Tuesday, October 19, 2010
going to the bookstore
I wanted absorbing, huge, complex, novels of substance. Believable characters who spoke like real people, real people caught up in their lives, inadvertantly or deliberately caught up in the crushing politics of the day. Secretly, I started reading Russian literature. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak. It was and is like crawling back in time, being there. Tolstoy writes so well, his women speak like women, not like what men think they hear women say. Everything, every glimpse of the wolrd they live in and hide from is so present, so unparalleled by what I read now. Some periods of your life color you, color your world, color your tastes, set up unreachable expectations for every book that follows. You just have to let other books be other books. They can't all be A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Fruit in the Fall
I saw the ad for berries "on sale" for $2.99. Some sale for a half pint, but what can you do when its October and you crave fruit salad all year?
The berries were beautiful. I flip the boxes and check the bottoms for crushed and mouldy berries. These are perfect, which means they just came in. Berries are the most perishable of all fruits, hence the price, hence the seldom seen incoming shipments.
I got blueberries, red raspberries and blackberries and then I saw the gooseberries. I'd never tried them before so I got some of them too. And what is a fruit salad without fresh pineapple? I'm just not going to watch when they ring this up.
I rinse the fruit when I get home, which means I've committed myself now. Once you rinse berries they decompose even faster. No matter. I dice up the chunks of pineapple, throw on black berries, raspberries, blueberries and notice the gooseberries have a tiny dried flower on the end. They look like tiny grapes. I pop one in my mouth. Disappointingly bland. Reminds me of trying star fruit for the first time-stiff rind, flavorless, tart fruit. That little flower end has to go-it tastes like a tiny scrap of paper. feh.
These gooseberries are a strange beast. I bite one alone and crush it gently. The outside it a slightly mealy pulp, slightly tart, dissolves in my mouth. It leaves a group of what feels like caviar in my mouth. Weird. So I slip it off the end of my tongue and look at it. Its gorgeous. Tiny, shiny translucent bumdles of gelatenous matrix around tiny, soft seeds, the same brilliant green of the striped berry. I bite one slippery little seed in its coat. A little more tart than the pulp and the seed is faintly bitter. I eat three more, looking at it, slipping it back in my mouth, feeling it, trying to taste more than tart and faintly bitter, but it gives up nothing more.
It is a little appalling how I play with my food, I know. I unwrap whole candy bars to let them melt while I savor them. Chocolate melting luxuriously, warming, getting more fragrant on my fingertips. I shake your head. Normally I'm a knife and fork boi. Foods don't touch on my plate. When something needs to be mixed by hand, I'll come get you. I love the textures changing consistency, knowing by feel when its ready to be turned out of the bowl.
I sprinkle a bit of sugar over the blackberries and sit down with my fruit salad. Its so good. If I could only have one thing to eat for the rest of my life, it would be fruit salad. True story. This is heaven. I eat two big bowls of it while I make dinner of baked cauliflower and spring salad greens.
Life, she's good.
The berries were beautiful. I flip the boxes and check the bottoms for crushed and mouldy berries. These are perfect, which means they just came in. Berries are the most perishable of all fruits, hence the price, hence the seldom seen incoming shipments.
I got blueberries, red raspberries and blackberries and then I saw the gooseberries. I'd never tried them before so I got some of them too. And what is a fruit salad without fresh pineapple? I'm just not going to watch when they ring this up.
I rinse the fruit when I get home, which means I've committed myself now. Once you rinse berries they decompose even faster. No matter. I dice up the chunks of pineapple, throw on black berries, raspberries, blueberries and notice the gooseberries have a tiny dried flower on the end. They look like tiny grapes. I pop one in my mouth. Disappointingly bland. Reminds me of trying star fruit for the first time-stiff rind, flavorless, tart fruit. That little flower end has to go-it tastes like a tiny scrap of paper. feh.
These gooseberries are a strange beast. I bite one alone and crush it gently. The outside it a slightly mealy pulp, slightly tart, dissolves in my mouth. It leaves a group of what feels like caviar in my mouth. Weird. So I slip it off the end of my tongue and look at it. Its gorgeous. Tiny, shiny translucent bumdles of gelatenous matrix around tiny, soft seeds, the same brilliant green of the striped berry. I bite one slippery little seed in its coat. A little more tart than the pulp and the seed is faintly bitter. I eat three more, looking at it, slipping it back in my mouth, feeling it, trying to taste more than tart and faintly bitter, but it gives up nothing more.
It is a little appalling how I play with my food, I know. I unwrap whole candy bars to let them melt while I savor them. Chocolate melting luxuriously, warming, getting more fragrant on my fingertips. I shake your head. Normally I'm a knife and fork boi. Foods don't touch on my plate. When something needs to be mixed by hand, I'll come get you. I love the textures changing consistency, knowing by feel when its ready to be turned out of the bowl.
I sprinkle a bit of sugar over the blackberries and sit down with my fruit salad. Its so good. If I could only have one thing to eat for the rest of my life, it would be fruit salad. True story. This is heaven. I eat two big bowls of it while I make dinner of baked cauliflower and spring salad greens.
Life, she's good.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
A letter of praise
From: Joy Willett, willet05@email.franklin.edu
Sent: October 12, 2010
Subject: A little pep talk to get you through your day.
Dear Mr. Vice President,
I just wanted to write to you and let you know that I think you are doing one heck of a job. I also feel that you are one of the best Vice Presidents the United States has ever had. I know this is a tough time in politics but I just wanted to tell you to hold your head high and be proud of the hard work you are doing for our country. I think you bring a lot of personality to the Oval Office, especially after 8 years of Dick Chenney.
You have many supporters out here who also think you’re doing a great job; even if you don’t hear it from on a daily basis.
I can honestly say that I wish you could be Vice President FOREVER! In fact, they should consider re-naming the “Vice President” to MVP! God bless the work that you do, Mr. Biden.
With the utmost respect,
Joy Willett
Friday, October 15, 2010
"everybody's wife"
I heard the saddest, sweetest song today and thought of you... I wanted to call and leave you a kind of weepy message. I just wanted to tell you I want to be a more caring, compassionate person and I don't want you to ever have reason to doubt my love for you if I'm quiet or selfishly lost in my own tiny world. You mean everything to me and I hope I get a lifetime to show you.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
You have to choose to live...
...sometimes,live in a way that risks everything, in a way that does not shut down. Life is a savage wrecking device, a stomping machine, a brutal drop on a garbage heap at times. This much I know, no matter the shatter, I have to wake up from the dream, unbloody my lip & carry on. "No more" is not an option
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