Sunday, July 27, 2008
Weight
I can see it coming, like a train. I can recognize it because I saw it run over me and then stall on the tracks. Can we do it? It seems like at this point we're expending more energy not to. Sometimes, you just can't stop gravity. But sometimes, gravity stops you.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The pot calling the kettle, period.
"Oh were it to stop, my tick tock tick tock clock, were it to stop- beep beep beep, sleep sleep sleep..."
The set up:
bare feet, filthy on the bottom from watering the garden and pacing the porch during a difficult phone call
salt clinging to the curve of my chin under my bottom lip from summer heat
the brain is restless, the stomach empty and wondering how to fill itself up
The simple joy of picnics. Piece by piece food that you liked when you were a kid: fruit and veggies, cheese and crackers, with the adult addition of aphrodesiastic wine. People on blankets. M.anifest in the background. Straight laced Minneapolitans dancing to hip hop. Soooooooooooo many bicycles. Another night of window shopping pretty boys and running into people you know from something. A silly, ironic film in the background. The film is good, but everyone's there for the people and the picnic.
I'm getting restless and red eyed. A week at home, though I plan on spending a lot of it cheering up my sad mother and wearing a synthetic fiber bridesmaid's dress, is much needed. Even just a week of air conditioning will be welcome. A week of not looking at the oven for 12 hours a day. Today in the kitchen, reaching for the salt, AA snarfled in my ear like a dog. Ironically, it made me excited to see my father. It also made my ear tickle.
I may have bit off more than I can chew trying to arrange dates with more than one person at a time. I'm a cook. I shouldn't be dating in the first place. I need to start writing stuff down. This new one, I don't know. He's laid back almost to the point where I have to wonder if he really wants to be go out. When we're in the same place, he's smiley and blushes and seems rather happy with the situation, but when we're not, he is downright reticent.
I'm trying to play a game where I simply do not know the rules. The last time, we played without rules and we both got hurt a little- I got my heart broken and have had to give him up entirely because I don't like these new rules- the rule of inactive fractional love, diminished friendship and too little to late. It's now beyond late. It's like when you sit in traffic trying to get somewhere so long you realize its pointless to still try and go, and you should just turn around. He's left me a wide berth to turn around in.
Did I mention someone stole my license plates? Very suspicious. I have to wonder what they're being used for. All of my criminal defenses are up because I'm watching the second season of Dexter on Korean YouTube. God bless YouKu.
The set up:
bare feet, filthy on the bottom from watering the garden and pacing the porch during a difficult phone call
salt clinging to the curve of my chin under my bottom lip from summer heat
the brain is restless, the stomach empty and wondering how to fill itself up
The simple joy of picnics. Piece by piece food that you liked when you were a kid: fruit and veggies, cheese and crackers, with the adult addition of aphrodesiastic wine. People on blankets. M.anifest in the background. Straight laced Minneapolitans dancing to hip hop. Soooooooooooo many bicycles. Another night of window shopping pretty boys and running into people you know from something. A silly, ironic film in the background. The film is good, but everyone's there for the people and the picnic.
I'm getting restless and red eyed. A week at home, though I plan on spending a lot of it cheering up my sad mother and wearing a synthetic fiber bridesmaid's dress, is much needed. Even just a week of air conditioning will be welcome. A week of not looking at the oven for 12 hours a day. Today in the kitchen, reaching for the salt, AA snarfled in my ear like a dog. Ironically, it made me excited to see my father. It also made my ear tickle.
I may have bit off more than I can chew trying to arrange dates with more than one person at a time. I'm a cook. I shouldn't be dating in the first place. I need to start writing stuff down. This new one, I don't know. He's laid back almost to the point where I have to wonder if he really wants to be go out. When we're in the same place, he's smiley and blushes and seems rather happy with the situation, but when we're not, he is downright reticent.
I'm trying to play a game where I simply do not know the rules. The last time, we played without rules and we both got hurt a little- I got my heart broken and have had to give him up entirely because I don't like these new rules- the rule of inactive fractional love, diminished friendship and too little to late. It's now beyond late. It's like when you sit in traffic trying to get somewhere so long you realize its pointless to still try and go, and you should just turn around. He's left me a wide berth to turn around in.
Did I mention someone stole my license plates? Very suspicious. I have to wonder what they're being used for. All of my criminal defenses are up because I'm watching the second season of Dexter on Korean YouTube. God bless YouKu.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Suspicious Bruises and Liberating Midnight Underpants Snacks
It is 1:16 am CST. I am eating raisin bran on the floor in the middle of my hallway in my underpants and I am so, so happy. I am listening to Ozomatli and Star's Set Yourself on Fire and have only checked to see if the front door is locked twice, and checked to make sure the freezer was shut once, as these are two things I do not want open to the elements.
The signs of summer are on my left leg- dirt from the garden on the tips of my toes, friction burns from my chef's clogs on the top of my foot, mosquito bites ringing my ankle where my pants don't go, and a very odd cluster of fingertip size bruises on the middle of the left side of my thigh. What?
Have I been slapped by bony fingered ghosts? Sucker punched by squirrels? Pelted with at least a dozen Mike and Ikes? Sitting on the floor in my polka dotted underpants and old activist T-shirt, I am perplexed. I have also stretched my camera, which is attached to my computer, and also to the charger, which is attached to the wall back into my bedroom so I can take a picture of my thigh at an hour roughly described as the beginning of the middle of the night, at least for normal people.
Tomorrow is the day all chefs and other 16 hours a day standers live for. I have an appointment with a chiropractor. Holy SHIT, am I excited. I've been, ahem, doing my own chiropractic work by using the weight machine at the gym that makes all my bones crack. Often, the three seconds of cracking are the most relaxed of my whole day.
The topic of the gym brings me to a topic I will most likely mention often: the big smallness of my beloved, awkward Minneapolis. There are twin brothers that come into work, often. They eat my food. I think they've seen me running around in some kind of official capacity. I remember them because they're twins. I also see them at the gym almost every day. I see them see me. They see me and probably remember that I should be familiar. I know exactly where I see them. Yet I never, ever say hello.
Yesterday, my day off, I was scooting around the produce section at a certain disreputable but cheap grocer and became aware that someone was staring at me. It was a man, a fairly ordinary looking man. I'm certain I've never met him. His girlfriend joined him some time later, and I am almost certain that I have not only met her but had some kind of conversation with her. Nevertheless, I had tomatillos to buy, so I remained silent. So the person I don't know is looking at me and the person I probably know is not.
Tonight, I saw those two people at the Hipshaker, not six inches away from my left elbow. And didn't say a thing, though the man definitely recognized me.
Minneapolis is a big city that is embarrassed that all semi hip 20 and 30 somethings all know each other, however remotely. We. All. Know. Each. Other. It's ridiculous. And we never say hello- just a whole big town full of shy people who apparently can't start conversations. As if that's the worst thing in the world. *cough* And I don't say hi either. Guilty as charged.
The Hipshaker. I don't understand it. It's fairly okay 60s soul music. It's free. They serve beer. Every month, there are between thirty and a hundred generally attractive people who have gone against Minnesota custom and said "yes, I am going out- TO DANCE". Soul in polka country, and in fact, just down the street from NYE's. People come in big groups. Some are doubtless married, engaged, dating, etc. Yet in all my time going to the Hipshaker, I have never seen anyone ask anyone they do not know to dance or even casually start dancing with someone they do not know.
It's like boy window shopping. I can put on my dress (or as tonight, stay in my chef pants) and dance my little heart out and look at all the pretty things I want to touch, but I know they will stay in their dance circle and I will stay in mine, out of meekness and a pretty lame and unsubstantiated fear of rejection. This sucks.
I wonder what would happen if I asked a boy to dance at the Hipshaker. Would the dance floor open up and eat me for my assertiveness? Would, inevitably, all of Minneapolis know within twenty minutes that two slightly awkward twenty something hipsters who did not know each other in a non peripheral sense danced? Come next month, cause you're going to find out, because though I love my friends, I think I should probably try to meet at least one new person at this monthly event that is so obviously set up as an opportunity for awkward people to meet and dance with other awkward people. Harumph.
I'm so excited for the man I refer to as "Dr. Bones" that I can hardly sleep. It's like Channukah, Election Day and Surdyk's Wine Sale Day all rolled into one.
Damn it, key in the door. Underpants raisin bran party over.
The signs of summer are on my left leg- dirt from the garden on the tips of my toes, friction burns from my chef's clogs on the top of my foot, mosquito bites ringing my ankle where my pants don't go, and a very odd cluster of fingertip size bruises on the middle of the left side of my thigh. What?
Have I been slapped by bony fingered ghosts? Sucker punched by squirrels? Pelted with at least a dozen Mike and Ikes? Sitting on the floor in my polka dotted underpants and old activist T-shirt, I am perplexed. I have also stretched my camera, which is attached to my computer, and also to the charger, which is attached to the wall back into my bedroom so I can take a picture of my thigh at an hour roughly described as the beginning of the middle of the night, at least for normal people.
Tomorrow is the day all chefs and other 16 hours a day standers live for. I have an appointment with a chiropractor. Holy SHIT, am I excited. I've been, ahem, doing my own chiropractic work by using the weight machine at the gym that makes all my bones crack. Often, the three seconds of cracking are the most relaxed of my whole day.
The topic of the gym brings me to a topic I will most likely mention often: the big smallness of my beloved, awkward Minneapolis. There are twin brothers that come into work, often. They eat my food. I think they've seen me running around in some kind of official capacity. I remember them because they're twins. I also see them at the gym almost every day. I see them see me. They see me and probably remember that I should be familiar. I know exactly where I see them. Yet I never, ever say hello.
Yesterday, my day off, I was scooting around the produce section at a certain disreputable but cheap grocer and became aware that someone was staring at me. It was a man, a fairly ordinary looking man. I'm certain I've never met him. His girlfriend joined him some time later, and I am almost certain that I have not only met her but had some kind of conversation with her. Nevertheless, I had tomatillos to buy, so I remained silent. So the person I don't know is looking at me and the person I probably know is not.
Tonight, I saw those two people at the Hipshaker, not six inches away from my left elbow. And didn't say a thing, though the man definitely recognized me.
Minneapolis is a big city that is embarrassed that all semi hip 20 and 30 somethings all know each other, however remotely. We. All. Know. Each. Other. It's ridiculous. And we never say hello- just a whole big town full of shy people who apparently can't start conversations. As if that's the worst thing in the world. *cough* And I don't say hi either. Guilty as charged.
The Hipshaker. I don't understand it. It's fairly okay 60s soul music. It's free. They serve beer. Every month, there are between thirty and a hundred generally attractive people who have gone against Minnesota custom and said "yes, I am going out- TO DANCE". Soul in polka country, and in fact, just down the street from NYE's. People come in big groups. Some are doubtless married, engaged, dating, etc. Yet in all my time going to the Hipshaker, I have never seen anyone ask anyone they do not know to dance or even casually start dancing with someone they do not know.
It's like boy window shopping. I can put on my dress (or as tonight, stay in my chef pants) and dance my little heart out and look at all the pretty things I want to touch, but I know they will stay in their dance circle and I will stay in mine, out of meekness and a pretty lame and unsubstantiated fear of rejection. This sucks.
I wonder what would happen if I asked a boy to dance at the Hipshaker. Would the dance floor open up and eat me for my assertiveness? Would, inevitably, all of Minneapolis know within twenty minutes that two slightly awkward twenty something hipsters who did not know each other in a non peripheral sense danced? Come next month, cause you're going to find out, because though I love my friends, I think I should probably try to meet at least one new person at this monthly event that is so obviously set up as an opportunity for awkward people to meet and dance with other awkward people. Harumph.
I'm so excited for the man I refer to as "Dr. Bones" that I can hardly sleep. It's like Channukah, Election Day and Surdyk's Wine Sale Day all rolled into one.
Damn it, key in the door. Underpants raisin bran party over.
Eat this Book
Weighed down with culinary tomes at the Walker Library, research for a project I call "You Need More Cookbooks: A Study in Excess Brought on by Built in Cookbook Storage Space", I spotted a fanciful little book hanging out by itself, not in line and spine exposed on the bottom shelf on top of such unappealing titles such as "Weight Watchers Butterless Baking" and "The Microwave Cookbook for Men". Everything I Ate, it said. Everything You Ate? says I? What an interesting idea. So I took it home. Put it in the backseat of my car, where it lay next to the Dove soap and the raisin bran while I became deeply involved with Starting With Ingredients by the splendid Aliza Green, sister Jew in the quest to make real and really good food. Today, exiting the car and halfheartedly perusing the amalgamation of stuff in my backseat, seeing what I could carry upstairs without it flying down the stairs, out the door, and onto P____ (you laugh, but it happens, often), I saw it lying there, cheerfully bright and looking like a light read, the kind I can handle while eating late breakfast and preparing myself for a night spent in an unbearably hot kitchen where I would dance an eight hour tango with a steam table. An iced coffee kind of book.
HOLY SHIT, this book is amazing! It's so self-gratifying, so self-interested, so boring and at the same time, so simply awesome. Tucker Shaw, who according to Google, also wrote the literary crisis Confessions of a Backup Dancer, has my total and unwavering attention. He is probably boring. He eats a lot of cereal. He eats like every New Yorker- he's hip enough to know how to cook, but eats out, all the time. I know nothing about him- how old he is, what he does, what part of New York he lives in (though my money is on Manhattan), if he's serious or goofy or artistic or what kind of music he likes, but I know the inside of his mouth like its my own. For people like me, who can read volumes into sammiches and sushi and carbonara and popsicles, this is like reading someone else's diary. For those of you similarly obsessed, you should read this book. And then do your own.
After reading through March, I went into my room. Put one knee on my desk chair. Toyed with the inexplicably sharp pull handle of my right hand, top most desk drawer. Took out the Nikon. Twitchy trigger finger on the flash. Picked it up. Put it down.
Would photographing everything I ate change what I ate? The whole point is to be brutally honest. But I'm human. We'll see.
Love,
Ani
HOLY SHIT, this book is amazing! It's so self-gratifying, so self-interested, so boring and at the same time, so simply awesome. Tucker Shaw, who according to Google, also wrote the literary crisis Confessions of a Backup Dancer, has my total and unwavering attention. He is probably boring. He eats a lot of cereal. He eats like every New Yorker- he's hip enough to know how to cook, but eats out, all the time. I know nothing about him- how old he is, what he does, what part of New York he lives in (though my money is on Manhattan), if he's serious or goofy or artistic or what kind of music he likes, but I know the inside of his mouth like its my own. For people like me, who can read volumes into sammiches and sushi and carbonara and popsicles, this is like reading someone else's diary. For those of you similarly obsessed, you should read this book. And then do your own.
After reading through March, I went into my room. Put one knee on my desk chair. Toyed with the inexplicably sharp pull handle of my right hand, top most desk drawer. Took out the Nikon. Twitchy trigger finger on the flash. Picked it up. Put it down.
Would photographing everything I ate change what I ate? The whole point is to be brutally honest. But I'm human. We'll see.
Love,
Ani
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Dud
The cake I baked at approximately 0200 is not right. It's fine, it's just not very good. Therefor, Mike will be getting his birthday cake about a week and a half late. But it won't suck. It could have been the humidity. It could have been the cocoa powder. It could have been the hour. Just another mystery of science.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Spectacle!
Klezmer music makes me so happy. The accordion is an unapologetically joyful, awkward, exuberant instrument and it makes me kick up my heels and twirl around the kitchen while I do the dishes. To dip and weave as I hang out the wash. To tap as I type. Hurrah.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The French Press Squeeze
Finally, finally, the second book is done enough for me to justify blogging again.
The book is an ego fuck. The book had to be written, or I was worried I would explode.
The book ruined my life for awhile. I would wake up with laptop on my knees, salty cheeks, empty. Just all spent out. You wonder why so many of us writers are heartless bastards? Our soul is in pages. I started the book when my heart was in little pulverized pieces, figuring that writing as a little shell would make it easier to write about death, torture, injustice and violence. And pancakes at Nana's. It was.
Now my heart is all whole again and I'm so fucking restless. I want some goddamn VERBS. Jump, hopscotch, run, paint, whirl, fuck, tango. Even cooking feels a little like drowning right now. My hands are raw and at the same time, cauterized by flame. My tastebuds are dead with the cigarettes I want to but haven't smoked and the meals I make for other people but have no interest in eating. At the same time, I'm happier now that I've ever been. I just feel trapped in my happiness, like I would imagine dogs do. I'm fed and watered, but I want to chase cars and get into trouble. I want to play the accordion and howl at the moon (this is easier for humans than dogs).
I'm one who takes deep and almost carnal joy in really simple, small things. Watering my plants. Eating breakfast. Listening to the Beach Boys "Endless Summer" while playing Scrabble against myself. Knowing the librarians at the Walker library. Making grocery lists. Having an actual conversation with someone other than my (much loved) roommate or my team members.
I want to be a gypsy. A rice paper lamp. An unpredictable souffle. A tea cake. A paperback pocket sized travel guide.
I am chef clogs. I am heavy sighs. I am a half dried up black marker. I am the syrupy coffee dregs in the bottom of a big, big mug.
I'm not morose and I'm not whining. It's just a reminder to reassess and slow down. Do I still love my job(s)? Do I still want to be a cook? Do I still want to be a business lady? Maybe I should move. Maybe I should stay (ie buy a house).
The problem with this age is I don't know what I want, but I want everything that I think I want (stability, uncertainty, in turns, love, sex but not love, to learn to play the accordion, to make my own marmalade and butter, to visit my parents all the time, to accept that I can't, to build tree houses and blanket forts, to double our sales at work, to be a line worker, to be a rising star, to travel and to sit still, to read books and take naps, to knit, to fight, to drink large quantities of bourbon after remembering to eat something so I can drink large quantities of bourbon, to build furniture again, to paint again, to be a ballerina again, to learn Spanish. To take salsa lessons with Nate. To cook every week with Rose. To go see everyone's band. To visit everyone that has flown the nest of the Midwest. To see my sister grow up. To get more than three hours of sleep a night. To throw spontaneous dinner parties without falling asleep on the couch during the coffee portion and having to be carried to bed. Pho. Mostly I want pho.)
I can feel lusty summer air blowing in through my window. It overheats me, which makes me nauseous and fraught with insomnia. The pressure builds. I get up. I turn on the fan. I put ice from the freezer on my chest and arms and neck. I drink cold water. At the same time, the blast of heat makes me want to be out in it. Its just a matter of fighting the glaze of humidity to get to the lovely parts. That's the answer, I suppose.
It's midnight. I have to work at five. I'm wide awake, drinking coffee like an idiot, tapping both feet, knowing that I'll either fall asleep hard or spend an hour curling and uncurling, hugging the extra pillow, putting my feet against the wall, eventually doing some yoga, cursing the clock. Whenever I get pensive, that tricky mistress of slumber goes to someone else's house and sleeps around. The dirty tramp.
It has also been demanded by certain currently abroad ex bed sharers that I start Twittering. I understand, my darling, but its just little bit degrading to acquiesce to something called "tweeting". As always, I am the Caddie Woodlawn of this modern wired world. The canning kettle in the coding room.
Speaking of which, has anyone seen my fucking canning kettle?
Love,
AEL
The book is an ego fuck. The book had to be written, or I was worried I would explode.
The book ruined my life for awhile. I would wake up with laptop on my knees, salty cheeks, empty. Just all spent out. You wonder why so many of us writers are heartless bastards? Our soul is in pages. I started the book when my heart was in little pulverized pieces, figuring that writing as a little shell would make it easier to write about death, torture, injustice and violence. And pancakes at Nana's. It was.
Now my heart is all whole again and I'm so fucking restless. I want some goddamn VERBS. Jump, hopscotch, run, paint, whirl, fuck, tango. Even cooking feels a little like drowning right now. My hands are raw and at the same time, cauterized by flame. My tastebuds are dead with the cigarettes I want to but haven't smoked and the meals I make for other people but have no interest in eating. At the same time, I'm happier now that I've ever been. I just feel trapped in my happiness, like I would imagine dogs do. I'm fed and watered, but I want to chase cars and get into trouble. I want to play the accordion and howl at the moon (this is easier for humans than dogs).
I'm one who takes deep and almost carnal joy in really simple, small things. Watering my plants. Eating breakfast. Listening to the Beach Boys "Endless Summer" while playing Scrabble against myself. Knowing the librarians at the Walker library. Making grocery lists. Having an actual conversation with someone other than my (much loved) roommate or my team members.
I want to be a gypsy. A rice paper lamp. An unpredictable souffle. A tea cake. A paperback pocket sized travel guide.
I am chef clogs. I am heavy sighs. I am a half dried up black marker. I am the syrupy coffee dregs in the bottom of a big, big mug.
I'm not morose and I'm not whining. It's just a reminder to reassess and slow down. Do I still love my job(s)? Do I still want to be a cook? Do I still want to be a business lady? Maybe I should move. Maybe I should stay (ie buy a house).
The problem with this age is I don't know what I want, but I want everything that I think I want (stability, uncertainty, in turns, love, sex but not love, to learn to play the accordion, to make my own marmalade and butter, to visit my parents all the time, to accept that I can't, to build tree houses and blanket forts, to double our sales at work, to be a line worker, to be a rising star, to travel and to sit still, to read books and take naps, to knit, to fight, to drink large quantities of bourbon after remembering to eat something so I can drink large quantities of bourbon, to build furniture again, to paint again, to be a ballerina again, to learn Spanish. To take salsa lessons with Nate. To cook every week with Rose. To go see everyone's band. To visit everyone that has flown the nest of the Midwest. To see my sister grow up. To get more than three hours of sleep a night. To throw spontaneous dinner parties without falling asleep on the couch during the coffee portion and having to be carried to bed. Pho. Mostly I want pho.)
I can feel lusty summer air blowing in through my window. It overheats me, which makes me nauseous and fraught with insomnia. The pressure builds. I get up. I turn on the fan. I put ice from the freezer on my chest and arms and neck. I drink cold water. At the same time, the blast of heat makes me want to be out in it. Its just a matter of fighting the glaze of humidity to get to the lovely parts. That's the answer, I suppose.
It's midnight. I have to work at five. I'm wide awake, drinking coffee like an idiot, tapping both feet, knowing that I'll either fall asleep hard or spend an hour curling and uncurling, hugging the extra pillow, putting my feet against the wall, eventually doing some yoga, cursing the clock. Whenever I get pensive, that tricky mistress of slumber goes to someone else's house and sleeps around. The dirty tramp.
It has also been demanded by certain currently abroad ex bed sharers that I start Twittering. I understand, my darling, but its just little bit degrading to acquiesce to something called "tweeting". As always, I am the Caddie Woodlawn of this modern wired world. The canning kettle in the coding room.
Speaking of which, has anyone seen my fucking canning kettle?
Love,
AEL
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)