Lit Bits-6/11/2014

Aleathia says:

Last Sunday morning, after a brutal night in the ER, Michael told me about an article he read the night before on a writer named Karl Ove Knausgaard.  He was very animated and excited about this man and the excerpt he read from his first book in a six book series called My Struggle.

I was delirious to tell you the truth, but he was so excited and moved by the work that I decided to look him up and read a little bit of the opening of the first book.  I was blown away by the deep, raw, stark, intense honesty in his work.  It wasn't flashy or showy.  It was full of description of the mundane life he leads, but it is not any different than the life we all lead and I think that is what makes the connection so immediate and cutting.  We have this book on order and we are both clamoring to read it.

“Now I saw his lifeless state. And that there was no longer any difference between what once had been my father and the table he was lying on, or the floor on which the table stood, or the wall socket beneath the window, or the cable running to the lamp beside him. For humans are merely one form among many, which the world produces over and over again, not only in everything that lives but also in everything that does not live, drawn in sand, stone, and water. And death, which I have always regarded as the greatest dimension of life, dark, compelling, was no more than a pipe that springs a leak, a branch that cracks in the wind, a jacket that slips off a clothes hanger and falls to the floor.” --Karl Ove Knausgaard

Not all of the books in the series have been translated from Norwegian yet, but they are in the works.  I listened to a video of him speaking at the Library of Congress and I was in tears by the end of it.  My heart ripped out and bleeding in my hand.  His words so powerful and true...so relative to any of us.  It is hard to find these books on the shelves and you  may have to order them in.  It will be worth it.

Let's Go Somewhere-6/10/2104

Aleathia says:

Several years ago I heard about the Tulip Festival in Albany, NY and decided to take my daughter up there to see what it was all about.  Every year on Mother's Day weekend Washington Park is alive with over 150 different kinds of tulips with nearly 200,000 scattered through the park.

In addition to beautiful flowers, they also have the paths of the park lined with vendors of all kinds.  You can find hand made goods from jewelry to woodwork.  There are food trucks everywhere and concerts in the parks center.

There are lots of great activities for children as well.  There are pony rides, bouncy houses and several playground areas.  It is really a great days worth of fun.  There is a hotel a few miles down the road and we took the bus from in front of the hotel to the park to save fighting traffic.  Inside the park there are several beautiful monuments like this one:

The area surrounding the park and lake is called this Historic District and is home to many styles of architecture from all over the world.  This area has been named one of the 100 most important areas by the American Association of Architects.  It is a wonderful time and so many pieces of visual candy to behold.  If you are ever in the Albany, NY area you should stop by and enjoy it.

Music Monday-6/9/2014

Aleathia says:

On a stroll through the local music store I came across the new Beck album called Morning Phase.  I remember when Beck first came out as this quirky emo-ish guy at the height of the explosion of grunge (outside the Pacific Northwest).  I thought it fun music and it fit my personality at the time.  I was 19 and discovering who I was after leaving home and starting college.

I didn't follow his career much.  I would hear songs from time to time on the radio or see a random video, but I was not investigative in his every changing sound.  Truth be told, I snubbed him.  He became somewhat acclaimed and I turned my back on him instead of really digging in and listening.

Last week I jumped on the old Myspace account and dialed in Beck's Morning Phase.  Morning is one of those great words.  It can mean dawn and sounds like grief.  I think that is a great description of the sound on this album.  At first listen I told myself this sounds like a blizzard of My Morning Jacket-Iron & Wine-Bon Iver.  It is ethereal and spacey.  A bit droning in parts.  There are a few great tracks from this album that I would put in rotation.

Blue Moon by Beck

Unforgiven by Beck

Don't Let It Go by Beck

OM-6/8/2014

Aleathia says:

Sometimes you find a strange sense of comfort in the oddest places.  Work was as busy as it has ever been. I spent one of my two precious 3 minute breaks last night to cry in the bathroom.  It can be overwhelming to stop and think about how, as a nurse, I spend my time saving people's lives, but when it is as busy as it was last night the fear of missing something, or having a death in the waiting room is too much to bear for one small heart.  I ran for 12 solid hours and when I got home, I had to walk the dog.

It was a beautiful crisp morning and we walked lazily down the street.  It was nice to smell something other than sickness and defeat.  I listened to music in the headphones and good old Elvis Costello sang:

"I'm putting scraps in cheap tin lockets.  What time erases and memory marks."

For some reason this made me remember something about my mother 6 months before she died.  She had been raised a Catholic and was a faithful devotee until I was about 2 years old.  She was 17 and poor and for Christmas that year she afforded a used black velvet dress for mass and a red rubber ball for 59 cents. She told me she was so proud to take me to this beautiful mass in my pretty dress.  She was giving me faith and community and spiritual togetherness.  They passed the basket around and she had nothing to give.  She told me that they made her feel worthless and dirty.  She never went back to church again except for funerals, weddings, and to comfort the grief she felt when her father died, alone and far away.

Shortly before she passed away, she had called me randomly and told me that she started saying little prayers again and did I think that it meant anything after all these years.  I told her a prayer is a prayer. They all get listened to in the end, they might not get answered, but there is never anything lost in saying one.  I didn't think much of it then, but now I wonder if she knew she was sicker than she let anyone know.  It gives me some comfort that she was getting right with her maker after so many years of drifting alone.

I'm not exactly sure what the line from the Costello song has to do with that other than it ruffled something up in my gray matter.  What time erases and memory marks.  Yeah, life is like that.

Quills and Frills-6/7/2014

Aleathia says:

One from the vault.  The Honey Pit, by me.

The Honey Pit

Darla lay on the old quilt in the field.  The summer flowers bobbed in a light breeze that didn’t seem to make the air any less thick around her.  She reached her hand out and snapped a daisy from its stem.  Its yellow center stared at her like a glowing eye.  She tried to count all the flowers within the flower, but the sun washed out her eyes.  Darla played “he loves me, he loves me not” in silence wondering if Marcus had fallen into the river.

“I feel like being submerged in honey,” she said to no one in particular, “I think it would feel nice like a liquid second skin.”

“It would be hard to breathe oxygen that way,” Marcus said from a distance.

Darla hadn’t thought he heard her.  She had hoped, but wasn’t counting on it.  He could be aloof sometimes and she never knew when that would be.

“Well, I won’t put my head under.  I will just go in up to my neck.”

“Ok,” he said as he walked closer, ”I’ll look out for sharks.”

“Are you a shark?” she questioned.

“No, but I’ll stand here ready to hit them with an oar if they come after you.  I’ll just stand here outside the honey pit while you bath.” He remarked with a small smile perching on the ends of his lips as if he were imagining her in the thick, amber liquid sticking to herself.

She liked that smile on his face.  She felt connected to it. Connected with everything around her and she didn’t know why.  Maybe that was the most amazing part about the smile.  It transcended everything she couldn’t name.

Darla closed her eyes and swam in that honey pit, arms moving in slow motion and legs scissoring, but not cutting anything but time.  Her naked flesh invited the honey to live on her.   She opened her mouth and tasted it.  It was so sweet and natural that it choked her.  Darla thought it was so opposite with the rest of the world that she knew day to day.  Everything sour and plastic and impossibly manmade.  There was nothing she could attach herself to that didn’t hurt or leave an aftertaste in her mouth.

She heard Marcus’ feet shift stance in the grass.  He always wore inappropriate shoes.  He liked to feel like every step reminded him to be alive.  Sometimes suffering made him feel alive.  She couldn’t understand this fully, but accepted it was part of what she loved about him.

“You will have to hose me off when I am done in the honey.”

“My pleasure.”

Dar stood up from the blanket slowly like she were rising from the pit and dripping the culmination of a bee’s life.  She was right about it feeling like a second skin.  It pulled at her flesh as it slid onto the grass leaving her feet in pools of gold.  Darla imagined she had been touched by Midas and felt precious for just a second.  She stood there with her arms out in an airplane and blindly smiled into the sun.

“You look like you have had a rebirth,” he said softly.

“This is a sweeter life,” Dar said.

I will be sweet by osmosis, she thought, and I will smell like candy and glow like summer peaches on the bough and be filled with nectar.  With her eyes closed and arms still out at her sides, she felt Marcus come closer.  Darla could feel him in her space.  She could feel the heat of his dark colors, of his sadness reach out like fingers.

She put her arms down but didn’t open her eyes.  She wanted to stay in this place where he would venture to get this close.  “I would lie in the grass under the sun and sleep by the river; I would listen to the frogs singing and hum along.  The crickets would hop from blade to blade above my head and in my dream would move like the undulation of water.”

“Perfect,” Marcus whispered only inches from her mouth.  He wanted to kiss those lips.  He wanted to taste that dream Darla was weaving, but he didn’t know how.

“Maybe you would leave your shark hunting post long enough to come and sit by the river with me and watch lesser fish.”  She reached out and put her fingers on his mouth smearing honey across it.

“All fish are great.”

Aleathia Drehmer

Art Bomb-6/6/2014

Aleathia says:

Hello.  I have started a new series of photographs that look at the back of people's homes in a small town. The town of Corning has roughly 12,000 people and it has the most alleyways I have ever seen.  They are even named.  So on my many walks with the dog I started thinking about how people will put their best foot forward when showing off the front of their homes, but what do the backs look like?

This first volume of photos covers a lane called Cintra between the cross streets of Field Street and Lexington Street.  This photo essay could be continued for years (yes, there are that many alleys in this city) and they will change in nature over the seasons.  I believe it shows the true side of people, not just the face they keep up for the neighborhood.

What is Left Behind: A Photo Essay of Backyards and the state of small town America, Volume One.

Foodies-6/5/2014

Aleathia says:

It is food time again folks.  On another jaunt to the library I found a great cookbook by J. M. Hirsch called High Flavor, Low Labor.

The idea behind this cookbook is that you don't have to sacrifice great flavors because you don't have enough time.  These meals are easy to prepare, but still pack a punch in the taste department.  Most of the recipes have 10 or fewer ingredients with very simple preparations.  I am going to be sharing a recipe for Lemon Grass and White Bean Chili:

As with any recipe, I make alterations of my own to make it more palatable for my family.  This recipe calls for several things which I am going to swap out.  We can't tolerate jalapenos in this house due to stomach issues so I'm substituting a can of prepared green chilies.  The recipe says to used ground turkey, but remarks that ground chicken or lean ground beef can be used as well.  I'm going with the beef.  It also calls for fresh spinach that gets wilted through the soup but I detest wet spinach so I am going with kale instead.  It holds up better and could be frozen if there are leftovers.

Lemon Grass and White Bean Chili

15 inch stalk lemon grass, cut into 4 segments and gently crushed

2 T olive oil

1 can prepared green chilies (or 1 T diced jarred jalapeno slices)

1 large yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp smoked paprika

14 oz can of coconut milk

1 cp chicken broth

1 1/4 pounds ground meat

15 oz can cannellini beans, drained

4 cps lightly packed chopped kale (or whole baby spinach)

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan or medium Dutch oven over medium-high heat, combine the lemon grass, olive oil, chilies, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, and paprika.  Saute for 3 minutes.

Add coconut milk, broth, ground meat, and beans (note: I am leery about the safety of this step of adding raw meat to the broth so if you also worry, cook the meat with the onions and spices, then add the liquids). Bring to a simmer, then cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 20 minutes.  Discard the lemon grass.  Add the kale and stir for 1 minute or until it wilts.  Season with salt and pepper.

I plan on trying this recipe next week!  Enjoy.