Slovenian Stew

I was cooking black beans and decided to add garlic and olive oil and chicken bullion. I tossed in some frozen corn for color, then I spotted my stash of frozen pork and added the whole thing, and 3 cans of sauerkraut (they needed to be used up). Then I looked online to see if this has been done before and this is what I found.

With confidence I added tomato paste and an onion and a jar of my local lifeguard's homemade mead. I transferred the contents from my crock pot to my big blue iron enamel pot and now I am slow baking it covered at 250 F. I've tasted it several times and it is delicious. I might serve it on rice.

Slovenian Bean and Sauerkraut Hotpot (Jota)

Dream

I was hiking in the woods on a trail and I got lost. A maroon mountain lion appeared. He was solid color right up to the whites of his eyes. I put out my hand and he bit my pinky. While my finger was in his mouth I pet him on the head and thought, I won't look him in the eye, I'll just be kind, and he released my hand.

The Well

“I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Do Not Worry

“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Red Car

Today the red car was parked in the last rectangle of sunshine in the parking lot. I watched. Five guys jumped out. It was the clown-car of drug dealers. The driver is always the girlfriend of The Kid. He sits in front. Her other passengers clamber out and dissipate making local deliveries. They wear their jeans so low you can see their briefs and the tops of their naked thighs. They have to walk like penguins in order to uphold this fashion. When the police drove by the boys hurried back into the car and drove off.

Exile from Thought

I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

RAYMOND CHANDLER

Illusion

Friendship was another illusion like love, though it did not reach the same mad heights. People pretended that they were friends, when the fact was they were brought together by force of circumstances.
R.K. Narayan

Loneliness

We come together only to go apart again. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle & misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. The law of life. No sense in battling against it.
R.K. Narayan

A Yoga

You become writer by writing. It is a yoga.
R.K. Narayan

Short Story

I killed a man. I had discussed it with my husband. The plan. Then I had a piece of wire and I took him out at the wrists, cutting his hands off. He bled to death behind my parents old house in New York. My local Rhode Island police arrived and covered the man in a white sheet. I was in shock. "I murdered a man," I said to myself. Two female lawyers were there. One was a friend of mine. "You probably don't want to be my friend anymore," I said to her. The other woman lawyer was from Providence. I explained what I had done. "My life is over! I will be living under fluorescent lights in a cinder block building." I didn't mention that my husband helped me plan the murder. "I must have an anger problem," I said.

The Bad Landlord

The bad landlord never shows up and leaves nasty threatening messages about eviction if the rent is late by a minute. The bad landlord hasn't lit the back hallway and so everyone is clambering up and down in the dark. The bad landlord doesn't care that there's a hole in the fence and a hole in the floor of the third floor porch. The bad landlord doesn't care even when he has been told.

Broke the Spell

I broke the spell of eating sandwiches for every meal and made a soup with what I had on hand; celery, onions, carrots, kidney beans, a can of crushed tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, chicken bullion, wine vinegar, salt, Adobo. It was so good I ate a bowl for breakfast.

Dream

I killed a man. I had discussed it with my husband. The plan. Then I had a piece of wire and I took him out at the wrists, cutting his hands off. He bled to death behind my parents old house in New York. My local Rhode Island police arrived and covered the man in a white sheet. I was in shock. "I murdered a man," I said to myself. Two female lawyers were there. One was a friend of mine. "You probably don't want to be my friend anymore," I said to her. The other woman lawyer was from Providence. I explained what I had done. "My life is over! I will be living under fluorescent lights in a cinder block building." I didn't mention that my husband helped me plan the murder. "I must have an anger problem," I said. I woke up relieved that it was a dream.

A Key Mystery

I found a key on a key chain with a CVS care card, ACE Hardware and Panera Bread cards attached. It was in the grass under the Urgent Care sign opposite the Kennedy Manor high-rise. I dropped it off at the police station. "I'm hoping CVS can identify the person for you so they can come claim it," I said. "If it's a key to an apartment in the high-rise, I know the tenants get charged a hundred dollars when they get locked out. I hope this makes this person's day!"

Underwater Detective

The pool was cool yesterday--quite thrilling! I thought of my friends wild Atlantic swims. I swam next to a retired police detective who is also a Tai-chi expert. He had special flippers that fill with water and a thick yellow elastic to tie his thighs together and foam rubber handcuffs for his ankles and other torturous swim devices to "work his core" or cause drowning!

Jessamyn West

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
JESSAMYN WEST

Sue Grafton

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They’re just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.
SUE GRAFTON

Kate Atkinson

“The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.”
― Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet

Dream

I dreamed my husband and I were at our old 3rd floor Oakland Ave apartment in Providence. The landlord Victor and tenant Joni had not aged at all in the 31 years since I had last seen them. We decided to move back in. The apartment had a fireplace now but other than that it was the same as it was when I rented it in the 80's. Joni and her boyfriend decided if we rent it they would follow their dream of moving to Wyoming. This dream is what happened from reading a time-traveling themed novel.