The Melbourne ShuffleWe live in an age of tumult. As our technological acumen expands, so too do our capacities for communication. Like never before, we have a wealth of options and media by which to express ourselves to each other. We still have the venerable paper and stamp, these days mostly used to send in a message of money. There is the phone, which is now everywhere, and electronic text, which is becoming equally ubiquitous. We are recycling old norms in faster and more pervasive ways, but we are finding forms anew, too.
I think my brother and I just had a conversation consisting entirely of YouTube links.
And I'm not sure how I feel about that.
UpdateAs it turns out, my brother is pretty happy about it.
SeedingOne of the things I remember from my childhood is the gardening. Some of the memories are immediate: the hot afternoons, the smell of the leaf mold pile in the sun, walking the top of the split rail fence when I got bored of weeding (I was young, then). Some other things sit quiet in the periphery, like the seeds. My father collects seeds, and puts them out to cure on paper towels folded in quarters and placed atop the microwave. It is something of a reconnection when I realized that I could do similar things this year, banking seed toward the next.
I have envelopes now. I suppose I could have found actual seed envelopes, but I have a lot of regular ones, and they seem to work just fine. I have pulled seeds from the anaheims, and the tomatoes, too: I have seeds for green zebras, pink ladies, early girls, yellow paste, and grapes. I let them dry on paper towels, parked atop the spice rack. I don't have a microwave. It seems odd to say that.
I'm looking forward to the attempt to coax life from those things next year. Part of all of this is to develop a better understanding of where food comes from, and how it gets to my table, and what it is all worth. With the seeds, I get (hopefully!) tomatoes for free, if I'm willing to trade the time for them. So far, they've been astoundingly superior, so I'll take it.
The one disappointment continues to be the poor suffering brandywine; I have no seeds from it. This is not due to any lack of vigor or effort on the plant's part. Whatever it is these days that sneaks about in the garden wreaking havoc has discovered that the plant can be tilted toward the hedge, and the hedge can be a ladder, and again I am left tomatoless (unless I get volunteers next year; we'll see). I am reasonably sure that there are ordinances in place that prohibit me from sitting on the back porch with a pellet gun, waiting. I am less sure that there are similar measures against archery. I do not know my way around a bow and arrow, but I imagine I could learn.
The other thing the seeds bring is the gentle memory of my late uncle, an avid gardener. I was learning about planting garlic, and reading a lot, and asking questions, and he put up a weathered hand and told me: "Stop." He paused a moment, and then: "you're thinking too much about it. Take a clove of garlic, and stick it in the ground." He sat back in his chair with his tea.
"It will know what to do."
No KiteToday began with a grimace, a grey dour tinge and the threat of mist in the air. I walked in anyway; one of the useful things about habitual exercise is that it becomes somewhat addictive, or at the very least a welcome comfort. I will likely soon need to break out the stout coats, but this morning all that was required was an umbrella and some ability to shrug off the damp.
After the front fell through, we were treated to a taste of autumn, sorely welcome after the swamps of recent days. The sky became blue tufted with clouds. The air became crisp, teasingly scented with leaves and the smoke of fruitwoods. Grilled cheese sandwiches are called for next to mugs of tomato soup; there is a promise of cider in the evenings, bubbling on the stove with steeping spices. It is good weather for walking, good weather for sleeping, good weather for standing on a hill, windswept.
Sleep well tonight.
Leaving The Light OnBasements are useful things.
I recently bought a wok. We have a number of fancy boutique stores around here, but I did not go to any of those. They are nice stores for toys, and occasionally tools (expensive, though!), but with a little work and a bit of luck I've found that one can do much better. Consider the factory seconds sales that go on twice a year a bit south of here. When one is buying a prop or a toy, one can afford the luxury of how a thing looks; when one is hunting tools it is of far greater import to get a thing that works. I know many, many people that have outfitted their kitchens with a professional compliment of insanely useful cookware because of those sales, and because they get to buy things that work. And then go home and use the hell out of them. I will happily raise my hand as one of those. So: I bought a wok. I avoided the toy stores, and went nosing around for a closer source.
I've got a fair choice, there; I started looking in the calm back shelves of various Asian groceries, and managed to find many, most larger than what I could comfortably use. I ended up with a small (12 inch) steel wok for ten bucks, and a ring upon which for it to sit for two. I brought them home, and pondered.
The wok had no handle; there was a bit of steel cylinder where a handle should go, but none there. Well, down to the basement! I found bit of doweling in the scrap pile, cut it down, and thumped it home. It was still wobbly, so I cut some shims from some old redwood planking, and tapped them in next to the dowel. With a hole through the other end and a bit of cord through the hole, I was set. Back upstairs!
The wok ring posed a bit of difficulty; it would not sit well on the burner guards, and slid all over the place without. Back down to the basement! After a bit of work with the tin snips and the Dremel, the wok ring had notches to lock into place on the guards. Back upstairs!
It's a success, so far. The wok is a bit too far above the flame, but I can stomp back downstairs and fix that, at some point. The thing is a little side heavy now, but no worries. It presents itself on the wall, I suppose, as ugly to the eye: the underside is already coloring from flame, and the handle is utterly pedestrian, and the cord it hangs on is, at best, meek.
But it works.
Apropos Of The DayOne of the things I have rattling around in the drawers in the kitchen is a bunch of cheese graters. Two are flat paddle type things repurposed by a manufacturer of woodworking tools (and they're unbelievably good at grating cheese). I've also got one of those hand held drum-type graters that are sometimes seen hovering over bowls of pasta at restaurants, but I don't use that for cheese. I use it for nuts.
I figured this out looking for a way to grind up a bunch of walnuts for Maida Heatter's storied recipe for Craters (highly recommended). The cheese grater made short work of the nuts, along with bits of chocolate. It did something else; it made a lovely pile of grated walnuts that were...fluffy.
Try this: put a bit of ice cream in a bowl (I have some coffee ice cream in the freezer). Drizzle a bit of chocolate syrup over that (a good excuse to whomp up a batch). Then: grated walnuts. A quarter cup turns into a topping all on its own, no need for whipping up some cream. Cheery is optional. Tuck in.
I should start making ice cream again. Basements are good for that.
Shallots And RoadsI wandered down to the local convenience store a while ago to get a cup of coffee (I was out of coffee, and they keep half and half in the cooler) and maybe a pastry (they bake them there, some of them, and with luck they are warm). I was standing in line to pay when a gentleman came in clutching a map. He named a street, and asked us if any of us knew where that was.
Then, something remarkable happened. Those behind the counter, those of us in line, and those not yet in line: we had all heard of it, but none of us had any idea of where it was. We poured over the map, asked for hints, pointed in directions. Two members of the city police force came in and joined us; they had both heard of the street, too, but neither of them had any idea where it was, either. We all stood akimbo or hands on heads, utterly unable to help. In the end, we may have been able to offer him some aid; it's strange to know a place well enough to be able to use the gaps to help, and between all of us, we had a pretty good idea of where it wasn't.
I have only been here for seventeen years. I am not a native. A friend of mine who has spent more time in other places on both coasts has this to say about this place: "it's okay to be nice here." She has to remind herself of that from time to time. I have been here long enough to understand that part of it, at least.
For months and months, the shallots coming into the city have been poor. Reedy husks of paper with no weight, the same story everywhere, and no one to know why. Today at the market, though, stuck in the corner was a simple box of shallots, good and purple and plump.
One HalfSomewhere around here, there is a 43rd ½ St.
Also, the contact address has changed again.
Rest well!
Lessons Of An Ambulatory LifeOn weekends, I don't have much care for clocks. I managed to set up the house such that it has only a few of them, and those that do exist are hard to read, easy to ignore, or are only correct twice a day. Those last ones keep that secret close, and the moments they mark mean little more than to point out when I should have bought more batteries. What clocks I do have around here are mostly meant for generating unholy squall in the mornings to rouse me: I do not use them othertimes. Occasionally, this gets me in trouble.
I am sometimes an idiot. Somewhere at the beginning of last week I left the map light on in my car, leading to the discovery near the end of the week that the battery was dead, dead. In the normal course of things, this is not a big deal. Although the topologies around here are not strictly kind to such stunts, I can walk to pretty much everything I need. The problem this morning, then, was that I found myself with an appointment both 2 miles and 30 minutes away. Tricky.
If I had taken a flatter route, it would have been longer. The route I ended up taking was really not flat at all. I made it in 40 minutes.
I'm a little proud of that, given the kind of shape I was in five years ago. Still: oof.
Tomorrow, I will get a jump, then drive a long time, listening to the game and taking in roads that I do not yet know. And I should probably fix the clocks.
And This To Be Remembered ByI have a friend with a car; the car has no hat.
This is a silly vernacular for a car with a roof that can be bade go away, tucked into recess behind the head rests. The sky goes wide, then, at speed: tall an blue or wide and grey, and in each case strangely still as the road unravels underneath and the trees clutch and shake as they blur by. Other cars without hats, driven by people perhaps in scarves (or hats of their own) pass in the other lane, and they wave as they go. You can do that sort of thing in such a car; on pretty days with flinty air and big smiles it is nearly expected. Overpasses sound like applause, tunnels reverberate with an arena cheer. I have a car with a window in the roof to give good illusion, and I like it, too, but it is nothing compared to a car without a hat.
I should remember this year to ask if I can borrow time in it. We are coming up on the season of apples, and there are places I'll need to go. There are farms around here that grow them, sell them, apples the likes are rare to find in other ways. Varieties that do not make it to the markets can be sought out there in the mist raked hills, piled up in bins made by hand to be sold by the bag, the half-bushel, the bushel, brought home in plain brown paper and set to sit on the sill until the pie crust is done or the applesauce is bubbling. They are tart, sweet, and shimmer with season. When the teeth take them, they burst crisp.
I can think of no better way to get to them than blue roads, back roads, paths known only to locals, the lost and the brave as they climb and fall over the wooded hills, so close and easily ignored. The roads fold into valleys under canapies that will soon enough turn flame and gold, and offer vistas from the ridgetops that will betray the rivers and streams only by what is no longer there, worn away. I will take up my recordings of Barry Phillips and Edgar Meyer, and seek the season, hopefully with the favor of my friend.
Because I can think of no better way to do it than in a car with no hat.
IndemnityA friend of mine just moved into a new apartment in a new place, a new state: a new home. A responsible sort, one of the things on the todo list was the acquisition of renter's insurance. They were somewhat amused to discover that, should some chunk of spacecraft re-enter our skies and cause damage to their residence, they are covered. There is no distinction between craft made by men and craft made by others, but it would not surprise me if those setting the tables have thought about it. The actuarial world is a weird one.
I riposte with this: as part of the policy on this place, amongst other things, I am insured against any damage done by a volcano. I do not make too much noise about the relevant geographic location of these writings, but it is simple to discover, more or less. If you are lazy, I will tell you: I do not have much to fear from volcanism here. But I'm covered.
It is getting cooler in the evenings. A harvest moon rose high last night, starting amber and turning bone white upon climbing. The air tastes like autumn, moves like autumn, and soon I'll have to think about turning on the furnace. Soon I'll have to shut out the sounds of the yard and hill, return the house to the cloture of the colder months. This is good: the oven is happily hot, roasting a pan of beets. There are covers on the bed. This is bad: soon I'll have to close all the windows.
But not tonight.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Mail accepted for the bears in the basement. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.