“It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!” Abraham Lincoln
It’s been some time since the last update. Time, being relative, might not have passed at the same rate for you as it did for me. For me, it’s either all been a flash, or painfully slow. I can’t tell yet which, but I know that it hasn’t been any where near the middle.
Oh, the middle. The balance that should be our number one desire, our biggest ambition, the greatest achievement a man can earn. How I miss the middle.
First, there was disappointment. I wasn’t able to get something I thought I wanted. I worked hard, probably too hard, trying to buy a building that didn’t want me. I’m under-exaggerating the stress and desire and the sense of loss, I assure you, and also, the threat of small claims court that now looms.1
Then, there was the grief of loss, the angst and guilt of family drama, and the jarring reminder of one’s own mortality that came with the death of an immediate family member. It didn’t help that Bradley and his step-father/uncle had been estranged for the last two years, or that their relationship had been so complex for the 36 years before that. It didn’t help that our truck broke down when Bradley was trying to make it down to say good-bye to the old man one last time after the plug was pulled, leaving him stranded in the middle of Oregon and unable to make it in time.
Somehow, though, it did help that this death came right about the same time as the start of another life. We were incredibly excited by all of the possibilities a third human member of boolar might bring. We were pregnant. How can I explain that it changed everything about the world in such an intricately beautiful way? I can’t.
And somehow, it makes beautiful, poetic sense to me that we lost that, too. The golden possibility of a brand new human life. It hurts like hell, I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. Nobody is that strong. But it makes sense.
I am attracted to allowing myself to be a victim of circumstance, beaten, lonely, and with nothing more to lose. But, like my friend John Whitson said, I don’t need binoculars to see the bright side. Far from being left with nothing, I have now the ability, from the chair where I am making my physical recovery, to survey the world about me, and to take stock of the richness and luxury of my life.
I have people, so many people, who were willing to share an hour, or a dime, or a tear-filled phone call with me, to run to the store or bring me what I needed from their own private stock. Family, friends, and neighbors all love me more than I ever needed to wonder.
I have an incredibly comfortable home. I was able to end my physical relationship with the child that never was to be in front of a warm fire in a cozy living room filled with beautiful music and aided by the person I love and trust most in the world.
I have flexible jobs working for people who were willing to let me take the five days my body needed to finish the miscarriage (even though the average is one to four hours, I seemed to need a bit more time, and I’m very glad that I had it) and are giving me another week to recover.
I have the financial resources that allow me to take that time.
I have the courage I needed to fire my nurse-midwives in the midst of an incredibly stressful event and to turn to a real healer, a lay-midwife who helped ease me through the most physically painful, frighteningly bloodiest, and most emotionally difficult event of my life thus far. She helped me keep the strength to complete my miscarriage at home and avoid the place that scares me most in this world, the hospital.
I have a garden full of life-supporting green vegetables, and one kale plant in particular, a Lacinato Blue Dinosaur, who has been our hero this winter. She stood tall, keeping her head above the snow, though her leaves were shriveled and frozen. She thawed herself out and sent up sweet and delicious new leaves as soon as the snow melted and the first sun warmed her green blood. Soon after, she started sending out the shoots that would become flowers that would bear the seeds that would keep her family growing. They would have, if I hadn’t come along and eaten those sweet shoots, greedily, because they are my favorite part of the kale plant. Did she give up? No, she reacted to my plunder by sending twice as many little attempts at procreation out of her strong central stalk.2
Which, of course, is what I will do. As elastic and resilient as my chlorophyll-filled mentor, I will bounce back. As Bradley sagely said, “It’s OK. It’s OK because it has to be. There is no other way for it to be.”
Lessons learned were many. The biggest? Don’t do business, or attempt to do business, with people who don’t have a similar value system to your own. How do you know? Trust your intuition, or your husband’s, if yours isn’t functioning properly. [↩]
Don’t worry, I’ll let her win in the end. I’m a seed saver. [↩]
Cross your fingers hard and tight for the next week or so. The one crazy loan lady who thought my application was worth submitting has actually gotten me pre-approved to buy this building1.
What does this mean? It means that all of my precious confidential information is soon to be on an underwriter’s desk. He or she will try to decipher the convoluted contract (written over two months on eleven pages in type and by hand, some by a lawyer, some by a realtor, some by us common folk), will assess risk and crunch numbers and, ultimately, give it a stamp with a big old smiley face that reads “We love you, Melanie!”
That or he’ll just fart on it and put it into his basket labeled “shred.”
Thursday I’ll spend about five hours (and five hundred dollars) with a building inspector who will, hopefully, tell me that, though it certainly doesn’t look very good, it is good.
What a process. It’s been hard to know at times if I really still wanted to get it or if I was just caught up in a game. I can be competitive, you see, so I worried at times that I might just be trying to win for the sake of winning, forgetting to reassess whether or not I actually wanted the “prize” anymore. But I’m a firm believer that faith which does not doubt is no kind of faith worth having, and brother, have I doubted.
I won’t be sorry to see this part of the process come to an end, even if the scene closes with a flatulent underwriter. Its been difficult to keep a foot firmly on the ground these past couple of months. Especially since my other half, usually so well grounded he’s half buried in the sand, is having a major meltdown of barriers erected well before he’d been on the planet more than two decades. A lot of muck comes to the surface when a family member ends up in the ICU. But that is a story for another day.
I’d say tomorrow, but I’d like to invite Danyou Street George over for Salmon Green Curry, Pad Thai (sour and spicy, not cloyingly sweet and slimy), and sticky rice. Oh, maybe papaya salad, too. I wish I could send smells through this here machine. I toss a few at you right now.
Have I mentioned how very often I have heard the phrase “waste of time” lately? This lady has also used the phrase, but to tell me that she, unlike every other mortgage broker and/or banker in my world, did not think I was a waste of hers. [↩]
I have already sunk (and most likely lost for good) a few thousand dollars for which I actually worked.
I’ve already been told that unless I am wiling to pay double-digit interest rates and a trio of points on twelve-month loans, it can’t be done.
And never mind the money, I’ve lost so much ground in my on-going existential battle against this social cage I’ve been trapped in for almost twenty-nine years. If I get pushed back any further, I’ll be at risk of losing the sanity and happiness I’ve staked out for myself. That’s right, I feel myself slipping back into the old depression. What is the use of all this sobriety and sacrifice and goddamn crochet? I want drugs. I’m already using caffeine again, without medicinal wine I couldn’t have made it this far in the process, nicotine is rearing its ugly head and flashing its yellow teeth provocatively at me, and the only question on my mind is, why not indulge?
Forget this dream. That’s right, give up! You’ve been a stranger in a strange land these past months, and the locals haven’t made you feel very welcome. Go back to suckle at the bosom of the good old life, where the wine is strong and the music is better.
Not yet. I’m gonna give it one last push, even if this project turns out to be as dead set against me winning as Djamilah’s right arm was against mine last Sunday. I had her inches from the table, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not muster the strength to get it down. After five white-knuckled minutes, I finally let go, just as I’ll let this building go if I have to.
At worst, I’ll be a little sore for a few days, right?
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
By Boolar, on January 20th, 2009%
“He has no ego any more–if ever he had one. He’s split it up into hobbies. He has at least three hobbies that I know of–and they all have to do with a big, ten-thousand-dollar workroom in his basement, full of power tools and vises and God knows what else. Nobody who’s really using his ego, his real ego, has any time for any goddam hobbies.” Zooey suddenly broke off. He was still lying with his eyes closed and his fingers laced, quite tightly, across his chest, his shirt-front. But he now ground his face into a deliberately pained expression–a form, apparently, of self-criticism. “Hobbies,” he said. “How did I get off onto hobbies?” He lay still for a moment. J.D. Salinger, Franny & Zooey
Bradley has told me that I might have to give up crochet. He might be right.
Souls which are pregnant–for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies-conceive that which is proper for the soul to conceive or contain. And what are these conceptions? Wisdom and virtue in general. And such creators are poets and all artists who are deserving of the name inventor. But the greatest and fairest sort of wisdom by far is that which is concerned with the ordering of states and families, and which is called temperance and justice. And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in him and is himself inspired, when he comes to maturity desires to beget and generate. He wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring. –Plato (Πλάτων), Symposium (Συμπόσιον) 209 (ca. 385 BCE) (B. Jowett transl.)
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the girl with know eyes
I’m working on a cooking ‘zine, though, admittedly, “working” means “thinking about and doodling upon so often that I would have the whole thing done if I’d actually started the physical process of putting it all together.”
Kinda like the way the new Boolar album is happening. It is happening. It will materialize. But it will be on its own time because nobody is trying to force it.
Part of the problem I have with actually committing the ‘zine to paper is that it seems to be the kind of constantly-changing thing I could never bolt down, and would never want to. I am always learning about new ingredients and improvising new recipes, it seems an exercise in folly to put any of it in writing. 1 I also worry that since I want my ‘zine to be focused on healthy approaches to cooking (starting with stocking a kitchen), I must be certain that I am giving good advice that people can trust. What if I am wrong and Raw Apple Cider Vinegar turns out to be carcinogenic. Unlikely, but what if?
I’ve decided not to worry about such possibilities, but just to do the best that I know how at this moment. I’ll finish the thing now and be happy in ten years when I look back and see how far I have come. And then I can put out a revised edition. Right?
I feel pregnant. Not physically, but like Plato’s pregnant men who give birth to beautiful ideas((I am really very happy that I can still navigate my way through that bit of Greek text above. I’ve been afraid to try at all these past few years because it would be so disheartening to find myself so bad at something at which I had once excelled. I wish that I had worked on my own translation to put here, but I’ll allow myself to take some baby steps.)). It’s a good feeling. I described it once in a lyric that went something like “so impressed/I must express/the shape and weight of time.” Feeling so pregantly full of love and gratitude for all of the beautiful, amazing things around you that you have to express this love by giving birth to another beautiful, amazing thing.
Life begets life and beauty begets beauty.
Or something like that.
This is also a problem we have with music. I call it perfection getting in the way of doing anything at all. [↩]
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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 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
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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.
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