Foodies-7/31/2014 The Herbal Kitchen

Aleathia says:

My garden should be in full swing at this time but what I have is 4 cherry tomatoes, a fading cucumber plant, a cross-my-fingers-please-grow-goddamit zucchini plant and more herbs than I can shake a stick at.  Basil, Oregano, Thyme and Coriander are bountiful.  I can grow herbs like a mofo.  Veggies...not so much.  So in light of that ideal this weeks cookbook is about using herbs!

the Herbal Kitchen by Jerry Traunfeld is a delightful book filled with herb infused recipes.  The herbs get the spotlight here and that is something I can live with.  Traunfeld gives a bit of tutorial in the beginning of the book on growing herbs, cutting them, and storing them.  These are helpful tips if you are just starting out like I am.  This is the first year I have grown herbs in earnest besides the year I had 8 billion basil plants and not enough pesto loving friends to give it away to.  So I really need help this year to get the most out of my garden.

The rest of the book is divided up into types of dishes rather than types of herbs.  The food is all paired with herbs that will make the other ingredients sing and dance...I'm talking a whole lot of poppin' and lockin' here! I have been looking for a recipe to use up the remainder of my basil before it all flowers out and decided to try this one this week:

Green Bean, Basil, and Radish Salad

6 Servings

1/4 cp finely chopped shallots

2 T sherry vinegar

1 pound fresh fillet green beans

1 bunch of radishes, cut into wedges

1/2 cp coarsely chopped basil

2 T extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp kosher salt

fresh ground black pepper

1/2 cup thin shaved parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Stir the shallots and vinegar together in a large mixing bowl and let them sit to mellow the raw bite.

Boil the beans in a large pot of heavily salted water until just tender but still have some crunch.  Drain the beans and then plunge them into a large bowl of ice water.  Drain again and dry on paper towels.

Add the beans to the bowl with the shallots.  Toss in the radishes, basil, olive oil, salt and black pepper. Turn out onto a serving platter and top with shaved cheese.

Enjoy!!

Lit Bits-7/30/2014 Deborah Wearing, Li-Young Lee

Ally says:

 I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself

- Marcel Proust

I don't read memoirs. I really don't. I think I've read exactly two memoirs in my entire life. One was about a NYC writer who had a kid who went a little bonkers and did some drugs for awhile (which really could be a lot of parent's story) and the other was Forever Today by Deborah Wearing.

It' a terribly cheesy title with a terribly cheesy cover but it tells an utterly amazing story. I stumbled upon this book when I was doing research for a scifi book that I have been writing forever called Palimpsest. It's about time travel and multiple dimensions and stuff but at the core it's about memory.

I have a terrible memory and my terrible memory sort of plagues me. I feel bad about it. I've tried to do those stupid tricks people tell you about to make it better but it hasn't worked. I'm thankful that, at the very least, I've kept a journal since high school so I can at least read about the things I can't remember.

So while I was doing research on memory I came across Clive. Clive Wearing was a brilliant musician who one day got a fever. It was March 1985 and that fever was caused by an infection - herpes encephalitis. When Clive recovered, both the doctors and his wife Deborah were horrified to discover that he retained a memory of only seconds.

Seconds. Deborah Wearing writes the following in Forever Today:

His ability to perceive what he saw and heard was unimpaired. But he did not seem to be able to retain any impression of anything for more than a blink. Indeed, if he did blink, his eyelids parted to reveal a new scene. The view before the blink was utterly forgotten. Each blink, each glance away and back, brought him an entirely new view. I tried to imagine how it was for him. . . . Something akin to a film with bad continuity, the glass half empty, then full, the cigarette suddenly longer, the actor’s hair now tousled, now smooth. But this was real life, a room changing in ways that were physically impossible.....It was as if every waking moment was the first waking moment. Clive was under the constant impression that he had just emerged from unconsciousness because he had no evidence in his own mind of ever being awake before. . . . “I haven’t heard anything, seen anything, touched anything, smelled anything,” he would say. “It’s like being dead.”

Some of the most heartbreaking sections of the book include the journal that Clive kept in a desperate attempt to make sense of the meaningless world around him. Each moment was a new beginning:

2:10 P.M: This time properly awake. . . . 

2:14 P.M: this time finally awake. . . . 

2:35 P.M: this time completely awake... 

At 9:40 P.M. I awoke for the first time, despite my previous claims.... 

I was fully conscious at 10:35 P.M., and awake for the first time in many, many weeks.

The only moments that provided Clive with any grounding where when his wife Deborah would visit him. But after spending the day with him she would come home to messages begging her to come see him - telling her that it had been ages since they were together instead of just moments. Stripped of the world around him and most of his own history, Clive still always recognized Deborah and loved her dearly.

How maddening and yet, how completely beautiful to find yourself adrift in such a place of love and sickness. Deborah Wearing tells an utterly fascinating tale. For anyone with an interest in that strange organ within our skulls I recommend this book.

I discovered this story by listening to Radiolab's podcast on memory. Here is the piece they did on Clive.



Aleathia says:

In the mid-2000's, as I was climbing out of a motherhood cocoon, I went about rediscovering the part of me that liked to read and write poetry.  My daughter's early years had my undivided attention (save nursing school) and that left little time for me to enjoy the things that make my heart sing.

I remember wandering around Barnes and Noble one day looking for poetry.  Their selection isn't the greatest, but I came across Li-Young Lee and something clicked inside me when I read his work.

Li-Young Lee had a very political and tragic beginning to his life.  He was born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1957 under duress.  His father had been the personal physician to Mao Zedong in the late 1940's and was forced to flee China.  They went to Indonesia and suffered at the hands of authorities there.  His father was a political prisoner at times.  They eventually fled the country.  The family moved around to Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan before immigrating to the United States in 1964.  Lee's father was very religious as well as political which had made his life intense.

Lee's life was not a bed of roses emotionally once moving to the US as he struggled with his identity as a Chinese American and his early childhood experiences.  His work is woven with the themes of exile, loss, and family strength.

His book, Behind My Eyes, is one of my favorites:

Trading for Heaven

I saw you at the top of the stairs.

Now I live a secret life.

I saw you holding open the door.

Now I'm filling pages with

things I can't tell anyone.

Now I'm more alone than I've ever been.

I traded every beyond, every someday,

for heaven in my lifetime. Now I'm dying

of my life. Now I'm alive

inside my death.

Do you see the space between our bodies?

Barely a hand, hardly a breath,

it is the space mountains and rivers are made of.

It is the beginning of oceans, the space

between either and or, both and neither,

the happiness of forgetting

our names and the happiness of hearing them

for the first time. I heard you

singing yourself to sleep.

It was a song from both our childhoods.

And now I don't know if singing

is a form of helplessness,

Time's architecture revealed,

or some inborn motive all blood

and breath obey

to enact a savage wheel.

I found you at dawn

sitting by the open kitchen window.

You were sorting seeds in a plate.

And if you were praying out loud,

I'll never tell.

And if you were listening to the doves,

and if their various whoo-ing, and coo-ing,

and dying in time,

are your earliest questions blown back to you

through the ragged seasons,

and if you've lived your life

in answer to those questions,

I'll never tell.

Your destiny is safe with me.

Your childhood is safe with me.

What you decide to bury is safe with me.

Li-Young Lee

John says: 

When I was a kid my old man had this t-shirt that read: So Many Books So Little Time.  Apparently the quote belongs to Frank Zappa.  I never took my old man for a Zappa fan.  Back then I had no clue what that quote meant.  I wasn’t an avid reader as a child.  I missed out on all of the classics unless you counted Batman comics and Baseball Card Monthly amongst the classics.  I was a television kid.  I knew sitcoms.  I knew that Alyssa Milano, Justine Bateman and Lisa Bonet gave me a funny, yet good, feeling.  Books never gave me any kind of feeling.  I didn’t really get why my old man had the t-shirt.  If I’d understood irony at that time in my life I may have understood that t-shirt.  I believe that I still have no true conception of irony, and I don’t like to wear t-shirts with sayings on them.

I didn’t become an avid reader until high school, until I had the desire to write.  I had the desire to write because of the hate that welled up inside of me toward the beautiful people in my age group.  I wrote poems railing against those people and then sent them into my high school literary magazine.  They were mediocre teenage rants at best.  At some point it hit me that I couldn’t write unless I read.  Reading has since become an addiction of mine.  It’s something that I spend most of my free time doing.  I don’t toil with people in the way that I do with books.  And now I don’t have a clue what’s on television.  This is either my human evolution or I’ve just become a pompous asshole. 

The So Many Books So Little Time saying has become a mantra of sorts.  I ponder it often as the stacks and stacks of “to read” books get bigger and clutter the apartment.  It doesn’t help that I’m forever thrown off course with reading.  I’ll make a plan.  I’ll say, okay, nothing but Alberto Moravia novel, but a month later I’m ripping through the new novel by Joshua Ferris, and the stack of Moravia is sitting there collecting library fines.

This happens when I meet people whose literary tastes I’m intrigued by.  Last year on a trip to the west coast I met the novelist, Ezekiel Tyrus (author of Eli, Ely).  Zeke and I talked a bit and we’ve exchanged a few letters.  Of course we’re Facebook friends.  But within the conversation came a whole host of writers whom I’d never read: W. Somerset Maugham, Alexander Trocchi, and Erskine Caldwell to name a few.  As a result whatever I had been reading was suddenly thrown out the door for these new names and books.  Another reading plan was shattered.  Another stack of books went unread.  A new stack formed.  As always Proust would have to wait.

I don’t just do this with fiction either.  I currently have a stack of non-fiction on my desk on topics as wide a Haiku, French literary history, string theory, all the way to biographies on Gustav Mahler and John Quincy Adams.  It’s exhausting but I guess it keeps me going.  I’m trying to settle down and stick with one author again.  W. Somerset Maugham.  I’m one-third of the way through Of Human Bondage.  It started off slow but now it’s picking up some steam as the main character ages into a man.  But the book better stay interesting.  I have a stack of Sinclair Lewis waiting in the wings if it doesn’t.  And that guy keeps calling me and calling me.

Here’s a list of some classic writers (not current) I’m pretty keen on right now: Hans Fallada, W. Somerset Maugham, Sinclair Lewis, Erskine Caldwell, Jack London, Georges Simenon, James Baldwin, Alexander Trocchi, Alberto Moravia, Italo Svevo, and Thomas Bernhard. 

Let's Go Somewhere-7/29/2014 New Orleans

Ally says:

Back in 2002 I decided I was going to go to school for writing. I was going to get an MFA and I even managed to get accepted into the one school I picked simply for their ad in the back of the issue of Poets & Writers that I was reading in Barnes and Nobles the week beforehand: University of New Orleans. I’d never been there but I figured, it’s New Orleans – can you think of a more muse-ful place?

So I put together my sample, filled out my forms and mailed them off to the admissions department. And I got in. Unfortunately I got my letter of acceptance about 1 month after my mother called me in tears telling me my father had stage 4 cancer. Instead of moving to New Orleans, I moved to New York City in 2003 to be closer to home.

I delayed my acceptance for a year thinking I would go back. I never did. Instead I got a different masters degree – an MLS – a Masters of Library Science. Yes, I’m sure you too are surprised to hear that you have to get a master’s degree to be a librarian. Stranger things.

I got married in 2004. On our first wedding anniversary, months into my MLS coursework, my husband and I boarded a plane for our first trip to New Orleans.

We drank at the Napolean House:

watched the Mississippi roll by, 

crept through the old cemeteries

rode the streetcar:

 and listened to some amazing music, including this guy: St. Louis Slim

and the Panarama Jazz Band:

My husband had such a good time he didn't want to leave:

It was an amazing trip. And walking around that city I felt, for a moment, I had stepped into that other life - the one where I was a student at the University of New Orleans, getting an MFA. Living and writing in NOLA.

Three months after that first trip, Katrina ripped through New Orleans, forever changing, but not destroying, that city. Since then I have been back 4 times. I hope to make this fall number 5.

There are certain places that welcome you back no matter what. That stretch out their arms, wrap you in a hug, show you to your seat at the Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street, slide a pim's cup into your sweaty hand while the thin man on stage replaces the reed in his clarinet before playing you a song.

Music Monday-7/28/2014 B-52's, Tchaikovsky

Aleathia says:

This week Michael brought home this:

Yes!

I remember owning this when it came out and thought I still had it, but the library of music was consulted and he said I didn't have it anymore.  This was a spectacular album for a small town, rural girl.  Each member of the band their own unique character...so bold, so confident.  This meant a lot to me in those high school years as I was moving away from bubblegum pop and hair metal into new wave and alternative.

Years down the road I would live in Atlanta, GA and hoped I would see them wandering around or even get to see one of their shows, but it never materialized.  I remember singing many of their songs while working shifts for my parents karaoke business in Arizona.  Ah....the good old days.

You love to hate it, hate to love it.  Yes, "Love Shack":

                          

You may begin cussing me out at any time.  Earworm!

John says:

Me and Tchaikovsky

I don’t profess to know much about classical.  I like what I like.  And one of those things is the music of Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky.  Tchaikovsky (or Tchaik as I call him) had a pretty miserable life: separation from his mother, her death of cholera, a bad marriage, and closeted homosexuality for a start.  It’s odd to me that he’s probably most famous for the Nutcracker when overall Tchaik was a pretty melancholy guy.  And this brings me to my point about me and Tchaikovsky.  Of all of his great music I’m most partial to his final symphony, his No. 6 in B minor, Op.74, or otherwise known as the Pathetique.

By Pathetique Tchaikovsky meant music more passionate or emotional rather than how we know the word pathetic; in fact Pathetique and pathetic have no correlation at all in terms of meaning.  And Tchaik couldn’t have been more correct on this one.  This symphony is full-blown passion and emotion from a first movement that teeters on the schizophrenic, to two exuberant middle movements, including a third that is so full of wondrous buoyancy that when the final movement hits it’s so breathtakingly somber and broken hearted that it takes your breath.  And you stay that way through the rest of this piece of gloomy genius, until the notes have no choice but to fade out at the end.  I can’t think of another symphony that completes itself in such a way.

The first time I heard the Pathetique was at the symphony back on 2012 and it has been a favorite of mine since then.  I walk to work daily.  Five miles.  Every other week I’m working Saturdays which means I’m doing six days straight of getting up to act as a public servant for the humble masses, when all I want to do is find a dark bar and sit there until the sun sets.  More often than not I find myself turning to Tchaik’s 6^th on those Saturday walking days.  It gets me through it in a way that no other music can.  

OM-7/27/2014 Buddhism, 10 Precepts

Aleathia says:

Life, as we know it, is a series of decisions.  Each of these choices moves us down a slightly different path that we might not see veering left or right at the time of happening.  Each choice thus has a positive or negative action/reaction that effects everyone we come in contact with.

In Buddhism, one of the first things I learned was The Four Noble Truths.  Birth, Suffering, Old Age, Death. It is simplified, yes, but that is how I look at it.  Our lives are one long string of suffering.  Some seek enlightenment from this suffering and others just turn the wheel and keep moving in circles.  It is hard to live by the vows I took so many years ago.  There are 10 Grand Precepts:

No Killing (I do well with this one)
No Stealing (Never on purpose)
No Misusing Sex (I'm good and proper)
No Lying (I am truthful 99% of the time)
No Abusing Intoxicants (We shall talk about this)
No Talking about Others Faults (epic fail)
No Elevating Oneself and Blaming others (could still use some work)
No Being Stingy (this could use work)
No Being Angry (uh-oh)
No Speaking Ill of the Three Treasures (pretty darn good at it)

If I start at the top with No Killing it is pretty easy.  I have never been one to want to see things die.  I have tried to save animals and people at own risk to my own health.  It is no wonder I chose a life in healthcare though today's modern medicine it could be questioned if we do harm with all the medications and treatments rather than letting the body work itself out.

No Stealing.  Hmm.  I did used to be a pen klepto in a bad way, but I was never a shoplifter or an out right thief.  I think stealing is pretty shitty.

No Misusing Sex.  This would be sexual relations that hurts me or someone else.  I have to say that in the past I have done this, sadly.  I am human after all.  But I have never engaged in activities to directly hurt someone with malice.  These happenings would be in the younger years when I was rife with stupidity.

No Lying.  Oh my.  When I was 8 years old everything I said was a lie, on purpose.  It was a stand against my stepfather.  I was beaten for it everyday too.  He tried to break me and it never worked.  Eventually he gave up and then I quit lying.  I felt like I had won.  I didn't win much.  I have never been good at lying anyway.  I have one of those faces where it just shows up in neon.  My father chose my name because it means "Truth".  It is hard to get away from a name like that.  Honesty is always the best policy.

No Abusing Intoxicants.  Ok.  I was young once and did a fair amount of abuse, but after I had Chloe it really wasn't hard to put it all down.  I had responsibility.  Growing up in a house of addicts and alcoholics I was used to seeing what sort of life it would bring and naturally chose the other direction.  This isn't to say that I didn't drink along the way, but I wasn't abusive with it.  In the last year, in a stay of support for Michael, I have not had a drink of alcohol.  It is strange that I would miss it having never really loved it in the first place, but I miss that feeling of letting go sometimes.  I am fully aware that I am fully immersed in reality as it should be, but hell if I don't miss letting my hair down from time to time.  When Michael and I drank, at our worst, I spent less time with my kiddo and more time hung over.  When she started mentioning it, I knew there was a problem and quit drinking.  But why isn't there a middle road?  I have been an all or nothing person most of my life.  It is frustrating and lonely there like a self imposed prison.  This needs revisiting for the both of us.

No Talking About Others' Errors or Faults.  Oh dear lord.  Work brings out the worst in me in this aspect.  I do this all the time even though I know it is bad on a professional level as well as a spiritual level.  I am one of those people that can find the good in others when most people cannot, but there are some people that I cannot do that with and it creates a freight train of negativity.  I need to be better at this.  This concept feeds a few others and puts me in a vicious circle.

Not Elevating Oneself and Blaming Others.  I don't often play the blame game.  I'm pretty good at taking one for the team but I would be liar if I said that I didn't lay blame here and there.  Most of the time it is reactionary when I don't know what to do.  This requires a bit more thought and patience.

Not Being Stingy.  I have to say when I was younger I would give away everything I had to make other people happy or make them want me around.  Maybe that was giving with strings which isn't true generosity, but most of the time I felt good about the giving.  I am still that way in some aspects.  I do want the people around me to be happy, but in my older age I have gotten more stingy with everything.  I think my excessive generosity as a kid burned me more than once.  Burns leave scars.  I need to open my heart a bit more.  I have been contemplating this quite a bit.  I could give more of my time to a charity.  I could do some good.  I have a lot to offer.

Not Being Angry.  Oh Nelly.  This is a tough one, isn't it?  Everyone gets angry.  I have never been a fly off the handle angry person though.  I am the slow smolder take over the oxygen in the room sort of angry.  I bottle up until I can't take it anymore.  In the last 3 years, with Michael, he has been patient and encouraging. He helps me let it out.  I suppose I have fear that if I express my anger then the people around me would leave me.  This might be imagined or learned from my mother, but it is rooted deep inside me.  This fear is pretty strong.  I have been a woman without a voice for a long time; always with a burning ember.  I get angry mostly at work these days.  See the talking bad about others precept.  These two hold hands.

Not Speaking Ill of the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha).  Oh, how could I talk bad about them. Never crosses my mind, ever.

This whole rant came about because yesterday Michael and I got to talking about how life has become a perpetual groundhog day.  We do the same things over and over.  We never let our hair down since we quit eating gluten and quit drinking.  I did not have to quit either of them, but chose to do this in a show of support to Michael because I love him.  What we have done is put ourselves in self-imposed prisons.  We have gone too far.  Now we aren't sure if we can even eat gluten or if in fact he has an allergy or if it was his gastritis.  We are going to try a controlled experiment with eating gluten when I have some days off (in case I'm in the bathroom all day).  We are doing this because these days being gluten free means having very few choices at restaurants and very few options of places to go.  We can't go on dates anymore.  We end up going the grocery store for our dates.  Boring as hell, right?  The drinking part is up to  him.  He wanted to quit for health and because he thought he was causing problems with us, which wasn't true in my view, but I supported it.

In the end, there has to be a middle way for all of it.  There has to be some way to survive in a proper way without feeling like life has halted completely.  The coming months will be interesting.  I'm looking forward to bending the bars.

Quills and Frills-7/26/2014 Writing Prompt

This month's writing prompt required us to put our iPod's on shuffle and take the first line from the first song we heard and use it as the first line of a story.  The results are interesting.

Chloe says:


Toxic Zombie Apocalypse
by Chloe Drehmer


        They’re all on the road again, those dirty, mangy creatures.  For two days now, there has been this….. large disease which started out as a cure for cancer. Of course, it started out in a small lab two years ago by the famous scientists who were known as Dr. Jones-Parker and Dr. Petee. They tried over and over again to create the right serum to cure cancer and they were finally successful on October 31st 2032 (3 days ago).              All was great for the first day since 98% of the USA’s population had cancer, so they all raced for the antidote. Those people were cured at last!... or so everyone had thought.
         The next day, the cancer-“treated” patients were literally toxic! Acid fumbling out of their mouths, rotten flesh (if any at all!), and all they did was infect people, throw up acid, moan and groan or loose a few limbs at a time….. or separately..… whatever was the case.  Yes, these dirty things are Toxic Zombies a.k.a. TZs. My name is Adolse, I’m only 14 and I am willing to die soon in my free time. I am one of the youngest of the 500 or so survivors left who has a crappy shelter, no weapons, no food, and no water, and no freaking allies!
         This first day was very bad and very sad. First off, my whole family had cancer except for me, so I had no help from family. The people who weren’t infected probably ran into the woods to never be seen ever again (still, no allies). My only “ally” was this shelter….. at least for the moment it was.  I tried to sleep which I surprisingly did and then the first night ended…..
         Now it was time for the 2nd night, and it was okay. I was thirsty and hungry and just then had I realized that I was sharing my roof with a TZ. I tried to get up slowly but it saw me and (like all TZs) it tried to spew acid on me. It was quick but I was quicker (thank god for the track team who were all probably TZs by now!), and I got away safely and ran for the woods!  I quickly climbed a tree to find that I ran 1.36782157 miles to the apple tree farm, so I set up shop then fell asleep.
         Today was my 5,475th and final day and sadly, it was also my birthday, but I just couldn’t take living in this dangerous world, running away from fate (which was telling me to die, sadly). I don’t know why I jumped the cliff ledge (other than that main reason), but it happened. What I’m trying to say is, don’t end up like the other people and if there ever is a Toxic Zombie Apocalypse, just kick the bucket, it’s not worth living after that happens. Be safe.



                                        A HMN From - Adolse

Aleathia says:

Crème Filled Doughnuts
by Aleathia Drehmer

“Number ONE in acquisitions!” Brent screamed at the top of his lungs, “Let’s see you assholes take that away from me.  Come on! Come at me with your best shot!”

Brent stood on the ledge of a Wall Street high rise wild eyed and sweating.  Small bubbles of white spittle clung to the corners of his mouth as he raged.  He HAD been number one in acquisitions for his company and his heady nature caused him to gamble one too many times.  In his recklessness, he had lost everything for his clients.  He was a laughing stock on the trading floor.  He knew he could never face his wife again let alone his parents whom he had taken responsibility of care.  They all depended on him and he let them down.

His hands were shaking as he held the cool marble edges of the building.  He couldn’t stop yelling into the spring air, unsure if anyone could hear him…unsure if anyone even cared.  He was now stalling what he had started no completely convinced he wanted to jump.

To his right, Brent heard an office window open.  He couldn’t see who was there, but started screaming he was “number one” even louder.  He looked more closely and saw a woman leaning halfway out of the window.  She was plain.  He would have never noticed her in passing.  Her hair was pulled back to the nape of her neck in a severe bun so that her fleshy neck looked as if it had a tumor growing from it.  He noticed how her ample waist spread out on the sill like a comfortable blanket wrapped in a polka dotted candy wrapper.  Seeing her there caused Brent to stop screaming.

Paranoid, he thought the woman was with the police and started to inch further to the left.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you…doesn’t look like you have much ledge left,” the woman said.

“I don’t care what you think you fucking pig!”

“Hey man, just cause I’m fat doesn’t give you the right to call me a pig.  I have feelings too you know!”

“Well….aren’t you with the police?” Brent questioned.

“No you dumbass, I’m not.  I work in this office and all this damn yelling is really making it hard to concentrate.”

“I should just fucking jump then is that what you’re saying?  You want me to jump?” he said with heated passion.

“Man, it doesn’t matter what I want or what I think.  I just opened the window to see what all this “number one” bullshit was about.  Seriously—does it matter that much?  Being number one?”

Brent stood there quiet, his body starting to slacken.  Did this woman have a point?  What was he throwing his life away for, because he failed?  Brent wasn’t sure anymore.  It all felt like a horrible dream.

He was startled by the shrillness of the woman’s voice.  “Hey…dude…I’m gonna leave the window open for you.  Just stop screaming, ok?  I just can’t take it anymore.  If you jump, that legacy is on you.  If you don’t, you can come in, I’ve got doughnuts.  Crème filled and everything.”

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Janet.”

“I’m Brent.”

“Good to meet you.  Ok, I’m gonna get my work done now.  Have a nice day.”

She put her heavy body back through the window and Brent suddenly felt alone and very near the reality of his situation.  It wasn’t a great time to remember he was afraid of heights.  He inched along the ledge carefully and only let out his breath when he felt the lip of the sill under his dress shoes.  He eased a leg back through the window, balanced there awkwardly he imagined, and moved the rest of his body through.  He let out a heaving sigh.  He turned and there was Janet standing in her polka dot dress.  Her face was full of Boston Crème doughnut, the chocolate smeared over her upper lip, smiling.  She picked up the box and extended it out towards him.

Brent reached out and took the lemon filled jelly doughnut.  He bit into it with gusto.  The powdered sugar sprinkled down on his black suit.  He smiled with her ready to not be number one.

Teeth Meet Nail

by Ally Malinenko

“Call my name.”

“What?” I say, sleepy into the phone. I fumble for the clock on the nightstand.

3:11

Jesus Christ.

“What?” I say again.

“Call my name.”

“Danielle….It’s late.”

There is nothing but silence on the other end.

My throat is foggy and I cough to clear it. “Danielle.”

“Call my name.”

“Go to sleep.”

“You won’t play?”

Her voice is light, soft. I can picture her face, her long dark hair. The way it used to fan over my pillow, over my own face at night.

I used to sleep soundly, buried in that hair, like a bird in a nest. Then, something changed. And it started to choke me, twisting its way into my mouth.

Suffocating.

“Danielle…”

“Do it.”

I sigh.

“Call my name,” she says again, sing-songy, letting the words just hang there.

“Ninety to nothing—”

“Watch me run,” she says before I can.

“I have to go now.”

“No,” she says. I hear that tears quiver inside her. It makes me wonder about the last time I went to the ocean.

“Is he there?” she asks.

“No.”

Her indignation is put on. It’s Cherry-Coke flavored.

“He’s on call tonight.”

“Sure…..ugly girls know their fates.”

“Are you finished? I want to go back to sleep.” This is, of course a lie. There is no way I’m going back to sleep.

“Wait….”

“What?”

“Just wait…” I hear a click and know that it’s the sound of her placing her fingernail between her incisors and biting down. When she fishes the loose nail from her tongue, because Danielle doesn’t spit, heavens no, anything but that, her words are momentarily garbled. “You missed a good show tonight.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“You did.” She says this with conviction as if to remind me that I’m missing out on a lot of good shows these days. I stretch and scratch my stomach.

“Big house?”

“Yeah. Martin says he wants to add another performance.”

“Good.”

“Good?” Her voice rises at the end and I hear another click as teeth meet nail.

“Yeah, good for you.”

“Ah,” she says exhaling. “Good for me.” Then after a pause, “I’m assuming you know about Layla.”

“I heard.”

“Are you coming to the service?”

“Probably…I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to go? I think you should go.”

“I’ll think about it.” I roll over, my back sore. The bed feels hot. I lay a hand across the empty mattress and wonder what Paul’s night is like. Has he saved any lives? Has he dipped those hands into the blood of another human? Why would anyone want to be a doctor? I asked him that when we first met. He laughed, taken aback by my question and in his surprise his eyes lit up. That was the first time I had seen him like that. Do you want to save lives? I asked him. Are you doing God’s work? He cocked an eyebrow at the mention of a deity. Jon, he said to me, I’m undoing God’s work. God made disease and death. Decay. Rot. I preserve. I fight to keep life. I’m a most unholy crusader.

He reached across the table of that posh restaurant – more expensive than I could ever have afforded and brushed his fingers over the skin of my hand, so lightly like it was only the thought of physical touch.

And, he asked, what about you? Why do you act? Because you want to know every life you could have lived? Or because you’re afraid of this one?

“Layla was your friend,” Danielle whispers through the phone. “You can’t abandon all of us.”

I can hear that she’s crying. She probably knows that I know this and expects me to comment.

“I’m going to go. It’s just… you know…. I hate funerals. They’re so depressing.”

“No time for the dead in that fancy new life.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Don’t bring him.”

“Danielle…”

“I’m serious. I hate the way he looks at us. Like we’re vagabonds. Druggies. Freaks. Like he wouldn’t lay his doctoring hands upon us. Don’t do that after we lost our Layla.”

“Stop it.”

“It’s true.”

“You don’t know him.”
            “I don’t need to. His name is Paul. That’s all I need to know.”

“What does that mean?”
            “It means ‘small.’ Small Paul. Is that what he is?”

“Goodbye Danielle.” I pull the phone away from my ear and I can hear her calling my name. Jon, wait. Jon, wait…I’m sorry. Her voice is tiny and airy like an evil pixie. I bring it back to my ear and I hear her whispering, “Please don’t hang up. Come on Jon, don’t hang up on me.”

“I’m tired,” I say. “I want to go back to sleep.”

“What time is Prince Charming back?”

“Usually around 7 or 8 in the morning. He goes right to bed then.” I think about Paul climbing into bed next to me. How he will fit his body against mine. How the smell coming off him will be the hard soap from the hospital. Clean. Bleached. Raw but still Strong. Behind that will be the faint sterile scent of the rubber gloves he pulls on and off each day. The powder he uses to keep away irritation. He will snore. His arm, over my waist will be heavy with the weight of a night spent pulling the dead back from the brink.

Pulling and succeeding. Pulling and failing.

“I knew you would come out. I’m not stupid. I knew it…us….we wouldn’t last… I just didn’t expect it to be with a straight.”

“Danielle…”

“You know what I mean.”

I count ten seconds. I’m about to tell her I have to go but she beats me to it.

“Anyway, I have to run.” She’s light and breezy as if it was the middle of the day and we were normal still.

“Okay.” I give her this. She needs it and I understand that.

“Call me later.”

I nod and then remember she can’t see me and instead say, “Sure.”

“Call my name….” she sings it. High and light. She has a beautiful voice. For a moment it melts inside me and I sink into the mattress. Suddenly all I want is for Danielle to sing to me. I think of her pressed against me. How light her arm always was around my waist. “Call my name….here I come. Your last ditch lay, will I never learn…”

She laughs at the end. “Ciao, darling.”

I listen to the dial tone before I drift off.

Art Bomb-7/25/2014 Polly Apfelbaum

Aleathia says:

Polly Apfelbaum does things that I could only wish I'd thought of.  She works with great color, fabric, symmetry, and visual spectacle. In 2009 I was in Kansas City for a poetry reading and took a detour to the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.  There was the usual fair that you find in a contemporary museum until I went into the back rooms and saw this:

I was really taken aback by all of the fabric on the floor.  I had thought that I went into a room I was not supposed to and was unsure where I should walk or what I should do.  The docent saw the stress on my face and started explaining the exhibit to me.  Polly Apfelbaum used hand dyed and cut fabrics arranged on the floor of the museum.  It came from her series of works called "fallen paintings".  These works spoke to every part of my being with the vibrancy of color, the near OCD placement of pieces, and the gorgeous designs.

Her work showed me that there is such a thing as controlled chaos.  Her work has a free nature by using fabric instead of paint and the floor instead of the wall for display.  More importantly, they reminded me of the Tibetan Mandalas in the way that so much painstaking time is taken to make a large scale painting that will be disassembled in the end.  

Polly's work is freedom and happiness and just plain fun.  If you ever get the opportunity to see an exhibit of her work you should do it!!

Foodies-7/24/2014 Bacon Brussels Sprouts

Aleathia says:

I have wanted to try Brussels Sprouts with Bacon for years but have never ventured forth to do that.  I have been in a pretty food complacent place as well as everything else due to exhaustion from work and the lingering effects of grief.  So after a rousing conversation with Michael (a bit painful as well) I kicked myself in the ass and am getting back on track.

Tonight we are trying this despite my kid wrinkling her nose up at it.  I just told her she'll love it because everything tastes better with bacon!

In addition, I am making mother's famous cracker chicken but with gluten free crackers.  I have avoided it because I didn't want to face the disappointment that it will taste like crap.  Fuck it.  I'm going for it.  We only live once, right?

Enjoy your food.  It should make you smile and laugh.  It should bring your family closer together.  Eat dinner together every night.  It is a place for conversations that might not happen because food is a great buffer for fear.

Lit Bits-7/23/2014 Jack Gilbert

Aleathia says:

Several years ago I was wandering through a book store and found a book of poems by Jack Gilbert.  I had never heard of him before and I was drawn to the cover of the book and the title.  I opened it up and started reading the poems and was thoroughly engrossed.  I bought that book that day and it remains one of my favorites.

Jack Gilbert was an American Poet (1925-2012) from Pittsburgh, PA.  He is known for his simple lyricism and clarity of tone.  The turns of phrase are elegant.  His first book of poetry Views of Jeopardy was very successful winning him the Yale Younger Poets Prize and was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  Despite these early achievements, he would not go on to produce copious amounts of collections of poems.  He broke away from this acclaim by living on a Guggenheim Fellowship in Europe.  He toured 15 countries as a lecturer of American Literature spending the greater amount of his time in England, Greece, and Denmark.

Gilbert maintained his writing career by being a frequent contributor to American Poetry Review, Genesis West, The Quarterly, Poetry, Ironwood, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.

I only have one of Jack Gilbert's 9 books.  It is very hard to find his work and you almost never find it in used stores because he is that good.

Refusing Heaven is a collection of poems that has held me through many very tough times in my life.  There is a sadness throughout the book that I have been able to relate to, but not so sad that it is depressing.  The work is real and truthful.  This speaks to me.

Homesteading

It would be easy if the spirit

was reasonable, was old.

But there is a stubborn gladness.

Summer air idling in the elms.

Silence hunting in the towering

storms of heaven.  Thirty-two

swans in a Kobenhavn dusk.

The swan bleeding to death

slowly in a Greek kitchen.

A man leaves the makeshift

restaurant plotting his improvidence.

Something voiceless flies lovely

over an empty landscape.

He wanders on the way

to whoever he will become.

Passion leaves us single and safe.

The other fervor leaves us

at risk, in love, and alone.

Married sometimes forever.

Let's Go Somewhere-7/22/2014 Wanderlust

Aleathia says:

My whole life has been spent moving from one place to another.  It started when I was small, a baby really, and pushed on through my late 20's.  The last 13 years have found me making roots and my soul is pretty happy about that.

Michael and I were watching a documentary last night on areas of the planet that were ravaged by either natural or man made disasters.  One of the towns was Picher, OK.  I remember my mother telling me that we lived in Oklahoma once and I have minimal memories of it so I sent a text to my Pop to see if he remembered the name of it. Tahlequah. Huh?

Let's start from the beginning:

I was conceived in San Antonio, TX according to my father.

I was born in Bristol, CT where most of my family still lives today.  This would be a returning point over the years.  We always came "home".

I got my Social Security number in Mayberry, CA before we made our way back to Bristol, CT.  I am told that in this mix we also lived in Florida and Massachusetts.

I know my mom and pop stayed together until I was 4 years old.  Apparently she got a wild hair up her ass (which wasn't unusual) and decided he had to go.  I would not see him for another year until my mother would become gravely ill and I was sent to live with him.

In Port Allen, LA

and then to Tahlequah, OK.

When my  mother recovered  I was sent back to Bristol, CT to be with my mother.  I faintly remember a small stint of moving through the midwest....staying with my Aunt Patty in Michigan.

Terra Haute, IN and somewhere in Iowa and somewhere in Wisconsin.

Again we would go back to Bristol, CT where my mother would decide she was in love with my a man who would become my evil stepfather.  He would move us out to Sahuarita, AZ by way of Puma and Amarillo, TX.  I would stay in Arizona for the second half of second grade, all of third and fourth grades.

Things would go sour and my mom moved us back to Bristol, CT where I would be reunited with my Pop for the first time in 5 years.  I would spend another 2 years here before my mother moved me up to Elmira, NY so she could get back together with the evil stepfather.

I made her promise to not move me around for high school.  I wanted real friends.  I wanted some stability. We stayed in Elmira, NY until I graduated high school.  I moved to Corning, NY to go to college.  This wouldn't last too long as I met a friend who would later convince me to move out west to Seattle, WA.

I stayed in Washington from 1993-1995 when, like my mother, I decided that I would move across the country to be with someone I thought I loved.  This time I would end up in Atlanta, GA.

We would be there a year before we moved back to Washington.  Once back in Seattle for 2 years, he decided he needed to be in Georgia so we packed up and moved to Athens, GA.  We were there only 6 months before he wanted to move back to Seattle.  When we finally got back to Washington we settled down for about 4 years.  I got pregnant and we knew that our families would never be able to afford to come west to see the baby so we packed it up again and moved back to Corning, NY.

Now I have a lovely home with my wonderful family in Corning, NY.  My home.  The place where I get to create my own personal driven memories.

In all of my years of travel I have driven through, stopped at, camped in, or eaten in every state in the continental United States except North Dakota.  I have never been to Alaska or Hawaii.  My bucket list is to have visited all the states before I die....and maybe enjoy it this time.  In addition, I have been to several parts of Mexico and Canada.  I have been to England.  I think traveling is fun, but home is better.  It is where my heart is.