Best of the Very Worst, or How I Rose Above Personal Mediocrity to become a Self-Made Above-Average Character

Posted on September 30, 2011 by kathryningrid

”]The ever-inspiring Nia, photojournalist of all things sweet in Istanbul and wherever her travels have taken her, has tagged me with the honorable task of reviewing my short (thus far only, I hope) history as a blogger and passing along the challenge for such introspection and resurrection to some fellow internet trapeze artists as well. As one who has always prided herself, if that’s not too extravagant and approach to it, on being comfortable with her place in the middle of the pack, so to speak, in the universe, it is a tingly and cheering surprise when anyone tells me I’m otherwise. I mean, I knowI’m special, wonderful, and adorable and all of that since people I love and respect tell me so in my real life, but I am also fully aware that the rest of the planet is absolutely brimming with equally special-wonderful-adorable creatures in that sense. I’m also well aware that nothing I have done, made, said or been has shaken the foundations of reality or made me rich or famous, nor is likely to do so–and I really am okay with that!

So to be singled out as worthy of mention in this my new endeavor is flattering, frightening and flummoxing all at the same time. But mostly it feels really nice! It is a fine affirmation that my ego, smiling broadly at me in the mirror, is not so far off-kilter that my average-and-ordinariness cannot be seen by others, too, as maybe something a little shinier and more compelling than they actually are–or perhaps even edging upward over the years and efforts somewhere a tiny bit closer to excellence. Complacency, no, never, I hope. But isn’t it nice to get that sore shoulder once in a while that comes from cheerily patting oneself on the back?

Buckets of bouquets to us all!

I would like to offer the same supportive and enthusiastic back-pats to the following fellow toilers in the fields of blogdom:

Ted Griffith, who braves the blogosphere with wonderful photographic art despite frequent disclaimers of intimidation and inexperience apparently quite similar to my own;

Madeline of ah-lum-dahp-dah, daring adventurer and journalist (with great humor and compassion) of her experiences around the world at an age when I still thought it was incredibly gutsy to say Hi to a stranger at a boring reception;

Fellow unreasonable optimist Jared at Lexidelphia, poet and commentator on such useful things as mustache characteristics and the importance of being an impertinent little upstart when questions ought to be asked;

Milady Hannah-Elizabeth of The Last Classic, writing a remarkably insightful and thoughtful rumination on life with all of its ups and downs;

Beautiful Desi of The Valentine 4, whose ability to calm the stormy seas around her with wisdom and humor and passion are a great example to us weaker-willed souls;

Aaron Leaman, who like the rest of us hard-working arty types, starts with Nothing and makes Something–in his case, artful and thought-provoking photos, vids and texts.

Jack Campbell, Jr, of This Average Life, a guy that just happened to post today on the selfsame theme I had chosen for the day, with a unique twist. I think that qualifies as good taste in ordinariness!–or something like it . . .

My Fellow Bloggers: Should you choose to accept this mission, you will only need to revisit and link to 7 of your all but forgotten posts, linking to them, and then pass this mission/challenge on to 7 other bloggers . . . here are my own responses:

#1 Your Most Beautiful Post (in your opinion): Another Kind of Safety (or, better yet I hope, something yet to come)

#2 Your Most Popular Post (per stat views): The Supercooled Liquid that is Far More than Smoke and Mirrors

#3 Your Most Controversial Post (per reality): As American as Whaaaaaa . . . ???

#4 Your Most Helpful, or “How To” Post: Happiness may be Ephemeral, but It’s Sure Worth the Effort

#5 Your Most Surprisingly Popular Post: I Hereby Crown Myself Mistress of the Mess-ups and Guru of Good Intentions

#6 Your Post That Didn’t Get the Attention It Merited: Be Still and Listen, Thou Big Dope

#7 Your Magnum Opus (post you are most proud of): I’m hoping like crazy that if there’s an individual post that’s “best” it is yet to come. What I’m really proud of is finally getting up the nerve and the gumption to actually join the blogosphere and persevere at it. And all of the rest of you that commit to this humbling and exhilarating and inspiriting task should be equally pleased to be in this weird and wonderful company!

This little piggy cried, "Me! Me! Me!" all the way home . . .

Please pardon my wallowing in self-congratulation for a moment. Whee! Whee! Whee!

I Hereby Crown Myself Mistress of the Mess-ups and Guru of Good Intentions

Posted on September 28, 2011 by kathryningrid

It's okay to be screwy, as long as I keep it upbeat . . .

Yes, I have received another award. This one’s from me, to mark the official recognition of my silliness in not quite getting it right when I got the last one.

My last award was a generously conferred Versatile Blogger nod from one of my favorite fellow bloggers, Ms. Cecilia the Sage and Savvy Farmer. Yesterday I was tagged with a second such recognition by the delightful and gifted Nia, a photographer and diarist from Istanbul. And when she sent me the notification, I had to slap my forehead with dumbstruck awe at how remiss and inattentive I’d been when I was tagged the first time. So, with my apologies, I tip my new self-anointed crown in an apologetic genuflection and promise both to re-post and to remember to inform (as is customary, if you’ll note in the rubrics down below) the people to whom I had hoped to show my admiration in the first place. Oops! My oversight is in no way meant to be reflective of my great enjoyment of the bloggers listed here, and I hope all of you reading this will click on the links, check out their blog sites, and share in their wealth of knowledge and artfulness and entertaining and thoughtful world-views too.

Now, for the REST of you, who really do deserve this!

In Search of My Moveable Feasts

We ask anyone receiving the Versatile Blogger Award to
pay it forward, if you will.

Thank the person who gave
you the award and link back to them in your post.
Tell your readers seven (7)
things about yourself.
Give this award to fifteen
(15) recently discovered bloggers.
Contact those bloggers and
let them in on the exciting news!

As for things to tell you about myself, I’ve already mentioned my dyslexia and wildly meandering forms of thought, and here I am just proving the point again. No news there! So I’ll go off on a little different tangent, with a list of a few of the interesting places I’ve visited.

1 The Grove of the Patriarchs (Washington State). An isolated little island surrounded by streams in Mt Rainier National Park, because of its sheltered position there the islet is still populated by spectacular old-growth trees, mainly Douglas firs and cedars, that are awe-inspiring and make you feel you’ve stepped into another dimension, an incredibly peaceful one.

2 Saint Lucia. Another island, but of an utterly different kind, being in the southern Caribbean. My mother and father in law took the family on a cruise with them for their 50th anniversary (apparently missed the memo where people are supposed to give YOU big presents for big events). While ‘cruise culture’ isn’t necessarily a logical fit for my personality, it was tremendous fun to spend the time getting to know the family better, seeing a part of the world I’d never seen before, and especially, going off with the parents, my spouse, and the elder nephews and scarpering off the ship across a lonesome stretch of high road to the local aquarium, where they had the most impressive tarpon I’ve ever seen sailing around in the tanks.

3 Prague (Czech Republic). By default, really, the first time. Our honeymoon was planned to time perfectly with a previously scheduled conducting gig my husband had gotten in Hungary, so we thought we’d fly to Budapest right after the wedding since we were to be picked up there by the festival arrangers. But it was one of the big years for European travel–so much so that there were no tickets to be had anytime close to when we had to be there. So we flew into Prague, fell wildly in love with its superb Gothic-to-Art Nouveau architectural beauties, and were sorry when we did have to leave on the train to Budapest.

4 Tijuana (Mexico). It’s not really what I’d call having been to Mexico! I’m sure it’s quite different now, but if you visited there, say, in the seedy seventies, you know exactly what I mean. But what a colorful experience in a sort of eccentric country-of-its-own. Unforgettable.

5 Winnipeg (Manitoba). I’ve been on the Canadian plains before–not least of all, spending joyful years going to our home-away-from-home in Edmonton, Alberta. But going to Winnipeg in cold, wintry weather was a special kind of revelation. Wonderful historic buildings rising seemingly spontaneously from this incredibly flat expanse allowed me to see distances that seemed almost godlike in the chill and windy silence of the season. Indoors, warmth galore: great events, great food, and most of all, great people. But outside, something uniquely apart that appealed to my soul greatly too.

6 Grim (Kristiansand, Norway). The neighborhood near my sister’s home in Kristiansand is not a tourist destination or remarkable for its unique character, per se, and let’s face it, the name doesn’t read with promise in English! But as it’s the ‘home’ neighborhood for us when we’re there, it has the unbreakable draw of bloodlines coursing through its streets and walkways. And all roads then lead to family. Quite the opposite of feeling grim, indeed, to me.

7 Molokai (Hawaii). After a rough year at work, my father’s friends and supporters gave our family plane tickets to Hawaii, a family to greet us on Oahu and host the start of our visit, and a week’s stay in their condominium on Molokai. When we flew into the dirt-paved airport on Molokai and saw the big scrawl on the tin roof of the “terminal” (using the term advisedly here) shouting “THE FRIENDLY ISLAND” at us in welcome, we almost fell out of the plane laughing. The 6-mile-long island looked so dusty and forlorn and godforsaken that we couldn’t imagine anything would be engaging there. But the condo was peaceful and proved a perfect place for personal restoration after the year’s exhaustion, not to mention for the family to simply regroup a little. And better than that, the locals embraced us as though we were long-lost relatives, feeding and leading us with incredible generosity and kindness that can never be forgotten.

8 Kersey, Suffolk (England). Our late friend Ruth was a world traveler, gourmet cook, lifelong teacher, and one of the kindest souls to grace the planet. She took my sister and me in over American Thanksgiving when we visited her charming home Blue Gate in the English countryside. She fed us glorious meals, showed us the Wool Churches and thoroughbred stables nearby, and took us into the sweet town of Kersey, where she introduced us to a marvelous lady I still suspect of having been a fairy or elf of some sort. With the most perfectly gossamer sterling hair and blue eyes brighter than the North Star, she ruled a tiny woollens shop right beside the most significant natural feature in the village, the main street ford of the stream. Which was no more and no less than a slight depression in the road, and would fill with water at any and every drop of rain or dew, and it was accepted as the Only Thing to Do that when the water came in, the ducks followed, and when the ducks were in the so-called Ducksplash, anyone in an automobile had better just settle in for a wait until the bathing was done rather than risk the ire of the villagers by forcing the ducks out of the little ford to let him pass. The shopkeeper knew full well what a marvel this village was, surviving intact and quietly into the noisy modern age, and told us of a young man who’d visited in the past and was unable to conceive of this sleepy town’s merits. He asked her what on earth it was that had moved so many people to urge him to spend time in Kersey. “You don’t know yet, then?” asked the twinkling lady. He shrugged. She smiled more widely than the Cheshire Cat and said softly, “Well, then, you’ll die wondering, won’t you.”

9 Balatonfüred (Hungary). A resort town on lovely Lake Balaton, situated in wine country and popular as a seaside getaway for many generations, my husband and I and a pair of close friends visited it on the advice of colleagues while we were at that honeymoon music festival I mentioned before in a nearby town. While the town itself is quite charming and pretty and full of interesting people and inviting walks along the water, the driver we hired, who tore up the countryside with us crammed in his little car while he narrated at top speed in delighted broken English, was really the highlight of the trip. His evident pleasure in the outing, in racing his little automobile as though on fire, and in showing us a favorite town were wonderfully contagious.

10 Fort Worth (Texas). Now that I live in a nearby town myself, I have been to this haven of cowboy culture and enjoyed a taste of the present-day version of Old Tejas. There’s something immensely appealing about being in a city big enough for the requisite skyscrapers and big business but still housing pens full of beautiful longhorn cattle within the city limits. Ft Worth has much more resource in the way of arts and culture that I’ve yet to explore, but it’s nice to know that the old west is still alive and well here thousands of miles from where it finally hit the actual west coast of the continent.

Foodie Tuesday: Beauty is in the Tastebuds of the Beholder

Posted on September 27, 2011 by kathryningrid

Zest for life, zest for food, zest for art: all "customized" by our own tastes . . .

I give myself credit for being a tolerably decent cook. Once in a blue moon I even fuss with fancy-schmancy cookery or baking, but less often with every passing year. As it is, I’m mostly far too impatient to get to the actual eating to consider fooling around with any processes that delay that significantly. For a visual artist, I’m shockingly laissez-faire about plating and presentation, and depend on the goodwill and patience of those at table with me to get me past that part of the meal to the part where I get to play human forklift.

Now, I have great admiration for those who are serious and artful chefs, and I certainly prefer to feast upon delicious, rather than fit-only-for-subsistence, foods. And if those foods are a feast for the other senses as well, why that’s nigh unto nirvana. But mostly that happens at other people’s hands, others’ tables. I’m too busy concentrating on not eating the entire meal while preparing it to devote much attention to subtleties of composition. When I’m a guest in another’s dining room, it’s everything a piggy like me can do to feign manners enough to keep from leaning over my dessert with a maniacal tooth-baring slaver that belies the need for utensils while I wait for the host to take that first bite. A picture comes to my mind of our former neighbor Everett, so in love with both carpentry and helping out, that when he knew a project was afoot at our place across the street he would place his lawn chair at the front of his open garage and perch on the edge of it in runner’s-starting-block position, gripping his favorite Sawzall® at the ready, for the moment when he might be summoned to join in the party.

Likewise, I never have much in the way of photo documentation of any culinary successes I have, because those are usually dived into and massacred unceremoniously even as the last sprig of fresh herbs or the final flourish of confectioners’ sugar is drifting down to alight upon them. Yes, I have made heaps of glistening handmade pork jiao-zi, a mountainous mocha Intercontinental torte, delicate Norwegian-style fishcakes with dainty potetkaker (fat mini-lefse potato cakes) dripping with butter on the side, steamed zucchini blossoms stuffed with scented couscous, homemade rosemary pasta with wild mushroom cream sauce, and many more such dishes and meals over the years. I have fussed and fiddled with sauces and garnishes meant to make a sultan sigh with admiration. But dang it, when the perfume gets too heady and the urgency to get this stuff on the board gets too intense, well, how can anyone blame a poor ordinary cook and unbridled scarfer-of-foods if the comestibles get hustled to table and everybody just puts his head down, knife up, and plunges in?

There is the additional problem of what some foods look like in the first place. I’m not talking about the delightfully horror-movie appearance of a freshly caught monkfish or that sort of thing, but about the kinds of delicious dishes that resist being prettied up. Food stylists and top-flight chefs find ways around this all the time, but in truth, there’s not much point in gussying up a mousse. It is what it is.

Two words. Peaches. Cream. That is all.

In the case of this mousse from last week, I didn’t even bother to fool much with the fineness of the puree, since I like the slightly chunky chew of the peaches that emerges in each spoonful of otherwise creamy texture. Okay, I went so far as to put the dessert in tall stemmed glasses and even powder the top of the servings with a bit of good ground cinnamon, so that the scent of them would be that much closer to the diners’ noses in case the odd brownish-orange color and irregular texture were a teeny bit suspect. But I wouldn’t necessarily trade in for a prettier appearance the simple richness of peaches caramelized deeply in vanilla and cinnamon and butter and then pulverized to blend with lightly sweetened heavy cream. That’s just my set of priorities, you see.

I'm told it's all about the quality of the ingredients, anyway . . .

I have eaten and heard described plenty of dishes that start out with individual ingredients that simply oughtn’t to have been invited to the same party, so there’s a certain incompleteness to the general rule of ingredient-quality = finished-dish-quality, but the converse is so definitively true that it’s best to rely on this side of the equation. The most elaborate and skillful preparation of kæstur hákarl (the classic rotten shark preparation) is still going to taste like rotten shark, so either get with the Icelandic program and learn to enjoy it on its own merits or don’t be serving it in puff pastry with sugarcrafted butterflies on it. (Sheesh, at least you could put sugarcrafted arctic foxes on it.) Even I with my limited-experience palate and low tolerance for foods not appreciated outside of their native cultural circles will know something’s just not right.

I’ll take a slightly sloppy looking plateful of hearty and unpretentious homemade goodness any day. Especially if the singular parts of it are fabulous ingredients and haven’t been ridiculously tortured in the process. Then the only danger is if you get in the way of my ninja-like attack on the dish with my gleaming cutlery. I can only keep up the guise of manners for so long, my dears.

I’m Not a Real Person, but I Play One on Television

Posted on September 24, 2011 by kathryningrid

Maybe, Mr. President, but in the spirit of clarity and full disclosure, I think the other thing we really have to fear is ourselves . . .

. . . or as the ever-astute Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

I’m speaking, of course, for all of us lily-livered, yellow-bellied, totally ordinary milquetoasts in the world who have ever awakened on a perfectly calm and sunny day filled with dread for no other reason than that we are over-anxious about anything–or nothing. By this, of course, I mean practically everybody. On a bad day. Those few of you magicians who have never once had this experience, I salute you with admiring astonishment. And I implore you to hustle out and patent your technique and figure out how to produce it in vegetarian-safe three-a-day capsules for the rest of the waiting world.

Meanwhile, back at the Reality Ranch, I can lay claim to having plenty of days free of the aforementioned bane, but certainly plenty of times too when it seemed it would be far simpler to raise a sunken battleship singlehandedly from the bottom of the Mariana Trench than to haul myself out of my cave and interact with the world as though I were a competent human. And I’m not talking about dealing with true clinical depression or anxiety disorder, both of which as you know by now I have entertained as unwelcome guests in my own head in times past (pre-treatment). I’m talking about that state most mortals enter occasionally, where we’re certain that our horrible inadequacy is a glaring banner of toilet tissue perpetually trailing from our waistbands, that we are so clearly impostors in our own lives that we’ll soon be successfully replaced not by another person but by a badly made mannequin and no one will notice or care.

Yesterday, I was reminded in conversation of a fine and sometimes very helpful method for dealing with this characteristic in myself. Don’t know why I’d forgotten the source for so many years, as it’s really rather handy. I was in the high school drama program–and lest you die of shock at this news, be assured that I got into it initially because (a) I liked reading and viewing plays and (b) I happened to know that there was a lot of off- and backstage stuff to be done. Somewhere along the line I drifted from stagehand duties and lighting design and being mistress of all things costume and prop and set-related to, you guessed it, acting. Clearly not because I was destined to grow up and take Broadway by storm. But there it is, weird as it sounds. I mentioned in a previous blog that I have won theatre awards, including in those years, Best Actress, but this was high school, and hardly a magnet school for the Arts, for Pete’s sake.

However, I think I did perhaps earn the award from among my peers, and obviously not because of my natural vivacity and gregariousness. What I had was a wonderfully tolerant and clever set of teachers that did their best to spot weaknesses and needs among their students and find ways for them to overcome themselves. Because of course that was precisely the problem in my case. How could an uptight introvert get up onstage and act? I could barely conceive of how to play ME in my own life at that point.

The answer was really rather simple to state, and not, it turns out, impossible even for an uptight introvert like me to execute when I put my also-natural stubborn will and desire to be better than I was behind it. “If you can’t imagine someone like you getting up on the stage and acting a part, then start with playing a good actor. Then let that actor play the part.” Convoluted? Of course it is. Silly? You bet. But somehow that one extra step of remove let me pretend it was somebody else doing what I knew I couldn’t do myself, and that was that. While I had forgotten the specific inception of that nugget of useful knowledge in my life until yesterday, I know that I have employed it to many and varied extremes over the intervening years, and can thank the idea (and Mr. C and co.) for thus having pulled me through many a dicey situation since.

So far I have played a college graduate, a construction worker, a landscape and interior designer, an artist, a teacher, a poet, an administrator, a blogger, and many other roles, not all perhaps to award-winning standards, but enough to help me survive them and sometimes even forget myself enough to truly enjoy them in the moment. And I think I’m continuing to get better at the role of Me, the one role that might actually matter the most come to think of it. I’ll keep you posted if any honors other than my self-appointed tiara should pop up.

Never Fear, My Darlings, We're All in this Together . . .

Best-Laid Plans, Like Best-Laid Eggs, Gang Aft Agley

Posted on September 23, 2011 by kathryningrid

Robert Burns evidently knew it as a long-established fact, so I think it’s safe to assume that the unexpectedness of the turnings in life’s wonderfully wiggly path long predates Bobby and me and pretty much anyone else I could look to for a quick peek in the crystal ball. The day will always just take me where it takes me, and I will consider myself to have done well even if I can only keep going with the flow of it and not just plain get knocked down and run over. Most of the time, the moment’s, day’s, or year’s destinations are far more interesting than those I thought I’d plotted out in the first place.

Even thoughts are often just fly-by evolutionary phases waiting to develop into something more meaningful . . .

Yesterday, for example, I thought I’d post my Wednesday-night drawing exercise, but I was startled by the arrival in my inbox of a lovely gift and task in the form of pay-it-forward blogger recognition into doing something entirely different than my first intention predicted. In the process, I discovered not only a renewed interest in visiting and catching up with various of my previous favorite bloggers‘ sites but a whole cadre of new blogs and bloggers with whom I will now be sharing this adventure. Much better than the stodgy post dedicated to yesterday’s-drawing.

On the other hand, what it brought to mind along the way was that there are few, if any, of us that understand any of ‘what happens behind the curtain’ in anyone else’s world. Non-musicians think that because almost all human beings can make sounds, most of them in some controlled form, that a singer is just someone who opens up and pretty sounds come out rather spontaneously, not that he or she would spend years learning how to breathe properly, read music, stand, sit, move and (when necessary) act in the ways demanded by the particular repertoire. That singers have, in fact, to learn a large amount of repertoire over the years, getting to know texts, languages (pronunciation and nuances of meaning), rhythms, techniques for singing faster passages or long-drawn-out notes well, and a million other aspects of musicianship that non-singers will never know.

I think it’s hilariously misguided how readily we assume that if something is done well by another person, it must come naturally or easily, and not that–as is far more often the case–it has been honed through the now-famous 10,000 hours of practice that Malcolm Gladwell posits in Outliers as requisite for gaining expertise in one’s field. Any one of us knows from experience that things being easy and “natural” from the start is rare almost to the point of nonexistence. From bronc riding to ballroom dancing, from puzzling out the intricacies of quartz crystal cutting to those of quantum physics, there’s no place that one becomes expert or even experienced at first try, or probably tenth.

So I think it’s only fair that we teach each other what we know of these behind-closed-doors mysterious labors. You see my writing in a somewhat raw form, granted, on a daily basis because I committed to posting daily and that means I can’t spend unrealistic amounts of my waking time fussing over rewrites and editorial doctoring or the house will fall into ruin around my ears and we’ll eat nothing but what comes in random order out of the fridge at every meal. Not to mention that I won’t fit in even my Wednesday evening drawing time, let alone go on photographic wanderings or any other creative tangents.

The drawing, though, you don’t see in process or very often in its developmental stages. I draw enough stuff that I don’t have to let you see my “underwear” like this, but as I say, being a fairly truthful person I think I owe it to you to show you that not everything gets finished to the same degree or as successfully. I wouldn’t claim any of my work at all as Perfect (and where would be the fun in that, anyhow?), but there are degrees of relative completion and appeal, even in my playtime stuff. So the sketches above give you some sense of process in my case. They are literally bits pulled from my carry-around sketchbooks, and show that while I’m in a particular mode I might be working out issues not only of technique and medium but also of style, mood, intended story content (if any) and so forth, until they might gel in a drawing of the sort I’m more often going to publish here or even want people to see when they peer over my shoulder at my work.

The result of recent noodling over bird stories (yes, birds are about as recurrent as the proverbial fish and pencils in my work) in my sketchbooks led to this Wednesday’s drawing session in which I imagined what would happen if a pair of birds found one of the Easter Bunny‘s plastic eggs and raised it as their own. I’m pretty sure this is the actual origin story of marshmallow Peeps.

We are artistic birds and these are our peeps . . .

Given how generous, collaborative and creative the blogging world is, I expect that eventually there will be a bit of lessening of the information gap that lets us naively believe that anything we don’t understand but someone else is good at doing must just spontaneously spring into being for them. Much better to acknowledge and admire the immensity of learning and effort that devoted practitioners devote to their wide world of doings, and the great gift that having others so dedicated and skilled around us is to us all.

Just think: if some poor cave-dwellers hadn’t squatted nekkid around the cooking fire with a fat-spitting hunk roasting over it about ten thousand times too often, we would neither have the knowledge of how to have sputtery, juicy fun at the cooker, nor would we have the majestic modern beauty and wonder of aprons.

Friends Well Met in Cyberspace

Posted on September 22, 2011 by kathryningrid

We have constant reminders of the dangers lurking around the dark corners of the webiverse, and indeed we would do well to heed all such warnings. But I have seen that the obverse of that coin is equally impressive and far more enlightening and cheering: cyberspace is full of fantastic people and inspirations, and I don’t have to go far to find them. The kindness of strangers is quickly transformed into wonderful streams of affinity and even deep friendships when we have the ability to find so much common ground despite the physical, cultural or temporal distances between us.

Case in point: ceciliag, author of the exquisitely artful and personal blog The Kitchens Garden. I saw, without surprise, that today she had received a much-deserved blogging award for her marvelous work, and was delighted, because in the short time I’ve followed her blog I have come to see her as an inspiration, a mentor and even a friend. That’s the beauty of this concentrated contact we can develop with wonderful people whose shared insights and arts move us to do more than merely hang about the fringes basking in their gifts, and actually get to work on our own, howsoever we can! What I saw with surprise, and gratitude, was that C had generously passed along the award to other bloggers, and included me. I will of course try to narrow the field of my admired cohorts enough to pay the gift forward, because others besides ceciliag have strengthened, entertained and inspired me as well. She must know that I would gladly have included her in my own list had she not been the one ‘tagging’ me!

The purpose of the award is clearly to reinforce the ties between us in this remarkably friendly and creative world of blogging, and also to introduce us to more new connexions that we haven’t yet known to enjoy. Along with the fine mandate to share with you some links to other blogs I know you’ll find delightful, I am tasked with telling you 7 things you don’t know about me. Finding 15 bloggers whose work I admire and think deserves recognition is easy (though keeping it to only 15 mightn’t be)–but since I’m so boldly non-secretive a person, I may have to fish around a little to think of any things everybody doesn’t already know about me. So first, a blogroll of other worthy persons whose blogging efforts I hope you’ll support and find as delightful, provocative, educational, witty, touching, and/or flat-out gorgeous as I do.

In Search of My Moveable Feasts

And now, as if my dear readers haven’t already heard enough blather about me, here are seven things you might not have known.

1 I consider ginger root the Universal Donor. I can think of hardly anything that can’t benefit from the addition of ginger in one of its many forms.

2 I have something a little like the earworms people get when a pop song (or, among people I know, a movement from some classical piece) gets stuck in their head for a day or week–but mine is a permanent repetitive tune. My personal theme song, I guess. At least it plays in variations sometimes, thank goodness, or I’d go batty. Or have I already?

3 Once, long ago, I got to make a commissioned artwork to be presented as a gift to the Bishop of El Salvador.

4 The shelves on my desk have a miniature found-science collection of bones, bugs, bird nests, rusted hardware and seed pods.

5 I have a horror of telephones. Yes, it has a good latin phobia name too. But what do we phobics do to get over it–call each other???

6 My ability to raise one (either) eyebrow sardonically once garnered me the nickname “GP” for reminding my teacher of Gregory Peck’s expressions. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment, ‘specially if she had any idea that my sense of irony was mostly aimed at what I thought was the absurdity of her teaching style. Mea culpa.

7 At various points in my life I thought I’d study to be a pastor (that was clearly before I started developing into such a heathen); a marine biologist (all that scientific knowledge started to get in my way); an architect (oh, yeah–a dyslexic who can barely do grade-school math). Turns out I wasn’t really cut out for any sort of well-defined path.

Which brings me right here! And I can definitely say I couldn’t be more pleased with having landed among you. It challenges more different aspects of my personality and self-image than pursuing any of the aforementioned would have done in my case. And it lets me keep up the hunt for my vocation, if I have one, with a dandy support community that often drives me down previously unknown and unexpected paths of fun-filled mystery. So thanks, and here’s to all of you, not just those on today’s list!

Bouquets to all!

Maybe I DID Hear You the First Time

Posted on September 22, 2011 by kathryningrid

Pardon my reverie . . . I was just mulling over my latest plans for ruling the world . . .

Oh, yes, in my youth I was very much that kid all of you teachers have found so frustrating in your classes. It wasn’t that I was at all obstreperous (a little chatty at times, but then who isn’t), and I certainly wasn’t intentionally disruptive or uncooperative. But since I mostly hated being noticed, thanks to my shyness and social anxiety, and naturally I didn’t want to get in the way of the kids that weren’t perhaps getting enough of the attention anyway, I often found myself wandering the byzantine byways of my brain with the undoubtedly frequent appearance of not caring about the highly significant stuff being generously shared from the pulpit of the teachers’ desks.

Did it really matter that while the doyenne of the desk was teaching the spelling lesson I was counting the holes in the ceiling tiles to see if one tile matched another or perhaps each was hand-punctured by specially trained elfin craftsmen with sterling silver toothpicks instead of fingers? Actually, as a sometime teacher myself, I can answer that query with a resounding Yessirree, but truthfully only because no matter how stealthy the “inattentive” student thinks she’s being, and no matter if she gets a Hundred on the spelling test every time, the other students are bound to take their cue from the least participatory and cooperative seeming student in the room. It doesn’t matter that she did in fact hear the spelling practice being held in the background of her own mental meanderings (or already knew how to spell whatever exceedingly counterintuitive new words were being practiced), what mattered was that she wasn’t supporting the standard of classroom decorum. I get that. Now. But as a kid, I found it rather trying that I had to do whatever everybody else was doing even when I was certain in my heart that I would get the required job done in my own way. I was the poster child for the triumph of Mind over What Matters.

Did I have Attention Deficit Disorder? (Do I?) Would that make any difference? Not really. Despite my demurrals and admissions of inner sloth and self-indulgence, I have always had the ability to be fairly disciplined when it mattered, I just know I have to make a very serious commitment to exercising that particular skill, because it’s simply not my automatic bent. So along the years I’ve tried to train myself up into a slightly more presentable appearance of compliance and conformity when it seems important or expedient to do so.

Yet my mind still flits hither and yon with equally purposeful purposelessness, all the same. I’m simply learning how to be better at a sort of out-of-body transcendence that allows me to look like I’m fully involved in the present action (and I almost am, really, Boss) while a hunk of my inward self can continue its peregrinations in whatever flights of fancy it requires in the moment.

Sugar and spice, sure, but don't forget the snails and pails and whatnot . . .

See, there’s just too much loveliness in this universe (and potential in all of the other imaginable ones) not to be exploring it when-and-however I can. The found castoff wing of a dragonfly simply begs to be examined in person and in memory and at great length for its extravagant glassine iridescence. Every minute or magnificent object that comes into my view or my thoughts deserves some serious attention. Shells, shoes, barking madmen and barking dogs, whales and whiskers and whistling trains–if I don’t give them their due, and hopefully in the process also unveil their previously undiscovered secret histories, why then who will? That boy in row six thoughtfully picking his nose with his pencil eraser while staring out the window? Probably, because clearly he (a) has a similarly vagrant brain, the sort from which fabulous inventions and discoveries do spring, and (b) his nose ought to be clear enough by now that his brain will get more oxygen than all of the rest of Row Six put together, so his thoughts will have the added lustre of brilliance that fresh air brings.

In the meantime, I feel it incumbent upon me to keep up my part of cross-pollinating the scientific and romantic approaches toward whatever imaginative ends might finally appear. So please don’t be offended if my attention seems to have drifted just a little off to port or starboard when you’re regaling me with the wit and charm and incomparable genius that I should undoubtedly be diving into with the fullest focus possible. Because I probably only look like I’m off in la-la land when in fact it’s located in me and at one and the same time I’m perfectly awash with what you have shared, O my teachers. I promise I will absorb it, too, subliminally, cutaneously, osmotically and, if necessary, orthotically–right along with all of the goodness I’m already absorbing in my far-off inner world.

The waters of mystery and adventure are just waiting there to be swum . . .

Foodie Tuesday: Everything You See I Owe to Omnivorousness

Posted on September 21, 2011 by kathryningrid

". . . zee spites of life . . ."

Sophia Loren is on record as having attributed her, erm, attributes thus: “Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” Following in her pulchritudinous footsteps, supermodel Laetitia Casta claimed “my breasts were made in Normandy from butter and creme fraiche.” I can tell you from experience that eating plenty of the aforementioned prescriptions doesn’t in any way guarantee one will become a siren–more likely, a zeppelin, if one applies the medicines too assiduously. I can even say that sometimes, as Pogo’s lady-skunk admirer Mam’selle Hepzibah referred to l’amour itself, food is “zee spites of life”–both the spice and the bane of existence. My love of food becomes at times something of an amour-propre, in which I am shaped by my love of food and in turn, my self-image is affected by my disaffection with my shape. But I can also tell you that I know this is not only an extremely common complaint but also one I am inclined to ignore and suppress, thanks to my adoration of food and the eating thereof.

I am an unregenerate omnivore of sorts; while there are a few (probably previously mentioned) foods I eschew to chew, they are generally in no way designated unwanted because of moral, ethical, logical, political, practical or physiological reasons. Yes, that’s changing a bit as my old carcase ages enough to begin objecting on its own to some things that weren’t previously non-grata on my plata. So as I said before, I am hunting up alternatives to wheat, for example, and finding that I lean toward some foods more as a way of leaning away from others I’d long eaten now that they don’t agree with my innards as well as they once did. The rest only gets avoided if I just plain don’t get its appeal, whether it’s a textural or flavor-based or conceptual thing. As for the objections others may have to a food for any of the above-named reasons or any others, for that matter, I am able to find plenty of things to like and overfill myself with in almost any setting, so if I need to lay off the red-in-tooth-and-nail eating while dining with my vegetarian companions, I can happily do so; if it’s time I got more kosher or halal because I’m at table with friends for whom that’s important, I can swing that way too.

I can be semi-well-behaved when I really have to. I even learned to make wheat-free lemon shortbread to be kinder and gentler to the digestive attachments of my sweet tooth, but still . . .

But chances are pretty good that when left to my own devices, I’m going to eat a whole lot of whatever looks, smells and tastes good to me at the moment, and rare indeed are the moments when something or other doesn’t appeal. If the offerings in question should happen to be loaded with butter and eggs, taste rich and sweet and salty, have a juicy dash of ripe fruit and lavish lashings of cheese and avocado and chocolate and perhaps be sided with a rasher of excellent smoky bacon, look out! I’ve worked very steadily over the years to achieve my one form of womanly curvaceousness, that burgeoning bulge at my equator, and while it’s easy to maintain, I don’t recommend that you get between me and the buffet table at any inconvenient juncture or I can’t be held responsible for your safety. Just sayin’. Think I’ll go poach me an egg.

At least edible perfection doesn't have to be complicated!

I’d Like to be Shakespeare, but It’s Too Much Responsibility

Posted on September 19, 2011 by kathryningrid

I'm much better at being the family curmudgeon than the curmudgeon that turns the family story into art . . .

Much as I always complained about it in my students as whiny entitlement, I too am consistently under the spell of that dream wherein one becomes Great without any sort of effort or even natural-born gift that should make it happen. I’d probably even be quite content with being a one-hit wonder, if for example it happened to be one of those comfortably money-producing sorts of a hit, because after all, it’s not the notoriety per se that appeals to me (as I still enjoy my dork-in-the-corner shy side’s privileges) but the benefits of the notoriety, i.e., exceedingly fat living supported by a steady stream of however-undeserved wealth. All the better if I can manage to convince anyone, at least myself, that it’s marginally deserved; hence, the one hit I’d gladly have.

Meanwhile, back in reality-land, I will go so far as to lay claim to having actually read work by a number of superior writers, studied art made by a talented-rogues’ gallery of artists, and paid some serious attention to what great thinkers and doers of all sorts in fact DO to make their hits just keep on coming. It’s fascinating to see who’s been prolific and who hasn’t, and perhaps more so to see who among those has produced higher or lower proportions within that of impressively high quality stuff. Not least of all, it’s intriguing, if sometimes only in a sort of sadly prurient way, to see who’s burned out our died young, and whether there appears to have been any connection between the productivity and its quality-quotient and that early “deadline” or not. It’s sometimes as though they were outfitted with a cosmic ending-detector that made them squeeze as much into and out of an unfairly short life span as they did.

My own plan is that, if that’s a requirement of greatness, I will be so unbelievably UN-productive and UN-talented and UN-dedicated as to live a Methuselah-like yet party-filled lifetime unnoticed by the gods of fame and fortune. Pretty sure I can do it.

But to be fair, lots of standouts have lived long, prosperous and even exceedingly happy lives, so my preference, my actual Plan A, is that I will get to have it all instead. There are footsteps worth following, and paths worth admiring but not wanting to touch with a ten-foot pole even when wearing full hazmat gear. Not that I wouldn’t look adorable in a hazmat suit, especially if I could find it in safety orange! With a fake fur collar!

But I digress.

If I am to succeed with Plan A, I am willing to concede that I might have to lift the proverbial bale and tote its concomitant barge. Sigh. So I do keep reading, writing, gazing, drawing, and otherwise studying and practicing whether I happen to be quite in the mood or not. It may be that my lucky stars will never get into the specific alignment required, the necessary coincidence never happen at just the right juncture, despite all of my best efforts–which would be a disappointment, given my inborn desire to enjoy all things in the least effortful possible manner and my determination to thwart that inclination in pursuit of productive betterment. But I do believe the only way to tip the odds toward, no, to actually make it possible for, any such confluence of desirable consummations, is to do the work. Pity, but there it is. So the old bum does get off her old bum. What else can I do but do?

This will not, I guarantee you, turn me into a Sure Thing. But it’ll pave the way, should any stars just get in the mood to align in my favor, and along the way, it’s kind of funny, but I find the more I work at the writing and art-making and, heck, even some other things at which I’ve been known to buckle down and work, the more often I find I can derive pleasure from the process itself. This is indeed a really fine thing; if I can’t guarantee that working hard will produce any tangible objects-o’greatness, at least I’ve figured out that I can guarantee it’ll produce some personal pleasure along the way. All else had better be considered bonuses.

Now, I am well aware that the whole idea of a one-hit wonder is fraught with a certain air of condescension among the cognoscenti. There’s more than a hint of disdain in the phrase, as though the wonder-maker were kind of a loser for not having followed up on the whole hitmaking process. I think that’s a horribly unmerciful judgement. Maybe even sour grapes. How many of us ever manage to produce a single notable achievement in our lifetimes? Talk about pressure! The response to a miracle of significant action or production, the thanks you get, is, “Cool–where’s the rest of it?”??

In spite of the danger, for as I’ve said I would be mighty impressed with myself if I could accomplish one really amazing thing in my lifetime of toiling as artist, writer–never mind as daughter, sister, friend, wife–I will keep on plugging along. Because I can’t, finally, figure out how to stop it. Because Twain and da Vinci and Shakespeare and Morisot are dead and so I don’t have to compete with them, only my yesterday’s-self. Because it’s worth doing even when only the process makes it worth doing. Just because.

. . . because I Will do it . . .

Leading Me down the Primrose Path

Posted on September 17, 2011 by kathryningrid

Amid the fragile glories of a garden . . .

I am as gullible and easily ensnared as they come. When the weather is just perfect (however that may be defined by me on the day) and the blooms begin to go off like temperate fireworks and all of the insects are humming benignly in delight, I am easily convinced that the garden is the only place on earth to be.

It’s not that I’m quite in the league of those master gardeners and other addicts that find true solace in being elbow-deep in dirt, for everyone who’s not been nodding off like Rip Van Winkle knows I rarely get the urge to work that hard, and gardening can be truly heavy labor. But the smell of deep loam mixed with mouldering pine or fir needles and crisp fallen leaves, blended expertly by Ma Nature with top notes of any sort of sweet flora, and perhaps just a splash of wet pavement to finish–this is the perfume of a kind of happiness found nowhere but in a garden and in the heart of a garden-lover.

The lovely rustle of leaves, the metallic buzz of a sonorous cicada, perhaps the musical flow of water over stone, this is the soundtrack of contentment. Birds can sing to it with ease, and their choruses may interweave with a depth and beauty seldom heard in the most sophisticated counterpoint and polyphony devised by human composers. Even the neighborhood dogs and cats seem inclined to dance when passing by in these marvelous moments of song. A far distant lawnmower’s roar is softened by the miles to a point where it almost has the same romance as the sound of the passing train.

Every one of the gorgeous growing things is lovely in its own peculiar way as well. Grasses stretched to bristling brushy heights in wild bursts of growth may be just brown to those not tutored in a garden’s joys, but on a close inspection can reveal a magical array of brown and yellow, ruddy, rusty, tan and bronze, and silver and gold tones in every shade. Leaves and blooms in colors ignored by all but the most discerning eyes in a rainbow’s arc are suddenly broadcast with prodigality in all the craziness and grace a garden’s bed can possibly begin to hold. Somehow even the spots that might look bare at first hide secret gifts if one has patience just to take a closer look and see what moves among the bits of soil, the scattered rocks, to lean in far enough to find that velvet dust left by a butterfly, the drifted petals of a rose. I am enchanted, too, by the silky feel of a the bold tissue-paper blooms of a tree peony or the rough warmth of a sun-baked cedar trunk, by the taste of the honeyed air when I breathe in the sweet perfections of a summer afternoon.

There is beauty enough for all the senses . . .

Here in Texas it has been a fairly brutal summer for such things to thrive. Only the profligate expenditure of water where there has been none could possibly allow for garden prettiness of such a delicate sort to live and grow. Other than trying to help our venerable oaks and full-sized Bradford pears survive with dignity intact, I’ve not been generous with water, knowing that there are more urgent uses for it at the moment than for personal pleasure’s sake. I have been working all the while to devise an appropriate native-planting-x-xeriscape new landscape plan with which to revise our yard for the long term–when we can afford to do it. I’m building a rather nice new scheme for it, I think!

Meanwhile, there came a little rain. In the last few days there’s been a little respite from the drought. It hasn’t ended the drought, of course, nor anywhere near undone the damage that’s been wrought. The dire dryness will likely continue for some time, and we know that droughts, historically, have shown the power to last for decades in a place, but for this little point in time it’s heavenly to get a sip.

So even though I know this hint of watering is likely only to lead me down some primrose path if I believe it means it’s garden time for real, I still give in. I’ll acquiesce to the false sense of springlike play this water brings and go, I’m sure, to the garden once again, only to be chased back by another wave of heat. But for this little time I cannot lie: the roses tentatively opening after a splash of rain make me want to believe in them, make me want to head out to the yard. There’s life in the old lady yet.

Art-Colored Glasses

Original poetry, essays, artworks, photographs & musings on whatever moves me…

Category Archives: Human Nature

I Hereby Crown Myself Mistress of the Mess-ups and Guru of Good Intentions

Foodie Tuesday: Beauty is in the Tastebuds of the Beholder

I’m Not a Real Person, but I Play One on Television

Best-Laid Plans, Like Best-Laid Eggs, Gang Aft Agley

Friends Well Met in Cyberspace

Foodie Tuesday: Everything You See I Owe to Omnivorousness

I’d Like to be Shakespeare, but It’s Too Much Responsibility

Leading Me down the Primrose Path

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