Monday, September 28, 2009

update

hey, I just added a new post from Boston (waaaay down at the bottom of the page - check it out!)
also, if you click on a picture, it gets bigger. Thought I'd mention it for anybody who's even more of a Luddite than me :)

10. My new hubcap (yup! "wildcrafted" from the riverside forest in Phoenicia, NY. I might be a hobo, but at least now I'm a classy one).
11.Couchsurfing.org
12....?

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Garlic Fest! (Saugerties NY)


I am such the smelly hippie right now.
By which I mean I smell delicious.
Today I went with Evan and his lovely friend Jane to the wonderfully antique-shop-and-used-bookstore-laden town of Saugerties, for the annual Hudson Valley Garlic Festival!

Here's a short list of some -not all- of the foods we tried:
garlic ice cream
garlic and butter pizza
garlic-stuffed olives
garlic-flavored pickles
pickled garlic scapes (three varieties)
pickled garlic cloves (about a bazillion kinds)
garlic scape pesto
garlic and basil pesto
garlicky dips, dips, dips, dips, and more dips (did I mention dips?)
raw garlic (about 6 different kinds)
garlic and marscapone cannolis
garlic and honey infused balsamic vinegar
garlic infused olive oil
garlic jerkey

...you get the idea. By the time we left the fairgrounds and got back in the car, we were so saturated with garlic, I smelled like an Italian restaurant, though that may have something to do with the bag of delicious Spanish Roja garlic bulbs that I bought.
After the Garlic Festival, we went over to Annie and Vlad's place for a while, which was a nice treat - Annie and Vlad are two of Evan's friends that came to visit this summer, and we had a great time down at Hampton Beach playing ski-ball in the arcades and drinking enormous frozen drinks on the second-floor balcony of a skeevy dive bar. It was fantastic.

...I keep sniffing my arm, just to test, and I'm happy to report that I still smell like a breadstick. A really tasty breadstick.
And now I'm kind of hungry again.

The Happy List (Annandale-on-Hudson NY)

I once had this student who carried around lists of her favorite and least-favorite things on the off chance that she'd be asked what they were and be too shy to remember them in the moment.
I'm not that shy, but I do take great pleasure in lists and I keep finding new things that bring me joy, so I figured I'd start my own and see where it takes me.
What would you add to yours? I'm curious...

The Happy List
1. That "just brushed" feeling.
2. Sunshine.
3. Salted caramel.
4. Chipmunks.
5. Wildcrafting.
6.Beach rope.
7. Holding hands with little kids.
8. Poignant songs: Diamonds and Rust (J Baez), God (J Lennon), The Weakness in Me (J Armatrading), Grey (A DiFranco)
9. This comic
10. ...?

Wildcrafting and Crafting (Bard College, NY)

(a note on the second floor bathroom door in one of the dorms)

So I'm staying with my "little" brother, who is in point of fact quite a bit taller than me, and about half as wide. He's a senior this year, which kind of blows my mind, but not nearly as much as the massively heady conversations we've been having about Art and Meaning.
I love my kid brother. He's such an amazingly cool person. He's majoring in studio art, and has this wickedly keen eye for design and space, as well as a ridiculously oddball sense of humor. Not only has he been totally generous and offered up his bed -several nights in a row!- he's paternalistically taken me under his squash-muscled wing, showed me around campus, introduced me to his friends, and shared meals from the quasi-awful dining hall.
I think he thinks of me as some sort of visiting pet/sidekick.
I am so tickled by this arrangement, I can't even say.
Tonight there was a craft party in the Campus Center, with "bad" 90's music that quickly turned into actually bad 2000s dance music. Luckily, the sequins were rollin', the fabric was stylin', and the tacky glue flowed in veritable rivers of crafty awesomeness. Glee!

Yesterday I went for a wander, and hung out at an apple farm for a while, learning about cold storage and the effects of temperature on various fruits' sugar contents from an incredibly knowledgeable man named Fred. I'd hoped to get a job picking for a day or so, just for the experience of it, but the boss wasn't hiring, so I said goodbye to Fred, thanked him for the apple and the lesson, and hopped back in the car to see what I could find. The answer? This:


It's a black walnut from this beautiful tree:

























Here's what the fruits look like on the ground after I've stepped on them, and next is what I came away with (and used): a field guide to ID trees with, my gloves (now turned completely orange from all the oils!), and in the basket is the bounty: a scant cup or two for this winter, but a beautiful memory of the harvest...

After I harvested the nuts, I stomped on them to get them open, pulled them out from the fruit, and took them across the railroad tracks and down to the Hudson River, where I scrubbed them against a rock and each other until they were relatively clean. Even though I used gloves, my hands (and feet where they got splashed) are still pretty stained, and I have some cuts from the shells - not surprising, since black walnut hulls are so tough, they're actually used as industrial abrasives! The oils/juices are used for dying fabrics, and once upon a time, when I actually bought into this sort of thing, I had a fake tanning spray made with black walnut, which I recall working exceedingly well.
Did I remember that when I started harvesting the nuts? Nope! But I did remember the scene in Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees in which Taylor describes how when she was growing up in rural Kentucky, you could tell who the poor kids were because their hands were stained from picking walnuts. Once again, everything I need to know in real life comes from reading fiction.

dipping into the collective unconscious... (Boston, MA)



"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

-from The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams

Don't believe what you
saw, believe what you see.
-M.M.

My time in Massachusetts was...unexpectedly intense.
I spent a week staying with an old friend and his loverly roommates (you guys rock!! also, James, whatever chemicals were in that leather-softening spray are amazing - my belt feels like butter), exploring the area, talking with interesting people, and making some wonderful new friends. Of course, Mark (who is not just an old friend, but also an old flame) and I spent far too much time arguing about the fact that we believe the same stuff, but arrive at our understanding of Reality from Entirely. Different. Directions.
In all fairness, we hadn't actually had any of these conversations in a decade, and that's a long time to arrive at our own, seemingly unique perspectives. We're also pretty stubborn, touchy people. Which might explain why it took the same amount of time for God to create the world as it did for me to say, "I'ma shut up and let you talk. Tell me what you think I need to know."
From now on, whenever I (re)meet folks, that's gonna be my new line:
"Hi, it's nice to meet you. Tell me what you think I need to know."

In addition to all of that fun stuff, though, I spent most of my time in Boston thinking about the nature of duality, and whether or not the concept is more illusion than fact, which is something I'd never pondered before, and which has opened up far more questions than I know how to ask, let alone answer.
The idea of polarity and opposites is so ingrained; I always took it for granted as one of those universal truths: male/female, macro/micro, good/evil, etc etc.... All of these existed -in my understanding- at different ends of various spectrums, with most things falling somewhere in between.

Now I'm starting to wonder if that isn't entirely too simplistic.

Here's a quick sketch of an dream idea I had. I know I don't have all the words to describe it with or the knowledge to comprehend it, but maybe somebody will read this and clue me in:

Two entities, appearing as glowing balls of light and energy, interacting alone in a vast expanse of darkness: a -the- cosmic Syzygy. Together, they encompassed totality. They pulsated and shifted, and though their aureoles -auras?- merged, they themselves could never connect - this was an important part of their nature. Now here's where it gets strange: when one of them experienced itself as a Self -single, whole, autonomous - the other became Everything Else. And when I say everything, I mean everything - space, time, creatures, concepts, the dimensions that occur behind and outside of time - everything. And for the one who was a Self, the overwhelming sensation I got was of loneliness, and a sort of resigned, unending boredom - because when you exist forever, and are the only one of your kind, it doesn't matter whether you're embodying War, or Karma, or the Light That Shines Through A Birch Leaf At Six Thirty-Four On Planet X... you'll always be alone. And you can hop through as many other entities and experiences as you want, but you'll never experience unity - and that, that was a sad thing to see.
(Here's a sketch of the Single Consciousness wearing one of it's infinite masks):

When I first started thinking about it, the word that came to mind was Syzygy. I didn't know that syzygy had so many different meanings - in math, philosophy, poetry, zoology...
At the time, I only knew the Jungian definition, but when I started to research the word, I stumbled across the Gnostic one, and that seems a lot more accurate.

Anyway, here's what I've got: duality - the concept of opposites - is just that: a concept. Because in reality, if this model holds true, there's never any actual balance of power. It's all just a dance between two entities that together encompass more than any spectrum could ever contain.
My brain is not entirely sure what to make of this particular idea. Thoughts...?

Taste Testing with Grandma (Salisbury MA)

Guess how old the lady next to me is:What would you think: 80? 85? Would you guess 87? Add a decade and you'd have it: this here is my amazing Grandma Ruth, 97 years old and still willing to go for a drive down the coast to taste-test cruddy beach side pizzas with my parents and me! What a trooper!!
Here she is with my dad, waiting for my mom and I to return with our first samples:
The verdict: Ick (but no worse than you'd expect). So I grabbed a bag of salt water taffey, and we drove off to test some from the next place.
An obvious winner.

Friday, September 25, 2009

RiverSing (Cambridge MA)

Sept. 20, 2009

RiverSing was an unexpectedly poignient, 'by the people' ritual-cum-festival that I literally stumbled upon. I'd been driving indecisively around Harvard Square, debating between finding a cafe to sketch in or going back to the apartment to blog, only to find that the road I'd turned onto -the major road I'd turned onto, one of the only roads I recognized in the entire city and which I was quite sure had not been closed off the day before - was closed off. And it was dusk. And I'd left my GPS back at the apartment. And I was tired of wandering aimlessly and getting lost, which had been the two major activities of my day, and which had changed from Fun Adventures to Stressful Mindfuckery about two hours prior.
So the sight of barricades and police cars did not inspire me to 'make a joyful noise unto the hills' ...except, instead of construction machines or ambulances, there was a large crowd of people on the other side of the street, and as I rolled down my window I heard... folk songs? Next to Harvard??

Sometimes the event you need to find finds you instead. Sometimes, all you have to do is park and get out.

According to the Revels website, "Revels was founded in 1971 by musician, educator and author John Langstaff to celebrate the seasons in performance through the power of traditional song, dance, storytelling and ritual from cultures around the world." It turns out that RiverSing is an annual community event to mark the transition from Summer to Fall, and though it started with a parade and ended with dancing long after I left (I'd parked directly in front of the barricade, and didn't want to get towed), I was there for the singing part, and that itself was pretty special.
So many people were there, families and singletons and groups of friends, all gathered along the edge of the Charles and singing folk and gospel songs and even hymns, right outside, right next to thousands of strangers.
It was the first time I'd been in a city and felt like the crowd had a deeper meaning and purpose than whatever temporal, temporary event was going on, a meaning I could get behind and enter into.
Part of it was the imagery - a large bread-and-Puppet type Summer goddess, the cartwheeling children, and, right as the conductor read a poem about migrating birds, a V of Canada geese winging their way down the river and across our heads, to vast applause. And part of it was the pageantry, the ritual of the evening; the songs and cues and choreographed transitions were created with intention; the artwork and sets all spoke to a common, ageless theme.
Whatever the reasons, the event had a handmade, meaningful feel, and for me at least, it all culminated at dusk. As the sun sank behind the buildings, the conductor, George Emlen, led us in his song "River Hymn." It was so simple, solo verse and group chorus, but you could tell as he introduced it that he was leading us in a ritual. As we sang together, call and response, the crowd's energy turned toward the water in a ripple of awareness as a slow-moving boat gliding towards us, a solitary musician standing silent at its prow. The song continued and the small, illuminated craft floated closer, its bow hidden by a giant golden Sun and the stern bedecked with a blue Moon.
"Now everyone be quiet," Emlen instructed. As the real sun sank behind the buildings, the quiet notes of the saxophone poured across the darkening Charles.
Like I said, sometimes all you have to do is stop driving.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Pathways and Prunings (a post-New Hampshire post)

Dynamic interconnectedness [describes] the physical world as the sort of thing that imagination and desire can effect. The magician's world is an independent whole, a web of which no strand is autonomous. Mind and body, galaxy and atom, sensation and stimulous, are intimately bound [...]all things are independent and interrelated.
-Alan G. Hefner (paraphrasing the Emerald Tablet)

As above, so below.
-Hermes Trismegistus

September 5, 2009
"I woke up this morning feeling incredibly grumpy - poor sleep, and dreams in which people I trust became unapologetically opportunistic, and I kept waiting in line at an airport to
exchange my ticket for a later flight so I could spend more time visiting family, only every time I almost reached the front of the line, I'd rush off to take care of something pressing, and then have to stand in line all over again. Sometimes my subconscious is not very subtle.
"All of which has me thinking about choices and relationships and pruning. Neural pruning, to be specific, and its intimate relationship with walking one's Path; the way it mirrors in minute detail the larger decisions and actions we take. Micro and macro, internal and external. Spirit and corporeal. Art and life."

September 25, 2009
Oh yes, I spent lots of time in New Hampshire thinking about pruning (plants, neurons, options) and pathways (neural pathways, spacial pathways, rivers and arteries and the metaphoric roads we walk and stray from and return to again...). Not surprising, then, to upload the photos from those weeks and find most of the landscapes and plant images following the same theme. Straight paths, branching stems, growth and blossoms and fruits - each one representative of the myriad other choices that never came to fruition; the three hundred and fifty nine other directions one could have chosen to walk, but didn't.

The thing I kept coming back to was the fact that growth, whether in plants or people, requires both movement and purpose. And I love moving, cannot sit still in joy without getting antsy for new experiences and wisdom and ideas, do not want to stagnate...above all, Goddess, I do not want to stagnate. But decisiveness? Clarity of purpose? For all my bossiness and spontaneity, I can get so bogged down with the weight of making the best choice that it's difficult to make any choice at all.

I think, when I bring my Shadow into enough light to look at her, that my core fear is that I will miss out on the beauty and opportunity and tasks that the world holds for me; that I will not make the most of this precious, finite spark of a life. And so I get impatient and anxious when I feel like time is being wasted.
(People say -so casually!- that they're "killing time". Killing time! Here we are with this tiny, minute, indescribably brief snippet of existence, this blazing chance to illuminate even the slightest, most hidden corner of cosmic darkness, and you're content to "kill time"?? Can you at least comprehend my urgency?)
I know not everyone feels this way. But I do, and so I find that unless I either coat each moment with enough ritual to give it Import, or hide inside procrastination, to find myself in stasis means tuning in to the one omnipresent, pulsing question that every creature faces:

How do I make the most of this brief amount of time?


It's obvious that this is not an easy way to experience the world. I don't know if it's a sign that I'm greedy, wanting to embrace and experience all that I can while I'm here, or that I'm farsighted, aware of all the multitudes of possibilities that extend in every direction and wanting to explore as many as I can. But it makes for a lot of pressure.
People whose opinions I really respect have a tendency to say I'm too hard on myself. Maybe, but it's because I care, and I believe: in myself, and in the work, and in others, which is -incidentally- why I'm no harder on myself than I am on anybody else. When I push, it's because I cannot stand to see this life, this infinite capacity for joy, be wasted. Because to do less -to not accept and embrace these gifts - would be such hubris on our parts.

One thing I do know is that without clarity, pressure like this can easily lead to chaos, or (ironically) stagnation: if you constantly find yourself at the center of an ever-changing wheel of possibilities, trying to experience each spoke means you're in for an awful lot of running and returning to the middle, and not a lot of rest. Unless you've got a different way of traveling (yes, my shamanic, visionary friends, I'm talking to you). Or you're willing to let go of the other paths.

Which leads us to pruning.

Ironically, I take great joy in pruning (when I finally do it); perhaps because it's initially so difficult. By the time I let myself submit to universal laws, there's pleasure in the aquiescence. And there is grace in letting go, in chopping down and moving on and the tangible, finite act of one foot in front of the other.
That there's pain in it, too -wrenching, aching soulwounds- goes without saying.
I'm still mourning the recent prunings and parings of this past year. At this point, though, the only choice I have is to keep walking my path, one foot in front of the other, with faith that I'm journeying in the right direction. And it might hurt, and it might be asking too much of myself at times. But it's the price I choose to pay for a life well lived. I can ask no more of myself than that.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Banana Pancakes with Salted Caramel Sauce

Cre·a·tion n.
1. the bringing of something into existence
2. the world and everything on it
3. a product of human imagination or invention
Dec·a·dence
1.
a state of uninhibited self-indulgence

The creation of decadence is, while superficially simple, not for the faint of heart or those of timid temperament.
Take Banana Pancakes with Salted Caramel Sauce as an example. The pancakes alone are a straightforward endeavor; to add chopped bananas to the batter is, as Julia Child would trill, “simplicity itself.” No, the complexity and nuance that I’m talking about derives from the formation of a caramel sauce, neither syrup nor candy, but some other entity wholly within its own caloric jurisdiction and operating under its own, not entirely vanilla (if you’ll pardon the pun) set of ethics. People hear the word caramel and envision those safely-cellophaned cubes of polite, corn-starched sweetness, the kind of sweetness you’d get taking a good girl to a nice movie and necking a bit before squeezing her hand goodnight.

Salted caramel sauce is the candy world’s Marla Singer.

If you really want to create gastronomic opulence of this magnitude – and you know you do – you must first realize that in undertaking this endeavor, you’re committing yourself to a path of sin, realize this and embrace it. Why? Because salted caramel sauce is nothing short of an exercise in culinary sensuality of the highest degree. Do it right, and your life will never be plain again. Eat it with breakfast, and your coworkers will think you’re having an affair.
Are you ready?

Good. Now you need butter, and lots of it (in this, Julie & Julia and I are in utter complicity). Melt your butter over a medium flame until, overwhelmed by the futility of struggle, it submits to its true calling and enters into a state of blissfully melted, bubbling, late-afternoon sunlight. Appreciate this alchemy for what it is. Gaze upon its newly rendered beauty with anticipatory satisfaction, delight in the transformation of butter to Butter, and then:
Pour in as much cane sugar as you know it can take. Do it. Are you having second thoughts? Quash them. You’re committed now, you and the butter, and if you want this sauce as badly as you should, soon you – alchemist, creator, stovetop maestro – will force it to hold even more. This is as it should be.
Stirring quickly and continuously, so as not to let it burn, add a drizzle of molasses, and, as a sop of mercy to the tractable but by now almost-overwhelmed butter, a scant splash of milk. A benevolent gesture, its subsequent tranquility will be short-lived. As your whisk whips the half-submerged mound of sugar crystals through the swirling liquids, molasses spiraling into thinner and thinner trails until all appear as one, breathe deeply, for the next stage is one of utter defiance.
In order to make caramel, two things must happen: first, the sugar crystals need to oxidize (creating the characteristic golden-brown color and rich, almost nutty flavor), and second, the liquid needs to become super-saturated, holding more sugar crystals than it can sustain under colder temperatures, yet not so many that it becomes granular upon cooling. The only way that this can happen is through heat. The only way it can sustain enough heat without boiling over is by your steady hand, guiding the flame and whisking the sauce as it boils and steams in protest. Carl Jung eat your heart out (or at least your pancakes); this, my friends, is transformation via the flames.
After several minutes of this swirling, contained chaos, your sauce might look like its done. It might even – were one so brave as to risk the heat – taste like it’s done. Appearances are deceiving.
The only way to claim success with utter certainty is to let a small drop fall into a glass of ice water and watch as it sinks to the bottom, becoming a slightly firm ball with enough strength to hold its shape even between your fingers: in cooking vernacular, the hard-ball stage. If it wavers, or jiggles at the bottom, it’s not done. Be resolute at this stage. Be firm. Be…

…ready to add two pinches of sea salt and a splash of pure vanilla. Once your caramel has reached the hard-ball stage, you’re free to season it and thin it with milk, water, or even bourbon, as you see fit. Don’t thin it, and it will soak into the tops of your pancakes, entrapping them in a candy embrace as it cools (excellent for dipping fruits). Thin it, and it will soak through baked goods and pool on your plate, waiting for the last forkfuls to swirl through its amber swells and swirls. The choice, as it should be, is yours.

Whatever you serve this on, I recommend an accompaniment of black coffee and ice water. Experience cautions that you may find yourself forswearing all foods besides undressed salad for the rest of your day’s meals, but that’s between you and your conscience, and who am I to intrude on a personal matter such as that?

A Note on Thickening Ratios:
When thickening syrups and sauces, it’s easy to overestimate the amount of liquid you need, with the end result that the cup of raspberry-tarragon syrup you’d wanted turns into three cups, or the eight minutes you planned on spending to reduce your balsamic marinara turns into eighteen. If this happens, try starting with solids and slowly adding liquids – it’ll save you time and reduce your leftovers. Why isn’t this recipe written that way? Because I’m not one to follow all my own suggestions and I like a good challenge, that’s why.

A Note About Seasonings:
A general rule that I do follow (with choice exceptions) is this: when working with herbs (leaves and roots), add them early, and give them time to work. Let them simmer in your sauces, sit in your dips, and marinade in, well, your marinades, for as long as possible. Rosemary, thyme, dill… This is why so many classic foods taste better the next day.
When working with spices (barks, seeds, extracts, salt) add them last. Like many herbs, spices get their flavors from their aromatic and volatile oils, but instead of mellowing, they can lose their potency if they cook too long. Pure alcohol-based extracts will evaporate out of anything, leaving barely a hint to tell you they were even there. I once worked in a bakery, and the protocol we followed was simple: artificial extracts flavored cooked foods; frostings and anything uncooked got pure ones, added last.
In short: use herbs as base notes, spices as top notes, and texture and presentation to weave them all together. Different cooks and books and websites will give you all sorts of good advice and suggestions that are completely different from mine, but this, in my experience, is the difference between a mellow, melding curry and an upbeat, ginger-pumpkin soup.

Boston, MA

So I'm in Boston, and once again posting in the middle of the night.
It's been an interesting visit so far, and I'm looking forward to visiting the Mount Auburn Cemetery, where all the different kinds of trees are labeled. Just think: labeled trees and a cemetery, all in one place!
I really enjoy a good graveyard; the way the stones lichen over and the light coats the tops of the monuments, throwing the carvings into bass relief. I like struggling to make out the epitaphs and old-fashioned names on the weathered granite markers; like reading all the bits of poetry and psalms and hints about the people whose bodies I'm walking above. I also like how there are no crowds. Well, I suppose there are, but they do tend to keep quiet.
(That reminds me of the scene in The Meaning of Life when Death comes to the dinner party and tells the dead Americans to "shut up!" As Richard likes to say, "Ahh, good times.")
On an unrelated note, I tried caviar today. The verdict: fishy and salty, with a mildly fun sort of "pop!" to it. But I didn't eat the salmon mousse.
Speaking of food (and when am I not?), here's some more fun with fruit:













Bananas really lend themselves to faces. And quotations. I bet they'd be a great canvass for pin-
etching...

An added update: I never did end up going to the Cemetery. But I had a bang-up time exploring Mission Hill, the Museum of Fine Arts, some parks, an inter-tribal Pow Wow, and even a giant outdoor folk-song sing-along celebration called RiverSong, led by the Cambridge Revels, to celebrate the Autumnal Equinox. And I met a bunch of really amazing people...live ones, to boot!

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Wild Mint Drink & "Name That Plant!" Game (now with prizes - hot dog!!)

Papa's Rum and Coconut with Wild Mint
1 shot dark rum
juice of 1/2 key lime
1/2 cup coconut water
ice
several mint leaves

Shake (or stir) together first four ingredients. Crush mint leaves between fingers and rub around the rim of a cold glass (kitchy 1950s style, if possible). Add mint to drink, stir to incorporate, and pour into glass. Garnish with fresh mint and lime, if desired. Taste, make one for your wife and daughter, bask in complements. Drink and repeat.

So, the mint used in this drink - the one you see in the picture - is actually wild spearmint, which grows around the outdoor tub. We used to have tons of peppermint, too, but that seems to have disappeared (an almost unheard-of phenomenon with mint).

This lends itself to the question "Is something considered wild if it's a volunteer/not native to the area"? Others might disagree, but I say "Yes, totally!"

Thoughts?

And now that I have a camera, it's time for tonight's round of.....

NAME THAT PLANT! (or fungus)

Tonight's theme is Things that Grow in Boggy New England Forests. Take a look at these gorgeous mystery specimens, and leave a comment if you think you know what they are. Winner gets internet fame and the good fortune of knowing her or his stuff.





Plant #1:
Hint: This creeping vine often grows
near Jewel Weed,
and that's a very good thing for us fleshy folk.




"Plant" Number 2:


Hint: This lovely colony of shelf fungi were growing on two trees right next to each other (you can sort of see the one behind it is covered in them as well), and were approximately 1/2 inch - 3 inches in diameter, with a creamy white top.




Plant # 3:

Hint: This tree has small berries that turn from peachy-
red to deep blue and likes full to partial sun, reading, and long walks on the beach (well, maybe not the last two...).



And for our final, bonus round, correctly identify this tree and I'll send you a postcard or other goody from the road!
Good luck, and may the best botanist win!

Friday, September 11, 2009

Manchester, NH

It's fairly late here, so I'm going to hop off to bed, but before I do, a great big shout out to the acolytes of Our Lady of the Sacred Right to Choose, aka Planned Parenthood of Manchester, NH! Not only did they give me a whole bag of goodies to hand out/strategically place at various college campuses along my travels, they were super fun, friendly, and knowledgeable. If you're ever in the area and in need of a health care professional, I recommend them (and all Planned Parenthood health centers) highly. Ditto if you find yourself looking for a fun place to volunteer! (Also, did you know that lots of PP's do same day appointments? They do! You can call them up and get seen by a doctor the very same day. Awesome. Ladies, I don't know how you do it, but you've got a gift, and I tip my uterus to you. Literally. But I digress...).

Seriously, though, if you're in need of health care, education, outreach, a job, cool conferences on teaching sex ed and working with adolescents, a free ticket to the next Ani concert or outdoor festival (tabling for PP = loads of fun), or just an awesome network of inspired, dedicated people, Planned Parenthood is the place to go!

On an unrelated note, guess who bought a digital camera today? Yay! Now I can post pics of all the plants I can't identify, and Charlie can ID them for me :)

I did the math, and with my car loaded the way it is, with only one passenger, 1 mile = 10 cents. This equation has the strong ability to put any and all purchases into perspective. (Pack of peanuts? Six miles. Pound of coffee? Almost a hundred and twenty. Etc., etc...). Between that and the challenge I've set for myself of trying to live off of less than $4 a day for the next however many moons, this was a biggish expenditure, but very worth it. I can't wait to take pictures of beautiful views and plants and people... hooray!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Pendulum Vitae

For the past couple of days, I've been focusing my energy in too many directions - not at all what one does when one is attempting to embrace life, live in the moment, be present, and all that other hippie-Zen awesomeness I've been reading so much about (or would be, if I weren't so busy doing other things...).

Ahem.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that the tasks I'm trying to accomplish aren't totally valid - on the contrary, they're all really important. The problem is, as unfailingly simple as they each seem in my head (and trust me, they really do), in reality they all involve some level of bureaucracy (result: they're really not). In short, dealing with the dregs of my past adventures while attempting to participate in my current ones has taken up time, cell phone minutes, patience, and attention that I had not planned to spend, and to seemingly little effect. This is vexing.

Now, after several days of ineffective multitasking, I feel worn, tired, and melancholy. That is also vexing. (Where were sad and angry in that mix, you might ask? Well, gosh, they were here yesterday. Looks like you juuuust missed them. Shucks).

Still, at least there's comfort in familiarity. After all, I spent my teenage years here, and if you can't get moody visiting your childhood home, where can you? Tonight I might be a grumpus, but at least I know where I stand: high atop the hills of regression, gazing out upon vast expanses of virgin angst and clear-flowing self indulgence, where the wild frustration and bitterness roam free... All it needs is a giant SUV and an American flag, and it'd be the perfect commercial.

There are some really nifty life lessons in all of this. Like, learning to give yourself permission to let go of the really important things that you wish you could change, but can't. Or loving people/experiences for who and what they are in the moment, not who/what they could be. Or paying attention to when stress enters your life, and acting accordingly. Or Downsizing. Delegating. Communicating your plans with others, so they feel important and valued. Not making people wait. Or -oh, irony- how about not always treating life like a self-improvement class? How about letting myself relax?

Folks, it might be time for stage 2 of my Magical Quest for Herbs and Adventures.

To be continued....

Something wonderful for today (Portsmouth, New Hampshire)


A little treat to lift us up...


Monet Refuses the Operation, by Lisel Mueller
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Greenland, part 2: nighthawks revised


Tonight we ate inside an Edward Hopper painting: it was dusk, then night, and in front of the giant pine, the outdoor table squatted under its wide, light-draped umbrella. When I walked onto the steps, the cinematic, two-dimensional quality of the scene - table and chairs, sitting man, surrounding darkness - literally stopped me in mid-stride. Is there a word for when reality looks like a painting?

Catching sight of that particular moment felt like turning my head while driving and staring straight into the Vermont sunset. Congratulations, the world says, you almost let that one slide by, but you made it. Now breathe.

Only, unlike the sunset, I got to walk down the grit- and leaf-covered steps, over the fallen crab apples, and out onto the lawn and into the picture.

Beneath the sparse weight of placemats, bowls and wine bottle, the dusty marble tabletop shone dimly in the light from the string of hanging grape-shaped fairy-lights. White plastic garden chairs circled the table, and behind them, under the pine, the curve of the small chrome grill glowed through the darkness. Chrome, shadow, yellow light, a group of people caught in Polaroid stillness, this one holds a fork, the other a glass... I wish I'd figured out how to upload pictures from the Palm (and also, perhaps, taken one of this particular vignette); it was such a perfectly framed, American realist moment. Ah well, you'll just have trust me when I say that for a brief period of time, life appeared as art.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Greenland, NH

Once again it's midnight, and I find myself typing, typing, and not writing much of anything. It's frustrating, I suppose - I've got all sorts of half-written thoughts and half-thought scribblings to shape and polish and fling into the void - but until I figure out how to sync up the palm pilot with the computer, those proto-posts will just have to stay up there on my mental shelves to gather dust. It's okay, though: pictures can wait. Posts can wait. What can't wait is the present moment, the here-and-now, and all it offers up if we just stoop down to take it in our hands.

And so I do.

And it is glorious.

I love it when everyone else falls asleep and the house settles into stillness; love how the tensions of coexistence slip off my shoulders, leaving me naked and fragile and ready to ease into solitude like it's water. Daylight is home to so much hive-like activity, and we spend it scrambling and buzzing and flitting about, intent on our insect missions. By the time darkness strokes us into stillness, there's a certain grace in simply sitting down and letting the lamps coat our shadows with their meager, golden aureoles of stolen time.

I'm sitting in my mother's office, about to go upstairs to the bedroom I spent my childhood nights in. The ocean I grew up on and in, the sands and rocks and spartan, salty plants, all lie about six miles to the East. Outside the front room, the crab-apple tree quietly pumps today's sunlit memories from leaves to fruit, heartwood beating with September's familiar rhythm. Feverfew stands sentinel around the old apple stump, and there's a new batch of pixie-like spearmint spiking its piercing, persistent way up through the ground by the outdoor tub. The pines between the woodshed and the studio lean against each other like old men, dripping aromatic droplets of sap onto everything below like they're stories of the War.

The night air sings with the scent of almost-Autumn. What was it Keats wrote, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun..."?

Fall and all, it's only a matter of time...

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