Archive for Topic gumbo

Up river yet downstream

October 15, 2008 at 11:21 pm · Filed under Art, Topic gumbo

Spike

Spike really likes singing.

He hasn’t shown a particular dislike to any music I’ve played, but he will curl up with his eyes and ears heavy with contentment when I play, say, “It’s a Big World”. The soundtrack to “Once” is having a similar effect.

He likes acoustic guitar and simple voices. He likes clear harmonies — thirds, not seconds. He particularly likes live singing. Mom’s old songs as I sing them when I do dishes sometimes in the late evening. I sing Mom’s songs and I sing what I know of Grandpa’s songs and then I switch to God’s songs — hymns I’ve known since before I could read from when I would sit under folding tables during choir practice — and now I sing “It’s a Big World” and whatever that first song is. It’s nice to have an actual being to ask.

Are you a beach? Are you the sand? Are you the wave that washes up upon the land?

He also has been enjoying the audiobooks at night. During the Drawing Hour I sit and listen to 90ish minutes of “The Hummingbird’s Daughter,” (which is read by the author and very good — it helps to have someone who knows how to pronounce the Spanish and say it as it should be said,) and he will lay on the bed or sit with me sometimes on the stool and listen.

Something must resonate in the voice, in a cross-species sort of way. There is something about hearing auralizations that is somehow correct. At first I thought that it may just be that his first house had far more ruckus than he gets here, but it isn’t just noise. He doesn’t really respond to movies — pictures or scripted words set to music. But bare-voiced singing and talking in long unbroken strips seem to captivate him in a very interesting way. So there must be something there. Something deep and True.

I forget sometimes that he is barely two years old. His health certificate says he was 18 months in July, but I actually think he was born in May, not January. We were hand-feeding his litter during a graduation party — May ‘07 — and they were only a few weeks old. So that would actually mean he is closer to 16 months right now. It certainly matches his temperament — he swings wildly between being almost terminally sedate to running feverish laps around my tiny apartment. Last night he spent two hours putting an acorn cap under the rug and taking it out again. He is never, ever bored and I’m glad he’s not a sullen self-loathing sort of cat, despite the occasional scrape in the thigh when he doesn’t quite make his hairpin turn from couch to window sill.

LATELY

1. Work has been awesome then terrible then awesome then terrible. I am doing my very best to simply Not Care — no small task for the Ceaselessly Empathetic, but some art upswing has helped the big syrupy spoonful of Fuck-it go down.

2. I had a bit of a breakdown last Sunday about the art stuff. It’s too much, there’s too much to do, I never finish anything, and so on. I saw this breakdown coming and had enlisted Anthony a week before to be my sort of deadline holder. At the beginning of the week I have to announce some project, send him progress reports through the week, and then finish something by Sunday. But then Sunday came and I hadn’t finished anything and OH MY GOD WHAT’S THE POINT. This was coinciding with contact from a certain lovely someone at creativeshake.com. When a simple question of “do you have 15-20 pieces you feel are strong” was answered first with a timid, “I only feel strongly about two pieces,” I sort of lost it. How will this every get off the ground. I haven’t DONE anything in so long. Blah blah blah.

Anthony essentially had to talk me into my own art. Not a proud moment for me. But helpful, ultimately. It somehow got me back into the groove, now that I’m “allowed” to paint and call the easy-and-fun-to-do-fruits a portfolio piece. I’m still not sure that’s a good way to go as far as portfolio stuff goes, but once I sort of broke that seal it wasn’t long before I was drawing every night just like I’m supposed to be.

3. WordPress has a new feature in the “add media” portion of the entry-input thing. The icon looks a lot like a single breast. I had to mouse-over to figure out what it was. “Add Poll”. Well, okay. Except you have to sign up with their “sister website”. No thanks.

But I’d already thought of a question, so I thought I’d ask you anyway. The following was an actual extra credit question on my Shakespeare final Junior year.

Q: What is the greatest Shakespeare play ever written?
a. The Merchant of Venice
b. Brideshead Revisited
c. Richard III
d. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Answer: b.Brideshead Revisited. That was a semi-secret nobody-showed-up-in-class-today-let’s-make-a-crazy-extra-credit-question-for-the-final type of thing.

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Detritus

September 16, 2008 at 9:33 pm · Filed under Adventure, Topic gumbo

LINKS

I probably I should have wanted it more.

I need to tell you about the Rainbow of Disappointment. Everything on that blog is good stuff, but that was my absolute favoritest.

This is mostly helpful only for me, but also maybe for any other newbie to Portland’s food scene.

I hate to gawk at images of destruction, but I’ve been to Galveston so many times that it’s hard not to. I defend myself by saying that as I get all my news from the radio this is the only way I would get images from the events at all, and I’m a rather visual person who likes to look at pictures. Then again. One could surely look up the New York Times article and see plenty, right? Hmm.

OH HELLO

I feel icky about that last thing. Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. I have a lot more to say about Those Topics, but I don’t want to alienate people, not over the internet anyway. I like to save Big Discussion About Stuff That Matters for those afternoons when you and I are at a coffee shop for hours, we’ve both had too much coffee, and we start verbal fisty-cuffs. That’s the atmosphere. Here there’s no music, no musty old books to use as props or distraction to diffuse tension, no breeze coming through a window fluttering a handmade curtain. There’s only this cold void that makes me sound like I care too much about stuff. That ain’t no way to live!

So um. It’s been a while. I know I always say that. Or do I?

I fall in and out of love with this here blog, particularly now that I have Goose and Simply Kumquat going, though I haven’t really been pumping content out over at those places either. Lately there’s been the Great Work Struggles, the enjoying the hell out of Anthony moving here, and various other adventures. And at the moment there’s a wonderful aggravated head-cold, complete with fever. (Really? For me? Aw shucks you shouldn’t have). Or I guess that’s what it is. Hopefully it’s that and not typhus or sleeping sickness.

Anyway. The rambling thought-lettes hardly constitute an entry, but I feel like if I don’t now some of these things will never see the light of day. SO LET’S SLOG ON.

VARIOUS THINGS, ITEMS, QUANDARIES OR EVENTS IN MY LIFE SINCE LAST WE SPOKE

1. Strange karma lately. Nice and not nice things said to me by my boss. Bike was stolen. The sickness I mentioned.

2. Last week Anthony and I went to The Noble Rot, despite the pending illness, to celebrate his possible job at the University. He spotted the job through their philosophy listserv he joined a few months ago. it’s a teaching gig, discussion group leader, and would mean a paid tuition (!!) plus a stipend to spend on extra philosophy tools like books and play-doh. We still haven’t heard anything, but we were celebrating the luck of seeing that job and applying for it more than we were celebrating the acquisition of it. Baby steps and all that.

3. We got some sort of organic instant oatmeal from the store on accident. I had no idea such a thing existed. So far no real opinion there other than the “nut” in “Maple Nut” is hazelnut, which tickles me pink as hazelnuts are my favorite.

4. Um. So my job. I refer to it as my Big Dumb Job (BDJ) when I talk to my friends that have more normal-for-our-age jobs (freelancing, waiting tables), because I still feel strange about the whole thing. I am still confused why they like me so much, why I actually got it, and whether or not I can swallow my pride to endure it. I go back and forth on that last one not daily but by the fucking hour, because that job is so uneven. I will be a miracle worker, and then I am doing everything wrong, and then I am busybusybusy, and then I have nothing to do. Things were reaching critical mass as I realized that my Machiavellian boss was in fact Machiavellian (no WONDER I can’t figure him out!) and as I began to worry, as I do with any non-art job, that I am settling for this because I’m too lazy or unresourceful to do otherwise. This was particularly difficult for me the Monday after Anthony got here, since we had spent the weekend exploring waterfalls along the historic highway. I want THAT to be my life and not this, this LAW OFFICE.

Things are a little better now — I am getting the hang of the phones and my cold is clearing which helps. I also had an important realization in terms of Life Situation. In a way, it’s perfect that I am here Slogging On and Anthony is there doing School Work. We are both working on stuff that cannot really involve the other person right now. We are doing this so that in two-ish years Anthony can study for his PhD abroad, and so I can go with him, hopefully partially subsisting on a published work at that point. That is my goal: to have some sort of art thing published in two year’s time, and if not, than to have a nest egg saved up to make that whole move somewhat possible.

4a. Also helpful was the joining of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, which I sort of joined on a whim not thinking it would amount to much. In fact they’ve sent me tons of stuff: lists of agents and publishers, websites and phone numbers of helpful contacts, grant information which had honesty not occured to me, and contacts for the local chapter. They have a listserv which I’ve joined; not wholly informative but it’s good to be in some sort of loop. Going it alone is hard, but at least now I have some places to start. I feel like I can draw up a real plan with all this information, and it makes my heart sing.

4b. I also watched Garden State. Sam? The Natalie Portman character? She works at a law firm! And she’s not a horrible drone of a thing! That was comforting.

4c. Also watched the Darjeeling Limited. Again.

4d. And six episodes of Fishing with John. Have you seen this? You probably should.

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Lullabies for three oranges

August 30, 2008 at 1:02 pm · Filed under Fibers, Photo-tastic!, Topic gumbo

My cat has taken to waking me up at 3am, instead of the usual 6ish. I’m not sure what to do about this. The first night I felt bad because I hadn’t fed him the semi-regular late night snack (which I do sometimes because he eats weirdly small amounts, and sometimes he asks for food at night.) I’d assumed he was actually starving, and my repeated throwing him off my pillow started to feel more heartless than it needed to. So I got up and dished out a little food. That was a big mistake though, because now we think 3am is the perfect time for a snack! The perfect time to wake up! If I don’t move or actually push him back down to my feet or push him off the bed, he will sit on the other side of my pillow which drives me batshit insane for some reason. I have a king size pillow, because when Anthony’s here and we share the (twin-size) bed, a longer pillow makes that easier. When a cat I’m mildly allergic to sits on it, it means hair that I can’t see gets everywhere on my head. If I keep moving him off the pillow he comes back again and again for hours, and I don’t sleep. So what to do? I haven’t worked it out yet. I’m afraid if I shut him out of the room I won’t actually wake up in time for things.

MEDIA

1. Today’s episode of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” features an unusually hilarious ‘not my job’ game, which you can listen to here. It’s The Collected Wit and Wisdom of Matthew McConaughey, and it’s about as insightful as it sounds.

2. I went to OMSI last weekend with the geohashers, and in the physics lab they were playing a series of films by Arthur Ganson. By and large my favorites were those akin to this, which reminded me of Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine. No one else in the room was as struck by these films as I was. It was out of context of course — his machines involve simple machines like pulleys and levers, but the films are clearly art house and not simple documentary footage. I stood there for half an hour watching these things, and then had to leave and go with the group to work on wooden puzzles. Of course Anthony was as geeked about this as I was, and I think we’re going to by the DVD once we both have money again.

3. Last week I netflixed the BBC’s “The Human Face,” hosted by John Cleese. I was completely delighted by this segment, and would re-watch it every day before going to work. The final two episodes were a little more depressing to me, dealing with fame and what makes a beautiful face beautiful, and anyone who’s ever had to endure a Women Studies 101 class understands why this question instantly tires me out. The fame episode in particular made me feel hollow and unhappy, because as much as I pretend like it isn’t true, there really are people out there that only want fame and celebrity out of life. And it scares me. But in order to adequately explain to you why fame is so Very Beside The Point when it comes to life, I would need to have you here with me in person, so we could go fly kites and stand in cold water and yell at the ocean.

FOOD!

I live next door to one of the Thursday farmer’s markets. Along with the normal stalls of fruit, veg and meats, they have little stands of ready-made food, making Thursday night dinner a cinch. Sometimes they have little events; last week was a coupon with every $5 spent, good for a free corn on the cob (corn on the kabob). This week I also got milk. Fancy unpasteurized milk from one of the local dairies. I’m still a little afraid of milk that I need to shake first in order to distribute the solids, and I worry about how foul it will be when it does in fact go foul, but the taste is clearly superior to any other milk I’ve ever tasted, even from other dairies. So drinking it up fast should not be a problem.

It is also melon time evidently, and there were samplings of all these wonderful tiny melons. I came home with two, and mutilated them with my melon baller this morning.

melon2

I ended up with crescents instead of spheres, but they still taste the same. I’ll just have to practice on more melons.

Melons in their original guise usually can’t be friends with me because I cannot eat a fruit the size of my head before it goes bad. And pre-cut melon from the store makes me wonder when it was in fact cut. I adore these fist-sized things, half is just enough for a bowl of mid-morning sweetness. Good for either second breakfast and elevensies, if you will.

NOT QUITE WELSCHMERTZ

There is a phenomenon Anthony and I have been talking about. It’s when you are doing something that should Feel Very Significant, yet doesn’t, somehow. Moving to a new state, starting grad school, getting married, buying a car, quitting your job as a CEO to join the Peace Corps, things like that. Clear jags in a life-path that one would expect would sort of feel epic. But doesn’t. It’s the lack-of-feeling-epic feeling. We want there to be a word for it, and as yet have not found one, and instead refer to it as, “that thing again, you know, the lack-of-epic-epicness” or something similarly inarticulate. So we’re on a bit of a WordQuest, to see if there is in fact a term for this. I suspect if there is one it’s in German.

EVERYTHING ELSE WITHOUT A GRATUITOUS TITLE

I’ve been shying away from talking about work because it’s been a bit awful lately, and that does not make for good posting. It also causes me additional pain to rehash every waking moment of the day if it was both physically and mentally exhausting (I’ve lived it once, must I DWELL on it?). I’m also working hard on rebuilding that on/off switch between Work and The Part Of My Life With Meaning, with limited success. I’m getting there but it’s a slow process, particularity when you were unemployed for several months. And when before that you had a job you loved. It continues to confuse the hell out of me. On Wednesday I went into HR to quit, and left that day with a promotion instead. Back when I was doing a lot of research on Schizophrenia, a common metaphor I came across was the ’switchboard metaphor’, whereby one’s various mind-and-emotion connections are plugged into the wrong places, and therefore send signals to the wrong places. That’s a bit what this workplaces feels to me, what with my actions turning up with all these strange outcomes that make no sense. There is absolutely no degree of predictability whatsoever. It should probably feel fresh, but instead it feels unstable and confusing. Even threatening at times.

However, there was a moment yesterday when six of us were in the kitchen making macaroni and cheese for 80 football players. That was really fun.

Although there are no pictures yet to prove it, I have finished that quilt I started all that time ago. I backed it with a couple study homespuns instead of flannel, so this is an Adventure Quilt. A quilt to use out in the wilds as well as on the couch on the weekends. It is also the most boisterous quilt I have ever done, with a couple eye-achingly bright strips that really kick out on a cloudy day. I adore this quilt. I brought it with me to the Avett Brother’s concert at the zoo last Sunday where I was rained on for three hours. I eventually bailed when I noticed I was sitting in a three inch puddle of water. I also saw her there, but shied away from saying anything because I thought that might be weird. I recognized her right away not by her looks, but by her Adventure Quilt spread out under a tree.

Today there is a crispness in the air that feels decidedly autumnal to me. Me and my Adventure Quilt are ready. Bring it on!

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A bit of a fish soapbox, but with a helpful chart

August 11, 2008 at 7:19 am · Filed under Nibbles, Topic gumbo

AN IMPORTANT FISH ANNOUNCEMENT

As I try and sail the choppy waters of Responsible Eating — whole grains and foods when I can, many colors every day, servings sizes, etc — I sometimes forget that there’s another side to this whole eating thing. The eating green part.

On principle, I am totally down with this. I want food that came to me as soon as it could have, not to be obtained in a way that destroys forests and oceans, let alone the poor guy gathering it (although fair trade and green are not always a happy couple, which is a shame.) It is harder in practice, what with a strange label nomenclature, people cashing in on this movement, and the straight up difficulty in choosing food in the first place. I’m not sure what a good pear should look like, much less where it should say it comes from. And then there’s the decoding. An apple from New Zealand had to travel farther than the mushy things from Washington, but the Washington apples aren’t labeled organic and those New Zealand apples are, plus the Washington Apples are mushy because they aren’t yet in season I think, or is it just this store’s batch? And on and on ad infinitum.

CHOOSY CONSUMERS CHOOSE TEDIUM

I must admit: now that I live in a verdant land with fertile soil, it is easier for me to do this. In the arid high plains there is less local bounty, though if I had gone to the farmer’s market more often while I was there I probably would have surprised myself. Then again, I know we didn’t have the climate to grow mangoes and oranges that some of the people were peddling. So it’s hard to know.

And back to fish — it’s hard enough trying to wade through all the labels. When you suddenly have real choices it becomes a nightmare. The local tiny butcher has dozens of fishy comestibles, many I had never seen fresh (anchovies, sardines), or have only read about in french cooking blogs (sole). What can I say? I’m not fancy.

When Anthony was here, we went up to Newport to see the aquarium and the town. While walking by the sort of industrial part of the wharf, we saw men in waders processing fish, to which I’ve always thought, “that is the way of things here, no big deal.” And I thought this until I turned the corner, and saw processed tuna being dumped into a huge dump-truck. The tuna meat was overflowing onto the ground, and the seagulls were calmly waiting, which is strange for a seagull. Evidently this was so routine that the birds had learned that with this feast, it’s okay to wait. Sure enough, the truck pulled alway, and the birds flew down and feasted on the heaped tuna bits.

A kind of shaggy guy was walking near us and when on a Corporate People Making Money That They Just Throw Into The Streets – type rant, which I kind of ignored, but it also kind of bothered me. Because he was right. Really, who do they think they are? If there is enough to spill onto the ground regularly, there is too much, I think. So that’s no good just on a straight up excess sort of way — in this economy you can’t afford to be sprinkling money everywhere methinks — but when you then consider the over-fishing aspects it’s a little appalling.

And maybe I’m wrong — I don’t know anything about the fishing industry, and I have no idea what works and what doesn’t. I’m not mad the seagulls got fed of course, and fishy stuff is much better for them than fritos. So what is one to do?

Well, one can ask them about it, which is what I plan on doing. Not in a condescending sort of way, just a letter in ernest. Probably they are doing exactly what they should be doing, and cannot do any more. But then I would feel better about it. And if not, maybe I can help them learn something.

It’s a naively simple strategy, yes. But I think it’s a good start. Quietly request sustainable fishing, one letter at a time.

I was just checking up on my food blogs and Clotilde wrote a really thoughtful piece about this very topic. It included (for us Yankee Doodles) charts c/o the Monterey Bay Aquarium, saying exactly which fish are the best eco-friendly choices, which are okay alternatives, and which you should stay away from in your area.

And you’d be surprised: There are just as many options for the Central US than there are for us North Westerners. Fish lovers, rejoice.

As Clotilde mentions, this isn’t exactly the be all and end all of the problem, but it’s a start.

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Quick flashes of news nubbins

August 8, 2008 at 12:25 am · Filed under Topic gumbo

WELL THANK SAINT CAJETAN

Because I just got an administrative position in a law office. It certainly won’t be vibrant and exciting, but it will pay the bills. A decentish wage, benefits after three months. I start on Tuesday, which also means I get to work on my quilt and art things for the next few days without feeling guilty about it.

However I do need to work on my dress. What I wore to the interview was, I was told, not acceptable. I know that going into Professional Dress from the world of business (very) casual in the newspaper (and that was just the forward-facing people — the graphic artists and sports writers could wear t-shirts and jeans) would be a step up dress-wise, but I didn’t realize it would be THAT much. As someone who wears those hideous 1970s poly-disco shirts with sweaters for just going down to the bookshop, it’s quite a change. I dress “up” in comparison to other people I know, so it’s interesting to suddenly be the slob. I’ve literally been searching Google for “conservative dress,” image-searching Law & Order, and pulling up the store directory from the swanky mall back home. This is really new to me. I don’t even know where one can get sensible blazers that fit on your body, as opposed to the general vicinity. I will of course go Goodwill-Hunting first, but the thrift store roulette doesn’t always deliver the goods, as we all know. Especially when you are a Weird Size (in my case, Lanky 12-year-old-boy). I can’t really suit-and-tie it like I want to, because with my haircut I think it would be a little too butch. I think for now it’s best to, um, play is straight (no pun intended) and go for something that would make me look professional to on our alleged high-end clients. From what I can see, based on the area of town, I’m to go for “invisible”, essentially. Again, this is new to me.

INTRODUCING THE NEWEST MEMBER OF THE FAMILY

Spike

This picture makes him look like he lives up to his name, despite my insistence to the contrary. This look is a look of simple confusion about the big black camera, not the thinnly veiled plot of world conquest that many cats toil after.

Anthony and I have been amusing ourselves by thinking of having a cat as having a tiny mentally impaired roommate living with you. One that lives rent free, eats your food, uses drugs (i.e., catnip), needs to be occasionally entertained, and requires a bedpan.

And hey! Speaking of! Anthony’s visit was awesome, thanks for asking. You’ll notice the lack of WebContent. Things like updating a blog tend to be way less important when your favorite human visits you.

I BE HATIN THE HILTON YET I BE LAUGHIN AT HER VIDEO

Well played, is what I gotta say.

Of course when I was over there I had to visit my favorites, including Power thirst which brings me immediately back to my senior seminar, in a way that Charles Dickens does not. I am brain damaged.

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