Do or Die
The ancient Archaeopteryx had never turned a wing
Or lifted her substantial claws to help with anything;
She wielded her impressive bill, but only to express
Disdain for any task but what advanced her happiness
Exclusively, for she believed herself the focal point
Of all existence on the earth; her nose got out of joint
When anyone would question her supremacy as Queen.
You’ll notice, now, that she’s extinct, and never since been seen.
Other than my general adherence to food posts on Tuesday—for no particular reason on my part other than my constant love of eating—I don’t often go with the popular day of the week trends or memes or whatever they are. But what makes me happy can render even the loquacious-unto-verbose me speechless, so what better to do than shut up and hand it over with no further fuss. My gift to you, therefore: a [nearly] Wordless Wednesday. The roadside view on Saturday was simply too fabulous not to be shared.
I’m strolling by an old oak, and as I approach am hearing a fantastic avian aria. I expect that, as usual, that little singer will fall suddenly silent when he senses my approach. Bet when I walk up to the low branch where he sits, on he goes.
There sits a feathered dandy, a handsome and hale male of the mockingbird persuasion, and as I stop to admire his good looks and impressive vocal repertoire, he looks me right in the eye and goes on singing. I whistle and chirrup and warble in as close an imitation of his excellence as I can manage, because it seems only polite to respond in kind, yet I feel not only inferior in my birdcalls but just a little sorry I’m not ‘available,’ let alone the right species for him. Ah, the biological imperative!
I can only assume that such a fine specimen of mockingbird-kind will find no shortage of applicants for the position of his tweet-heart. A creature so elegant, tuneful, and confident could never remain unnoticed by any ladies of his kind, and surely only a true birdbrain would mock his efforts.
All I know is that I couldn’t help whistling as I walked on, myself.
The whole of nature has its ways of reflecting perfection, when we take that momentary pause in which we can step back to appreciate such things. Even, as I posted yesterday, in death there is room for new life; out of captivity, freedom. In silence, I come to better appreciate the small and unobtrusive ways, not just the large, noticeable ones, in which sound enriches my world: water burbling down a ditch, breeze-stirred grasses, bees that sing soft love songs to their golden pollen treasures. In stillness, I relish each breath and every tentative movement as the wind kicks up a little and sets the empty park swings in motion again. Out of wintry darkness and overcast days, I more consciously embrace a bright afternoon and its combed, silky clouds.
In a moment of quiet reverence, I, too, can reflect such perfection better and am made more whole and beautiful.
Today, a nearly perfect day of blue and gold and bracing new-leafed green, demanded that it be enjoyed from outside the house. We, my darling chauffeur-companion-partner and I, obeyed. We went to the park.
Being in a massive park, but one zoned as a number of separate and more intimate places devoted to strolling, picnics, camping, horseback riding, fishing, and the like, we found no shortage of pleasant places to revel in the marvels of a sweet north Texas spring day. Tiny, starlike rain lilies leaping up from the sleepy clay shine like miniature suns but are even more sweetly pretty, somehow, when they’re nestling little pollinator insects. The swell of tree fungus at the base of a stump is pierced by the skyward plunge of a dainty but strong sprout of new growth from the cut tree.
And in the short, wooded path at the park’s entrance, where the last years’ drought has compromised the forested patch of this little zone to the point where a careless spark or a small lightning strike blackened the undergrowth and seared the feet of the pines, the leaf-mould blanketing the path is whispering with scurrying insects. Dragonflies zip, crickets hum, and a flurry of minute emerald beetles flashes across the shadows into the warm sunlight on the piney dirt in search of other green things to dedicate to the extension of their fleeting little lives.
Renewal and refreshment are all around at this time of year, even in those parts of the hemisphere not so visibly on the brink of bloom. The very knowledge that the season of change and growth is near gives us a little nudge, when we let it, to remember that we, too, might be capable of change and growth. We, too, might bloom, with just a touch of faith and effort.
Time for another dose of Texas-inspired meditation. Because I live in Texas. And I got to meditatin’. And I have been known to think—as American Thanksgiving Day approached, for example, but pretty much whenever it comes to me too—that one of the things I am perpetually impressed by and immensely grateful for is the soulful dedication of those people who do all of the difficult and endless and mainly unsung tasks, at often invisible jobs, to make life bearable and beautiful for the rest of us.
It would be an exaggeration to claim that My Heroes have Always been Cowboys, but I do indeed respect the role they play in this pantheon of working-class wonders whose gifts are so much-needed and so often unheralded by the rest of us. I thank you sincerely, all of you independent gas station owners, ditch diggers, restaurant servers, car wash detailers, dry cleaning operators, factory workers, day laborers, and all of your committed fellow-men and women who carry us all on your backs.
Eclipse
It all began with the erasure of
All memory, of thought and hope and care,
Of sight and sound and sense, and of the air,
Removal of all faint belief in love—
A chrysalis unsealed its crystal door,
Wherefrom emerged a brittle wingèd thing
That slowly pulsed the veining of its wing,
Searching for light and heat that came no more—
And, lastly, drew upon the black’ning sky
To fill its velvet wings, opaque, a most
Mysterious angel, butterfly, a ghost,
Then spread that inky cloak and sprang to fly—
And so was blotted out the sun and moon
And ev’ry ounce of life at highest noon.
In addition to the under-appreciated benefits of simply vegetating for rest and personal renewal—the old R&R that current generations seem to forget to practice in our constant race for connectedness and communication and “productivity”—vegetating is a state in which the highly desirable happy accident of inspiration has room to occur. Some inspiring thoughts could even lead to a great invention or contribution to society. Mine, not likely. But if I don’t take the opportunity to allow that creative space, how will I know?
It’s worth the risk, in my view, of fulfilling my destiny as one who will never have the Great Idea. By trying the intentional-vegetative approach, I might surprise even myself. And I’m certain that having a little more time spent as a human plant form is bound to have a positive effect on my general well-being, at the least. Indulge me. Better yet, indulge yourself from time to time.
As part of the perpetual human inclination to long for what is impossible, I suppose it’s no surprise that in the midst of one season I am frequently hungry for whatever is furthest out of season. When summer’s blistering and swelter have long since worn out their welcome, I think with great fondness of weather cold enough not only to cool my overheated brain to a slightly more manageable temperature but also to encourage the peak production of root vegetables with which to make those satisfying soups and roasted dishes that give a welcome tot of inner warmth to body and soul. In springtime, the autumn’s pears and quinces seem so remote as to have been but a beautiful fever dream of seasons past.
And though winter is short and blunt in north Texas most of the years I’ve spent living in it, it isn’t long dropped toward freezing before I think what a joy it would be to have weather balmy enough to require something cool and liquid, or just bursting with juicy freshness, to cheer my fainting spirits. Mostly, this is merely a sorry reflection of my lack of maturity and patience with whatever is present on the table or in my life. But perhaps it’s also possible to place a little of the blame on some of the first-world realities of the modern era. Indoor climate controls make winter ever so much drier than it was in my soggy single-pane-windowed youth. The normal chill of wintertime is confused in my body and household by a central heating system, never mind by old lady hot flashes, and the vast improvements in food packaging, shipping, and storage mean that I have access not only to fresh, picture-perfect produce that is nothing like currently in season where I live but just arrived on store shelves there from a country where it is at its peak growth. I can buy freeze-dried or frozen goods that are sometimes fresher and more flavorful on being prepared or reconstituted in my kitchen for having been processed so quickly at the point of harvest than any such things often were right in their natural local peak years ago.
My tastebuds and dietary inclinations care nothing, still, for seasonal propriety. So if I can get something preserved—old-school, as jams and canned goods and classic charcuterie, or flash-frozen on a factory ship in mid-ocean—that’s able to be prepared in ways making it as tantalizing and palatable as the fresh-harvested stuff, you can bet I’ll be indulging. Today, sitting in a blower-heated space at elevation and looking out at drizzles of snow, what should my wandering mind and salivary mechanism conspire to make me wish for most fondly? Some juicy, dazzlingly bright tasting fruit. Thank goodness for being a spoiled twenty-first century citizen. It doesn’t hurt to make a dish that will assuage both the out-of-sync wish for cool, juicy refreshment and any appropriately wintry hopes for a good tummy warmer.
Baked Apples with Raspberry-Rose Snow
Clean and core fresh, crisp apples. When I don’t have a cylindrical fruit corer on hand, I will opt to use a melon baller and just work my way through each apple sphere by sphere until I’ve tunneled through it and removed stem, blossom and seeds. Lacking a melon baller, I will use a narrow-bladed knife. You can leave the blossom end of the apple intact to keep it from leaking its filling during the baking, or you can make an edible “stopper” out of dried apple pieces, a handy way to give your diners a treat without any inedible parts. Set the prepared apples aside for the moment.
Make a paste, of whatever proportions please you, using marzipan (since there’s such a long tradition of wonderful commercially made marzipan, I feel no obligation to make my own, but if you want homemade, have at it), seedless raspberry jam (ditto), cream cheese (or labneh or goat cheese), a tiny pinch of salt, a dash of cardamom, and some elderflower cordial. Fill the apple tunnels with this goodness.
Put the apples into the buttered ramekins (individual) or casserole and bake them just until softening. About a half hour at medium-high heat (375°F/190°C), give or take a little, will do. While they’re baking, take a small handful of beautiful frozen raspberries per apple, crush them into their individual arils (gently enough to make pretty little dots rather than a messy mash), and stir in a dash of rosewater. Stick them back in the freezer that way until the moment before serving the apples, when you’ll sprinkle them over the top as a cool, burst-of-winter-sun contrast to the heat and creamy juice of the apples. And a tiny reminder of what fresh-from-the-garden goodness is like in other seasons.
Art-Colored Glasses 