thin veil reveal
green tree
deep
brown
earth...
i smell rain on your hands
look there... past the blue deep
beyond the grey-white, billowy cloud
there above the hills
over the undulating tree line
i see her...
feel that soul sun
high
in the abysmal expanse
i feel her warmth
rooted in my belly
soul shine
leap from rooftop
intrinsic as dew drop
speckle forehead
and brow
with your heat glow
glisten
and
slide.
26 June 2009
17 June 2009
On Baking
Leaning over the sink, I glanced out the window, peaking at a chubby spring robin, breast of burnt umber. Flipping the knob to 350, removing the wok and cornflower blue cast iron skillet, I set about organizing some counter space and to begin baking.
I find the art of baking does not take much effort. It’s actually quite simple—follow and or create consistent directions, contribute to your local economy by investing in really good ingredients, and almost just as essential as organic, free range eggs, [please] ensure you add a healthy dose of ‘good guys’ (as my dear friend Ben refers to ‘good vibes’)… what I mean to say is when baking, ‘commence with a happy heart!’
I have learned (the hard way) over the years, that no different than a teaspoon versus tablespoon misstep, if you come to the kitchen with a kink in your attitude, you might just as well ‘fuggetabout it’ and go buy your prospective gift recipients a hearty box of Newman-O’s!
I am keen on using separate bowls for dry and wet ingredients. Ideally, I enjoy using my shorter, stouter, sea-green ceramic bowl (a gift from my aunt) for dry ingredients, and my sister’s deep indigo-blue ceramic piece for wet. About two years ago, I treated myself to the purchase of a large sterling silver bowl that is perfect for extra large batches of dough—lately though, I have preferred the handmade pottery to the hammered metal.
Due to some serious issues with procrastination and an inability to prioritize what I would like to do with what I think I have to do. I typically do not plan in advance to bake. It’s often a spontaneous reaction to the reminder of an important date of some kind. In this haste, the butter is never at room temperature and I usually slow-melt it in one of my blue saucepans.
I’ve found that baking is its’ own form of therapy. In particular, I enjoy the method to this art, the grace of bouncing around the kitchen, listening to some good music, or perhaps Car Talk on a Saturday morning. I dig the ritual of putting on my apron—I have an assorted collection, small but sentimental. Customarily, I am baking for someone or something—some kind of communal event—or a birthday, a thank you, and every so often, as a way to repay someone, barter-style, for a service they offered to me. Sometimes my aunt will edit some of my ad copy or a short piece of marketing collateral, and although I do not have the budget she deserves, she’s happy to receive my thanks and a dozen chocolate chip cookies.
Another little idiosyncrasy of my baking practice includes amassing all of the ingredients and the properly sized measuring cups and spoons so they are sitting on the counter in little groups—the dry with the dry, the wet with the wet. At some point, I will need to add a colorful, ceramic collection of ramekins to this arsenal…making this seemingly OCD activity as harmonized as possibly… ostensibly synchronized appropriately.
For some reason, I always start with the wet ingredients—maybe it’s the way I was taught or the way all of the recipes I’ve ever perused are written. Maybe it’s because I find that if you slowly add your dry ingredients to the wet ones that mixing is simpler, and you know right away if something is off with your dough consistency. It also aids in not producing a white, puffy cloud of dry ingredients during a plot of wet into dry.
The last time I baked, as I went from preparing wet ingredients to dry, I realized I had not grabbed the all-important sifter for my baking stockpile and reached into my baking-pantry shelves to grab it. When I did, I pirouetted from one side of the kitchen to the other (my kitchen set up is two long strips (including sink/stove/refrigerator and countertops) separated by a narrow piece of hardwood floor. The baking pantry is on one side and the space I was using for preparation was across the floor, next to the sink. So in this movement—one that I do almost repetitively while baking, was a moment. In it were my grandma’s hands.
As memory often does, it sneaks up on you, sensorily… the fragment of an image or sound or scent reminds and transports. In my moment there, I had traveled from my dissimilar, black-counter-topped kitchen with a window overlooking the side yard, to my gram’s kitchen, there on Platte Road, (not the large, white, cavernous grandparent’s home of my youth. It had long-ago been destroyed and traded-in for an expanded bank parking lot and a fat bag of cash; no, it was the diminutive, ‘retirement’ spot, just down the way, where they both came to die that I speak of). Where the out-of-date, gold speckled Formica met the sink and the sink was in front of a window overlooking the backyard.
My grandparents were both wonderful craft persons particularly in the kitchen—my grandma a master pie (crust in particular) and pound cake baker (among myriad other talents) and my grandpa an excellent baklava and rice pudding aficionado.
In fact if it weren’t for my gram’s stellar piecrust, I might not be on the planet! My mom, a spritely 16-year-old waitress at the local diner served pie baked with that recipe to an older, hippie, just home from Vietnam. When he learned that it was her mother’s recipe, he asked if she knew how to bake pie like that. Flirtatiously, she hurriedly answered ‘yes!’ and later begged her mother to teach her, straightaway.
I lived, briefly in my grandparent’s ‘retirement’ home after they both had past away. Even before that though, two of the treasures granted me from their kitchen supplies were the silvery metal measuring spoon set and old-fashioned tin sifter.
Every time I bake I think of her, the worn metal of the teaspoon in her fingertips—she had the loveliest hands and nails—soft and sumptuous. Whenever I pick the spoons up, and they clank together, I imagine the way she may have wiped the last smidge of vanilla onto her apron, so she could measure baking soda next.
Sighing now, with the deep, satisfying inhalation of acceptance that memory has a magical way of stirring and healing the spirit, I realize that in that one iota of remembrance, that I am now writing about, that it is not just gram’s hands to remember… maybe it’s the approach of Father’s Day, but in fact, I recognize that I think of them, for they shared a kitchen for more than 50 years, and Grandpa’s knack was diverse and delicious.
I find the art of baking does not take much effort. It’s actually quite simple—follow and or create consistent directions, contribute to your local economy by investing in really good ingredients, and almost just as essential as organic, free range eggs, [please] ensure you add a healthy dose of ‘good guys’ (as my dear friend Ben refers to ‘good vibes’)… what I mean to say is when baking, ‘commence with a happy heart!’
I have learned (the hard way) over the years, that no different than a teaspoon versus tablespoon misstep, if you come to the kitchen with a kink in your attitude, you might just as well ‘fuggetabout it’ and go buy your prospective gift recipients a hearty box of Newman-O’s!
I am keen on using separate bowls for dry and wet ingredients. Ideally, I enjoy using my shorter, stouter, sea-green ceramic bowl (a gift from my aunt) for dry ingredients, and my sister’s deep indigo-blue ceramic piece for wet. About two years ago, I treated myself to the purchase of a large sterling silver bowl that is perfect for extra large batches of dough—lately though, I have preferred the handmade pottery to the hammered metal.
Due to some serious issues with procrastination and an inability to prioritize what I would like to do with what I think I have to do. I typically do not plan in advance to bake. It’s often a spontaneous reaction to the reminder of an important date of some kind. In this haste, the butter is never at room temperature and I usually slow-melt it in one of my blue saucepans.
I’ve found that baking is its’ own form of therapy. In particular, I enjoy the method to this art, the grace of bouncing around the kitchen, listening to some good music, or perhaps Car Talk on a Saturday morning. I dig the ritual of putting on my apron—I have an assorted collection, small but sentimental. Customarily, I am baking for someone or something—some kind of communal event—or a birthday, a thank you, and every so often, as a way to repay someone, barter-style, for a service they offered to me. Sometimes my aunt will edit some of my ad copy or a short piece of marketing collateral, and although I do not have the budget she deserves, she’s happy to receive my thanks and a dozen chocolate chip cookies.
Another little idiosyncrasy of my baking practice includes amassing all of the ingredients and the properly sized measuring cups and spoons so they are sitting on the counter in little groups—the dry with the dry, the wet with the wet. At some point, I will need to add a colorful, ceramic collection of ramekins to this arsenal…making this seemingly OCD activity as harmonized as possibly… ostensibly synchronized appropriately.
For some reason, I always start with the wet ingredients—maybe it’s the way I was taught or the way all of the recipes I’ve ever perused are written. Maybe it’s because I find that if you slowly add your dry ingredients to the wet ones that mixing is simpler, and you know right away if something is off with your dough consistency. It also aids in not producing a white, puffy cloud of dry ingredients during a plot of wet into dry.
The last time I baked, as I went from preparing wet ingredients to dry, I realized I had not grabbed the all-important sifter for my baking stockpile and reached into my baking-pantry shelves to grab it. When I did, I pirouetted from one side of the kitchen to the other (my kitchen set up is two long strips (including sink/stove/refrigerator and countertops) separated by a narrow piece of hardwood floor. The baking pantry is on one side and the space I was using for preparation was across the floor, next to the sink. So in this movement—one that I do almost repetitively while baking, was a moment. In it were my grandma’s hands.
As memory often does, it sneaks up on you, sensorily… the fragment of an image or sound or scent reminds and transports. In my moment there, I had traveled from my dissimilar, black-counter-topped kitchen with a window overlooking the side yard, to my gram’s kitchen, there on Platte Road, (not the large, white, cavernous grandparent’s home of my youth. It had long-ago been destroyed and traded-in for an expanded bank parking lot and a fat bag of cash; no, it was the diminutive, ‘retirement’ spot, just down the way, where they both came to die that I speak of). Where the out-of-date, gold speckled Formica met the sink and the sink was in front of a window overlooking the backyard.
My grandparents were both wonderful craft persons particularly in the kitchen—my grandma a master pie (crust in particular) and pound cake baker (among myriad other talents) and my grandpa an excellent baklava and rice pudding aficionado.
In fact if it weren’t for my gram’s stellar piecrust, I might not be on the planet! My mom, a spritely 16-year-old waitress at the local diner served pie baked with that recipe to an older, hippie, just home from Vietnam. When he learned that it was her mother’s recipe, he asked if she knew how to bake pie like that. Flirtatiously, she hurriedly answered ‘yes!’ and later begged her mother to teach her, straightaway.
I lived, briefly in my grandparent’s ‘retirement’ home after they both had past away. Even before that though, two of the treasures granted me from their kitchen supplies were the silvery metal measuring spoon set and old-fashioned tin sifter.
Every time I bake I think of her, the worn metal of the teaspoon in her fingertips—she had the loveliest hands and nails—soft and sumptuous. Whenever I pick the spoons up, and they clank together, I imagine the way she may have wiped the last smidge of vanilla onto her apron, so she could measure baking soda next.
Sighing now, with the deep, satisfying inhalation of acceptance that memory has a magical way of stirring and healing the spirit, I realize that in that one iota of remembrance, that I am now writing about, that it is not just gram’s hands to remember… maybe it’s the approach of Father’s Day, but in fact, I recognize that I think of them, for they shared a kitchen for more than 50 years, and Grandpa’s knack was diverse and delicious.
02 June 2009
molding clay
The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering. --Ben Okri
For today at least, I’ve determined an answer to a chicken/egg sort of self-observation… in some ways though, I know for certain, I am not alone in this ever-present evolution… this molding of clay.
As an over analyst by both craft and trade (HONK!), I spend a fair amount of time perplexed of my own accord.
I have dabbled in therapy.
Self-help healing.
Manuals on bettering and furthering.
I have aspired and inspired, relished and rehashed.
Often though, in retrospect, I might make myself barf. Instead.
Seriously.
What with the excess emotion—felt, anticipated, often expected, ridiculed…
What with it all?
Truly?
No. I will not blablabla. For although my life is a shared soliloquy of blablabla’s to whomever has not grown too tiresome from the listen, it is in the sorting—the turning of eggs and flipping of hotcakes, that true sourcing gleans-through–skimming to the top… surfacing, temporarily, sometimes stunningly…
And so to reflect a bit on dear Ben Okri… in my ‘capacity to create’
I do overcome.
I do endure.
I have transformed.
I do love and have been loved.
Am loved.
I do not suffer.
The countless experiences that have sculpted and shaped me are not dismal reminders of the negative… not painful scar-tissue-filled mounds… no.
They have left their stories on every inch of me.
They have changed my structure, my fibrous-being alters, unendingly.
Yet how is it, that in all the tedium of reconstruction; the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months; the YEARS of evolution—How is it exactly that at the tip-top, when I fancy that I too
walk like I'm on a mission
cuz that's the way I groove
[when in fact…]
I got more and more to do
I got less and less to prove
[and when I smack-myself-in-the-forehead…
wonderin’ why]
it took me too long to realize
that I don't take good pictures
cuz I have the kind of beauty that moves (Evolve, Ani diFranco)
And I get it, I just get it and I feel it in every last pore—in all the nooks and crannies, all the way to my toes, and the insecurities are dead-gone. Not just tucked away for the night under their handmade quilts, but gone from down-deep…
G O N E away…
How come then… the eureka moment of peace dissolves into a reality where it is neither tip or top?
Nadir it is neither, yet a blurred somewhere in between.
A boat, adrift unanchored, it’s anchored-rope severed.
How come then, with one terse word. With the fragment of one little memory, all the built-up-foundation of new construction—the new growth, strong in its fertile homeland.
How come then, must doubt seem to eradicate it all?
Crumble the sand castle into the sea?
How to desire motion, again, from whence it has ceased?
How to let the empty ache of pain subside?
Let the belly fill again with the humble renewal of laughter…let the heart, fill again its balloon of hope, full.
Splash again there, in the waves, build that sand-castle, knowing full-well the raindrops may reshape… the grains wash away again, into the sea…
For today at least, I’ve determined an answer to a chicken/egg sort of self-observation… in some ways though, I know for certain, I am not alone in this ever-present evolution… this molding of clay.
As an over analyst by both craft and trade (HONK!), I spend a fair amount of time perplexed of my own accord.
I have dabbled in therapy.
Self-help healing.
Manuals on bettering and furthering.
I have aspired and inspired, relished and rehashed.
Often though, in retrospect, I might make myself barf. Instead.
Seriously.
What with the excess emotion—felt, anticipated, often expected, ridiculed…
What with it all?
Truly?
No. I will not blablabla. For although my life is a shared soliloquy of blablabla’s to whomever has not grown too tiresome from the listen, it is in the sorting—the turning of eggs and flipping of hotcakes, that true sourcing gleans-through–skimming to the top… surfacing, temporarily, sometimes stunningly…
And so to reflect a bit on dear Ben Okri… in my ‘capacity to create’
I do overcome.
I do endure.
I have transformed.
I do love and have been loved.
Am loved.
I do not suffer.
The countless experiences that have sculpted and shaped me are not dismal reminders of the negative… not painful scar-tissue-filled mounds… no.
They have left their stories on every inch of me.
They have changed my structure, my fibrous-being alters, unendingly.
Yet how is it, that in all the tedium of reconstruction; the seconds, minutes, hours, days, months; the YEARS of evolution—How is it exactly that at the tip-top, when I fancy that I too
walk like I'm on a mission
cuz that's the way I groove
[when in fact…]
I got more and more to do
I got less and less to prove
[and when I smack-myself-in-the-forehead…
wonderin’ why]
it took me too long to realize
that I don't take good pictures
cuz I have the kind of beauty that moves (Evolve, Ani diFranco)
And I get it, I just get it and I feel it in every last pore—in all the nooks and crannies, all the way to my toes, and the insecurities are dead-gone. Not just tucked away for the night under their handmade quilts, but gone from down-deep…
G O N E away…
How come then… the eureka moment of peace dissolves into a reality where it is neither tip or top?
Nadir it is neither, yet a blurred somewhere in between.
A boat, adrift unanchored, it’s anchored-rope severed.
How come then, with one terse word. With the fragment of one little memory, all the built-up-foundation of new construction—the new growth, strong in its fertile homeland.
How come then, must doubt seem to eradicate it all?
Crumble the sand castle into the sea?
How to desire motion, again, from whence it has ceased?
How to let the empty ache of pain subside?
Let the belly fill again with the humble renewal of laughter…let the heart, fill again its balloon of hope, full.
Splash again there, in the waves, build that sand-castle, knowing full-well the raindrops may reshape… the grains wash away again, into the sea…
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