Monthly Archives: November 2015

Like Clockwork

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Don’t you love it when things go smoothly? Even when the means are antiquated—say, when the person involved is kind of, no, extremely low tech—it’s rewarding when the plot in hand goes just as planned, or even better. Clearly, this is somewhat rare, or it wouldn’t be a big deal; nothing about ticking along at speed without a hitch would be memorable.
Digital montage from photos: Mighty Machines

But it is. And we do have technology, however old-school, to thank much of the time. I’m no expert, but I am thankful to have so many handy props for getting the job done, and I hold in reverence the invention and creativity that make my life easier and more pleasant even when I don’t know the cogs are turning behind the scenes to make it all possible.

The new and the forever

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This is a first for me, but I must share my friend Celi’s post with my community here at Art-Colored Glasses. Because ours are not always *rose*-colored glasses, we find it meaningful to contemplate the complexities of the human condition, and the mistress of The Kitchens Garden says it so superbly. Read on, my friends.

Cecilia Mary Gunther's avatarThe Kitchen's Garden

All things repeat. All things. And now Paris. Again. DSC_0504

The world is a frightening  and fascinating place.  I have lived in a number of cities in the world. I have made terrible mistakes and wondrous decisions. So I am not naive. And as you know I have made a decision to move to the country, grow my own food and not to get involved in world news.  No TV, no radio and no news feed on my computer. Not to ever see a doctor again even at the hour of my death. To leave politics. To live without influence. I cannot vote in the country I live in so Politics holds no interest for me.

peacock

This works for most of the time but with Hugo (my resident Frenchman) sitting across from me thumping his computer with the palm of his hand as Paris erupts in violence, I cannot help but be…

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I Zig, Life Zags

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We rarely go the same direction, Reality and I. And when the day is long and complicated and my brain can’t quite keep up with it, I wander ever further from the appointed path of sanity and logic. It is decidedly my nature to diverge from what’s natural.

And I’m okay with that. You may as well be, too, because I’ve gone all abstract on you and must needs go to bed. I may or may not be wiser and clearer tomorrow, but I suspect I’ll still be very much myself and enjoy it. Cheerio!Digital illo: Life Goes Its Own Way

Foodie Tuesday: The Grass is Always Greener When Somebody Else Grows It

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Photo: Lemon Egg MousseI am happy to let others do all the work. Not only is the proverbial grass greener on the other side of the fence, it’s greenest of all when another party has sown, grown, and mown it. And if it’s metaphorical grass in the form of food (I’m usually not a ruminant), it’s downright perfection if they’ve done all of the prep, cookery, and serving, too. I’ll fix myself those fluffy little items like a protein-added eggnog or lemony egg mousse for a quick meal and I might even go so far as to grow my own veg if I find it a suitable garden beautifier worth the effort, but in my lazy heart of hearts I am best pleased if some dedicated master does all of the heavy lifting.Photo: Sprouts

I experimented recently with growing my own sprouts, something I’d not done since the post-hippie happiness of the ’70s, and was instantly reminded of why I’d not done it since those long-ago days: lots of fiddling for little payoff. I suppose if I ate sprouts with every meal I’d reconsider the attempt, but honestly, eating them with every meal would bore me just as much as fiddling with growing them. I am very happy to support the economy of whichever generous farmer provides me with the occasional sprouts and sends them to the grocery store for my delectation. Thank you, all you dedicated growers, raisers, fixers, cookers, bakers, and servers who make my life so delicious!

Just thinking about the labor of all this makes me want to sit down with a good cold glass of water to rest up from the exertion of cogitating so deeply. Maybe I’d go so far as to whip up a nice eggnog. Better yet, maybe I’ll drift over toward some corner coffee shop and let the barista fix me something nice to soothe my exhausted frame.Photo: Coffee Making

Holding My Breath

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When things get crazy, it’s time to stop. I’ve said it many times before, and I will surely have endless occasions to say it again, but more important is that I do it.

Being immobilized by the lack of internet access for a while is perhaps a good start, but given the current schedule of overlapping work, travel, home relocation tasks, and a fair number of surprise interjections, I know that I will need to take every little momentary jot of rest and refreshment I can get. It’s 10:30 p.m. and I’ve just sat down after the evening’s part of the work that started in earnest about 12 hours ago. I know that there will be longer days ahead, many of them. I know that other people do intensely hard work for much longer days on a regular basis, and for less reward. And I also know my own limits.

My brain is abuzz, my muscles flagging, and most of all, I am reduced to a fuzzy and quite unfocused state that prevents much more productive work before bedtime. Since there’s an appraiser coming to inspect the house at 8 tomorrow morning (and you all know full well that I am among the least morning-friendly of creatures), I know it’s time to accept the state of the house as tidy and dolled up enough for his or her inspection—or else. Can’t make Neuschwanstein out of El Rancho Ordinario, nor should I. False advertising aside, it’s not the right character for a simple and happy family home. (Ask Mad Ludwig’s ghost, if you like.) So I’ll get up in the morning, however reluctantly, and get out of the inspector’s way, believing I’ve done as much as I can and should, and I’ll let the results of the day’s efforts speak for themselves. And then come back and undo all of them for the next inspection, the arrival of the estate sale manager at 10 a.m.

But right now, I am preparing my mind and body for as restful a night as I can conjure, and it begins, yes, ironically enough, it starts with stopping. Letting go of all the undone, poorly done, or yet-to-be-done stuff and silencing my mind. Letting myself drift toward peace and calm as though I’d dived into deep, clear, soothing seas and the water buoys me and shuts out the visual and voluble wildness of the day just past and those yet to come. I’ll sing myself to sleep with a little whale song, perhaps, but mostly, I will gladly let go of the need to rant and pant and wrestle, and I will return to life as refreshed as if I had a good long soar through the depths, if I can manage it, because that will make the next day’s work survivable in so many more ways.Photo: It's Not a Fluke

Powerless

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There are so many ways that we crave and try to wield power, we mortal beings. We think we’re in charge of our own lives, if nothing else. We are wrong.

Our short trip to Portland from Thursday through this morning provided me with a fine refresher course in this form of necessary humility. While our house is in utter disarray during our move to an apartment and our lives in mild chaos during a busy fall season of school, concerts, travel, and conferences, I am about as far from in control of my own little existence as I am from running the world. I did my very worst job of packing, for Portland, that I think I’ve done since somewhere around the age of four. If my parents were dumb enough to let me help pack my luggage then.

So I arrived in Oregon without several of my simplest toiletries, one pair of socks short of the full trip’s worth, and sans laptop power cord. Hence, my first series of several days without daily blog posts in nearly four and a half years. And I must tell you that I was plenty irritated with myself, and mightily disappointed to break the string of consecutive posts so unwittingly, if not witlessly. But you know, the earth did not cease to rotate on its axis. The rain and sun still did their little minuets, people still talked to me as if they genuinely liked doing so, and music still sounded magnificent and more than a little miraculous.

Because it’s not my power cord that connects me to the universe, and it’s most certainly not my power that connects the rest of the universe together. I can’t fix what’s wrong in the world, not by a million miles, but I am not the source of any of its strengths or its life force, let alone its myriad joys. I’m just the lucky participant and recipient, who (when the power is plugged in) gets to report on my view of it all. I’m happy to be back online, but I am reminded that the very best of what I enjoy in my remarkably blessed existence is not born of my own merit or power, and not even remotely connected to whether I’m plugged in or not, figuratively or literally. I’m just plain glad to be here.

Photo: Out of Gas

Yep, I ran out of gas. But I reminded myself, however inadvertently, that it takes letting go of my driven need for power, sometimes, to refuel my spirit.

Historical Associations

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Photo: "The Amazing Feat of 'Sparks'"The small number of vintage family photos I own are a pleasure to view. I’ve admired some of them for their sheer aesthetic value, some for the clues they give to my ancestors; lives, and (indirectly) how the led to mine, and some for both qualities. But I’ve found that, like so many other belongings, the more I see them, the less I notice them. I should know this by now, having lived in around a dozen locations in my life and done the revisionist-revisiting of my personal history that comes with every sort-and-pack adventure. Objects, no matter how I imbue them with meaning and attach to them with affection or nostalgia, are still just objects. I have often enough regretted a hasty or wasteful acquisition, never mind the long-term storage and maintenance of it; I can honestly say that not one de-accessioning has left me seriously sorry. My memory is sufficient.Photo: Mormor & Morfar at Eitland

The family photos that have hung on my walls become—no pun intended—relatively invisible over time. It’s really the stories with which I have come to associate them, true or imagined, that make me revisit them, and this is far more often in my mind’s eye than in physically examining them.Photo: Otteson Family in Norway 1

I haven’t lost interest in my loved ones, unknown relatives, friends, or acquaintances when I stop looking at their pictures any more than I have lost interest in food and drink when I part with a vintage serving bowl or beautiful stemware; it’s just that I have so internalized my affections for them and the personal associations I have with them that those internal images become as real and significant as the things themselves. If I have enough to keep me content and well-filled—bowls, glasses, pictures on the walls—any extras become unnecessary to my pleasure; they go, and the enjoyment remains for as long as I have the memory to revisit it.Photo: Otteson Family in Norway 2

And when the memory goes, I’ll never know it’s missing, will I.Photo: Bolstad Family Grocery, ca. 1912

Let Me be So Attuned

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For those of you who would like to Tune In suitably, the concert that was being prepared when I wrote today’s post will be performed tonight by the University of North Texas A Cappella Choir, conducted by my esteemed spouse Richard Sparks. Click on this link, and it’ll take you to the live-streamed concert at 8 pm Central Standard Time. Or, if you can, come on over to UNT’s Murchison Performing Arts Center and enjoy the concert (with me and a host of other fans) in the lovely Winspear hall.

Digital illo from a photo: A Cappella HarmonyI am listening to a superb vocal sextet as the singers demonstrate the purity of tone and the achingly clear, clean dissonances and harmonies that their conductor has just been coaching the listening university choir to attempt. When they two sets of singers all join forces and achieve this without putting undue stress on their breathing and without letting anyone’s vibrato widen far enough to fall off its assigned note, the whole room, no matter how large or small, dry or reverberant, empty or crowded, becomes electric. The power of even the faintest pianissimo, when perfectly tuned to the chord of the moment, scintillates in such perfect proportion, one note to another, that involuntary shivers of pleasure run up and down my spine.

The conductor admonishes the singers to embrace the more tender expressive qualities of the passage they’re singing; instead of attack-and-cutoff beginnings and endings to notes and phrases, they attempt to let the notes open and close naturally with the breath. Attack becomes the almost imperceptible awakening sensation of even, steady onset, and cutoff loses its hard artifice in favor of the easeful grace of release. I think that this, too, makes a fine representation of what it should be to live in tune with my fellow beings, to breathe in consonance with them whether we are making pretty and perhaps predictably agreeable chords or exact and shivering dissonances.

This is the gorgeous, staggeringly intense experience of listening to genuinely sensitive music-making, of powerfully accurate tuning. A wonderfully skilled musician will no doubt say that the experience is even deeper for the singers themselves, as the physical sensation can only be intensified when one is physically part of the sounding instrument in this fundamental way. But I have been in those rooms, at times, where the perfectly timed phrasing of notes and passages and the confluence of vibrations are so perfectly aligned that I feel I am no longer a solid object, distinct from all other things, but have become an integrated element of the glittering cosmos. This, I think, is what it means to gain true harmony.Digital illo from a photo: Score

Foodie Tuesday: Desperate Times Call for Inventive Cookery (or None!)

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In the center of the vortex that is our schedule at the moment, I have a kitchen piled high with boxes, sorting spots for deciding what of the cooking tools and gadgets, dishes and dietary dabs, to Keep-Give-Sell-Trash, and cleaning supplies for tidying up when (and if) I finally make order amid the chaos again. In the center of that mess, I have rather little space, time, or inclination to be the simplest of pretend-chefs. So it’s imperative that I get my mise-en-mess just organized enough to see that we eat, no matter what.

What to do, what to do, cried Chicken Little!

First: don’t panic. I am not troubled with that far worse enemy of not having access to food aplenty. After that, it’s not so complicated. Remember to keep all of this chaos and craziness—of combining a busy work schedule with travel (out of state, followed by a jaunt overseas), while also being in the maze of selling the house and moving to a 50% smaller apartment—in perspective. We have a home (two, for a while, soon). We have real, daily work to do that is fulfilling as much as it is challenging and time-consuming. We have exciting trips to take and wonderful things to do and friends to spend time with while on these travels. And we have food, lots of food.

Prep is the enemy these days, of course. I love the leisurely approach of knowing two weeks in advance that company’s coming, planning the menu over a few dreamy days, shopping for ingredients, setting up my mise en place during work breaks in the day or two preceding the event, and even making up dishes in advance to be chilled properly or ready for flame, if they’re to be served hot. But that is the one ingredient I lack right now: leisure. Time is in too high demand these days for any ridiculously languid approach to fixing and eating meals. I look to the quick fix in times of, well, little time.

A good opportunity to think about quick foods, as opposed to Fast Food. One will satisfy and keep me on track, and the other will drain my wallet and energy and health, all while only feigning to save me time, because of course I would have to leave the field of my current endeavors for longer just to drive to a fast food joint and back than I do to make a swift pass at the refrigerator and/or microwave on fly-by breaks from the packing. Nothing wrong with taking a fast food break, as indeed, we will do tonight because the chaos in the house is at such a peak there’s no real place to sit down and eat, never mind whether I can rustle up any edibles when the counters, the space in front of the fridge, the cooktop, the pans and pots and utensils, the microwave, and pretty much everything else cooking or food related is virtually inaccessible. But by tomorrow I hope to have cleared a path again, enough so I can rely on my old standby cures for lack of time.

Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_bourguignon

Desperation Dining 1: if there’s a one-dish meal lying in wait in the freezer, yay! Something like a bowl of quickly microwaved beef stew Bourguignon-style is practical, hearty, and will stay with me through more busyness before the day is through.

Photo: Desperation Dining 2

Desperation Dining 2: a big glass of water and a couple of protein bars, especially homemade ones like these chocolate-peanut butter ones and citrus ones, can keep me moving while the clock’s ticking.

Photo: Desperation Dining 3

Desperation Dining 3: a bit of a sugar rush is sometimes just what I need to continue working for a while, so why not a piece of fabulous fruit to hold me over until it’s *actual* mealtime. Add a little cheese, and it feels like it’s nearly a meal. Add a bowl of popcorn *and* some cheese, and it’s Sunday evening supper! In my house, anyway.

Photo: Desperation Dining 4

Desperation Dining 4: My eternal friend the Egg is a constant companion in times of high-speed living, whether it’s scrambled or fried or whipped into a lemony hot mousse for microwaving—or it’s going, raw, into my coconut milk smoothies, because I’m a fiend for eggnogs of all sorts. If you tell me to Go Suck Eggs, I will take it as a mandate, not an insult.

Photo: Desperation Dining 5

Desperation Dining 5: there are times, I will confess, when the desperation becomes closer to the real thing, and I am so tired of pedaling faster, ever faster, that what I not only crave but need is to stop, sit down on any bare spot of furniture or floor or dirt, and slurp at a drink. It may be the aforementioned water, it might be juice, and on special occasions, it could be that what’s required is something equally special to perk me back into a semblance of good cheer and energy. A fine lemon verbena drink with mint-leaf ice cubes, chilled cucumber slices and candied mandarin orange segments, with or without alcohol, is a good way to forget for a moment or ten that life is continuing to race onward, with or without *me*.

A Rotten Rogue

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Digital illo: Scurrilous ScoundrelUnpleasant Before & After

Scabrous to scurrilous, sure to offend,

Senses assaulted and stench without end,

Here on the ash-heap of history, I

Will most be remembered as that Awful Guy.