Whenever I think I’m finding my balance, getting the hang of things, or otherwise making rational sense of my life, something happens to remind me that in my reality, these things are impossibilities. And probably unnecessary anyhow. The longer I look at anything, the more its illogical qualities emerge; the more illogical and foolish the world appears to me, the more at home I feel in it. Go figure. 
Writing, like most other creative problem-solving processes, can sometimes best coalesce into sense out of utter nonsense. Untrammeled play is often the precursor to productive work, and if it remains unproductive, there will be less cursing afterward anyway. If you know what I mean, and since you’re hanging around here I can only assume that you, too, understand the importance of letting your silly side out for regular exercise.
So today, no more from me than a hearty helping of hooey. How shall I refine the ridiculous on this occasion? Perhaps not at all. Maybe I’ll just throw it on the table and let you decide what’s worth a nibble or a nosh, for once. Play on, pals.
Noises On
Bye bike bicycle
Far farce farcical
Pop plop Popsicle
Drip drop dropsical
Miracle spherical
Fanatical dramatical
Hysterical historical
Oracle Coracle Rhetorical
Trickle mickle pickle tickle fickle nickel prickle
Hackle spackle cackle grackle tackle
Chuck chuckle chuckling Buck buckle buckling Suck suckle suckling
Duck…Duckle? Duckling…
Oh, F…I mean, Yuck.
Definitive Thoughts
Aberration [/ˌæb.’bɛər.ˈreɪ.ʃ(ə)n/ noun]: the odd ursine meal.
Harbinger [/ˈhɑːr.bɪndʒ-ɜːr/ noun]: one who chortles incontinently.
Jasmine Tea [/’dʒæz.men.ˌtiː/ noun]: Thelonious and Tatum play golf.
Protuberance [/prə.ˈtuː.bər.əns/ noun]: in favor of liquid-cleaning one’s brass instrument.
Rapscallion [/ræp.ˈskæl.i.ən/ noun]: green onion that induces stream-of-consciousness chanting.
Raisin Bread [/ˈreɪ.z.ˌɪnˈbred/ noun]: what’s the matter with cousinbrother Raymond.
Saline [/ˈseɪ.lɪŋ/ verb]: what square-riggers do over the bounding main.
Scalawag [/ˈskæl.ɪ.wæɡ/ noun]: opera house humorist.
What, you wanted sense? Why’d you come here, then?
This is the first post of a three-part series on depression and anxiety, so if that’s an off-limits topic for you, I’ll see you again on the weekend! But it’s really intended as a series on hope from someone who has been-there-done-that and loves life in all of its complicated craziness as I know it now, on the other, generally sunnier, end of the tunnel. Today, for your contemplation, a meditation based on a true story of fear and loneliness and the possibility of triumph through one faint but persistent call for help.
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.
I make this claim boldly, though as all of you know by now, I have never supped of maturity myself. I simply rely on the expertise of my betters who have visited the halls of grown-up-itude, however unwillingly or briefly, and am assured that my current Peter Pan flight plan will serve my needs and interests far better than the perhaps morally uplifting or civically productive ones others pursue. Sorry, world. What you see is undoubtedly what you’ll get.
Still, I flatter myself (another of my peculiarly abundant gifts) that many of my true role models, from my esteemed pater on out to remoter avatars like, yes, S. J. Perelman, have made careers and lives out of similarly irresponsible seeming stuff and yet managed in the greater scheme of things to have marvelous adventures out of those lives and careers, and even influenced others so to do. While I have no delusions of my own future grandeur based on their successes, I at least think of them as a partial excuse.
Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use. -Victor Hugo, novelist and dramatist (26 Feb 1802-1885)
What Fools, These Mortals
Hester the Jester was not a protester,
but every semester she stood
Proclaiming the truth, and she fought, nail and tooth,
for the right and the ruth and the good,
And I really should mention her kindly intention:
dissension and strife she eschewed,
While meaning to find ways to open the mind
and the eyes of the blind, not be rude—
But whatever she meant with her selfless intent,
there began to foment quite a storm
Of objection to this, her good aims gone amiss,
dissertation destroyed by the norm
Of assuming one’s thought was aright and was not
to be questioned or brought ridicule,
Called privilege, might—for the mighty, a Right
to be right, day and night, was the rule—
Her well-meaning japes made the men feel like apes
and the womenfolk’s napes itch with ire,
And the moment arose when a number of those
tweaked her nose, set her hairpiece on fire,
Bashed her quite black and blue with a strop and a shoe,
swapped her lip balm with glue, stole her hat
With its jingling bells, threw her in prison cells
with appalling bad smells—and with that,
They ended her reign, in despite of the brain
and the might and the main she had shown,
And, as Jester no more, she was only a boor
who got kicked out the door on her own.
The moral, you ask? Keep your thoughts in a cask,
in a secretive flask of great tact,
And instead of Truth, Charm will prevent much alarm
and protect you from harm, and in fact,
Diplomacy’s best, whether true or in jest,
and at Hester’s behest, you should wait,
Your opinions held fast, silently, to the last,
lest your presence be past, and you, Late.
We learn how to live, in many ways, mostly by accident. But those of us who learn to live well, whether as better scholars, more skilled laborers or artisans, or simply as more loving and kind and generous and good-hearted people—that growth and knowledge is gained best of all through the care and guidance of those who serve as our teachers and mentors. Parents and relatives can do this, friends and neighbors and co-workers. We who are most fortunate of all have many such positive influences come into our lives and help to shape us and bring forth our best selves.
And those who are best at being this sort of careful, patient, challenging, and giving tutors in one other person’s life tend to be so naturally inclined to raise up the best in anyone within their reach that they serve as mentors to many, regardless of any plan or intention. We who have been the beneficiaries of this largesse owe a debt of gratitude, and perhaps too, our own best efforts to pass the gifts along to another circle of influence in the great, rippling pond of our connectedness, to a further acre or two of young and beautiful growth that waits between today and our own eventual horizons. Life is brief, and best enriched in its short seasons by propagating mutual help and guidance. I am thankful to have been gifted with a number of superb guides and examples, friends and mentors, in my own life. May you all be as well.
Bright Dahlias
The autumn came too soon, and left a pallor on the pretty paint
of those tall dahlias that you had nurtured faithfully, their saint;
It turned them into shadows of
themselves too soon, shadows of love…
Frost cut them down and took them in its bony hands to steal their dance
the graces you had tended there so tenderly, by circumstance,
From shoot to bud to blooming beds,
by stealthy ice that bowed their heads…
And you saw early autumn, too, too soon—were bit untimely by
the frost and plucked from gardening, the sun still in your sky-blue eye
Made winter’s sparkling snowy air
of beauties we were loath to spare…
Yet all this theft you had foreseen, and readied us to stay and tend
bright dahlias, each, our own; to go on gardening, and so amend
Our sorrows in your still-wide gaze
by passing on your gentle ways…
The rich inheritance you gave still grows like dahlias among
us all, your heirs, and in their turn, those we raise up as happy young
New imitators of your gift
for singing to give hearts a lift…
In loving memory of Neil Lieurance, and with deep and abiding gratitude for the treasure that is a true mentor in any life.
Isn’t it a little odd that so many of us find it calming to watch colorful fish swim? We don’t live underwater ourselves, generally preferring to breathe oxygen from above water level. I’m quite certain that most people would agree that the very idea of attempting to survive in a fish’s environment without plenty of protective gear or at least an ability to hold one’s breath for great lengths of time is more intimidating than inviting, especially as it would mean spending time rubbing…hmmm…elbows (?) with a fish. (Pectoral fins? Dorsals?)
No matter. When I’m feeling tired, under stress, or otherwise out of sorts, few things comfort me like the peaceful ripple of calm water when a few fish pass quietly by me. I would go on about it further now, but I’m growing pleasantly sleepy just thinking about it and shall go off to bed to dream of orchid beds and fountains, fan palms and a stone-lined pond filled with a silent, painterly array of highly bred carp easing past me. I’ll leave you with this little pond-full for your own moment of uncoiling in calm.
Today I saw a televised ad encouraging persons who had experienced negative results from using a particular medical treatment to come forward and be represented in a class action suit by the law firm posting the advertisement. The advert had the usual tangle of legal terms sprinkled among references to the undesirable outcomes various patients had experienced, as this sort of campaign usually does, but somebody in the TV production department seems to have had his or her own unintended grammatical consequences, because the last frame of text that appeared on the TV screen exhorted victims “If you have used this product and experienced injury, stroke, heart attack, or death, please call now,” and gave a toll-free telephone number.
I wonder what the protocol is for operators being contacted by any plaintiffs in the latter category, and whether, if any said operator should in turn have a stroke or heart attack or just die from the shock, that too would be legally admissible as a result of the faulty medication, however indirectly. Might set off quite the cycle of problems, though the more it filled coffins, the more it would presumably also fill the lawyers’ coffers.
No matter. Surely everybody needs a little understanding now and then for not responding as the inviting party might wish on every occasion, no matter how enticing the invitations might be. After all, I’d imagine it can be difficult to be perfectly socially correct when one has already kicked the bucket. Just saying.
Art-Colored Glasses 