All Together Now

Posted on December 27, 2014 by kathryningrid

One of my favorite vocal coaches is fond of characterizing people who focus on their own singing to the point of losing track of and/or sticking out from the rest of a performance at inappropriate times as expressing their “individual enthusiasms.” I’m doubtful I would be as tactfully euphemistic. We’ve all seen and, more importantly, heard concerts where one unplanned solo ended up hijacking the whole event, and it’s hard to forget what was so frustrating and embarrassing about it for the other performers and the audience and even harder to remember all of the probably fine or even excellent things that were supposed to be the stars of the day.

The same is true, naturellement, outside of musical performances as well. Our individual enthusiasms lead us to speak out of turn, act squirrelly in the middle of serious events, blurt out exceedingly inconveniently unfiltered thoughts, and generally act like little kids at the best of times. At worst, they make us deeply uncivil, unwilling or unable to negotiate, and self-centered to the point of implosion. Or, more often, explosion. This world does not need my opinion, unless I’m willing to get the rest of the passionate populace to engage in the conversation and collaboration that will make it needful. And in that case, they’ll quite generally be on board with my enthusiasm already and there will be little to negotiate.

None of this means that everyone should think and act in lockstep. What a horrific idea! Most of the great performances of our time are not solos, even those that feature soloists, but rather collaborations with the entire cast, crew, production staff, and audience, at a minimum. The deliberate and thoughtful give-and-take of everyone performing his and her part to the very best level possible is what creates the ideal of harmony, even in times when fruitful dissonance is desirable to throw that harmony into beautifully sharp contrast. Music is obviously full of grand examples of this stuff, but so is life in general. The sorrows and hardships, if they are carefully shared burdens, throw the joys and pleasures into higher relief, and the larger song of human experience continues to grow in beauty.

Instead of throwing a spanner in the works, why not find ways to make them run more smoothly together for a more harmonious performance?

I Made It Myself!

Posted on December 26, 2014 by kathryningrid

Funny, isn’t it, how proud we are of things we think we have accomplished, no matter how silly and shoddy they may turn out to be. As often as not, we are the engineers of our own destruction; whether we stubbornly and hubristically fail along with our ridiculous doings and inventions or not is sometimes a matter of mere luck and circumstantial adventure.

Celebrate Anyway

Posted on December 25, 2014 by kathryningrid

Christmas day means nothing at all to a whole lot of the world. Even some fairly devoted Christians are either skeptical about the accuracy of modern guesstimates of when the historical person Jesus appeared on earth or, in some cases, just plain weary of the commercial kidnaping of Christmas as a secular holiday. Beyond that, there are innumerable people and nations so impoverished or endangered as individuals, as communities, or as entire regions of the world that the last thing they can afford to pay attention to is an arbitrarily set date for recognizing anything as a reason for joy and revelry.

There are no gladly clashing cymbals, no brass choirs trumpeting their huzzahs to the skies, no parades or packages, masses or meditations that can fill the void in hearts and homes oppressed by war, famine, disease, hatred, or inner turmoil. The very thought of happiness and reverential bliss, if it can even pierce the noise and violence, the stress and terror holding such people hostage, seems hollow and artificial. Goodness and light are as distant and unimaginable as the most ridiculous fiction.

These sufferers deserve to have their sorrows and their pains lifted from them, obliterated by any and all who dare to change history. No one knows better than I that not everyone has the strength and wherewithal to be so bold in action. But if we cannot do so with our physical labors, we must do so with our hearts and minds, our words, our plans, and our constancy in spirit. One voice at a time, one solitary note sung by a tiny, quavering voice, is the only way to begin moving toward a day when others, also one by one, will join and build to a worldwide song of peace. Only when we direct our every breath toward healing, harmony, and hope will the song come fully alive. Every atom of our being will whisper, speak, sing, and shout until the whole of humanity rings with echoing gladness.

One moment’s pause, one hour of cease-fire, one hospital patient or lost child or elderly neighbor rescued for one single part of a day at a time makes space for the sound to bloom. We need to make room, and lest the horrors should return to fill the void, we must fill it up instead with songs of hope and joy and celebrate any way we possibly can. The other voices will someday, if we sing for long enough, follow.

The Changing of the Guard

Posted on December 24, 2014 by kathryningrid

As December draws toward its end and a new calendar year lies just over the horizon and out of sight, there is always a sense of anticipation. It’s a many-layered thing, too, this look forward, carrying my constant consternation at all of the possibly awful unknowns like some sort of a scratchy underlayment to the innocent eagerness to discover great and wonderful things ahead. My own small history has taught me that both will hold true to one degree or another in 2015, just as they have for every day, season, year, and chapter in my life, little speck that it is in the equally fearful and fantastic unseeable future of the whole of existence. Knowing that these things will come to be regardless of any worry or wondering on my part never stops me from either of those things.

The one very best aspect of all of this is that I find every modification does move me to grow and change. I, along with the days, seasons, years, and chapters of my storyline, can be made better by their passage if I choose to keep my mind and heart engaged. Newness ahead can mean new life ahead. Today is a day when the beautiful potential of the best kinds of change should shine most brightly on the horizon of anyone who longs for it.

Foodie Tuesday: Meringue Merengue

Posted on December 24, 2014 by kathryningrid

Egg Separation Anxiety never plagued me much, even if there’s no support group dedicated to its eradication. Mom taught me how to break open an egg delicately enough to slip the yolk from one half-shell to another over a cup or bowl while letting the albumen slide away, keeping the yolk intact and the white pristine enough for a good souffle or meringue. But do I think to do so very often? No, hardly ever. I really do love souffles and meringues, so it’s silly not to do a little egg separating and have a little bit of delicious, fluffy fun once in a while.

Heaven knows that inflated eggwhites are highly trend-friendly these days, anyway. All I have to do is have one little look at any of the menus, Pinterest boards, food blogs, or cookbooks that are current to be instantly engulfed in a vast snowbank of handmade marshmallows, mile-high mousses, and macarons. I think I can safely say that I am so far from being trendy as to have missed out on cutting any edge more exciting than my homely and unvarnished manicure.

Trends are usually overrated, anyway. Beaten eggwhites? Not.

But let’s stop dancing around this and start talking about what separating eggs can do for deliciousness. Less merengue, more meringue!

Kransekake biscuits! The famed Norwegian celebration dessert, a conical construction comprising rings of ground almond meringue that, in my family’s recipe, is made with a fantastic, simple (nuts, egg whites, sugar. Period.) dough to bake up into lovely chewy cookies when broken for eating.

Meringue crusted tarts! Cinnamon crust, apple filling with tawny port. Rose water crust, strawberries in pomegranate curd, topped with candied rose petals and finely chopped pistachios. All sorts of options that imitate but don’t supplant the lovely Pavlova in their magical variety. A lightly sweet, crisp meringue topped or filled with soft fillings of fruit, custards, mousses, and the like makes for a heavenly treat.

And, since it’s holiday time hereabouts, my own variant of île flottante, eggnog with a meringue cap. I kept both very simple this time around: the eggnog being an extremely uncomplicated thin custard made with cream, whole milk, cane sugar, a pinch of salt, a whole vanilla bean, a good grating of fresh nutmeg, and a whole bunch of egg yolks—in this case, the yolks of eight eggs for a combined quart of milk and cream. Warmed to a near-scalding temperature while being whisked continuously, it thickened slightly before going into the refrigerator for further thickening and chilling.

[For those who wish, a nice tot of bourbon, rum, or brandy (or any other liquor or combination of them that you like) can give this dessert-y treat a grownup twist, as long as you’re grownup enough to imbibe intelligently and stay away from dangerous things like cars, cliffs, and ex-spouses*.]

Meanwhile, with the eggnog chilling in the fridge, there’s plenty of time to whip up the eggwhites into sturdy enough peaks to keep their winsome little curlicue tops under the broiler while getting a quick gilding. All I added to the eggwhites while beating them into submission was a big splash of lovely dark maple syrup.

Pour some eggnog into a glass, add liquor if you like, and top with a little party hat of golden-skinned soft meringue, and toast the occasion. And the goodness of eggs, while you’re at it! Cheers!

* Note: Just in case anyone takes me too seriously, I should mention that I have the privilege of being married to a guy who has two genuinely excellent exes, and I consider them both fabulous human beings, so I only have to avoid the aforementioned cars and cliffs, myself. In fact, I’ll happily tip back some tipple with either of my predecessors anytime without fear of anything but conviviality (and possibly, hilarity) happening. It’s all about how the relationships are managed, just as it’s about how we manage our imbibing.

Eldest Child

Posted on December 22, 2014 by kathryningrid

It isn’t easy being the eldest child. You tend to be expected to carry the world on your shoulders for any kids that come after you. My older sister certainly had her hands (and shoulders) full when it came to the other three of us. Following her lead was the logical thing I expected to do from Day One, and she undoubtedly knew that her every word and act would be scrutinized and grasped as tightly as any life’s-mystery-solving clue could be.

Unlike many, my elder sibling was neither empty-headed nor empty-handed when leading or hauling me through the years, however. I must assume that she was generally more conscious of what she led me toward or away from than I ever was, and whether there was a particular purpose regarding its effect on me or it was simply what she needed to do in her own life was as irrelevant as if I’d been a duckling following a duck, since after all, our parents didn’t go to school with me, play in the yard with me, or otherwise have anything like the minute-to-minute impact a sibling could have. I apologize, here and now, for whatever time and energy I stole away from my big sister that she ought to have been spending on herself alone! Strangely, she still likes me, though, so I take the liberty at the same time of assuming her forgiveness on that front.

I certainly didn’t quit the hero-worshiping dependence when we were young, either. It was my sister who gave me the world. Our parents saw to it that we learned to read, and that is an enormous gift that can only be repaid in kind by handing it on to younger people as they come along, but it was and continues to be my older sister who blazes the path down every library aisle on earth (and a few in the ether, too) and inspired me to try to better my reading and writing. She always had astonishing verbal skills and a voracious appetite for all sorts of books, so she set the benchmark in reading and writing that I will always lag behind but continue to pursue.

If that cracking open of the world in the pages of books weren’t enough, there was always the lure of the tangible world as well. There, too, our parents paved the way for our ventures beyond home borders, both financially and with the encouragement to broaden our horizons beyond anything they were privileged to experience at our young ages. But again, it was at big sister’s beckoning that I took up the challenge given by Mom and Dad to take a semester off from my university studies, spending both the time and the money I’d have devoted to those on traveling Europe, instead, with my sibling. It was more education than I could possibly have crammed into the other three-and-a-half years of my undergraduate studies altogether, utterly worth all of the angst and expense it terrified my twenty-something soul to expend, and all happened under the tutelage of my sister, my intimidatingly fearless guide and hilarious friend.

There’s nothing a sister can say or do to make up for all of the times I was a pain in the neck—or anatomical regions south thereof—to my older sister. Despite her admiration for all things chocolate, no amount of truffles and cakes and French Silk Pies will do. But I am grateful, and I do thank her, and I certainly wish her a wonderful birthday today and many more of them to come. I’ll just have to watch and see what she does in times ahead, so as to get inspired for how to handle the next such conundrum as they always do come along in life. That’s what elder siblings are for, it seems.

Nighttime & Shadows

Posted on December 21, 2014 by kathryningrid

The Seasonless Sea

Posted on December 20, 2014 by kathryningrid

Open water. The image in my mind is rarely of swimming there; growing up on a northern section of the Pacific Ocean’s edge, I knew of the sea as a place for wading and the rare venture to splash in a bit farther than ankle-deep, but also as bitingly cold, rocky, and full of sharp shells and ethereal but menacing jellyfish. A lake, while it might be at least marginally warmer, held in my mind multitudes of the same creatures that live in children’s closets and under their beds, but wetter and slimier and without a single door or mattress to deter their finding and nastily clinging to every immersed cell of my body. Rivers were icy highways relentlessly pulling me into the thick of their mad traffic unless I had oars with which to do battle against the current. Open water was, for me, always best admired and appreciated from docks and bridges, boats and beaches.

But, as my mind has always been willing to venture into places my body had no intention of visiting, I also know oceans and lakes, rivers and streams, as realms of inviting mystery and magical adventure. Under the surface of every body of water, there are endless natural beauties and curiosities of wildly diverse sea creatures and aquatic gardens, landscapes of great magnitude and delicate detail, and biological wonders that rival the most fantastic notions of primordial soup. There are also, for me, equally magnificent and splendid worlds of the fantastic. I see, in my mind’s eye, tremendous tales of adventure and romance and daring and delight all over in the rippling, dappled light below the surface. Every sighting of a coelacanth, of gulper eels and viperfishes, confirms my belief in the literally outlandish contents of the oceans’ depths.

I understand that from a climatic and biological viewpoint, open water is of course affected by and dependent upon seasonal changes. It’s perfectly logical that, metaphorically, a sea change should refer to a significant transformation or metamorphosis. That the seas themselves undergo tremendous changes as the weather and tides and time pass over them has potent enough impact on the realities of this world; what the seas do, in turn, to anything while it is immersed in them adds to that alchemical appearance. Ariel’s song reminds us that what is embraced by the ocean’s depths becomes one with the ocean in profound ways. The possible applications of such a metaphor are so numerous and so thought-provoking that I could probably write a thousand posts about those alone, but the effects of existing immersed in open water are the ones that lap up against my attention and flow through my imaginings the most often, so it is on those shores I will continue to do my wandering and beachcombing.

Best place to find mer-people and coelacanths: open water. In the seas of my fantasies, there are no seasons. I will always be able to dive deeply among mysterious and wonderful events and creatures in my dreams.

Music is in the Air

Posted on December 19, 2014 by kathryningrid

There’s no doubt in my mind that there is more to sound than just the stuff, however notable, that vibrates on my eardrums and sends messages to my brain. My lack of ability to interpret subsonic information the way that whales and elephants and other creatures can do doesn’t mean that I am completely insensible to them. I’ve had enough experience with not consciously hearing but still knowing there’s something significant happening in my environment that I can truly appreciate the astonishing sensitivity so many animals have to the ways that the universe is sonically alive and active around them.

That’s part of what is so compelling about music to me: that it is a further layering of these forces in ways that transcend what’s strictly scientifically explainable in order to move the heart and shape the soul. The very atoms around me can make me shiver with joyful and eager anticipation of the sonic adventure that is to come, while I wait for the performance to begin. As music engulfs me, I feel more alive, more literally attuned to all of existence.

Industrious

Posted on December 18, 2014 by kathryningrid

My nature is just about the polar opposite of industrious. If there were a way to recline and remain immobile and mentally inactive without being in a completely vegetative state while still getting through daily life, I would probably have discovered it by now, but I manage to keep alarmingly close to it in spite of all urgings toward better things.

I have tremendous curiosity about and admiration of those who are, conversely, hard workers and the wonderful machinery that represents and supports them in their labors. But I have never progressed far beyond the stage of admiring these ‘rude mechanicals‘—human and otherwise—in the abstract. To me, they remain alien and magically artistic yet quite incomprehensible. Only when contemplated in the stopped state required for rest, repair, and refueling do they even register in my mind as real.

I will always admire and be immensely grateful for those people who do the work of the world, who keep it chugging on all cylinders and, indeed, invent and craft the machinery that does the chugging. I could not enjoy this life of privileged repose and ignorant ennui if it weren’t for being carried by the very machinations of these titans. I bow at their feet in humble gratitude and respect.

And while I’m down here curtseying, I notice that the floor looks quite comfortable and inviting indeed. If you should need me later, come back and look for me where I’ve stretched out on the rug in a slackly indolent heap. Don’t make too much noise, though, for I may be dreaming happy dreams of gears turning, flywheels whirring, and motors purring, and it would be a shame to interrupt them with actual action.

Art-Colored Glasses

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

I Made It Myself!

Celebrate Anyway

The Changing of the Guard

Foodie Tuesday: Meringue Merengue

Eldest Child

Nighttime & Shadows

The Seasonless Sea

Music is in the Air

Industrious

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