Our livers and mouths were happy to welcome these freshly-picked goji berries into our lives. This year we will step up the planting of food-bearing perennials. Ariadne Garden is selling baby Gooseberry bushes for five clams, so we’ll be sure to have a couple of those. I was also hoping to have currants (though I can’t decide which varieties), blueberries, and, if I can find an edible barberry in this country, one or two of those.
even robots get the blues
We now have a quart of the following herbs (some wild, some cultivated, but all grown in NE Portland and all collected by mine own two hands this morning) soaking in organic olive oil: St. John’s Wort flowering tops, calendula flowers, mullein leaves, chickweed, thyme flowers & leaves, lavender flowers, & plantain leaves. Six weeks from now, I’ll strain the plant matter out, melt some beeswax in, and rub the resulting salve all over my body, especially the itchy or damaged parts. I even put it in my ears sometimes!
Here is the original version of what recently became the Official Tiga Rally Song:
KOOMSEE! brand seaweed
I think you ought to know what’s been going on.
We’ve been eating a lot of seaweed. In everything. Even granola. And it’s the best damn granola either of us has ever had and you’d never know there was seaweed in it if we didn’t tell you. Minerals have been a top priority. It has changed our bodies for the better.
We’ve been following a fairly strict schedule.
We try to fit in all of our work, school, housework and homework on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.
Thursday we do some kind of cardiovascular exercise–jogging around the park, shooting a game of horse, playing catch. Otherwise, Thursday is a free-day, but I usually end up going to acupuncture (if I didn’t go on my 17-hour workday, Wednesday) gardening or doing special projects around the house.
Friday is Boolar day. Recording, mixing, writing on this website, taking photos, making videos, etc. Last week that meant recording the first track off of the Beach Boys’ Love you album, Let Us Go On This Way, and doing a final four-track mix of it. We plan on doing the whole record, each song in order. Look for it here soon.
Saturday is gardening day. I usually end up doing household projects, too. Not chores. Projects. It is also estate sale day. And twice a month or so I get to close Tiga.
Sunday is food day. Farmer’s market and prepare the week’s seaweed-infested meals: a rice cooker full of whole grains, lentils, and seaweeds; a large stoneware dish of kuku (persian egg & greens frittatta-like snack. I like to add barberries in addition to the fresh greens and herbs from our gardens and sometimes morel or shitake mushrooms); salad dressing of apple cider vinegar, olive oil, fresh parsley, one bulb of green garlic fresh out of the ground, greens and all, homemade mustard, blackstrap molasses, and Portland-made miso; cultured ketchup out of some of the last year’s tomatoes paste from the freezer; and three small pieces of salmon (less than half a pound total) baked in parchment paper with nothing, not even salt, on them. They are delicious. Sunday is also family day and dinner day. Sunday is also Softball day, but I wasn’t able to get my chores done in time to go to Tiga’s game this week. We won.
Monday we go back to school and work and chores and homework. We sit on the back patio a whole lot, admiring our handiwork in the backyard. But we get stuff done. We talk all the time, while we are happily busy with our hands.
I’ve been in the process of quitting nail-and-cuticle-biting. Bradley has already quit drinking. The garden is lush, the cats are happy, the bird has stopped biting. Everybody is doing better, see?
Today, I wrote a letter to the first midwives I had, the ones who left me feeling helpless and tragic about the miscarriage while I was in the process, a letter explaining my dissatisfaction with the services they had provided. (Continued)
Push the sideways triangle to hear Juss Like Heaven
I don’t have words to explain what’s been going on. Or maybe I do, I’m just too lazy to find them. Okay, I’ll try.
I feel like I can fly. But then I try, and find I’m even more bound to the ground than I used to assume. I feel like I’m happier and healthier than I’ve been in a long time. Then I think about writing a letter to my Eudaemonist and start to cry because thinking of her makes me think of everything I’ve been through since I’ve seen her last and the tears are not from pain as much as relief that it’s all over. It sounds silly when you write it, but it is all seriousness when it happens.
What I mean to say is that I’m more keenly aware of the limitations of my body than ever. But such an awareness (and acceptance) allows me to better use myself closer to my full potential (even if that is lesser than I formerly believed).
Life is an exercise in dichotomy these days.1 I think I mean contradiction. But not quite contradiction. Bifurcation?2 No. Now I’m just being silly. 3
What do I mean? In a recent ramble, I spoke of balance, and yearned for it. I think I’m closer to it than I’ve ever been4, but the dot-danged strangest thing is that balance isn’t what I imagined. It doesn’t mean walking down the straight, flat, partly-cloudy paved road of life5. No, no, it means that there are times when you need a machete to hack your way through the rainy jungle of days and there are times when you roll down the grassy, daisy-covered summerdays but that when you add them all together and divide by the total number of days they equal balance.
That’s why I’ve been crying and laughing at the same time so many times a week these past few. I’m going to die. But I get to live right now. So I’m never without a reason to be exuberantly happy or dangerously sad. But of late, they have been so firmly intertwined that I can’t bring one to mind without the other forcing itself upon my heart. And though you might have another name for it6, that’s what I call balance.
P.S. Remember that kale plant I told you about. Here we are, about to eat her.
It’s getting better all the time (can’t get much worse).
-Lennon & McCartney
I remember the day that Jonas and I were at that other bar we worked at together called the Social Club and we were listening to The Beatles and he laughed his biggest Jonas laugh about those particular backing vocals. I liked those times.
I like these times, too. I know that can’t possibly make sense to many people out there (or, secretly, I hope that it does), but I appreciate the good times and the bad. A housemate of mine once said that people are just trying to make themselves feel, anything (which is why they try to feel so bad if they can’t feel good, why we create drama, and why we make jokes, right?).
Today was better than yesterday, which was better than the day before. I feel stronger, strong enough to laugh, strong enough to make an herbal iron syrup1 (flavored with the pomagranate molasses from my dad’s garden outside Shiraz, Iran–have I mentioned that I have to get out there someday soon?), strong enough to ride the bus and walk in the rain to acupuncture. I also feel thankful.
I feel thankful for the two months that were given to me by that baby. I’m glad that I got to experience pregnancy. I will be looking forward to the day when I’m lucky enough to feel sick to my stomach all day. I can’t wait for the mood swings and having to pee all the time. I will leap with joy at every discomfort that signifies that I have the chance to become somebody’s mama yet again.
Cue Ella, singing “They can’t take that away from me.”
By my own standards, which may or may not be similar to your own, I am a successful human being. I live well, I love, I work hard, I think, I play, I dream, I create. I’m healthy. I’m (mostly) happy. I don’t owe anybody anything, except for on my house, which I am paying as agreed. I am well-liked and well-respected, by other people, yes, but more importantly, by myself. I have skills and talents and knowledge and curiosity. I have found some kind of balance that makes sense for me. I rarely hurt others, and almost never is it on purpose.
But all week long, all I’ve done (besides bite my fingernails) is shake hands with people (many of whom, by the by, I personally would not consider successful human beings, but judgment is a fault of mine) who then give me four or five minutes to prove to their satisfaction that I may in fact be worth wasting their time upon, but, who, ultimately, decide that I am not successful. And not trustworthy. Not good enough.
It’s been hard for me to take, you see. Because I have always been good enough and smart enough and strong enough and courageous enough to do anything I ever wanted to do in life. Or if I have been found lacking, I’ve had the drive and ability to practice and learn and otherwise do whatever it takes to do whatever it was that I wanted.
But there is no need for my skills and talents now. They won’t get me anywhere. What I need is some credit in the straight world (which, incidentally, I thought I had… there was a time when a credit score of almost 800 and a grip of cash was worth something… those were good times).
Well, I may not have a building, but at least I still have the Young Marble Giants (and all my legs and eyes). They can’t take that away from me…
Go for credit in the straight world
Look a dealer in the eye
Go for credit in the real world
Won’t you try?
I got some credit in the straight world
I lost a leg, I lost an eye
Go for credit in the real world
You won’t die
Instant credit in the straight world
Leaving money when you die
Lots of credit in the real world
gets you high
Masonic Weapons
I like being snowed in.
While Bradley juiced some pink grapefruits, I worked on a brussel sprout & buttercup squash scramble with fenugreek, basil and more, and dished up bowls of oatmeal with coconut, pumpkin seeds, apricots, and barberries, with flax seeds, butter, and honey on top, doubleplusgood.
Fuzzy logic rice cookers rule. I put all those treats in the rice cooker last night, set the timer, and presto! next morning we have deliciously creamy Oatmeal-Plus! kept warm until we are ready to eat it. Slow cookers are great for whole oats and other grains, but nothing beats the fuzzy logic.
Genome brought up the question of the aluminum cooking pan in rice cookers. I was under the impression that they had debunked the whole Alzheimer’s-aluminum connection and that it takes an acidic food to leach it out anyhow (it is also worth mentioning that China and Japan, both heavily rice-cooker dependent, have lower AD rates than the U.S.), but I’ve been looking into alternatives.
The most promising one I found? A rice cooker with a clay insert! Yes, clay. It hasn’t been around long enough for me to drop the dollars (I wait until the reviews are in), but you can be sure that I’ll be keeping my eye on it… I am a huge fan of clay cookers, like Romertopfs, and of stone baking ware, too.
I guess we all have to eat that peck of dirt before we die; might as well cook it up in a pot of earth, no?
It was dark and cold when the phone rang last night. “Blocked Call,” the phone said. “What the hell?” I replied, and answered anyway.
It was Jeff. No, not Jeff from Azure Standard, who would be delivering boxes and boxes filled with hundreds of pounds of organic foods, mostly dry goods, in the morning (which he did), but Jeff from Persephone Farm, who would not be bringing the 25 lbs of onions, 25 pounds of yellow finn potatoes and five pounds of white garlic I had ordered to the farmer’s market on Saturday because there is no farmer’s market on Saturday.
That’s right, the last farmer’s market of the year has been canceled due to the gorgeous weather we’ve been having.
I s’pose it’s for the best; I usually end up in tears by the end of the last market of the year. How can you banish me to the grocery stores for three long months? I moan at the farmer’s whose faces and manners and veggies I’ll miss until April.
But Persephone Jeff had good news to top the bad. He had my produce, it was already picked, and he was willing to bring it to my house, which he has now done.
So here I am with a couple of hundred pounds of food in my living room. To make it worth his while, I added some things to my order and called a few of the food club ladies to let them in on the deal.
Here’s what we are getting:
red and green cabbage, $0.70/lb, 40 lbs
storage onions, $0.88/lb, 75 lbs
romanesco, $1.50/lb, 15 lbs
beets, $1.30/lb, 10 lbs
brussel sprouts on the stalk, $4/stalk (about $3.20/lb), 8 stalks
winter squash, $0.70/lb, 60 lbs
fennel bulbs, $2 each, 5 bulbs
turnips, $1.50/lb, 5lbs
farm fresh eggs with orange yolks, $6/dozen, 17 dozen
I found this article on storing veggies in the suburban home and now I wish I’d gotten a few more stalks of brussel sprouts.
I am also now the proud owner of 50lbs of epsom salts, a fact which I will certainly appreciate more right after I finish up chopping the veggies for a few gallons of kraut tonight and start thinking about a warm bath.
I guess I’m just about done squirreling food away for this winter. Well, maybe…
To fill the hour, that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.” –Experience, Ralph Waldo Emerson
No-Key Suare
I really do not mean to beat this subject to death, but it is on my mind. In the absence of both my guru and my most trusted confidante (mind you, neither of these people suspect the real way I feel about their opinions), I have nobody but everybody with access to the internet to confess those things I feel the most need to confess. Here I am going to take the opportunity to mention that the bad taste from adding yet more poor-to-mediocre writing to the already bloated world wide web has gotten worse in my own mouth lately, but here I am adding more by the moment and feeling little to no guilt. For shame.
There we have Bradley filling his hour by strumming a twelve string guitar. I ought to record it straight into the mac-top and put it here for you, but you’ll have to imagine something like Sandy Bull crossed with Roy Montgomery on a snowy evening in our living room (you understand that it isn’t snowing in our living room, right?).
And here you have me, still wondering what I have to lose.
See, when making music, there really isn’t anything to lose. I do what I want and what I feel because the act of making music is for nothing other than to fill my hour with something that brings me joy and peace and sometimes relief and other times pride, among other pleasant emotions. If I end up with a well recorded track that stirs pleasant emotions in others, too, well that’s even more pleasant, isn’t it? It isn’t going to hurt anybody else, surely it can’t.
But I’ve got this idea in my head, and it is such a big idea and there is so much to lose, I feel. And I don’t like to feel as though there is something to lose that isn’t worth risking, except my life, except my life, except my life. I just mean that there isn’t any real risk in writing a song, or making a meal, or writing a blog entry, or keeping a journal, or drawing a picture, or spending a weekend crocheting little hexagons that I will probably never turn into an afghan (yes, I did this recently). A few hours, a few dollars, all worth it for the privilege of filling an Emersonian hour or two.
I’m trying to convince myself that there really isn’t much difference between a few dollars and a few hundred thousand dollars, a few hours and a few years. If I go into this thing, I’ve got to make myself believe that it is worth trying even if I fail miserably.
“Go out on a limb; it’s where all the fruit is,” said Aunt Sophia with a smile. I want to believe she’s right, as frightened as I am of heights.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off,–that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic wealth and standing followed, he said to himself; I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it would be necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?” –Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Holland Days
Maybe my friend down the hall remembers it, the part she played in the paper I wrote on Walden that first and only year I was at Mount Holyoke. It was this time of year. That hill outside my window might have been covered in snow. It started one of the many existential crises I had during the long three-quarters of a year I spent as a student in New England. I just could not write the paper. It was supposed to be many pages long, I can’t quite remember how many, but I couldn’t even imagine starting. Not because I didn’t love the book; I adored it, and still do.
I don’t remember all the details (I so often don’t), but I do remember the feeling of calm and the sense of purpose I finally had when I decided to write my paper (with the approval of that friend who surely wouldn’t have done the same herself, but was willing to try the experiment through me) on why Thoreau should not like me to write my paper, using Walden itself as my evidence. It was about a page and a half long and definitely included a line about planting beans.
I had never so anxiously awaited my grades, not since my junior year of high school, when I had convinced Mr. Milam the Algebra II teacher who wore his straight-fronted, flatly pressed slacks at the waist like a military man that if he really thought that his exams accurately reflected what he wished his students to learn, he shouldn’t count homework toward the final grade (unless it would help, of course). The deal we finally made (it took a few days to break him) was that I didn’t have to do any homework if I got no less than an A on each and every exam. You might be able to guess which student got 89% on the third exam. By my calculations, I would have gotten a D in the course if he held me to our arrangement. I held my breath, but I didn’t bother doing any homework.
In both cases, I was rewarded for my… what would you call it? moxie?
Ten years later, instead of using it only to avoid jumping through hoops I’d rather not, I’m trying to use this skill (or affliction) to get myself into something. It’s really a much more difficult position.
Instead of biting my nails while waiting for my grades to come in and prove that I have pulled it off again, I’m having my first migraines and wondering if it just won’t be enough, this moxie of mine.
Maybe not. But it is still worth trying, right? I know that my friend down on the opposite end of the hall who once agreed would probably do so again. I’m actually counting on that belief, though the hallway between us has grown to cover half the globe.
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case, my pains were their own reward.” –Ibid.
