Got Culture?

Yesterday my yogurt came out so perfectly I decided to try making buttermilk with the last 1/2 cup of cultured buttermilk in my fridge. It was so easy it was the same as making yogurt without the heating and cooling of the milk. I will do it today as I am hooked on cultivating culture. I should learn more about microbiology like the cheese nun. I have never liked butter but today there is an article in the NYT about cultured butter. Here.

Last night I noticed all of Pepe's peaches had fallen in the wind and rain. I grabbed a few for my Little Red Riding Hood basket, picked out the bruised spots and ate them on my way home. They were juicy and sweet. Lily ate a pit!

I woke up with this thought: If I am so psychic why can't I find the mop? Woke at 4 but got out of bed at 5 made coffee, started the laundry and hung the sheets and clothes in the dark. Just me and the squeaky pulley, lit up by the house lights. Why do I love these things?

The New Dominican American corner market at East School Street and Rathbun Street has a bright blue ATM sign, a spotlight all night and a multiphase OPEN sign. Digital neon! I love it. Maybe we can parade for them next year. They are a terrific store with 4 plantains for a dollar.

If I had this level of energy all the time I would be an actress in the theater. Yet I am an actress, in the theater of life. Theater, poetry, music, painting, dance are the magnifying glasses that teach us art is everywhere.

I was thinking what would I miss about my city. All of the characters!
Mothers wearing pajama pants taking their kids to the bus stop. Apartment windows covered with bed sheets and blankets pinched into the storm windows. The teen boys with jeans deliberately hanging low, waddling, swaddled in coolness. The house painter and carpenter vans, ladders strapped to the roof, tooting for their worker buddies at 4 AM. The post office parking lot full of workers at 3:30 AM. Diners open at 4AM. French Canadian old ladies commenting in dialect to each other. The public works guys waving and asking about Lily. Jackson the scrap metal guy asking for my sourdough bread. The friendly homeless guys who stay at the shelter and live at the benches, or under the trees at the library one has his gray-haired green eyed cat on a leash.

Yesterday I found a bunch of 100 dollar over sized play money bills on my granite stairs. The gods are trying to tell me something.

Hey, the radio just told me it's my hero actor Tony Shaloub's birthday today! Happy Birthday Tony, we adore you.

You never know what you'll want to write until it starts writing itself in your head. -Jill Ker Conway

There's a whole language out there, and one's role as a writer is to stumble around in it. -Ciaran Carson

I like good company, but I like hard work still better. -Camille Saint-Saens

I long, long, long ago thought the finest thing to be is an entertainer, with tons of funny things to say. If people find lots more in my work, that's great, but if they just read and have a good laugh, that's fine for me. -James Howe McClure


Number 20
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from A Coney Island of the Mind. © New Directions,1968.
source