chicken stock before extracting the collagen from those lamb bones.  I will never go back.  

I tend to pull the lamb out once I've extracted all the flavor, and then drink the pureed soup in a mug, but yesterday I had a bowl for lunch along with some baby bok choy I had seared in some smoked chaabani pepper olive oil.  It turned out surprisingly well since I wasn't actually sure what to expect from the oil, a new-to-me ingredient and gift from my brother.

4.  I also stepped out of my sartorial comfort zone, by branching out of my everyday boots and jeans mode and wearing a skirt and tights with a favorite pair of everyday boots.  Actually, perhaps I found my groove because I was very comfortable and very much myself.  Perhaps I am also rediscovering a bit of joy in the occasional jolt of black in my wardrobe.  That black knit skirt had not been worn for a while, and now I can't wait to wear it again, black leggings and boots and all.  

Of course the proportions worked better with the coat than they did with the sweater underneath, but that is something I can work on.  It ended up not mattering much on Wednesday, the day I wore that outfit, because I had two meetings at the house, which is always cold given that it is not yet closed up, and otherwise ran errands.  I ended up with my coat on for most of the day, the sweater simply acting as an insulating layer. The sweater itself, much as I have loved it in the past (it is 9 years old) may be spending its last winter with me.  It no longer seems to just work the way I want it to work with the things I want to wear. 

5. A secret garden.  I suppose that best describes how I feel about this small collection of artifacts.  Granted, they arrived in this spot because I didn't know where else to put them, but this location, the corner of my desk,  has proved fortuitous because I see them everyday and they always make me smile.  The glass rose is new, a Christmas gift from my brother, Charles. The silver llamas were my grandmother's, and I see I need to polish them, although at the moment I am also fascinated by the way the reflection of light off the rose plays out in a subtle play of colors dancing across the tarnished surface of the llamas. I don't remember the provenance of the small vaseline glass vase but looking at it I am reminded of where it sat in the house, on a windowsill in the sunroom, the play of light and shadow and the green of oak leaf hydrangeas behind it.  Those hydrangeas are now gone, but the vase does not make me sad.  There will be new plantings, new leaves, new light.  For now however, we just wait, remember, and dream.