Sap in the Loins

I've taken up jogging, for a few reasons. I love breathing the cool air, I love oxygen! My running shoes make me run, my dog loves it, and I'm jealous of my dog's thigh muscles. Right now I'd rather run than go to the Y to swim; sometimes I can't talk to people at the YMCA when I am engrossed in my creativity, it feels like I am giving away my fire. And I'd much rather be outdoors this time of year.

Systems

My two favorite systems are the postal system and the digestive system, except when things get lost.

Folk Tales

I love the book The Uses of Enchantment, by Bruno Bettleheim. He says it is important for the rage and violence in folk tales not to be edited out or softened, so children have a place to project and process their anger. I couldn't agree more! Robert Bly's works, Iron John, The Sibling Society, and The Divine Child (a collaborative lecture with Marion Woodman) are my favorite discussions of the nourishment that can be harvested through reading and re-reading folk tales. I revisit them because the facets of the story change as I change.

Dorrie and the Blue Witch, a childrens book by Patricia Coombs, is the story of a family of witches; mother, daughter Dorrie, and a cat named Gink. Dorrie is left at home alone after her mother, rushing off to a witch meeting, warns Dorrie to guard against a big bad blue witch who is on the loose. When there's a knock at the door, Dorrie accidentally lets the big blue witch inside and invites her to join Dorrie and Gink for milk and cookies. Dorrie raids her mother's magic cupboard and puts shrinking powder in the blue witch's milk. The witch, intending to leave and take Dorrie with her, starts commanding Dorrie to hurry up and get her things. While Dorrie searches her sloppy bedroom for matching stockings and cloak, the blue witch is yelling yet rapidly shrinking, angrily jumping up and down at the bottom of the stairs. This was terrifying to me! Dorrie comes down and puts the now weensy shrunken bad blue witch into a jar the size of a light bulb, seals it, places it inside the piano, and piles it with books! Then she runs and hides under her mother's bed until her mother comes home. The black-and-white illustration of the shrunken witch being placed in the jar was so powerful to me I couldn't touch the page!! I still can't! Ironically, because my husband is piano player and tuner, my home is full of pianos, covered with books. This story was the folk tale of my childhood, of the ways in which I was powerless but also powerful.

Quote of the Day

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.

     - Kimberly Johnson

Spontaneous Pie

Our freezer is our magic treasure chest. When we have an abundance of bread or soup we drop things inside, then later we dig for treasures! Last night I found three little containers of hammentashen poppy-seed filling in my freezer which I had made three years ago from Joan Nathan's cookbook. It was still delicious! It is made from rum, poppy-seeds, sugar, and orange rind. So I just whipped up my whole wheat/white flour + oil hippie pie-crust, pat it into my stoneware pie pans and spooned the hammentashen filling on top. It came out great! I am a lazy soul-food cook who is always dreaming about food!

Urban Farmer

Today, homemade yogurt is incubating in a glass mason jar on the boiler. I like to make it this way: Fill a wide-mouth mason jar with a mixture of skim milk and a little nonfat dry milk. Heat it in a water bath to 180 degrees, then cool to 110 degrees. Add a teaspoon of live active plain yogurt, stir, and place, covered, in a warm spot; in a thermos or a picnic cooler, under a blanket, or on top of the boiler, or in a gas oven that uses a pilot light. Leave it for 6 to 8 hours. The friendly bacteria turns the milk into a delicious, tart pudding. Refrigerate and enjoy. Save a teaspoon for your next batch!

Spring Greens

Chives are poking through my garden!! They survived the winter!! I can't wait to plant a few basil, parsley, and tomato plants. Homemade bread with chives, magic sauce (garlic, tofu, oil, and vinegar buzzed in the food processor) and garden basil and tomato is divinity itself. Maybe I should plant collards and kale and rows of corn! I worship corn. It is the most cheerful, uplifting yellow food I know.

I'm dreaming of making noodles again in my robot macaroni machine a friend gave me. Let's celebrate the miraculous noodle on this ordinary day!

Happy Easter

We took a walk Sunday, and spotted a bunch of young children hunting for plastic Easter eggs in their backyard. They were carrying baskets, and one girl was dressed up in white tights, white shoes, white dress, and magenta coat with black trim. Later, we passed a little mill pond and spotted four grayish white duck eggs in a pile of leaves against the chain link fence. Real Easter eggs!

Mr Turbesi

Yesterday Bill and I played basketball at dusk at Turbesi Park, which is on our street (Rathbun) but in the next town of Blackstone. Mr Turbesi was an amazing man who built the park himself because he felt his part of town needed a place for kids to play. He said kids need a second chance. He would hire the local boys to work on the park, and take them to get their drivers permit or to a job interview. I would walk by his house and hear opera playing through the open windows, curtains blowing, and see the pear trees overflowing in his backyard. He had a big garden with raspberry bushes, and a big landscape painting hanging on his front porch facing the street!

One day a few years ago he invited me in when I was out walking. It was a magic day I will never forget. He gave me a tour of his house, books piled on the chairs. Like my grandfather he loved to read books, encyclopedias, dictionaries! He had me sit down on the bed in his bedroom and he read me a poem he kept in the jewelry box that he wrote for his deceased wife. He handed me a framed photo portrait of her. He told me he built his house with his dad from used lumber, working every night after his day job in the mills. They had to pull the nails from the lumber by hand. He said that while they were working his wife would come by with bowls of macaroni for supper every night. Mr Turbesi died a few years ago in his 90's.

Quotes About Writing

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for?

     - Alice Walker

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

     - Albert Camus

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

     - David Ben Gurion

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

     - Denise Levertov

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

     - E B White

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

     - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

     - Gloria Steinem

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

     - Baltasar Gracián

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

     - Isaac Asimov

In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.

     - Pearl S Buck

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

     - Jessamyn West

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

     - Oscar Wilde

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

     - Pearl S Buck

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

     - Stephen King

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out, that is the reason why I compose.

     - Ludwig van Beethoven.

Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing.

     - Heather Armstrong

Good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you.

     - Real Live Preacher

How It Is

I wish I could tell people that I buy groceries and pay my bills and rent and buy socks on the money from actually selling paintings, but it is a delicate topic. The gap between me and the people I've known for years has become vast. Most of my old friends are renovating their kitchens and planning their next vacation. They encourage their children to be musical and artistic, but not necessarily to become musicians or artists.

Meteor

When I was seven
I loved to look
in the science book
the little black and white photo
of the lady
who had been hit
by a meteor
she was in a hospital bed
with her bruised thigh
exposed for the camera
had she been out sunbathing
when it happened?
Maybe she was hanging her laundry
that day in the sun
perhaps she took a break
and was sipping lemonade
on her patio
how could she not
feel chosen
to be smacked
with astral debris?
Is this something I have to worry about?
I'll be sure to look up often
and step out of the way.
When my brother and I go into the yard to play baseball
I duck when a bird flies by.
(7/9/05)

Top Shelf

There are a few books I love so much I have to reread them every few years.

A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca
A Little Book About the Human Shadow by Robert Bly
The Unquiet Mind by Kay Jamison
Episodes by Pierre Delattre
If You Want To Write by Brenda Ueland
The Fire Eaters by William Cobb
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
A Woman Speaks by Anais Nin
The Art of Eating by M F K Fisher
Art and Fear by Bayles and Orland

Words Can Change Your Life

One day after living on my own for years my friend told me something that changed my life. He was a medical and psychology professional who was married to my best friend. I told him the story of my childhood. He listened compassionately. He clarified a few things. He said you are not weak. The strongest part of you, not the weakest, has been fighting a war. What you see as your weakness is actually your window, and your window is your strength.

Thank you, Larry.

Chin Up, Leg Up

I hated gym class in elementary school. When we all had to participate in tryouts for The Presidential Achievement Award I knew it would be another round of humiliation and stupidity. But everything changed when I discovered interesting side effects to my exertion. If I pulled myself up on the chin-up bar and then hung there for a while, it would cause a sensation superior to anything I had experienced before! I didn't know at the time, but it was an orgasm. The same thing happened doing leg-lifts, or climbing the rope. I decided this meant there was a God and that this was his gift to me for having a mean mother.

Quotes of the Day

Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.

     - Amy Bloom

I wish I could walk for a day and a night,
And find me at dawn in a desolate place
With never the rut of a road in sight,
Nor the roof of a house, nor the eyes of a face.

     - Edna St Vincent Millay, from the poem Departure

I now feel like writing is the most important thing I do. In some ways, it’s harder than surgery. But I do think I've found a theme in trying to understand failure and what it means in the world we live in, and how we can improve at what we do.

     - Dr Atul Gwande, surgeon

I've been doing this for 52 years. If I wanted to get a real job, ain't nobody goin' to hire me. I ain't worked in 52 years. Oh yeah, I guess it's work, but it's a different kind of gig. I'm still makin' people damn near get undressed. I'm feelin' good!

     - Bo Diddley

Happy Passover

A gezunt dir in pupik! (Pronounced "ah geh-soont dear en pooh-pik.") It's a blessing, and it means good health to your belly-button. It really means good health to your entire being but it's aimed at the belly-button because that's where it all began.

The Feast Of Excited Insects

I'm sorry I missed this holiday, which happened about a month ago. In The People's Republic of China it is called Ching Che, Dragon Calls Insects to Life:

This is the time when, as the Chinese say, "the dragon raises his head." The lordly dragon goes into hibernation in September in the form of a tiny creature, and thus remains unobserved till he calls the insects to life. On the day of the "Excited Insects" certain fetishes are displayed to placate them.

     - V. R. Bunkhardt, from Chinese Creeds and Customs

In Korea:

Kyongchip, which may be translated as "excited insects," indicates the beginning of Spring. In the country, farmers go into the fields and sow rice and wheat with perennial faith that sun, wind, and rain can be relied upon to produce a good harvest. And, in a grateful and benevolent mood, families carry flower bouquets to the graves of their ancestors as an auspicious beginning of another Spring.

     - Gene Sawyer, from Celebrations: Asia and the Pacific

Fried Eggs

My new fad is to fry two eggs, sunny-side up, in my little black cast-iron skillet and then put a potholder on the kitchen counter and place the fry pan with the eggs right on it. I pull up a chair and eat right out of the pan! This way my eggs stay hot, unbroken, and runny. And they are so good with my home-made bread toasted! They are fresh brown-shelled eggs from a farm in Foster RI. Why didn't I discover eating out of the pan 30 years ago!

Room in the World

When I was a kid I was always fascinated by Grand Central Station. I loved watching all the people and spotting so many amazing faces from all over the world. Seeing humanity in all its fullness gave me unspoken permission to be who I am. Anything was possible!! But I also saw it as proof that maybe there was no room in the world for me.