a journal of...

A journal among friends...
art, words, home, people and places

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Heat

 It's half past morning, just back from a walk.  These days it's best to start out early, for the streets are still usually shaded, with a light breeze that makes it easier to face August.


Yesterday, I began my usual walk around the neighborhood circle.  A few neighbors were out, as always...across the street, down the street, around the circle.  One doesn't simply walk unheeding here; one stops to chat.  It's pleasant.  It's neighborly.  So a simple round means a protracted time out.


As I made my way back toward the house, the heat was rising.  The temperature would have pleased anyone; it was a temperate 78.  The humidity, however, was 92%.  I had begun to drip, and had to stop a few times to wipe my glasses.

Still, coming across the drive, I thought I hadn't gone far enough.  So I turned back  toward the main street, promising myself that if I kept going downtown, I could treat myself to a coffee at the new bookstore/cafe.  And maybe a new book.  The town isn't quite bustling yet, though new arrivals to campus have begun to sift in, parents in tow (or towing them).  (I carry my mask everywhere, since few of them do. Sigh.)

It's easy to fall into praise for Epilogue/Prologue as the new place is called.  The Sanchez', Jaime and Miranda, have built themselves a wonderful space to share.  Well placed in the middle of the main business blocks, the two large airy rooms of books, brightly covered and adventurously displayed, it's somewhere to drop into, drop onto a chair, drop one's books and/or laptops on a table...spaced apart for a good sense of liesure...and browse or read while you sip a really good cool or hot drink.  Their pastry...genuine bunuelos or churros or a small plate of little freshly rolled tacos...sends me back to San Antonio days. 



The stock of books is huge for a store of its kind.  In the maze of high shelves, there are corners and rounds and hidden arm chairs, tables in and outside windows. It's clear that both the personable couple have a passion for the page as well as good palettes and, important, a perfect sense of reader comforts.


My neck was wet from the heat as I browsed, but two collections of short stories, Life Ceremony, by Japanese writer Sayaka Murata and Milk Blood Heat, by Dantiel W. Moniz, fairly lept off their perches at me. For some reason, this beastly August weather has me edging more toward the shorts than toward whole works...longer library choices of late have seemed tedious and overdone, sometimes downright silly. (And frankly, the current romanticization of World War II by writers far removed from that horror makes my blood boil.)


These two writers, each fairly young and each fairly experienced, seemed to promise me paths into minds I need to explore.  Who is this generation? I have to ask myself with each turn of not only the page but daily life. 

Around me the world swells with evidence of the myriad ways I seem at a standstill.  I, whose favorite readings are among writers of other regions, countries and cultures,  lately find myself too easily startled by patterns of living I have to struggle to understand.

I can see your smiles...okay, yes, elderhood descends!...but not conservatism, not, I hope, the stodginess of a shrinking mindset. I'm plenty open to discovering, to finding out where and how and maybe why.


So last night I opened both new reads, tasting a little bit of the Moniz, then more formally beginning the Murata to settle into.  The first seems, as its title might hint, full of fervor and fire.  Her writing is clear but worms its way into the deepest parts of the heart and psyche.  

The second, perhaps not a surprise, given the translated writer, is cool, slim, dry...a pleasure to read on these too stuffy August evenings.  I can't wait to get to the Moniz, but right now, the Murata is a calm much needed.  And yet (here's the surprise) weirdness reigns in one tale after another.  Murata's sensibilities are strewn with absurdity that isn't, on second...chilling...thought, far off.  As I read further, weirdness becomes grotesque in some stories.  I wonder why she takes up those images?

What intrigues me is that each small story culminates in barely a moment or two and the crisis at the center, even in the longer stories, is sometimes only a sentence long.  Endings seem unresolved.  And yet...and yet...like ghosts surfacing, huge issues hang in the aftermath...who will love me when she is gone, asks an elderly woman who has lived with her childhood friend for 40 years...and then, in the hospital room where her friend waits for a cancer treatment, the two continue their spited arguments until they look out the window and see the snow fall, deeper and deeper.


Meanwhile, Book Group begins next month, and already I am thinking that our carefully plotted list for this coming year seems a literary lifetime away.  Maybe, like buying new school supplies each September, we should pick out our books not at the closing of the old season, but at the beginning of the new.  

Because so much time and mind and world has changed in the meantime.  And we might not have been paying attention.




Thursday, August 4, 2022

My brain needs a rest


This morning I am slow, but not as slow as operations around me...this laptop, for instance,  which remains ten words behind my typing, and has skipped the o and the y along the way.  The day, too, began as cloudy as half-night, then sunny, now just whatever by the minute.  Also the shower, dragging itself up from the water heater below, then suddenly steaming hotter than the setting.  (Fortunately, I like a lot of hot water. )  


The shower felt good, but didn't spark me from sluggedness. On the list, headed "Thursday",  there are many doings to tackle.  One of them is this blog, and walking while it's not yet too hot, and re-watering the yard because my drip system isn't getting to every thirsty plant.  Apparently I am supposed to do all that at once, since each is marked 8am

There's the ironing, too.  Because yesterday was the first day home from a cooling visit to Jim and Eileen in the mountains.  There is nothing better than walks through pretty parks, startlingly beautiful gallery art, delicious lunches with friends, and lots of thrift-storing, chair-shopping, games, and trying new recipes (see below) to bring one back to life.









Even the puzzle that teased us, until finally it fell into place under our fingers, provided  chilly respite.


So yesterday, back in the heat, was far more productive; I came home full of energy, zipping through everything including the wash, some weeding, my sister's new resume, a few cards for friends, some homemade soup for Joseph who has been under the weather,



and a new air conditioning system for upstairs to keep my sister cool.  I even went out to a welcome chill of wine at my neighbors' at aper' time.  Good wine too, from France, nice and dry.


I fell asleep last night finishing Rooms of Their Own, by a youngish man whose survey of writers' places could have used a bit of copyediting, but whose choice of illustrator was brilliant.  The book, a lovely gift from Alice May, just returned with John from an idyllic journey among gardens in England and Scotland, reminded me how many times I have changed my mind about a room of my own to write in.  This past spring and summer my mind has been full of plans...to do this and that, here and there, this way and that.  A garden in back.  An apartment and a garden.  

Okay, not an apartment...how about a new workroom/studio so I can reinstate my guest room? 

I can't seem to settle on the right configuration of space my house needs.  Consider that there is always a change in inhabitants, uses, seasons of living, and aging...none of which I mind, mind you...it seems to be the way I've always lived, and always will.

But this morning I thought, my brain is tired.  It needs to take a day off.  (It won't, of course, because there is still "Thursday" to deal with...to wit, this blog...)  I think what is behind all this spirit-drain is the state of the world, which is assaulting me with insults every day, it seems.  

Listening to news, to political and civic conversations, I think, Where is there room for me in this world?  Do you not know, you people making policies that harm more than help, that I and the rest of humanity is here?  You act like we don't exist...I who would love a little peace on this planet, some consideration for its people, food to eat and decent housing, water systems shared across the globe, children protected from the manaical. Decent health care, for pity's sake.

And for me, to be seen as a real person, an individual, a woman who doesn't need others ordering her life, thank you...accommodations being my own to make and my own principles to follow.  


Oh, here we go: this minute some life-hacker is flashing a note on my otherwise supposedly protected computer system: STOP NOW!  DON'T DARE CLOSE DOWN!  YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF .... (some technical term I think he/she made up).  CALL THIS NUMBER NOW!

Man! I say, wake up and get with it.  And leave open a world where we can be our better selves. Then, with some peace of mind and world, I can build my own room.  I'm sure to feel livelier then.

******************************************

Zucchini Casserole
(adapted from Kevin in the Garden)

·        6-8 small zucchini (1 1/2 to 2 pounds total)

·        One small eggplant

·        5 large eggs

·        1/2 cup milk

·        1 teaspoon salt

·        2 teaspoons baking powder

·        3 tablespoons flour

·        1/4 cup chopped parsley

·        1 garlic clove, minced

·        1 small onion, finely chopped (I prefer to saute the onion first)

·        Parmesan-Romano mix shredded or grated (topping)

 

1.               Center the oven rack, and preheat the oven to 350°F. Slice the zucchini into lengths.  Slice eggplant into lengths.  Drain for a few minutes.

2.               In the large mixing bowl, beat eggs, milk, salt, baking powder and flour until smooth. Then stir in the parsley, garlic, onion.  Layer between zucchini and eggplant. Pour into the greased baking dish.

3.               Sprinkle cheese on top of the casserole. Bake in the preheated oven until the casserole puffs and its center is set -- about 50 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.